You Are All I Need

by Ravinder Singh

  It hit him square on his back. He straightened up and looked down at the chit of paper. Puzzled, he opened it.

  Can you meet me at the cycle shed? I want to talk to you.

  —Rashi

  He turned to look at her and flashed a quick thumbs up.

  There, the first hurdle was done. Now if only she could muster up the courage to ask him for his number.

  ‘I will ask him!’ Rashi thought, steeling herself.

  The last day of the school year finally ended to much cheer. Everyone tore out of the classroom, running out to greet the holidays with the respect it deserved.

  Walking towards the cycle shed, Rashi hadn’t the faintest idea about how to start the conversation. Rajat walked in just then, unlocking his cycle. Without saying a word, they pushed their cycles together in step, only this time on the same side of the road.

  ‘So . . .’ they both began together.

  ‘G-go ahead,’ Rashi stammered, blushing.

  ‘I heard you are moving to Pune,’ Rajat said, looking at her forehead.

  ‘Er, yeah. Dad got transferred. We are moving in a week,’ she replied.

  ‘Oh, okay,’ he said, uncharacteristically quiet.

  ‘Rajat?’ She looked at him. ‘Can you give me your phone number? I’ll call once I reach Pune.’ It was a rushed sentence.

  He stopped in the middle of the road. She came to a halt beside him.

  ‘Give me your notebook,’ he said.

  Rashi handed him her school diary and watched with quiet excitement as he scribbled his landline number on the last page. He handed it back to her and she carefully kept it back in her bag.

  They reached the eventual fork in the road and stood there for a long time, smiling at each other. Rajat seemed to want to say something, but changed his mind, happy to just stand there and watch her walk away.

  The next few weeks were a blur of moving vans and settling in an unfamiliar city. When they finally installed the telephone line, she ran to her room, tearing open the boxes that had her school things. She searched through two boxes full of her belongings but couldn’t find the diary.

  ‘Ma! Did you see my diary from the last school?’ she yelled out from her room.

  ‘It should be among your boxes. Look again,’ her mother yelled back.

  Rashi turned her room upside down, searching every unopened or half-opened box. Her parents watched bemused as she dashed from one room to another, trying to find the elusive diary. She couldn’t find it even after several hours of intense destruction of her room. Dejected and tired, she plopped to the floor.

  ‘Ma, did you see it while unpacking? I had all my friends’ numbers in that diary,’ she asked weakly.

  ‘I’ll help you look for it,’ her mother said, gently stroking her hair.

  Over the next few days, her mother helped her search every nook and cranny, but the diary never made an appearance. It seemed well and truly lost in the move.

  Rashi felt a sharp pain of disappointment in her chest. She sat in her room, moodily looking at her newly wrapped notebooks, quiet tears trailing down her face.

  Five years later . . .

  Rashi was scrolling through her Orkut scraps, the concave monitor giving her a headache. In college, she was finally able to persuade her parents to buy her a computer for her room so she didn’t have to go to the cybercafé down the road every time she had an assignment due.

  Just as she was about to call it a day, she noticed a notification indicating a new chat message. No sooner had she clicked on the message than her heart started hammering loudly in her chest at the familiar name and display photo.

  ‘Hello, Ms Talkative. This is Rajat Desai. The boy who wrote your name on the blackboard and got you into trouble all through ninth standard.’

  ‘Hi, Class Leader. Still taking rocks to college?’ she replied, fingers flying on the keyboard in her hurry to reply to him.

  ‘It has been a while! What college are you in?’ he enquired.

  ‘I’m in Fergusson, studying literature. What about you?’ she typed back.

  ‘I’m studying Mech at IIT Delhi.’ he responded.

  ‘Some things have remained consistent, I see,’ she typed back, smiling.

  He was still adorably studious.

  They chatted for a while, exchanging pleasantries about college majors and the simplicity of school life. They reminisced about their teachers and how much they missed homework compared to the atrocities of college assignments. Rashi relaxed in her chair. Conversation with him was surprisingly easy.

  After a while, she looked at the time and groaned.

