Someone Like You (26 page)

I feel bad about having ignored Akshat all this time. Ever since Tanmay’s accident, I have seen him around in the background and he has made efforts to talk to me too, but I just wanted to be left alone. I had asked him to give me some time to sort out my emotions, which were all haywire. I am not sure what I feel for Akshat, but I guess I am about to find out.

He had apologized for being rude that day when he dropped us to the football match. He had said some mean things and we had had a small tiff, but strangely, I remembered nothing about it till he mentioned it. I had been so lost in everything that had been happening that there was no time to ponder over a small fight with Akshat. It is all back to normal, anyway. He had been really sweet and understanding all along, waiting patiently for me to come around, being just a phone call away always, so that I don’t feel alone.

Last night, when I had sent him that message, I did not know why I had done it. But now, as I walk out of my hostel, I feel that it was probably for the best. I am meeting him in half an hour at a place a little away from the campus. I had refused his offer to pick me up from my hostel; his shiny big cars make me nervous. Using public transport makes me feel like a normal human being.

As I walk towards the front gate of the college campus, I see Mandar coming in, along with a few of his friends. On seeing me, he pauses.

‘Hi Niharika,’ he says.

‘Hey.’

‘I have been meaning to call you. You’re doing okay? And Pia?’

‘We are fine. How’s your football practice coming along? Match in two days, right?’ I ask, just to make small talk.

‘Just two days, yes. We have been practising hard; we need this win. In fact, we were just going for the evening practice.’

‘Cool. And how is that other guy … Ratul, right?’

‘Yes, Ratul. He is fine now. A lot better than before. In fact, we were just returning after seeing him … it was so fortunate that he was wearing a helmet …’ Mandar says, a little lost in his own thoughts. It’s like he is in some other world.

‘Helmet?’ I ask. ‘But—why was he wearing one and Tanmay was not, when Tanmay was driving …?’

‘Oh. You don’t know?’

‘I don’t know
what
?’

‘Tanmay was
not
driving that night. Ratul was. He just told me …’ Mandar says.

‘But then … why did he not say this before? All this time, I have been thinking that Tanmay was the one driving … that it was his fault.’

‘How could he come forward? A guy died there, Niharika. It is a lot more complicated than that. The police would have been involved and he got scared. So he never opened his mouth.’

I nod, thinking about it all. For no reason that I could understand, I felt like talking to Ratul. ‘Where is he? City Hospital?’

‘Yes, but he is now on the ground floor. Physiotherapy department,’ Mandar says.

Before I realize what I’m doing and think it through, I find myself at the reception of the City Hospital, asking where I can find Ratul. The receptionist looks into the computer and tells me where his ward is. As I walk towards the corridor to my right, just as the receptionist told me, I wonder what I am going to ask Ratul, and what difference it makes. Tanmay is gone … and never coming back. So does it really matter how the accident happened?

Even though it might not make any difference to me, there is one person that will be affected by the news.
Karthik
. I have accused him of killing Tanmay. But if Tanmay wasn’t the one driving … Karthik must be in a really bad state right now, blaming himself for the accident. Having someone’s death on one’s conscience is not a good feeling. And I feel regretful about doing that to Karthik. No matter how spoilt he might be, he did have a bond with Tanmay. When he was already devastated by Tanmay’s death, I added this feeling of guilt on him too.

If Ratul seconds what Mandar has just told me, I owe Karthik an apology. The two things I blame as being the reasons for Tanmay’s death—alcohol and driving that bike—won’t any longer be so. If Tanmay was not driving, the accident was in no way Karthik’s fault. Though, it still was
his
bike that was in the accident …

I have no idea why, but I want it all to
not
be Karthik’s fault. For some reason, I do not like being mad at him. He might be cocky, arrogant and all of those things that guys should not be, but I still do not want to hold anything against him. I know it is stupid, but after everything that has happened, I still feel that he is a good person at heart. Guys know guys, and Tanmay had been a big fan of Karthik. I’m guessing that there was a good reason behind that.

Immersed in these thoughts, I find my way to Ratul’s room and knock briefly before pushing the door open. I peek in, to see him sitting up on his bed, looking towards me.

‘Hi, Ratul,’ I say and get in. ‘How are you now?’

‘I’m fine … Niharika, right?’ he asks. I’m a little surprised that he knows my name. He reads it in my expression and says, ‘There are not that many pretty juniors in our college. It’s not too difficult to keep track.’

I smile, but almost immediately, my mind goes back to the reason I am here. I begin, ‘Umm … actually, I wanted to know something. About the … the night of the accident …?’

There is a moment of silence in the room. Beads of sweat appear on his brow almost immediately, and his face closes up. He looks everywhere other than in my direction, and it tells me exactly what I wanted to know. The first feeling I get is that of relief.
Karthik is not to blame for anything in any way.

