Of Course I Love You!: Till I find someone better… (22 page)

‘Deb, how can you say that? You don’t even know me that well. Give it a try. I will be a good girlfriend, I promise. Please, Deb. Don’t do this to me,’ she said. I knew her well enough. She was an ear-shattering, dumb, clingy girl with absolutely no sense of how to behave. Inner beauty is eternal but not when it is packaged like Neeti was.

‘I am sorry.’ I did feel sorry for her. But more than anything, she seemed to be pleading more for an ice cream rather than a relationship. And why would anyone want to be in a relationship with a guy like me?

‘Deb, have you decided? Please think about it. Please do. Think about it again. Okay, I will not say anything. You think.’

‘I am sorry,’ I said.

‘Deb, don’t be sorry, just think. Close your eyes and think.’

‘But—’

‘Just think, Deb. Close your eyes.’ She covered my eyes with her hand.

I closed my eyes and all I could see was Avantika. Yes, she looked extremely sexy in formals, as she lugged a laptop and went around changing the world in her new office.

‘Nothing, Neeti. There can be nothing,’ I said. I feared that she might kiss me when she closed my eyes. But she didn’t.

‘You didn’t think! You opened your eyes too soon. I couldn’t even kiss you,’ she shrieked.

‘What?’ I exclaimed. I felt like a genius. Though, I missed out on a kiss. Did I want it? Maybe. Maybe not. I missed Avantika, but a kiss is just a kiss, nothing more. No, I didn’t want to kiss her.

‘Yes, I would have kissed you and then had it felt good … that would mean you love me. That’s easy, no?’ she asked. She
was
a lunatic, after all.

‘It doesn’t happen that way. You have to be in love to kiss. I am not in love right now and I can’t kiss you. It would be wrong and immoral and I don’t want to lie.’ I didn’t believe what I just said. Maybe I had gone insane, too.
You have to be in love to kiss?

The girls are waiting.

‘You will love me some day, Deb. I know you will. You just have to,’ she said and lay down beside me. We didn’t exchange even a word for the next hour or so. Amit and Astha were still in the same state of wordless staring. I wondered if they had died and rigor mortis had set in, cementing them in their place for all of life and beyond. I wondered what it would be like to kiss
Neeti, if I were to forget Avantika for a few seconds. It wouldn’t be too good, I knew.
But, what the heck, she isn’t coming back to see what I have been up to. She doesn’t even care. Maybe in some twisted way, I am getting back at her.

Another fifteen seconds and I decided against it. There were other considerations. I had lost Vernita to a kiss, though earned myself love, but I couldn’t afford to lose an Amit. Or an Astha.

It was already 2 a.m. Just seven hours to the rendezvous with Mr Goyal. I finally decided to call it a night.

‘Neeti, I think we should go home now.’

‘As you say, Deb.’ She still had the deadpan expression on her face. I wished I could make her understand that it was not meant to be.

‘I presume nobody needs ice cream here.’ I broke their stare.

‘Err … no, Deb,’ Amit said as he woke up from his stupor.

‘Shall we leave now? It’s getting late. And we have work to do,’ I said.

‘Shit! It’s two? Let’s leave. I am sorry, Astha. We have to go.’ I had never seen him exchange a sentence so fucking comfortably. I felt like a genius matchmaker. We walked to the car and Astha and Amit climbed into the back seat.

‘What happened, Amit? Don’t want to see me drive?’ I laughed at them.

‘No,’ he said shyly.

We dropped the girls at their flat and all the way, nobody spoke. In the back seat, they moved their lips continuously as if to say
love you
, but not actually making a sound. Amit tracked Astha right until the time she switched on her flat’s light.

‘Shall we go now?’ I asked him.

‘Hmm …’he said.

We drove off.

‘Amit? Are you
crying
? Oh damn!
You are crying?
What the hell?’

He was sniffing lightly before, but just after I said these words, he burst out crying. I had seen this happen a million times … you ask someone who is close to tears if he or she is crying and they will burst out crying within moments.

‘No …’ he said, as he notched up his crying pitch.

‘I thought everything was fine. You seemed fine. I thought everything went great. What happened?’

He kept on crying.
Wailing
, to be precise.

‘For God’s sake, tell me what happened? And stop crying,’ I shouted.

‘I am sorry, Deb, I can’t help it. But, but …’ he trailed off.

‘What? Tell me this very second or I will push you out of the moving car. You can walk your way home from there.’

‘I love her so much, but …’

‘But
what
?’ I sensed something was wrong.

‘But I want to marry her.’ He started crying again.

I feared the worst. What Amit had feared the day before. Maybe her marriage was already fixed with somebody and that was the reason she never spoke to Amit. I dreaded the answer but I gathered the courage to ask him.

‘So, what’s the problem?’