  ‘Okay, I have to log off now. My parents will blow a fuse if they see me on the computer for too long,’ she said, reluctant to log off but not wanting to give her parents an excuse to catch her late at night. She waited for him to wish her goodnight and log off. He was still typing.

  A few moments later, the screen filled up with his words.

  ‘Why didn’t you call, Rashi? I waited for months for the phone to ring.’

  Rashi took a deep breath and closed her eyes.

  ‘I wanted to, believe me. I lost the school diary that had everyone’s numbers in it. I turned the house upside down looking for it. I never found it.’

  ‘Oh, okay,’ he typed back.

  ‘I really wanted to, Rajat. Without any numbers or addresses handy, I couldn’t stay in touch with anyone. I was miserable that entire year,’ she replied, hesitant.

  ‘Yeah, I was bummed too.’

  ‘Why were you waiting for my call?’ she asked boldly.

  It was ten minutes before he replied. She thought he had left the chat.

  ‘Will it be too awkward to tell you now that I had a huge crush on you in school? I don’t know if you knew, but I pushed my cycle in the opposite direction to my house every single day just so I could walk with you.’

  Rashi stared at the message on the screen for a long time.

  The screen flashed a new message.

  ‘Are you there?’

  Her fingers shaking, she typed her reply and hit enter.

  ‘ . . . I had a crush on you too. I pushed the cycle so I could walk with you.’

  She felt a familiar smile tugging at the corners of her mouth, a new feeling blooming in her chest that she couldn’t quite name.

  20

  Something in the Rain

  Kaustubhi Singh

  I wanted to wake up thinking, believing, that my life was finally on track. I wasn’t the last person wishing for this, but I wanted sanity—and I wanted closure.

  I am twenty-five and was diagnosed with chronic alcoholism about three months ago—and it wasn’t a problem until my ex-fiancé’s wife reported me for threatening them. I hadn’t been clean for this long—fifty-five days in a row, with minimal withdrawal symptoms—but my anxiety was still pretty bad, so the rehab doctors decided to give me counselling, and I was in no position to deny. My withdrawal symptoms from alcohol weren’t as painful as the ones from heartbreak. They were more to deal with, and that is why I started drinking in the first place—to avoid the ache in my chest that felt like a rotting tooth.

  I take a little walk in my cubicle for one last time because I’ll be given a clearance today. I sit on the brown wooden chair I used to kick when I was so miserable that the doctors had to tie my hands up. Alcohol was my escape. The idea of alcohol was not pleasure but an escape, because when that warm liquor burns your throat, it starts dissolving the hurt stuck down there and slowly numbs you so you don’t feel the hurt. Heartbreak isn’t beautiful; it isn’t some literature; it’s not listening to sad songs or something like that. It’s feeling okay for a minute and then starting to feel their ghost around you, their touch on your skin. You miss them, you miss them so much that you choke on your memories with them.

  Dr Mayank Sharma, my shrink, almost my age, tells me that it will always hurt, and it will make one cry and scream till one’s nose is blocked and eyes puffy; that hurt is inevitable
but it will hurt less, and I will see and understand why someone did what they did. And I think I understand. When I look back to the day Robbie left me for another woman, he said he had grown out of love and I stood there thinking: Where did I go wrong? But thinking about it now makes me realize I did everything to truly belong to Robbie. I changed myself for him, I changed my ways and choices for him when I should have let him love me for who I was, because that’s what love is, that’s what love is supposed to be—loving someone for who they are.

  Dr Mayank also says that love is ironic—it lets you cage your older self in and metamorphose into someone new. And I agree, but if the changes aren’t letting you become a better person, what use is it then?

  My thoughts are disrupted by someone’s approaching footsteps. I tilt my head to see who it is, but in my heart I know it’s Dr Mayank. He has helped me a lot; he has seen me going to extremes and only he had the calm to cool me down. And, honestly, from the past week, whenever he is around I feel comfortable and relaxed, like I’m home.

  ‘How are you, Anjali?’ His voice is calm and deep.

  I stand up so he can sit on the chair. ‘I’m good, doctor,’ I smile.