‘So, you really were the one driving,’ I say. It is a statement.

‘Mandar told you,’ he says.

I nod.

‘See, Niharika—it happened. No matter how much I regret it, no matter how much I hate myself for not being able to maintain balance, the bike went out of control. I did not mean to smash into that divider, you know? I did not mean to end up here, at the hospital, and … and be the reason for Tanmay’s death. I just … I could see it coming—the crash. And I tried to stop it, but the bike, it just …’ Ratul says, panicking. He sounds very frustrated and it is clear to me that he has been running that incident through his head ever since it happened. He looks haunted.

‘What do you mean the bike went out of control? The accident happened because of the bike?’ I ask, my heart sinking a little. If it is because of Karthik’s bike, he would still be partially to blame. I don’t want that to happen.

‘No, not the bike. I have driven bikes with equal power before, and although this one was a little rough, it was not difficult to ride. The problem was the jeep that kept tailing us.’

‘Jeep? What jeep?’ I did not know there was another vehicle involved in the crash.

‘There was a flashy jeep following us, ever since we left the party. It kept diverting my attention, and I accelerated to get rid of them, but they just kept following me till we touched 120 km/hr … that was the last time I checked the speed. After that, we kept going faster … Tanmay asked me to slow down, but I didn’t. Their intentions did not seem good. Had they caught up with us, I don’t know what they would have done … I was scared,’ Ratul says.

‘Why would someone do that? Were you in a fight recently? Or Tanmay? Can it be something related to the football matches?’

‘I don’t know. I’m not even in the football team. I could not recognize the people in the jeep, but there was at least four or five of them. And they definitely were people one of us knew, because it was very obvious that they were doing it intentionally. They kept following us, and honking every once in a while, trying to scare us … and I fell for it.’

‘They wanted you to crash?’ I ask.

‘I don’t know. But they definitely did not mean well. It won’t be a stretch to say that had we not crashed into the divider ourselves, they would have knocked us over.’

‘Why would someone want to do that to you guys?’ I murmur. Since Ratul says that he has no enemies he can think of, my mind starts thinking of reasons why someone would want to hurt Tanmay and who he might be. There could be people who might do something like this out of jealousy … maybe because of Tanmay’s new-found and short-lived fame on the football field. But I can’t think of anyone who could have done this.

But then, all this because of his success in the football field? It is hard to believe that someone would go to such lengths for football matches. This is life and death we are talking about, and even adrenaline-crazed sportspersons know that at the end of the day, it is just a game. These are not professional footballers; these are college students who play for their college teams. Can victory on the field mean so much to them? Someone’s
life
…?

The thought that someone wanted Tanmay dead makes me sick. But right now, there is another thing I have to take care of—
Karthik
. I need to apologize to him for all those horrible things I said to him. It is not his fault, and he should not suffer because of the things I said to him without knowing the facts. I have not seen him around recently, but I need to find him.

‘I am not going to listen to anything. Just get up,’ I say.

‘But just got into bed. It hasn’t even been an hour …’ Pia says, checking the time on her cell phone.

‘I don’t care! Come with me now, and you will have a good sleep tonight. And every night after that. So, leave the bed this minute.’

‘Let me sleep. Go away.’

‘Don’t force me to drag you out,’ I say, already pulling her up. I have decided to take a stand against Pia’s self-destructive regime now. She can’t keep hiding in her room and drowning herself in misery, thinking about what we have lost. I know it hurts, and I feel exactly the same, but he is gone … and we are still alive. I can’t let her throw away her life like this. I will not let her be like this. I have to help her get herself and her life together and this is the first step to it—getting her to go back to her daily routine, starting with gym at six-thirty in the morning.

Fifteen minutes later, we find ourselves walking towards the gym, the early January cold biting us a little. We stuff our hands deep inside our jerseys to ward off the chill, our teeth clattering. It had taken a lot of persuading and forcing to get her out of the room; pleading and begging did not work too well. She walks with a grumpy face, clearly unhappy.

‘I’m telling you—this is
not
a good idea. It doesn’t work like this. I am way too weak to get back to gymming all of a sudden,’ Pia complains.

‘And that is because you have not been eating well. Which—like it or not—is going to stop today.’

She keeps murmuring things like, ‘What is wrong with you? I can take care of myself … stop being my mom …’ but I do not pay her any heed. I am going to do this, with or without her cooperation.

However, once in the gym, I do not know what to do. I look around at the equipment placed against the walls and wonder what people do with them. I never really got around to working out with Pia before, so I have no idea what one does with the weirdly shaped gear all around us. It’s such a shame that now when I have finally been able to drag her here, I do not know what to do next. I had expected her to start doing whatever it is she used to do here, but she just stands staring at me. I am lost, and she can see it.

