Part-Time Devdaas... (3 page)

H
rida.
Everything about her was so stupefying that all I could do that night was lie in bed and let her thoughts spin in my head. It was 2 a.m. and I was still awake, reliving every moment of that evening. It was as if she had plastered a permanent smile on my face since then. I don’t know when I finally fell asleep that night; all I remember is that I kept seeing her smiling face, she holding my hand with her warm hand, and saying yes as I proposed her. It was phantasmagoria of sorts in a good way. I had dated quite a few girls, but none of them had rendered me this useless. That one evening with Hrida had turned my life upside down.

I woke up in a daze the next morning and the smile was still there. I heard someone in the kitchen. It was my dad making breakfast.

“Baba, why are you up so early?”

“Making sure yesterday’s little stunt of ours doesn’t cost me a month of sleeping on the couch.” I guessed that Mom wasn’t speaking to him. “Come, chop some onions for me.”

“I love you dad, and so does she; she’ll be fine by the end of the day,” I said as I started peeling the onions.

“I love you too son, and so does she, and that’s the problem,” he said patting my cheek.

There was silence for a while, and a nudge from dad startled me.

“You okay, buddy?”

“I think I am in love!” I mumbled.

“You bet you are, with a baby like that anyone could fall in love.” I wondered how he knew about Hrida. I soon realised that he was talking about the bike.

“Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to win back my love before it’s too late,” he said as he gave finishing touches to the coffee he had brewed for Mom.

“Greetings, your highness...”

I heard him say as he entered their bedroom.

I decided to talk to Radhika.

Waking Radhika up from her sleep before time was like twisting a Rottweiler’s ear; you could rest assured that you would be ripped apart. I contemplated for a while before I tapped her hand to wake her up. She was fast asleep.

“Didi, listen na, I need to speak to you,” I said lying down beside her, poking my finger into her cheek this time.

She opened her eyes and stared at me acrimoniously, but I had to talk to her so I decided to put a up a brave front. She turned her face away to the other side.

“Radhika… come on ya… you can sleep the whole day,” I begged her to wake up.

“Poncho, get lost before I slap you,” she said furiously.

“This is serious ya, Di, I think I am in love,” I said desperately.

“All you care about is your sleep, you don’t love me anymore!” I whined. She pulled me towards her and started patting my head, forcing me to sleep.

“This would be the hundredth time in the past nineteen years that you’ve fallen in love.” I figured it was useless to talk to her. I hugged her back and lay there. I had to talk to someone. Raghu.

When my calls and messages to Raghu went unanswered, I decided to go to his place and talk to him.

Raghu’s dad and my dad were childhood friends. They had gone to the same school and had pretty much done everything together.

“We have had all our ‘firsts’ together,” they used to say with pride.

Our moms joked about how they even planned their kids so they could go to school together. Raunak Uncle was the most adorable guy I’d ever known. He had fair skin, blue eyes, grey hair, and at a hundred and twenty kilos was a heavy man. He bear hugged me as he opened the door.

“Where’s Raghu?” I asked in a low voice as I gasped for breath.

“Locked up in his room,” he said.

“Kaka... I’ll see you in a bit,” I said and entered Raghu’s room.

“Whaaaattt? Did I sleep with you and forget to call you back or what? Why are you stalking me?” Raghu snapped at me.

“Why aren’t you returning my calls, man?”

“Got stoned man… got this new stuff; it’s heavy. What’s wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong, just wanted to speak to you.”

“Heard Sachdev pulled a Shah Rukh Khan yesterday.”

“Fuck, you should have been there. Major cheapness,” I cringed.

“I bet you this
bhenchod
will be sniffing someone else’s ass in ten days,” he said scoffing.

“Do you remember ‘Dangling Deepa’?” Both of us were in splits.

“God, she was one scary floozy. I mean come on, she was an inch taller than Sachdev!” he said trying to control his laughter.

“No wonder he got all pansy for her,” I said.

“I’m sure she would have had a bigger banana than him.”

We were rolling on the floor now.

For years, Shashank’s love affairs had provisioned us with months of laughter. There was always some or the other trait about his girls that left us roaring with laughter. From the juvenile Anandi who spoke childishly, to the
burkha
-clad Afreen who never showed her face in public.
n
ot to forget
totli
Tulikaa who called him That-hank – they were all hilarious. I have to agree that Neha was doubtlessly Shashank’s best score till date. For Shashank’s sake, I hoped she’d stay.

“There is more to the evening,” I said trying to sound as casual as I could.

