Chapter 4: Seher and Anuj
Seher grabbed a seat across from Veena and Kartik. She looked like she had just stepped out of the shower.
– “Nice white pants, Anna Hazare⁸. I know, not good enough but I’ve had a hectic morning⁹.”
– “I am going on an aabeeran anshan¹⁰ to protest that anti-national nickname.” Anand got up and handed the plate of prawns to Seher.
– “Not bad, Angoolimaal! Not bad at all.” She flicked a wasabi nut at Anand and waved at Ahmed (who was passing their table and responded with a two-finger salute) before she hugged Veena’s ankles with her feet, “Veenay¹¹, I missed you more than Kartik the stalker missed his stalkee Anjali!”
– “You told her too?!” Kartik whined at Anand.
– “That was all me.” Veena confessed while chair-dancing to the bossa nova covers of post-punk and pop tracks.
– “Why would you do that?!” Kartik hadn’t unpuckered yet. He still had Khuda Jaane earworming its way around his brain, from the two hours of conditioned¹² sleep he got the night before — the night of the now famous Facebook status update.
– “Firstly Kartik, even if Veenay hadn’t told me, you think I don’t have Facebook? Secondly, get over yourself! It is not that big a deal if you like someone!”
– “But it is! Anjali’s the one!” Both Kartik and Seher said the line together, in meticulously practiced harmony on Seher’s part. Irritated by Seher’s successful prediction of his response, Kartik shut himself up with an extra large chug of beer.
– “This table is missing chicken.” Seher unscrewed one of the tiny bottles of water as she surveyed the spread. The colour of the bottle wrapper matched the turquoise of her dupatta and her earrings.
— “Order some.” Veena muttered at Seher without looking at her. Anand was stuffing his mouth with prawns and Veena found that sight adorable.
– “I’m wearing white pants. So I’m finishing the eating before the drunk dancing begins.” Anand stopped chewing and mumbled defensively.
– “I didn’t say a thing to you.”
– “You were going to ask me to not pig out.”
– “Thhu…” Veena tossed a wasabi nut at him. “I was thinking you look cute with your mouth stuffed! Why would I worry about your eating?” Anand was indeed a fitness nut.
– “Oye, Atlas-Shrugged!” Seher chuckled and tossed another wasabi nut at Anand. “What’s up with the white pants?”
– “He’s wearing mojris too. When I asked him, he said, the look is called the summer package. Why are you wearing glasses today though?”
– “Lenses are such a pain in the ass! Why do we need to take them off before falling asleep?”
– “Niyati would say Anand’s look works. She’d call it the summer package too.” Kartik chuckled into his beer, knowing that this was going to push Seher’s buttons.
— “There’s no look called the summer package.” Seher simmered.
– “This blue linen shirt and these white linen trousers are for the comforts of a Sunday. I feel like I’m a summer package.” Anand high-fived Kartik from behind Veena. Of course, the look was working. Anand was feeling it.
– “Whatever.” Seher started playing with her phone.
– “Don’t whatever people. Your ideal man would wear nothing but dark grey shirts and dark blue jeans.” Veena changed the subject as her entire upper body swayed to an acoustic version of David Guetta’s Where dem girls at.
– “You might be right but I won’t admit that.” Seher watched the three of them burst into laughter. “Why am I not getting the joke here?” Seher liked having the vantage point¹³ in every joke.
– “You’ve been trapped.” Veena raised her left eyebrow like a villainous mastermind. “I was just describing what Anuj is wearing right now. So either that is your type or you’re still not over him. So which one is it? Quick, before he reaches the table!”
– “Okay, maybe I have a type. I think it started with the college rock band.” She ran a hand behind her neck and dropped her dense curls down one shoulder. Her hair had one streak of golden hidden somewhere in the centre. It used to be blue, which used to be red but it had been golden since Bombay. The golden was so perfectly hidden that normally, you wouldn’t be able to spot it unless she wanted you to. That was when Seher would drop her hair over her shoulder in that particular way.
– “Hi, guys.” Anuj stopped behind Anand and Seher, smiled at Veena and Kartik as he played with Anand and Seher’s hair. It had been a pain¹⁴ for the gang to make sure he came to the brunches. “Acchha, you guys want to come get a little baked?”
– “You got stuff?” Anand knew that Anuj always had “stuff” but he liked asking that question because he also liked to be right.
– “Yes, but I also have a rolled joint waiting to be lit.”
– “Hey, wait, Niyati is yet to arrive.” Veena asked everyone to sit down. “By the way, she said she wanted to talk to us about her missing New Year’s Eve. She got some last minute work. The money was too good to say no to, she said.”
– “Typical.” Seher put on her iceberg face. The others followed.
– “You didn’t finish, babe. You said she has a plan.”
– “Oh yeah, there’s a plan. I’m not sure how foolproof it is but it’ll work.” Veena went for the last prawn but Kartik’s fork intercepted her.
