Half Girlfriend (11 page)

‘What?’

‘Deti hai to de, varna kat le.’

‘What?’

I had said it in coarse Bhojpuri-accented Hindi. I had said: ‘make

love to me, or leave’. Actually, that sounds respectable. If I had to

make an honest translation, I would say: ‘fuck me, or fuck off’. Hell,

even that sounds way better than how I said it.

I don’t know what came over me that day. Maybe I just couldn’t

wait anymore. Perhaps I felt insecure and scared. Most likely I am a

crass Bihari from Dumraon whose true animal nature had come out. I

realized I had spoken filth. I tried to take it back.

‘What the hell did you just say?’

‘Nothing. Listen, I just.

I released my grip. Before I could collect my thoughts, Riya

Somani had collected her belongings and left.

*

She refused to take my calls. She didn’t reply to any of my twenty-

seven messages. I waited for her at the college entrance every

morning.

She stepped out of her BMW, ignored me and waiked quickly into

her classroom.

During breaks she surrounded herself with her girlfriends.When I

approached her in the cafeteria, she took out her phone and pretended

to be on a call ‘That was a bit much,’ Shailesh said. I had told my

friends about the debacle in my room.They had listened with much

interest, hoping for a story with titillating action. Instead, they heard of a total fiasco, When I repeated the ‘deti hai...’ line I had said to Riya, even my thick-skinned friends cringed. We spoke filth sometimes but

nobody would ever talk like that to a girl. I, the idiot, had spoken like that to the woman I loved, worshipped, adored and respected more

than anyone else on earth.

‘Fix this disaster, rather than focusing on intimacy right now,’ Ashu

had said, his tone irritated.

Weil, I had tried to fix it. Riya just wouldn’t meet me. Helpless, I

had no option but to stalk her. I had to talk to her alone. I swore to

myself not to say a word of Hindi, lest it come out crudely again.

I did find her alone, finally. She sat in the library, immersed in her

textbook, poring over the history of European literature. She wore a

red-and-white salwar-kameez with black earrings, ‘Riya,’ I whispered.

She stood up to change her seat.

‘Two minutes, I beg you,’ i said.

She ignored me. She moved to another table full of students. I

couldn’t talk to her thete.

‘I’m waiting outside,’ I said.Ten students looked up at me, startled.

Riya continued to read the same page.

I waited outside the library for two and a half hours When she

came out, she saw me and walked in the other direction.

‘Two minutes,’ I said as I ran up to her.

‘I don’t want to talk to you, at all. Understand?’

‘I’ll keep following you. Might as well talk.'

She glared at me and stood still, her hands balling into fists.

‘Your time has started,’ she said.

‘Listen, I am really, really sorry,’

She crossed her arms, textbook still in hand.

‘Don’t waste your time. Sorry is not going to work.’

‘I didn’t mean it,’

‘Why did you say it? Do you knew how it made me feel?’ She

stared into my eyes. I looked away. Tin a reserved person, Madhav, I

have issues opening up to people. I trusted you. And you...’ She bit

her lower lip.

‘I just...’

‘Just what? The stuff you said. I may not speak much Hindi, but I

do understand it, Madhav,’ she said and turned her face sideways.Then

she said as if to herself, ‘My friends had warned me about you.’

‘I just love you, Riya.’

‘Yeah, right. Indeed a classy way to show love.’

‘I said it in anger.’

‘Let me be clear. I have never, ever been spoken to in such a cheap

manner in my life. I let you into my world. We had something

together.’

‘We do.’

‘No, we don’t. If you could speak to me like that, I wonder how

you think of me in your mind.’

‘I wanted to be close to you. Never let you go.’

‘You said “deti hai to de, varna kat le”. Does that sound like being

close?’

‘It’s my useless friends, they provoked me. They said, sleep with

her or else she’ll never be yours.’

‘You discussed this with your friends first?’

‘Not everything but...'

‘But stuff like “let me go fuck her today”.’

Before I could respond she raised a hand to silence me.‘I’m going

to say something now. Listen carefully. Okay?’ she said, her voice

shaky as she tried to maintain her composure.

‘Sure.’

‘One, don’t ever try to talk to me. Two, we are not friends

anymore. I have promised my triends and myself I will choose my

friends carefully. Three, stop hounding me, it’s disturbing. I don’t

want to tell my parents or the college authorities.’

‘Riya...’

'Please go now,' she said and folded her hands, as if pleading with

me.

I took one last look at her-her beautiful but angry and sad face, the

long hair I had stroked, the lips I had kissed once - and turned around.

I heard the sound of her footsteps get fainter as she walked away.

12

Six months later

After my break-up, or half-break-up, with Riya, my personality

changed. People in college started to call me SSS, or the Silent Saint of Stephen’s. I attended every class and sat in the front row. I took notes

like a court stenographer. I never asked the professor any questions. I

would sit with my friends in the residences but not contribute to the

conversation. Initially, they tried to cheer me up. They gave me copies

of Playboy and arranged booze parties to help me get over Riya.

However, just like their earlier advice, their break-up cures were

useless too. The only thing that helped somewhat was basketball.

Every time I thought of her, I hit the court. Three hours of dribbling

and shooting temporarily cured my heartache, if only because it left me

physically exhausted. Frankly, I went to the courts in the hope she

would come to practice. She never did. Perhaps her father had built

her a court in the backyard of 100, Aurangzeb Road.

Sometimes I lurked in the college corridors, waiting for her class to

end. I stood far away and avoided eye contact. I would watch her

come out of class, only to disappear into a crowd of friends. Once she

did see me. She didn’t smile or turn away. She didn’t even look angry.

She didn’t react at all. It killed me. If she had come forward and

slapped me or yelled, I would have been okay. However, she looked

right through me, as if I didn’t exist.