  Sometimes I smile on purpose because I’m kind of attracted to him. He has never judged me, but that’s what shrinks do—listen without judging. I’m thankful my sessions started last month, because it would have been terrible to face him after knowing he has seen me beg for alcohol.

  ‘Last day . . . Hmm . . .’ He opens my file. ‘I’m impressed with your recovery. You’re a great patient. I’m so proud of you!’ He signs on the yellow file.

  ‘I’m happy I’m clean.’ I finally sit on the bed.

  ‘So . . . Anything you want to talk about with your shrink one last time?’ He smiles and I can’t help but notice how beautifully two small dimples form under his bottom lip. I want to laugh at myself for looking at him like that.

  ‘I want closure, doctor. One last time, I want to close my eyes and replay the last year and never look back again,’ I admit.

  He pulls his chair closer to me so he can hold my hand, and I wonder if it’s okay for him to do that. He gives me a soft nod and I close my eyes.

  I take a deep breath before speaking. ‘When Robbie asked me to marry him, I said we were too young, but then he hugged me and told me we were supposed to be together. I was so in love that I agreed, until I found out four months after our unofficial engagement that he was sleeping with someone else. I felt like I was sinking and that there wasn’t enough oxygen in the air to keep me alive. He started to hurt me with his words and actions, and I never knew how evil he could get until he took pride in what he did to me.’

  He gently circles the back of my hand with his thumb, and for the first time I don’t feel like crying.

  I take a breath again. ‘I thought I could end the hurt by drinking, but whenever I was sober, I could feel the clouds of sorrow build up again—so I drank again. I tried to escape this hurt. I was so mad that I invested so much in him but he decided to give his love to another woman. I used to drink and call him. God, I used to call him till he picked up the phone and shattered my heart again, but even then I didn’t feel ashamed. I wanted to be humiliated so that it would trigger my self-esteem and help me move on.’

  ‘It’s okay, Anjali, you’re in a very good position now.’ His voice felt warm and homely.

  ‘There’s more,’ I grin and continue, ‘I used to apologize a lot. I used to wake up and say sorry and check my phone, because I knew I must have screwed up again. I lost my job, I lost everything—I lost myself. One day I got to know that Robbie and Simran had had a baby, so I just wanted to wish them. I showed up at their place and his wife thought I was going to harm them, so she reported me.’

  I sigh. ‘I’m happy she did, Mayank. I’m glad she did.’ I open my eyes and he smiles—maybe he is smiling at how I addressed him without the prefix ‘doctor’.

  ‘Sometimes . . . sometimes, Anjali, things don’t just break—they shatter and the unexpected happens, and you get hurt by someone you trusted more than your life. But grief doesn’t change you, it reveals you,’ he says and I catch the last line.

  ‘It’s from The Fault in Our Stars, right? The last line?’ I manage a smile.

  ‘Yes, I see you’re very sharp too.’ He laughs. ‘So who is coming to pick you up?’

  ‘My mom.’

  He grabs the file again. ‘I see you live like just ten minutes from here.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  A guard comes and tells him that my mother is there. He waits for me until I pick up my belongings.

  My mom looks young and I hug her when I see her.

  ‘Mrs Seth, nice to meet you. I’m your daughter’s shrink, Mayank.’ He shakes hands with Mom.

  ‘Is she fine?’ she asks.

  ‘Yes, your daughter is completely fine. Just make sure she takes her medicines properly.’

  He hands her his clinical notes and my file. I smile at him, thinking this is the last time I will see this man who had helped me get through my own miserable mind—or maybe I will see him again someday with someone and I will remember how grateful I am for him.

  ‘Come, Anjali, let’s go. Thank you, doctor,’ my mom says.

  ‘Take this, Anjali. This is my card. If anything happens, please call me.’

  He gives me his visiting card, and I give him a smile.

  My mom arranges a house-warming party for my welcome but I honestly don’t think it’s necessary, because the reason I went to rehab is embarrassing and unfortunate. But she says, ‘It’s only a little happiness that matters.’ She is happy that I am clean but I still have a feeling that she is disturbed by the actions I took in the past. When you go through a process, you hurt everyone who cares and loves you, and I hurt her.

