Chapter 7: Welcome to Stonedpur
The gang was getting used to having a seventh person at the table. A stoned Veena dodged everyone’s eyes and focused on her drink. She knew she was stoned because she could feel the fabric of her dress on her thighs. She put on her sunglasses because the sun had started to become a pain. She thought that if she looked at her phone, everyone would know that she was too stoned, too early. She usually counted the number of drags she got out of every joint but this time around, she had lost count. When she twirled the fork looking at the various plates on the table, Anand helped her out.
— “You’ve just had your first joint of the day. If you start eating now, you won’t stop till it’s evening.”
— “That makes sense. Thank you, babe. I’ll just take this one bite, okay.” Veena picked some lotus stem on her fork but paused midway to decide if she actually wanted a bite of that or was it something else. “Can we order some fries?”
— “Lo kar lo baat. She’s already Welcome to Stonedpur²³.” Niyati laughed.
— “Your eyes are pink.” Seher lifted Veena’s sunglasses up without moving much from her very comfortable position.
— “I’m all fuzzy-like.” Anuj loved getting stoned with the gang. Anuj also loved not paying for whisky by the drink.
— “You’re always cute when you are all fuzzy-like.” Seher ran her hands through Anuj’s rough, wiry hair.
— “What are you upto in Bangkok?” Veena asked Niyati and she handed Avantika the menu. “Why don’t you order something?”
Avantika asked Ahmed to repeat everything that had been ordered.
— “Ad shoot. Tourist boy meets tourist girl. Falls in Love. Full song montage — fun things couples can do at awesome places. They land back at the airport and head straight to get married. Truly an island, Thailand.”
— “That sounds like a fun project.” Kartik could never resist a love story. He was always looking for ways in which it would go after he met Anjali.
— “Meh. But yeah, I’ll be gone for about a week.” She laughed. “Shuffling around Thailand.”
Seher was busy running her fingers through Anuj’s hair as he sat there with a warm, all-knowing smile on his face. Both of them realised that they were both completely and utterly baked. Not that they were worried about hooking up with each other. This was just about getting too comfortable than one should be in an outdoor space. At which point, Seher pulled her hand off his head and Anuj got up and asked Avantika if she liked to dance.
— “I love dancing more than I love Niyati.” Avantika took a large sip of her kiwi margarita and got up. Anuj and Avantika created a mini dance floor right next to the table.
— “Only you guys are allowed to love me more than dancing.” Niyati, who was sipping on her margarita, leaned Veenawards to tell her that.
— “Weren’t you up all night at the studio?” A lot of times, Veena didn’t have anything to say in response to what Niyati said. “How do you still have this lovely morning hair?” When around everybody, Niyati just laughed it off with a wave of hand, like each and every one of those sometimes. When alone with Veena or Anuj or Kartik, there was a good chance she would start talking about her day. As of then, she just waved it off.
Kartik, meanwhile, had gotten stoned enough to stare at the life-changing Facebook status update and all the names who had clicked Like on it. Anand grabbed Kartik’s phone, put it in his pocket and joined Anuj and Avantika on the makeshift dance floor a couple of feet away from their table. He knew that there was nothing that would make Kartik step onto the dance floor unless Niyati or Seher pulled him there (Veena would never even try).
Anuj did his two step repertoire while Avantika danced four of her many around him. Veena’s eyes though were looking at Anand and Avantika dancing. The detail that even Anuj was right there, dancing with them was irrelevant to Veena. She checked to see if Avantika made any kind of a move to attract Anand’s attention or affection. She needed to know that if this candidate was even to be considered for New Year’s Eve. Niyati kicked Veena under the table and mouthed the words, “Don’t worry. She’s good.”
Unlike the captain of the Titanic, Veena wanted to make sure that the hull was not breached by this particular iceberg. She was certain that while Titanic had fewer lifeboats than were necessary, this gang didn’t have any. She looked Niyati in the eye, who then took off her sunglasses, and grabbed a stiff and stoned Kartik onto the dance floor (to cause some dissonance between the three people already dancing especially Avantika and Anand). Kartik was still unsure of what to do with his hands especially with his phone being gone (and his hands feeling the void²⁴). He did the twist without actually twisting but just moving his elbows. Watching the five of them dancing made Veena smile as she called Seher over to sit on her armrest.
