Chapter 43: Come With Us
Anuj finished the eleventh balloon without any pot smoke. The story since the first fight of his imaginary couple had moved through: ‘Where he said, he loved her’, ‘Where she said, she loved him too’, ‘Where they got bored’ and ‘Where they broke up’. The story felt a little incomplete to him. He needed to contribute as the narrator. So the last balloon said, ‘Makes you sad? Stop imagining it.’ Kartik and Anand had parked themselves on yet another crumbly wall. The walk and watching Anuj work had left them a little silent. Anand was still spiraling through it. Kartik chain-smoked three cigarettes, chuckling along as he kept reading the balloon love story.
Anuj returned to stand with them as he lit a cigarette, watching the eleventh balloon blow with the light breeze as the tape held it to the gate. Anuj tried blowing rings but he couldn’t. He used to be good at it. Somewhere in the last few months since the break-up, he hadn’t tried blowing rings even once. Every time that he had tried, he felt a void on his ribcage, where he was used to feeling Seher’s head.
— “Too silent. Now that my hand’s urges are satisfied, someone needs to roll a joint.” That was when he spotted David, Ishani and Sara walking towards them. “Shit, it’s Ishani!”
— “Welcome to awkwardness.” Kartik jumped off the wall to pull out more roach material.
— “Asshole.” Ishani called out as they came closer.
— “That was incredibly romantic.” Sara smiled at Anand as the two groups joined. “Sorry, it failed.”
— “Thank you. I’m sorry it failed too. Also, sorry we created quite a scene at the party.”
— “Hey man, no worries at all. Shit happens.” David did not want the conversation to stay in that awkward moment. “It must have killed your New Year’s Eve though.”
— “Oh no, we’re just hanging around here for a bit before the girls call and we can head to the next party.” Anand wanted to stay out of that awkward moment as well.
— “What party?” Sara wanted to go to the party Anand was going to.
— “Some party Seher was invited to.” Anuj held onto an unlit cigarette between his fingers.
— “We were going to smoke this joint at the party before we realised we better head to the next one.” Sara pulled a joint out of her purse. “So do you guys want to smoke one while we wait?”
— “Sure.” Anuj happily put the cigarette away.
— “You shut up.” Ishani still hadn’t forgiven Anuj, or she just wanted to continue having this moral high ground⁷² she thought she had over him.
— “Come on, Ishani!” Even Anuj thought she had the same moral high ground over him too. “I will make it up to you.” After all, she caught his booboo.
— “How long have you and…”
— “Veena. Almost three years.” Anand smiled like a veteran lover talking to a young up-and-coming entrepreneur in the business of romance.
— “Wow.” Sara tucked a lock of hair behind her ear. “I don’t think anyone I know has been dating for that long. Except for my ex-boss but he’s forty.” (That wasn’t true. There were at least two couples in her circles. But she couldn’t think of any right then.)
— “Where is the party you guys are headed to?” David blew out a cloud of smoke up in the air and it glowed white in the street light. “We were planning on walking to ours, maybe you should walk with us if you’re just passing time.” The cloud of smoke stayed formed and dispersed between drags and passes.
— “It’s something at some musician’s studio.” Anuj obviously remembered it was at a particular guy named Enky’s.
— “You’re going to Enky’s.” One side of Ishani’s upper lip had risen through the deadpan delivery of that line. She wasn’t sure if she wanted Anuj to be at another party that she was going to.
— “What?” Kartik didn’t really care enough to remember the second or the third parties from the plan.
— “Venky, this musician friend of ours, who has started this studio and is throwing this party.” David was looking forward to this party unlike the Prajapati one where he was just letting his hair down after having landed straight from work.
— “You should come with us and let the girls know that you will see them at the party.” Sara sounded genuinely surprised by the predatory move she made as she tried to take advantage of Anand’s suspended situation. Till that moment, she didn’t even know she had it in her.