– “I’m out, guys. I don’t want to spend a New Year’s Eve feeling like the creepy engineering manboy who is the 2n+1th wheel. People look at you like you are a tharak ka time bomb.” He was most worried about how he would look if he ran into Anjali.
– “Great, Niyati is bailing on us. Let’s punish her by lighting this joint right away.” Anuj just wanted the drama to end.
– “Fucker, you’re already high, aren’t you?” Anand grinned with his teeth.
– “One. And also half” The smile on everyone’s face made him add two paise of honesty to his answer.
– “Kal raat ka aadha which you found when you were looking for your keys?” Seher was the most enthusiastic towards getting stoned.
– “You get me, man.” Anuj only addressed Seher as ‘man’ ever since they broke up.
– “I still don’t get it. How do you guys do this? How are you so comfortable around each other?”
– “They’re not. They want to be friends so they’re trying.” Veena’s official summary of the Anuj-Seher break up was: He got too douchey. She got too judgy.
Anuj patted Kartik on the back for his question as everybody walked towards the smoking zone at the edge of the terrace.
Chest-high glass walls circled the terrace with a stainless steel frame holding them all together. At the centre of each pane was the restaurant’s logo: the silhouette of six monkeys in a circle, each holding a banana in one hand (pointing outwards) and the other holding onto the ring at the center. Kartik’s theory had been that the ring was floating in an anti-gravity chamber and the monkeys were being trained to fight wars in outer space.
Seher lit the joint. Veena let out a soft yayy as she borrowed Anuj’s glasses — octagonal, silver frame with fat concave lenses — to wear them. Veena wanted to know what would happen if she got high while wearing them.
It wasn’t that Anuj wasn’t over Seher. But his relationship with Seher had changed him. The pre-Seher activities where his day revolved around his phone and messaging different women no longer fascinated him. Problem was, he had no idea what would.
– “Please tell me we’re not the will-they-won’t-they couple of this group.” Anuj passed the joint to Seher.
– “Shut up!” Seher slapped Anuj’s arm and turned to Kartik. “I’m crazy, he’s depressed. And we used to get stoned together a lot. So we’re both fine.”
– “That does not make any sense whatsoever.”
– “Yes! And also stop being so fine! Where’s the drama in this group? I want some sparks.” Veena snatched the joint from Seher. The previous group she was a part of had blood letters¹⁵ and whatnot.
⁸ Seher never called Anand by his name. It was always something that began with an A. Anand had been called Air India, Amul, Agrarian Economy, Anchorman, Agni Pariksha, Anacin and so on.
⁹ She forgot to pull out her lenses before she crashed the night before and she remembered that she had bought a new bottle of shampoo only halfway into the shower. Imagine a five-foot-four girl wrapped in a loosely-held-together towel, her curls drenched, bouncing on her toes from the bathroom to her bag and back while mumbling, “Crap, crap, crap, crap, crap, crap, crap…”
¹⁰ Aabeeran Anshan (phrase), Hunger strike till a beer arrives.
¹¹ Veena was always V or Veenay, like Priyay or Priyatamay or Sitay.
¹² According to Actorography, you could condition yourself to be in any mood you wanted to be. All you had to do was get high as fuck or fall asleep while listening to a song or a playlist on repeat. On that particular day, Kartik wanted to stay in a state of longing.
¹³ According to Actorography, every conversation has a vantage point. A point from which you can enter the exchange whenever you please. Veena was rarely at a vantage point. Seher and Anuj worked hard but sometimes the vantage point gave them a slip. Seher did better than Anuj. Kartik’s superpower was that he could find a vantage point whenever he needed one. Anand had two exclusively different vantage points, one reserved for Veena and the other for the rest.
¹⁴ Right before they left for brunch, Anand and Veena would call Anuj to wake him up and do a good cop-bad cop persuasion routine to get him to come. It had been six months or so since Anuj and Seher broke up. After the break-up, Anuj stopped waking up in the mornings. Afternoons are a better time for breakfast, he’d say. He missed being in a relationship. He knew he missed it because he missed putting two mugs of water to boil for the morning coffee. Just like he hated holding the joint through the making and drinking of the coffee. (It was much easier to pass it to someone while making coffee, no?)
¹⁵ That part was true. Veena had to get out of that group (or the blood letter gang, as we shall call them here onwards) after she broke up with one of the guys. Two of the four guys in the group started moving in on her. One of them started sending her poetry. The other started being almost everywhere she would be. One of the three girls wrote the aforementioned letters in blood to the guy sending Veena poetry. The second of the three girls and her ex were sleeping together. Veena was not in touch with anybody from that circle anymore. Except for the third girl Radhika, who had exited the group just before Veena. Veena made sure she caught up with Radhika exactly once a month. It would be at a college bar which mostly played rock and roll hits, all of which were pre-1999. Every time the gang or Veena was about to meet Radhika, everybody knew. Veena put on more bling, darker shades of eye-shadow and an incredibly happy laugh.