— “Don’t make me get up, I’m baked.” She patted the fat, cushioned armrest.
— “Fine.” Seher left her dupatta on her seat and made herself comfortable on Veena’s armrest. She ran her fingers over the edge of her hair. “Fuck your short hair. You never have split ends, na?” Apart from Anand, Seher was the only one allowed to touch Veena’s hair.
— “Why do you think I keep them short?”
— “How is it going with you two? It’s almost been, what, six months now since the two of you moved in together?”
— “Antay? You know how it’s been going. I’ve told you. And you are with us half the bloody week, and for salsa classes.”
— “No, I meant, any signs of him asking you to marry him.” Seher’s hand dropped from Veena’s hair and she took a sip of her drink.
— “Shit, no. I think I’m glad that he still hasn’t. We’re still falling into each other’s rhythms. We’ve talked about having the engagement conversation only after a year of living together.” The unsupervised Veena took a few bites of the grilled fish that was just brought to the table. “Oh fuck, I so needed to put something in my mouth. Should I be glad that he still hasn’t asked me? I mean we’ve had a conversation about our futures, and all of them involve the both of us. Like how we both want to spend a year in another country, Australia or anywhere in Europe. I even made him practice Skype-sex for when he will have to fly off to Antwerp for a month. But that is not why I called you to sit here.”
— “In that case, you should know that I am over Anuj. You don’t need to worry about that.”
— “That is not what I am worried about either. I am not worried about anything. I am just saying that maybe you need a change of type. I mean, I adore Anuj. He is a great guy but you need to date someone who is not wearing black and blue all the time.”
— “As much as that makes sense, I think I have a thing for these self-obsessed idiots. Because when it is going well, neither of us are bothered about the other person. It is all good, till one of us slips and falls.” Seher finished her drink and signaled Ahmed for another.
— “Yeah? Then tell me how do we stop that idiot from losing it?”
The two looked at Kartik who had successfully escaped the dance floor, which was being totally owned by Anand and Niyati. Kartik had given up on retrieving his cellphone, and was now leaning against the bar, tapping his feet. Seher was not sure if she wanted to laugh or pity or be impressed at Kartik’s dedication to his non-existent romance.
— “You can’t. You’ll just have to let him crash and burn. What’s going on at work, by the way? That idiot boss of yours letting you have some time?”
— “Shit, no. And she has a child!”
Veena’s boss had been clocking extra hours ever since she had returned from her maternity leave. That had caused a general disruption in Veena and Seher or Veena and Niyati or the three of them hanging out together. Suddenly, Veena had been making sixteen iterations of the same design that the woman would have approved the first time around.
— “I want to get drunk, go walk all over the mall till we’re tired or have bought something, and then stuff ourselves with donuts or Cinnabon.” Seher’s fingers were busy tugging a strand of her own frizzy hair straight. She brought it from the side of her head to the front to stare at it. “Do you think she hates her baby?”
— “Why would a mother hate her baby?” Veena laughed.
— “I don’t know, she has one of those baby-hater faces. Make a mall plan soon or I will kidnap you like last time.”
— “We’ll go this Thursday. Why are you so edgy?”
— “I haven’t pooped yet today. I woke up late and then put the room in order for my parents’ Skype call. After which I got so wound up that I just couldn’t go.”
— “Go right now. This place has clean loos.”
— “Of course, it does. We roll joints in there but nah, I’m not feeling it yet.”
²³ Niyati, Seher and Anuj had come up with the different stages of stoned — Stonedpur, Lostpur, Spiral Town and Wasted Nagar.
²⁴ According to Actorography, a void represents the lack of pleasure or displeasure caused by a fellow actor or a prop’s physical presence that one has gotten used to or that one has fixated over a period of time.