‘Huh? Nothing, I want to marry her. I want to marry her. I want to marry her.’

Another Neeti, I thought. He stopped crying and started looking at me perplexed. I gave him the same expression he threw at me.

‘So, what’s the catch? Why are you crying? Have her parents already seen someone?’

‘No! What are you talking about? NO!’ He wiped his tears off with his shirt as he wasn’t old enough to use tissues.

‘Then why the hell are you crying?’ I shouted out of irritation.

‘
What if she says no?
I really want to marry her and I can’t get married to anyone else,’ he shook my hand off the gear stick.

‘Is that all? You nearly had me
dead
there.’

‘You think that’s not a big deal?’ he asked.

‘Shut up, Amit. I got you till here. Trust me, I will get you there. Forget all that, tell me how many sheets have you done?’

‘Sheets? None, till now. I haven’t started doing them.’

‘You haven’t started? What the hell were you doing when I locked you up in the room?’

‘I wasn’t doing the sheets, I was just thinking about Astha.’

‘Are you crazy or what? It’s almost three and I have just six hours to go. What the fuck, man! You promised you would do it. This sucks. I am going to be so dead tomorrow.’

‘I am sorry, Deb. Don’t be so angry now. I swear I will do it. Don’t you worry about it; it will be ready by morning. I am sorry.’

‘You should be, man. Please do something at least when we get back home.’

‘By the way, she loved the gift. Thanks, Deb. I wonder what would have happened if you weren’t with me,’ Amit said as he sank into his seat and dreams.

‘Whatever.’

We reached my place and I crashed moments later.

I
chose a very opportune time to save Avantika from the goons, let go of Avantika’s leg and fall off the cliff so that she could hang on and live. I had insurance and she had cheated me to get it. Even while plunging to a certain death, I couldn’t help but think how much I loved her.

I woke up, startled. It was 8 a.m.

I couldn’t see Amit around. Though we had different rooms, we slept in mine because it had the air conditioner. I walked out, rubbed my eyes, looked at my early morning ugly face in the mirror and entered his room. He was awake.

‘Good morning, Deb,’ he shouted excitedly.

‘Easy, Amit. Good morning.’ I forgot that I had to be angry with him for the work he hadn’t done for me.

‘I have good news,’ he exclaimed.

‘And what is that?’

‘I have done all the sheets! The third was a little tricky. Its material was still posing a problem as there is a transition from mild steel to grey cast iron here, so I just used the composite material formula to calculate the maximum stress at those points and used a factor of safety that was high enough …’

‘Cut out the crap. Just tell me how much you have comple …’
I was still groggy. I stared more intently at him to give me a definite answer, so it hadn’t quite registered what he had just said.

It finally did.
All the sheets?

‘WHAT? Did you say
all
? What? Don’t tell me you just said all?
All?
Amit, you did it all?’ I asked and checked if this was a continuation of the dream I was in before.

‘Yes, Deb, I have done it all.’

I was living with a god. I jumped onto his bed and hugged the life out of him. I felt the skeleton crumble to pieces, but I didn’t want to let go of him.

‘You really did this? How is this humanly possible? How on earth did you do it?’ I still wasn’t out of shock.

‘It wasn’t that tough. You see, there is symmetry between the rack pipes and the overhead pipes. The pipes have been designed in such a way that they are interchangeable, only the stresses and bending moments change, that too negligibly. So the calculations have to be just extrapolated with the equation I formulated, which I have written on the eighth sheet. After you do that, it’s just the displacements that have to be taken care of. That’s when the computer takes over. Wherever the displacement gives a red mark on the data sheet, you just have to provide a dummy support and it’s done. And the hanger part was easy, too. There is a set pattern of changes in strains in every part of the pipe. So it wasn’t tough. It was the least I could I do … and Astha and Neeti helped me. They didn’t sleep the whole night. It wouldn’t have been possible without them …’ he said, and I didn’t want to interrupt him. He loved those incomprehensible shitty sheets. I envied him. He had a passion and I did not.
Except for a certain Avantika.

‘Amit. I don’t need to know any of that.’ I still stared at him just as Astha had been doing last night. ‘I really love you guys … and you really love this bullshit, don’t you?’

‘Yes, Deb, very much,’ he said and balled himself up shyly.

I wouldn’t have admitted it even over my dead body, even if I loved those pipes.

‘So let’s go out there and kick the hell out of Goyal’s ass!’

‘Sure, Deb. I would love to see you do that,’ he said. Just as I turned to look for my underwear, he said, ‘I have never had a friend like you.’

‘Same here, Amit.’

It was true. I was glad that I had told him. Reciprocated is equal to told.
Of course I loved him.

We left my flat on time and reached the office an hour too early by my standards. For the first time, I was glad to be sitting on my seat and looking forward to my rendezvous with that bastard.

