Chapter 5: Avantika
Halfway into the joint, an acoustic cover of Taio Cruz’s Dynamite started playing on the speakers in the smoking area. Right on cue, the gang shouted, “Ayyyo, I’m Galileeeoo!”
— “Isn’t this Niyati’s song? Where is she?” Anand knew this because he had helped Niyati make every dance party playlist ever, and Dynamite was on all of them.
— “She should have been here by now.” Veena looked at her phone when she heard everyone else call out Niyati’s name.
“I made them play my song!” Heels clipped and clopped to the beat as Niyati (wearing her bee-eyed sunglasses) danced towards the smoking circle. “I came to dance, dance, dance/I hit the floor/Cause that’s my plans, plans, plans…” She was slightly off-key because she was singing the autotuned original and not the cover. Niyati slowed down, put an arm around Veena and made her spot-dance. “Thank you.” She plucked the joint from between Veena’s fingers and kissed her on the cheek. She took a drag and exhaled only after she had given everyone a quick hug.
— “You know, our group is a dark, dark member short of having all the shades of India. Like Anuj is brown, not fully dark-dark. Veena is textbook brown. Seher and Kartik are a few shades lighter. Anand is matrimonial ad fair. And of course, I’m the tubelight.”
— “You were not supposed to get a drag out of that one.” Anand leaned his back against the glass wall.
— “Don’t make me count the number of things I am not supposed to do that I do.” It was this side of Niyati that had made Seher like her. (We will come to that story in due time.)
— “How are you always all so like ‘I’m here and everyone else can suck it’? Who do you think you are? Why are you ditching us tomorrow?” Kartik was itching to start a fight. While his voice may have sounded like that of a protesting union leader’s, he was standing stiff with his hands in his pockets.
— “But I am actually not. But first… New balls! Must feel good.” Niyati pat Kartik’s back and then continued, “I mean I am ditching you ditching you but I am also not ditching you by saving the day. I’ve brought a replacement. You have to meet her, she is almost like me but she’s not really like me like me.” She, obviously like the rest, knew that Kartik would need all the support he could get if he was to speak to Anjali at a New Year’s Eve party.
— “I trust Niyati. I’m sure this new girl will be fun.” Veena knew that Niyati couldn’t have been that wrong about someone. Despite the fact that she did not understand many of the things that Niyati said. Veena innately knew that Niyati was “a good seed” — something her mother Nalini-amma¹⁶ used to say.
— “Have you even met this girl?” Kartik and Seher spoke in unison again.
— “Stop predicting me.” Kartik pointed a fingergun at Seher but didn’t shoot.
— “Stop being so self-important.” Seher broke into a laugh and slapped his fingergun away.
— “I’ve seen her photo on Whatsapp. Niyati sent it to me on her way here. She looks like a decent person.”
— “Have you even Facebooked her? How can you call her decent? What if she’s a right-wing nutjob?” He paused to look at the picture. “A good looking friend of Niyati’s. Works for me and the Anjali scenario. What’s her name?” Kartik’s mood suddenly improved. This girl would make his party posse look great on his metaphorical resume for his job as Anjali’s suitor.
— “Avantika.”
— “Every psycho looks like a decent person in a WhatsApp photo.” Seher built her defenses upon being handed the phone. This was too much work. Meeting a new person, waiting for everybody to figure out if the new person would break the status quo of the group or not. Seher preferred to not care and if voting was mandatory, she preferred to just vote against.
— “It’s a girl.” Anuj glanced at the picture and returned the phone to Anand. By his math, if he didn’t show up, the group would have more girls than guys¹⁷. Add that to the fact that Anuj himself was not going to show up and you’ll get how little he cared.
— “Guys! Guys! Guys! Avantika is here and she is waiting for us at our table. But first, we need to take a picture with Sunday’s first joint.”
After a group selfie on Niyati’s phone, the gang moved to the table. Anuj finished the last of the joint and tossed the butt off the terrace. At the table, a girl in a white t-shirt and loose dungaree shorts sat with aviators hanging off the chest pocket.
— “Why wasn’t I told we were meeting someone new? I hate being stoned when I meet someone new.” Kartik was worried that he would be way too stoned to be socially acceptable. He was worried he would sniff his armpits. (Sometimes, when he was alone, he did that.)
— “Avantika, this is Seher, Kartik, Anuj, Veena and Anand.” Then she quickly turned around and asked everyone to, “Get rid of the iceberg face, you guys!”
— “Hey there, psycho!” Seher was the first to greet Avantika.
— “What?” Avantika tried not to be intimidated and then tried to make friends. “What’s an iceberg face? It sounds like an anti-ageing spa treatment.” Not like she didn’t know. (After all, she was also a student of Niyati’s Actorography™ Personal Development Program¹⁸.)
— “Oh, that.” The gang responded with a bunch of nothings¹⁹.
— “Yes, that.” (Nothing.)
— “Ice-what-face?” (Nothing.)
— “Hey, it’s cool guys.” Niyati intervened. “Treat her like she’s a part of the gang already. She needs to start absorbing the vibes.”