— “Sure.” On realising the smooth that Sara just pulled, Kartik realised that he hadn’t ever been predatory like that. He had seen Anand pull it a few times before he met Veena and he had seen Niyati and Seher pull it way more than quite a few times since. He wasn’t really surprised when Anand jumped off the wall and agreed to walk to Enky’s.
— “So who else will you know at Enky’s?”
— “Can’t say but I’m sure there’ll be someone we will have smoked up with or played a drinking game with at some party or the other.”
The guys walked with their own personal cloud of pot smoke following them. This neighbourhood was quite silent and still. There were Christmas lights outside some houses and the flickers of television screens glowing out of some of the others. Sara stuck closer to Anand with Kartik being the bone in the proverbial kebab of her intentions. Anuj, David and Ishani were walking ahead of them, with the joint moving in the following circle: Anuj, David, Ishani, Kartik, Sara and Anand. At least, answering Sara’s questions was keeping Anand’s mind off doing something stupid. Kartik felt a little unburdened as Sara shared his load of keeping Anand occupied. Kartik noticed himself thinking of what Sara was wearing. It was Seher-esque except it wasn’t. Less fine design and more solid colours. David put on Foster The People’s Pumped Up Kicks on his phone and everybody found a beat to walk to.
Anand tapped Anuj on his shoulders to ask him if he should let the girls know they were heading straight to the party. “Don’t be a chut. Just let them know when they call you about where to pick us up.”
Still standing on the wall, the girls stared at the black blanket of water, the lights bouncing off the waves, filth rotting in the gaps between rocks with the chilly breeze threatening to blow their clothes off. Behind them was the street, the lamp posts, the concrete, the buildings — all painted in various shades of orange and black, except for the fluorescent and neon signs of restaurants, coffee shops and ATMs. The combination of air hitting Veena in the eyes, the slight downlow of pot and alcohol, and the brewing (slowly now) cyclical thoughts in her head, drew lines of tears down her cheeks.
— “I think I am sobering up.”
— “Do you think your tears taste of alcohol or weed?” Avantika leaned sideways to smell Veena’s cheek. She even ran a finger over the line to taste the tear. “Nope, just salty and a little eyeliner-y.”
— “Hahaha.” The first ‘ha’ of Veena’s laughter sounded more like a ‘huh’, the second and the third sounded more like they were waiting for the weight of the joke to kick in.
— “I think it is time we stopped running all over the playground. You still think you are being Kartricked?” Seher’s hand looped around Veena to tap the back of Avantika’s head.
— “Or drugged and held in a perfectly beautiful flat…” Avantika’s fingers turned Veena’s chin towards herself.
— “With all the amenities and a giant television screen, half of which you pay for.” (The new TV was bought on EMI.)
— “And more than half of which you have designed yourself.”
— “Or being kept away from turning into a hipster, running a vegan coffee shop that sells trinkets that you design. Of course, you can’t design anything with diamonds in them.” Seher’s eyes lit up as she tried to keep a straight face when all she really wanted to do was laugh. “What with all those exploited African kids and Leo DiCaprio.”
— “All of those sound horrible.” Veena wiped her cheek with her palm. “Also, I need some of those wipes, Avantika.”
— “I am glad you are coming to your senses.” Seher used her arm around Veena’s neck to pull her closer and plant a kiss on a swollen cheek. “So do you still want to marry Anand?”
— “I am not sure.”
— “Phir se drama?”
— “Let’s work this backwards.” Avantika thought she had a plan. She put her phone away. “Now that we have stood here facing the sea and the wind for a while, how do you feel?”
— “Good, actually. I’ve been sobering up and I love it when the wind blows through my hair, it reminds me that all the products I use still work. Even more so when the hair flaps over my face and I can smell them.”
— “Just good? Or powerful, like you are free to do anything?”
— “A little powerful.” Veena’s ‘little’ was still a little indecisive.
— “What if I said, forget everything that happened tonight and you could do anything you wanted to right now, what would you do?”