‘Deb, I just called up at his office. He is in a meeting with Mr Malhotra, planning department HOD and some other piping people. He won’t be back before eleven. Seems like I had a lot of time. We could have slept for two hours last night,’ he said.

‘I am sorry, man! You guys had to stay up all night for this bullshit.’ I knew he wouldn’t have slept; he would have redone them and made them better.

‘It’s okay, Deb. Just go out there and show them that you are as good as your dad. I know why you accepted what Mr Goyal said and took it up as a challenge. It’s for your father. Although your dad would have jumped off this building had he seen you work. But it’s okay, no two people are alike. He probably couldn’t have got me Astha,’ he said.

‘I can bet on that.’ I got up from my seat.

‘Where do you think you are going? It’s just nine thirty and he is in a meeting,’ he said.

‘That’s why I am going.’ I turned to leave and left five pipe sheets behind.

‘Deb! You left these,’ he said.

‘Seems like you had a lot of time in hand beyond those two hours, too,’ I said aloud as I walked towards the meeting room, and crossed my fingers.

‘May I come in, sir?’ I asked as I knocked and opened the door before they could respond.

I looked straight at Goyal and his face lost colour, as if he had just seen a ghost.

‘Can’t you see that I am busy? This is a meeting; your
unimportant things can wait,’ Mr Goyal barked. I could see the fear in his eyes and I loved it. I moved in for the kill.

‘Sir, I thought the twenty-five pipes of BINA refinery that you gave me yesterday to do were important. I thought that’s why you asked me to do it in a day. Sorry, sir, I could just do twenty. Sir, if you say so, I will complete the remaining five in an hour or two, if you need them today.’ I tried to be as explicit as possible and not miss out on any of the details. As I finished, Goyal’s head shrunk to the size of a pea. All the people alternated between staring at him and me. I dropped the sheets where he was sitting and stood there with my hands behind my back, like a dedicated, hardworking employee.

Malhotra broke the silence. ‘Mr Goyal? Twenty-five sheets? These are of the BINA refinery project? One day?’ he looked at me. ‘You did all of it in
one day
?’

A senior manager, Mr Bhatli, looked at Malhotra and spoke, ‘Sir, I am not sure about this. But this part was to be done at the senior manager level. Definitely not at the trainee level. Deb, aren’t you a trainee? You joined just last month, right? How did you do it? Can I have a look at the sheets, please? Have you got them checked by somebody, to confirm if what you did is correct?’

I picked up the sheets and handed them over to Bhatli. Malhotra and the three senior managers started to peruse the sheets in sheer disbelief. Goyal looked as if he was choking, I could tell.

‘What do you have to say about this?’ Mr Bhatli said as he handed over a sheet to Malhotra.

‘This is pure genius.
One day?
Mr Bhatli, how long would your team have taken to do this?’ Malhotra asked.

‘Five to six weeks minimum, sir,’ he said.

‘How did you do it, Deb?’ Malhotra asked. I hadn’t realized till then that it was really
such
a big deal. I knew it was tough, I didn’t know it was an insurmountable task! My ex-girlfriend was a porn star and my roommate was a god. Sweet life.

‘Sir, it isn’t as tough as it seems to be. You see, there is symmetry between the rack pipes and the overhead pipes. The pipes have
been designed in such a way that they are interchangeable, only the stresses and bending moments change, that too negligibly. So the calculations have to be just extrapolated with the equation I formulated, which I have written on the eighth sheet. After you do that, it’s just the displacements, which have to be taken care of. That’s where the computer takes over. Wherever the displacement gives a red mark on the data sheet, you just have to provide a dummy support and it’s done. And the hanger part was easy, too. There is a set pattern of changes in strains in every part of the pipe. So it wasn’t tough. But, sir, this wouldn’t have been possible if it wasn’t for Amit. He is the genius behind this and he is the one who has taught me everything.’

I felt like I was back in college where, during vivas, I used to speak the most nonsensical things with sky-high confidence and the professors would look at me with the same disbelief these people had written all over their faces. Only this time, it was because I was right.
Or Amit was right.

‘Did you hear that, Mr Bhatli? Mr Goyal? This is great work, Deb,’ Malhotra said.

‘Thank you, sir. But it was Amit who helped me with all of this,’ I said.

‘Mr Bhatli, I need to see Amit after this meeting,’ he said. ‘Isn’t he the short guy who always has a lot of questions and runs into trouble with the planning department?’

The others nodded.

‘Okay, sir. I always thought Amit had the brains. I will do that, sir,’ Mr Bhatli said.

‘Deb, both of you have done a good job. You can go now. Keep up the good work,’ Malhotra said.

I turned, and just as I walked away towards the door, I heard Malhotra say to the others, ‘Like father, like son. This chap will go a long way.’