“Oh yes, I heard.” It didn’t amuse me a tiny bit when he said that, “Neha’s friend?” he asked.

I knew Shashank had sensed something on the bike and must have told him. Then it struck me that if he had told Raghu, he would have in all possibility told Neha about it. What if she told Hrida? My heart sank. Why couldn’t he just keep his mouth shut for once.

Two regulars, I mimed to the waitress inside the cafe through the glass wall while Raghu and I sat at the open air table. Raghu elbowed me to check out the girls sitting at the next table. A while later I saw the girls giggling and smiling at him. The one and only thing I hated about being with Sachdev and Raghu was that I was freaking invisible to the girls when they were around. I had thought girls were only attracted to hefty guys, but this bastard was an inch shorter than me, had fair skin, was baby-faced, and oozed everlasting charm.

Neha got down as Shashank parked his bike; Raghu made our patented ‘tight ass’ face at me looking at her ass. I just smiled as she was too close. Shashank slapped him hard on his back before he sat on the table. He must have seen Raghu’s
hornithologic
expressions. Neha was looking even better than she had in a sari. The pink ganji she wore revealed ample cleavage and just a bit of her love handles. The dark blue heavily stonewashed jeans just made the flawless hour glass figure look better.

 “Neha, meet Raghuvir my boyfriend, Raghuvir meet Neha my girlfriend.” Shashank introduced them to each other.

All through the time we spent with Neha, Raghu and I kept observing her, looking for any form of impairment or deformity in behaviour which would be in tandem with rest of the nuts Sachdev had dated. We found none. She was flawless! Raghu and I exchanged a look. I hoped Sachdev would not screw up.

“So?” she turned to me with an impish look. “I heard.” I stared at Shashank with rage and threw a cigarette box at him.

“Hey I didn’t say what!!” Neha exclaimed.

Everybody started laughing at me. A bit embarrassed, I only smiled.

“Don’t worry, you’ll be the first one to tell her when she comes back.” She smiled reassuringly, “Only if you want to, that is.”

“Back? From where?”

“She left for Kerala with her parents for vacation this morning.”

“For how long?”

“Not sure, but a week I think.”

Shit a week? A voice yelled inside me. I had thought I would speak to her that day itself, now I suddenly had seven days to kill. I helplessly looked at Shashank, Raghu and Neha; they were happily making some random plans I didn’t care about. All I cared about was meeting her, and she was seven days away from me. Hrida… I thought of her and the smile sprung back on my face.

I
t had been six days since Hrida had gone, In those six days I had bunked college and spent most of my day either playing Counterstrike at Raghu’s place, or being a third wheel and watching movies with Shashank and Neha. Nights were especially difficult. I would kill time by drinking sneaked out whiskey from dad’s liquor cabinet or coffee at the James Coffeewala. Hrida was all I thought of. The more I thought about her, the more I felt crazy about her. The pathetic cheesy emotions which I had always despised were now flowing through my body.

At the dinner table that night, there was pindrop silence. I had an intense itch of pulling off an A. K. Hangal but the visual of three heads dissecting their food earnestly demotivated me. I quietly joined them. Mom was still not speaking to dad and that meant my house was a silent zone. Dad tried everything from making morning coffees to cleaning his cluttered wardrobe to going to the gym every morning. But nothing had worked. Lost in my thoughts, I was stirring the soup to death when Dad broke the silence and decided to shoot a few charming lines at my mom using my young able shoulders.

“Did you know our offspring is in love?”

Radhika pinched me and the excruciating pain brought me back. I saw Mom staring at me irately.

“In… in love with my bike,” I spoke attempting to recover from the pain. 

Dad looked at me disheartened. I realised I had flushed Dad’s brilliant attempt to strike a conversation with Mom. Everyone except dad began to giggle. Dad slapped my leg and Mom patted his cheek. Finally there was peace at home after almost a week.

That night Radhika and I snuggled between mom and dad in their room.

“Good I bought him a bike, at least he will have something to impress the girls with,” Dad said to Mom thinking we were asleep. “He doesn’t have my charm, you know.”

“Don’t say that, he has your smile,” she pinched his cheek by stretching her arm across us.

“And your lips...” Dad said and began to lean towards Mom.

”Poncho run!” Radhika screamed and we ran out of there room laughing.

I wished there would be never-ending love between me and Hrida, just like there was between my parents.

Next afternoon, I was still sleeping and beside me, a nine hundred and thirty page fat engineering mechanics book made itself so comfortable that it had pushed me to the corner of my bed. A vibration below my crotch woke me up. It was a message from Neha. I turned to read it and landed on the floor. The book looked as though it was dancing victoriously. I kind of forgot the pain when I read the message.
“She is back.”