— “Call Anand here and sit so close to him that I can smell his products and feel his warmth on one side of my body.”
— “Do you love Anand?”
— “Yes.”
— “Enough for you to want to spend the rest of your life with him?” Seher kicked the clause in.
— “Yes.”
— “Then what is bothering you?”
— “That I won’t be able to do any of the things that I have always wanted to if I get married to him. I will have to settle down and have kids and take them to school and to visit his grandparents and my dad and Nalini-amma, and ruin my life.” Veena’s dad and (based on what he said) Nalini-amma had both liked Anand. “The only thing I might end up having as only mine is a garden on our balcony.”
— “Actorography, bitches!” Avantika jumped up with both her hands in the air as Veena’s dress flapped up on one side. Avantika quickly resumed her duty to hold it down, while texting Niyati with her other hand. “At least, we have come to a solid conclusion about what is bothering Veena.”
— “Have you talked to your metrosexual madharchod about this?”
— “No. And don’t call him bad words.”
— “It is pyaar-se madharchod, like without him we wouldn’t have been in this mess. Think of you and me as a hypothetical couple who has had a hypothetical baby.” Seher smiled as the girls turned around and she was the first one to jump down. “And I am calling that hypothetical baby a hypothetical madharchod since you and him actually have sex, you know.”
— “What? Why do I have to be the mother? Why can’t you be the mother of this hypothetical baby?” Veena sat down first before setting her feet on the ground. “Sometimes, you are like Niyati.”
— “Don’t. Ever. Say that again.” Seher liked Niyati as a friend, but not who she was.
— “You know you are being misogynistic when you say that, right?” Avantika added as she laughed.
— “What?”
— “Nothing.” Seher said, “What are you thinking?”
— “Life sucks. I can’t decide anything.”
— “What is stopping you?”
— “My need to run away.”
— “Bahaut ho gaya, bhenchod.” Seher’s teeth grinded together for a moment. Her face jerked sideways as she blinked before she started. “All of us want to run away, all the time. You think all of us don’t want to win some lottery and go chase our dreams? We’ve decided to embrace pot, alcohol and banter because that is us. We’ve decided to say fuck you to the fact that we’re all going to die some day and by doing that we have accepted it. We’ve all tied ourselves to each other because we balance each other out. It has taken each of us that much time to seek solace in each other’s insecurities, seek sanity in each other’s trust. Because we simply don’t trust people. We just can’t. Because we can’t trust ourselves. We tell stories because life sucks and the best way to deal with it is to turn it into the most interesting story possible. Even if we knew there was a book to live our life by, we wouldn’t use it. Because we’re all afraid we will let it take over our lives, let it kill us. We’re mad but not that mad.” Seher was trembling by then. She lit a cigarette and continued screaming through the exhale (as she climbed up the wall once again), “We’re just neurotic junkies. We only seek cliches to destroy their meaning. The world around us is changing every second and we die pretty, we die young, more importantly we die many times a day. We have chosen to be whoever we are in the moment we are living in. We abuse every moment for as long as it takes us to be stumped by its innocence. We work hard to not belong. When did you figure out that the best way to sleep is with one leg under the blanket and one leg out of it? The joy of staring blankly at lights that zoom by during a late night drive. The pleasure of eating a sandwich stuffed with cheese at your desk. Our pleasures are small. Our thrills are cheap. Our sorrows are obscure.” Nobody had ever heard Seher speak so much, for so long and without any of it being elaborate small talk. Except Anuj. He’d be blowing rings and she’d be resting her head on his chest as they’d pass a joint or a cigarette to each other and she’d be rambling. Although, not as intense as she was on the edge of the promenade with: “We are not battling our way up or down anything. And nobody is going to get it. We are mad and we’re going to stay that way. Would you rather go to some other part of the world and become another person in someone else’s story?”
— “I don’t want to become somebody else.”
— “You will have to.” Seher just jumped off the wall and put on her shoes. “So now do you want to head to the last party where you can have a conversation with Anand?”