I walked just a little slower to the door to listen to what the others had to say. I smiled.

Mr Goyal could have taken credit for spotting my talent, but I guess he was a dumbass after all.
Not a patch on my dad,
not even
close. I was proud of my father and I was sure he would be proud of me too. The news would reach him, I thought. It did. But he knew me better than the Bhatlis and Malhotras.

His message read—

Congratulations. Heard about you. I don’t know what you are doing, but keep doing it. Because whatever it is, it’s working. Miss you, son. Hope to see you soon.

That felt good, anyway. Amit was busy the whole day, as expected. He wouldn’t get an out-of-turn promotion, as the system didn’t allow that. But he wouldn’t miss one for sure. The government system doesn’t account for geniuses, anyway.

‘Hi, Neeti. What’s up?’

I had nothing to do, so better than talking to a cell phone snap of Avantika, I thought it would be better to talk to Neeti. I hated to admit it, but it felt good talking to her. Or knowing that somebody cared … who, incidentally, could also go on and kiss me outside a relationship. I did start to think about what Shrey had said. Was it the best way to forget Avantika? Moreover, I feared my organ might turn vestigial out of sheer redundancy. I needed a distraction!

‘Hi, Deb.’ She looked and sounded miserable. I hadn’t expected that. I thought she would go on mauling my ear with her stupid relationship chatter even the next day.

‘Are you busy? Can we talk? Actually, I have nothing to do, with Amit being all busy and stuff. And I am tired of sharpening pencils. I hope you are not still upset. I hope you understand. We can work this out.’

‘You think so?’ she said, raising her eyebrows up to her hairline. She did sound sexy in short sentences. Well … kind of. It was a welcome change.

‘Yes, I do. A date of sorts? You mind?’ I lied.

‘Okay, whatever you say, Deb … I don’t have much work to do, anyway. I never do, you know. Okay, let’s see. Let’s go to Vasant
Vihar, I have heard a lot about it, you know? But I’ve never gone there. Can we please go there? Of course, if you don’t mind.’ She was getting back to her usual self. Long sentences, often unnecessary and delivered in a high-pitched tone.

‘Sure, why not!’ We left the office.

I quite loved it that way. Unlike the private firms, you can move in and move out any time you want to, especially if you don’t give a shit about the work. Nobody can ever kick you out. And age turns out to be the biggest qualification.

We went to Vasant Vihar, which was a twenty-minute drive from my office. In its day, it used to be the most happening place in the city. But with its overwhelming popularity, wannabes had started to flock to the place, girls started to get eve-teased and the place lost its charm. But the regulars still kept coming here.

I couldn’t say that I had a great evening, but after a long time, I’d gone out to a place, if you didn’t count the India Gate outing. Even Neeti, after the previous night’s ordeal, was not saying as much as she was used to. She was a little depressed and that was the first time I felt she was not that hard to bear. But she was definitely likeable … not that I had many people to compare her with.

‘Bye, Neeti. Thanks for lunch. If you see Amit, just tell him I have left. And do think about the night-out. Please?’

‘Okay, Deb, will do that. Don’t worry. Even I am excited about it. Thank you.’

‘My pleasure,’ I said as I walked away.

‘Deb,’ she called out. ‘I am so glad we came out today. Thank you. If you need anything, just remember, I will always be there for you.’ She turned back, with glazed eyes. She ran off. I was sad to know that she was into me. That day, she had acted and spoken like a grown-up. She wasn’t that bad, after all.

I went back home early that day and spent the rest of the afternoon sleeping, after wrapping up some things I had to do. I waited for Amit to come back. After months, I would be going on a night-out. It was an unsettling feeling; nervousness taking over some of my senses. I wondered what he would think of it.

‘Hi, Deb! You know what?’ Amit said as I opened the door for him.

‘No, I don’t. Do I have a choice of not listening? I am just a little bit sleepy. We were out on a night-out last night, remember?’ I said. I didn’t realize that, when I was saving Avantika’s life from villains in my dreams, it was Amit who had stayed up the whole night.

‘Shut up and listen, Deb. I was given the responsibility of heading the whole piping job for the new refinery project that’s going to start in December. And it’s going to be so exciting. And you are working with me, so you should start working now. It is so amazing,’ he said as he arranged his shoes in a perfect line and pulled his jeans another notch higher.

‘Amit! No extra pay and extra work? Who does that? Okay, I am sorry,
you
do that. I am happy for you but I will stick to getting coffee for you,’ I said. More work also meant more pencils to sharpen for me and I didn’t quite relish that.

‘Deb, there is something I want to talk to you about. Don’t mind, but it is serious. Can we do it right now?’ I had never seen such an expression on his face except once, when I caught him shagging. Until that day I had thought he never masturbated, but what do you know …