— “That does not make sense.” Anuj popped a prawn into his mouth and put its tail back on the plate.
— “In Actorography, it does.” Niyati’s palms dangled off her wrists.
— “Getting someone to replace you?” Kartik laughed before he delivered what he thought was a joke. “What is this, the IPL? How much did you bid for Avantika?”
— “I think I concur with the stalker. Also, there is no such thing as Actorography.” Seher stopped taking pictures at that moment and tweeted the last line she said.
— “IPL does make a little sense. We are the Indian Party League.” Anand always had Kartik’s back.
— “And Anjali is the man of the match trophy.” Kartik high-fived Anand as the others exchanged disturbed glances. Anuj choked on his prawn.
— “So Anjali is fair game? Anyone who out-parties you can win her?” Anuj grinned and put a hand on Kartik’s knee.
— “Oh, what are you going to do? Tell her you are a depressed writer who can’t understand why nobody understood his novel? Paadvaani toh haunh nathi aney tofdi maa naam lakhaava chaalyo.” The foreseeable fruits of his obsession had hardened Kartik.
— “What?” Veena fell off her chair laughing.
— “Nothing. Just something my grandmother used to say. Roughly translates to, you don’t even know when you’re farting and you want to sign up for the cannon battery?”
— “Say it again, in Gujarati. I want to write this down.” Niyati started thumbpunching her phone screen. She muttered the phrase under her breath to get the pronunciation right as she transcribed it. When she was done, she realised that a lull had set in. Niyati hated lulls²⁰. She waited exactly one second.
— “Looking good, Anand. Like a cool, breezy, summer package.”
— “Ha! Suck it, loser!” Anand pointed at Seher and laughed. Veena immediately dodged Seher’s eyes.
— “For the last time. Just like there is no such thing as ‘actorography’, there is also no such thing as ‘the summer package look’.” Seher spoke to her drink as it rested on her knee, right in front of her face.
— “We have had this argument. I work in the industry. You only write about it. We agreed to disagree.”
— “As the published writer in the group, while I am not convinced of actorography…” Anuj’s dramatic pause cost him.
— “Really now? Are we letting you get away with ‘As the published writer in the group’?” Seher made a two-finger gun and shot Anuj in the head.
Anuj died and dropped backwards into his chair. Seher stood over his corpse and shot him in the chest. Anuj’s body shook to acknowledge the second invisible bullet. Then just out of spite, she committed to her gun-toting breakdown and waved the fingergun around. Everybody ducked. “Say ‘Actorography is real’ one more time!”
Under the table, Niyati whispered to Avantika, “I’ve told you about the slight condition of gang violence that we suffer from, right?” Avantika nodded like she was at an interview and the boss had asked her if she knew her MS Office or not.
¹⁶ Veena called her mother by her first name because she wasn’t really her mother. Her dad had remarried after her mother had died of an embolism when she was ten. When Veena was thirteen, her father had fallen in love with another woman — Nalini. In the beginning, Veena had competed with Nalini but Nalini wasn’t one to hold a grudge. The only thing she asked to change in the house was move Veena’s mother’s flower patch to the right side of the garden. Her father had sat Veena down and explained to her how Nalini needed to feel like a part of their family. Nalini from her end promised Veena that she wouldn’t ask Veena to change anything else. Veena started calling her Nalini-amma when she was fifteen. Nalini-amma had caught her sneaking into the house right after Veena’s then boyfriend’s fifteenth birthday party. She wriggled one eyebrow at the half-empty quarter of vodka she was carrying. Veena put it on the table and said, “I’m sorry.” Nalini-amma laughed, “Don’t be. I know you’re a good seed. It’s okay to have some fun. Now, scoot.” Veena ran. From then on, Nalini-amma opened the door at whatever time Veena returned. In exchange, Veena would leave her a contraband item of her choice unless Nalini-amma pointed at some specific contraband she was carrying. Over the years, it had been alcohol, maybe a cigarette and a joint on a few occasions.
¹⁷ According to Niyati’s rules of Actorography, all groups with more girls than guys have two things in common at a party: They are welcome to the party. They look most approachable at the party. This was something that Anuj agreed with — Actorography or not.
¹⁸ Actorography was Niyati’s passion. She planned to write a book on the subject, which was for actors to do better in their social and personal lives. “To learn how to balance the star, the artist and the person inside them. Actors, I’ve heard have a really bad reputation when it comes to making and keeping friends. It is also a great tool one can use to cross meaningless social, moral and sometimes legal boundaries that come in the way of living the life you want.” She wanted to take the book to the next level by becoming a lifecoach for young and upcoming actors. According to Niyati, every member of the gang was a “natural”.
¹⁹ According to Actorography, Nothings are exactly that: nothings. Common words muttered to provide feedback noise to the conversation when nobody wants to go through the trouble of saying exactly anything.
²⁰ An ad film director who was trying to sleep with Niyati had told her that every conversation is made of pauses as much as it was made of words. She made a fart noise and left him at the party they were at.