— “And who said you have to agree to get married to him tonight? Contracts are for a system. People can’t live by contracts. We can only live by trusting someone to not destroy us.” Avantika rattled off the phone. “That’s what Niyati said.”
— “See! I told you! Sometimes Seher and Niyati sound the same.”
— “We have a detour ahead of us. I will have to show my face at the Delhi party.” Seher thumbed her phone screen with one hand as she unlocked the car with the other. “I tweeted a pic from here and I’ve been getting stinkers from my friends. It is not very far.”
— “Good!” Avantika bounced on her toes. “I need to pee!”
— “Should I text Anand and let him know that we need to talk?” Veena pulled her phone out and unlocked it to look at some more of the early bird New Year’s wishes. “He must be worried sick.”
— “Don’t be stupid.” Avantika slammed the door shut behind her.
— “We need to talk is universal code for let’s break up.” Seher started the car.
— “Should I at least tell him we’re going to another party and will be seeing them in how long? Half an hour?”
— “Just put the fucking phone away!” Seher’s fist shifted gears and she sped into the lane next to the shawarma place they were hanging out at before heading to the first party.
— “Give me that dumb cigarette then.” Veena turned around to ask Avantika for it.
— “Police barricade coming up.” Avantika handed her the grape-flavoured slims and a lighter. “Veena, seatbelt.”
Veena thought about how she was going to breach the topic with Anand. Of course, he was waiting for an answer rather than a conversation. “Anand, I love you and I want to spend my entire life with you.” That would not have been a good opening because Anand might not let her continue. He would just take it as a yes and do a victory lap, maybe even ask Kartik if he wanted to exchange shirts. Kartik would uncomfortably ignore that but would hug Anand and jump with him.
Avantika rested her fingers and her eyes as she sat right in the centre of the middle row of seats. The shape of the evening hadn’t even been close to what Niyati had described would happen. Her head dropped backwards between the two headrests. But it was fun nevertheless. This was not her usual crowd. Nobody tried to paw her (she had half-expected Anuj to) and nobody tried to compete with her. This felt good. She couldn’t believe she actually got what Niyati meant every time she would tell her a gang story, or talk about gang violence. “Plus all the boys are kinda cute.” She thought.
Seher sighed as her palm vented onto the gearbox. She hated speeches. They always charged her up. Long speeches for her were usually about talking her way into or out of something. Long speeches for her had been usually about situations of desperation. This one just hit her out of the blue. While her mind knew there was nothing desperate about this speech, her body didn’t.
Stupid, stupid fucking Anand, she thought as she returned to being herself. She thought of burning cigarette holes into his shirt that evening as an act of revenge. She wanted to turn to Veena and ask her if she could do that (because Veena had bought it for him) but decided to let go of it.
— “I need to find a guy to date, who I can buy a lime green shirt for. Just so I can hate him when he wears it. Although, if he ever wore it outside the house, I would burn the shirt with him still in it.”
— “What?” Avantika and Veena asked her together. Neither had a clue where that came from.
— “Nothing.”
— “What’s on your mind?”
— “I hate making long, meaningful speeches. They always get me worked up like voice overs in a movie.”
Stupid, stupid fucking Veena. She had messed Seher’s brain up for the evening at least, if not driven her towards finding out if she could find a guy smart enough to stick it out with her. Even if she was going to dump him soon after finding that out about him, she needed to know she could score one. Of course, Anuj saying she could score such a guy, or any guy she wanted to, when they were dating, didn’t make sense to her. He could have been saying that just because he was getting under the t-shirt of uncontrollable prettiness on a semi-regular basis. Scoring wasn’t about getting a guy to take his clothes off, or getting him to fall in love with you, but expecting him to stay sane while doing all of that. “We’ve reached.” She announced as they pulled into the compound of a towering white building.
⁷² According to Actorography, if your lack of commitment has led to you being caught in the act, you are at the mercy of the person who caught you, that is to say that the person who caught you has the moral high ground over you.