“I have to meet her. Please do something...”
I begged.

“I am meeting her with rest of the girls in the evening... we are going for a movie...”

“Can I come please? We’ll make it look like a coincidence.”

“OK fine... I’ll buy a ticket for you and message you the time...”

“You are my hero...”

“We are watching Bhoot, Screen 4, seat no. B-19, I’ve left your ticket with the security with your name behind it.”
Neha messaged me diligently.

“I’ll be there. I owe you one.”
I replied.

It was a brainless idea but I convinced myself that I had no other way to see her that day itself. It was dark inside the theatre and I was twenty-five minutes late, so had to cross ten people and bear their
“kya yaar tum bhi, dekh ke chalo na jara, ouches, uffs”
to reach my seat. I tried to be discreet and waited for her to notice me. I stuck to my plan watching the hideous camera angles and listening to loud thuds and tolerating the infant screeching
right
beside me, I tried to look at her from the corner of my eye, but she looked more interested in Urmila rotating her head and whimpering. So I decided to play her part, and act surprised. As I turned to give my performance, the lights went on for the interval and I was staring right into eyes of
‘the third girl
’ who detested me.

The plan wasn’t working so I decided to abort the mission. The interval was nearly over and the crowd was walking back in. I carefully walked down the aisle, making sure she didn’t see me. As I walked towards the exit gate, a voice called my name out.
Hrida.

“Oh hi!” I said and I began my performance.

“Too scared to watch the complete movie?” she asked me as she slurped her cola.

What was once a one-time exercise now became a routine. In the following days, Neha became my tipper, messaging me the locations and time and I would magically appear there.

“Linking road, Bandra, 12 p.m.”
and I was there, to buy clothes for my sister.

“Crawford market, near Badshah, 3 p.m.”
and I would be there to buy some pav bhaji.

I would simply cling to her for the rest of the day. The girls would walk ahead, and me and Hrida would be on our own chatting and laughing. As the days passed, my reasons became more lame. Malls, cafes, parks, local trains, at the bhel puri stall outside her college – whereever they went, I was there with one of my reasons in my pocket.

I was so obsessed with following Hrida that I had completely forgotten that I was due for a KT paper which was a day away. Raghu acted all paternal and dragged me to the college library along with him. I had no intention in making peace with engineering mechanics. I cursed the day my dad force-fed me the engineering seat. I could never understand how mugging theory of trusses or study of concurrent forces would help me become what I actually wanted to become; all that
gyaan
was for the bespectacled great souls who slogged their asses and wore the blisters of engineering like a medal and graduated only to do their MBA and work for companies which sell washing powder and other such mundane products to the world. I wasn’t ready to be one of the educated fools. I was determined to run away. ‘
Someday,’
I said to myself, but for now, I wanted to run away from the library before its noxious, damp, fungal air choked me to death.

“I am leaving; it’s been three hours and I think I’ll get passing marks tomorrow,” I said as I stood up. The shrill squeaking of the chair made enough noise for all the medal bearers to give me foul stares.

“Sit down or I’ll kill you,” Raghu said half whispering and gritting his teeth.

“I have to go. It’s almost six!” I began to collect my stuff.
Why hasn’t Neha messaged yet,
I thought.

“I am not allowing you to make a fool of yourself anymore; you have hopped enough in your poop,” he said as he tussled with me to force me to keep my stuff back.

“What the hell do you mean?” I loosened my grip.

“Poncho, you are blind but the world is not. You are stalking her, man!” he said furiously pulling at my bag.

“No... I am not.” I couldn’t even convince myself when I said that. “Do you really think so? Did she say anything?” I asked in panic.
Whatever happened to playing it cool with the girls,
I said to myself.

“No, but Sachdev and I have been meaning to tell you to slow down before you scare her away.”

“God! What have I been thinking?”

“You should rather ask her out directly than behaving like a psycho.”

“I’m scared, man”

“What? Are you expecting
her
to ask you out?” he went back to his reading.

“I wish,” I said and rested my head on the table.

An incoming message vibrated my phone. Raghu snatched it from me and read the message, “It’s an unknown number,” he said and passed the phone to me.

It read:
“Its past six thirty. I think Neha forgot to message you today. I’m still waiting outside my college – Hrida”

‘You really wished it, didn’t you?’ Raghu said smiling.

We ran out of the library making a lot of noise, leaving the medal bearers infuriated.