Nights hit me the hardest. I couldn’t sleep. I lay on the same bed

where I had messed it up with her.The same place where I had spoken

like a Bhojpuri movie villain. I wished I had a time machine to undo

my actions. I didn’t want a time machine to predict the stock market or

buy property cheap. I only wanted it to un-say that sentence. I had said

it in a combined state of horniness, bravado and stupidity. Well, it is

also the state in which men are most of the time.

I tossed and turned. I couldn’t sleep. I bounced my basketball on

the room’s wall back and forth until the student in the adjacent room

shouted curses. I studied my course books to distract myself. I found

books in the library on psychology, relationships and love. Through

these I tried to figure out women. Either the English was too tough or

the books gave contradictory ideas. I ended up being more confused

than ever. Women like to nurture and have long-term relationships,

one study said. However, I had wanted exactly that. So why did the

study fail to explain this? Anything I read about women in newspapers

I connected with Riya. If an actress gave an interview saying she was

moody, I nodded and felt that, yes, even Riya was moody.

I had to get this girl out of my head. I couldn’t.

A few months later it was my birthday. I sat with my friends in the

cafeteria. As luck would have it, Riya entered at the same time with her

friends. My friends wanted to see if she would wish me.They started

singing, 'Happy birthday to you.Madhav’, even as I cut a mince cutlet.

The girls noticed but ignored us. Riya didn’t even flinch. My heart

crumbled like the mince cutlet.

‘You’re lucky. It’s best such an insensitive girl is out of your life,’

Raman said.

One afternoon, after college ended, I was sitting outside on the

main lawn. Students turned their gaze to the main gate as a car entered

the college.

It was a beautiful car. It looked expensive even from twenty metres

away.

‘It’s a Bentley. Costs over two crores,’ a boy sitting close to me told

his friend. A young man stepped out of the car. He wore shades. He

walked as if he owned the college.

Riya Somani emerged from the main building and walked towards

the Bentley. I stood up and walked towards the driveway. I ensured I

could not be seen; not that anyone was interested in me.

The man’s face seemed familiar. Riya went up to him. They

hugged. I noticed the man was an inch shorter than Riya.

Rohan Chandak
, the name popped into my head.
What’s this

asshole doing here?
It's amazing how quickly the mind switches from figuring out a situation to commenting on it.

I had no idea why Rohan had come to college. Maybe he wanted to

buy the building and turn it into a hotel. Well, that seemed unlikely as

he didn’t enter the building. Both of them got into the Bendey and it

drove off, with Riya s BMW tailing Rohan’s car. The students in the

lawns released collective oohs and aahs.

‘I also want a loaded boyfriend,’ I heard a girl near me say.

‘Is he her boyfriend?’ I asked her. I shouldn’t have but I did. Like

I’d proved earlier, my impulse control is rather weak.

‘How do I know?’ she said and walked away.

I could still smell the burning fumes from Rohan’s Bentley long

after he had left. Or maybe it was my burning insides.

*

I had to talk to Riya. I decided to do it during Harmony, the annual

cultural festival of St. Stephen’s. It would be my final attempt to

rescue our friendship. The festival had various cultural competitions

such as choreography, music, debates and treasure hunts. Students,

including the day-skis, stayed in the college until late at night. Riya had already won the music competition in the solo English vocals category.

She was also taking part in Western choreography.

I took my place in the audience early, sitting in the front row facing

the makeshift choreography stage on the front lawns. Boys from all

over Delhi University had gatecrashed.They sat at the right vantage

points to ogle at the St. Stephen’s chicks. Some of these boys

resembled men back home. They spoke loudly in Hindi. They whistled

every time a pretty girl came on stage. Stephanians, of course, hated all this. We were way too dignified to express our lecherous feelings in

such a public manner. We ogled nonetheless, but in a dignified way.

A dozen girls wearing pink tights and silver-grey tops came on

stage. Riya, the tallest amongst them and the easiest to spot, stood in

the centre. Stage lights changed colours. A commentator spoke in a

husky self-important voice. He spoke about evolution and how all life

emanates from nature. It is stuff that sounds profound when you hear

it but is total bullshit when you look back and think about it.

Riya’s lean frame, athletic body and stunning looks meant most

men had their eyes on her. Of course, another girl with a massive bust

had her own set of fans.

As the commentator spoke his lines in a sexy voice, I rehearsed

mine in my head.

‘Riya, I think people deserve a second chance.’

Riya did cartwheels on stage with incredible grace. The crowd

burst into applause as she did a perfect cartwheel.

Inside my chest, my heart did the same.

‘Riya, not a day—
not a day
—passes when I don’t think of you,’ I

said to myself. I deleted it from my mental shortlist. It sounded too

keen. Girls are difficult. It is all about finding the right balance. You can neither be too pushy, nor come across as too cool to care. I suck at

this fine balance.

In the last act, Riya took a handheld mic and sang the two closing

lines about nature and how we need to protect it. Her clear and tuneful

voice earned a round of spontaneous applause.

The show ended. The girls came forward to take a bow. The crowd

cheered. I slipped out and then sprinted to the classroom converted

into a green room. Finger-combing my hair, I knocked on the door.

A female student peeked out.

‘What?’

‘I need to talk to someone.’

‘Sorry, only girls allowed inside.’

‘Is Riya Somani there?’

‘She is changing,Wait.’

I had little choice. I sat on a ledge opposite the classroom. I waited

for thirty minutes. A group of girls came out, giggling for no particular reason. Riya didn’t.

Forty-five minutes later, dressed in black jeans with silver buttons

and a tight black top, Riya stepped out. In a deliberate act, she took

brisk steps away from me.

‘Riya,’ I said.

She stopped. However, she didn’t turn towards me. Her hands

froze, as if uncomfortable.