  ‘I’m going to get a shower and change.’ I go straight to my room. For the first time, I feel like a stranger in my own room.

  I wear a pink-and-white floral dress and open the drawer to grab some clips. I see my phone lying there. I haven’t used my phone since I got into rehab, because they want the people there to engage in physical activities and not digital—and it had worked because I don’t even want to switch it on any more. But I do.

  ‘I’ll save Dr Mayank’s number,’ I think to myself and long-press the power button. The first message that pops up is Robbie’s.

  I’m sorry, Anjali. Simran shouldn’t have done that. I’m sorry.

  I read it and I keep my phone back in. I shut my eyes and open them again, trying to avoid any unwanted thoughts. I brush my hair and keep biting the inside of my cheek to avoid any sort of breakdown. I don’t want to let people down any more; I’ve done enough damage.

  ‘Oh my baby!’ Minne Aunty hugs me and kisses my cheek. I look around, and there are only three people in the room—that, too, Mom’s friends. I’m not disappointed that she didn’t call mine, because I don’t have any. Everyone I know is linked to Robbie. I sit near Minne Aunty and a nostalgic smell hits my nostrils—liquor. My hands start to shiver and my neck tickles. I feel like I’m going to go crazy. I get up and walk to the window, and I feel a hand on my shoulder. I look back and see it’s Mayank.

  ‘As a doctor, I can’t be prouder.’ He pats my back and I just smile. I’m too preoccupied with the nausea building up inside me. ‘So, if I take you out, will you come?’ he says, and I just look at him like he’s some ghost, and he waits for me to say something.

  ‘Isn’t it against the . . . er, rules or something?’ I try to regain my senses.

  ‘No, I’m here as a guy asking a gorgeous girl out,’ he says.

  Mom allows me to go out. She thinks it’s therapy, but I grab this opportunity to look forward to life. I realize I am not the only one noticing him around. He takes me to an ice-cream hub.

  ‘I think it’s going to pour,’ he says while locking the car.

  ‘I think I should buy my favourite flavour for you, and you buy me yours.’ I smile and he nods. I choose co
okie crème for him and he selects mint chocolate for me.

  ‘Why did you ask me out on a date?’ We are sitting near the balcony area under the pink umbrella.

  ‘It’s a treat. You passed your test. You didn’t touch it even though you got the withdrawal symptoms.’

  I feel embarrassed for referring to it as a date. He says he likes the flavour I got for him but I feel like his is better. It’s minty and sweet, probably my favourite from now on, but I don’t want to tell him that and feel embarrassed again. This man knows everything about me and I just know his name and what he does.

  ‘How old are you?’ I finally ask.

  ‘Twenty-six.’ He pauses and adds with a laugh, ‘Unmarried.’ I smile because I think it will be weird if I don’t. Doctors do have a weird sense of humour.

  ‘I really like the person you are. Your presence makes me feel something I’ve never felt, and you’re pretty too, so I just thought, you know . . .’ He raises his shoulders. How can he say something like that so easily? Then I remember that he’s trained—he’s a shrink.

  ‘Beauty is a myth.’

  ‘The soul is timeless,’ he says. ‘I don’t choose you for your history, I chose you for you.’

  ‘Why do bad things happen to good people?’ I finish my cup of ice cream.

  ‘Because if bad things happened to bad people, it would be a good thing,’ he says and I laugh. ‘I should capture this—a happy you—and maintain a record.’ He starts tapping his pockets. ‘I think I left it in the car. I’ll just get it.’ He leaves.

  I look around and see a familiar face approaching me, and my heartbeat goes crazy.

  ‘Hi, Anjali.’ Robbie waves at me. He waits for me to say something but I don’t—I just look down and think about how bad my luck is. ‘I heard about you. I’m so sorry. We didn’t mean to. I hope you’re good now.’ His words are harsh and I want to get up and leave, but I don’t—I want to face it. I feel like a rebel in my own body.