‘What?’ I say, noticing her look at me weirdly. I walk towards the treadmill, assuming that it should be the easiest one.

‘Why are you doing this?’ she asks me seriously, looking at me with those big brown eyes, the eyes that have lost their spark …

‘We pledged to do everything Tanmay would have wanted us to do, right?’ I meet her eye and say softly. ‘That also includes taking care of
you
and making sure that you are happy.’

She nods. I can see tears filling her eyes already.

‘I am going to make sure that it happens. That’s my duty now.’

‘I am so, so sorry, Akshat. I did not mean to … I had every intention of coming …’ I say over the phone. After coming
back from the hospital last evening, I had sent Akshat a last-minute text saying that I wouldn’t be able to meet him. He must already have been waiting for me for about an hour by then, and I felt bad about it, but after getting to know what I got to know, I was simply not in a condition last evening to meet him.

I had sent him a text, not mentioning the reason, but just telling that I would not be coming. I had come back to the college campus and tried to find Karthik, but it seemed like no one had seen him for the last few weeks. I asked everyone I could think of—students, teachers, the football team, guards, the janitor and even the gardeners—but no one knew anything about where he could be. I spent hours roaming around the campus, but found out nothing.

In the end, I went to the chai stall Karthik had taken me to, that time on his bike. I thought it was worth giving it a shot. The small boy there—the one who served us our tea the last time I was here—came running to me when he saw me. I was a little surprised that he remembered me. I asked him about Karthik and he told me that he came to the stall every evening and that he was there just moments ago—I had missed him by minutes. I heaved a sigh of relief. I had finally found someone who had seen Karthik within the fortnight. That meant he was okay.

But since I still did not have a contact number or address, I decided to meet him at the chai stall in the evening today. The boy had said that he came daily, not missing even a day. I felt relieved that I could find him. There was nothing else to do but wait for the evening to come. Till then, I set some tasks for myself—a) getting myself together and being strong, b) taking good care of Pia and c) apologizing to Akshat about yesterday and also letting him know that as we agreed, we are just friends and he should stop acting like my …
lover
or whatever. I regret that moment when I let him kiss me in
the parking lot. I wish it had never happened; things would not have gotten so complicated.

So the first thing I do after getting back from the gym is call him up to apologize properly. I think that once that is done, I will politely ask him to stay away from me. ‘What happened yesterday? All I got was a text message from you, saying you are not coming … Is everything okay?’ Akshat says, sounding a little freaked out.

‘Yes, yes. Everything’s fine. I left to meet you, but I got caught up in some things before I could leave the campus. I meant to let you know immediately, but it totally slipped my mind. I am sorry you had to wait …’

‘Relax, Niharika. It’s perfectly alright. I thought you must know by now—I don’t mind waiting for you. I don’t mind
anything
about you …’

‘You’re too kind,’ I say, mentally cringing from the cheesy lines he is using on me. It’s not that I mind him being sweet to me; it’s just that I want him to be more …
human
. And regular human beings get mad when people leave them waiting and never turn up. His niceness was nothing short of weird.

‘Just for you. So, what happened?’ he asks.

‘Nothing. I mean—it’s a long story. I am sure you do not want to get into all that. You must have better things to do.’

‘Oh, come on! How can I ever be too busy for you? Tell me what’s wrong. I’m all ears.’

He insists so much that I ultimately have to cave in. ‘Okay, fine. I’ll tell you. But I don’t know much … it’s just that—you remember that night of Tanmay’s accident?’

‘Yes … what about it?’

‘I got to know last evening that Tanmay was not the one driving the bike. It was Ratul. So that means it was not Tanmay’s fault. I feel so bad about blaming Karthik for everything now …’

‘But it was still Karthik’s bike. It’s not like he had
no
hand in the accident!’ Akshat says. I am shocked by his sudden change of tone. He has way too much hatred for Karthik, but blaming him for someone’s death is really unfair. I tell him so.

‘Ratul said that the bike was perfectly safe and okay to handle. The accident was
not
because of the bike. It is
not
Karthik’s fault in any w—’

‘What the hell is wrong with you? Why do you always keep defending that guy?’

‘BECAUSE IT IS
NOT
HIS FAULT. Why don’t you understand? He did
nothing
to cause that accident,’ I shout out, frustrated now. Akshat changes moods in a matter of seconds. One minute, he is all sweet and caring, the next, he is shouting at me like there is no one he hates more than me. They are like two different people. I hate his caustic tone.

‘
Oh, really
? So you mean this other guy … Ratul—he banged into that divider just like that? For fun?’

‘As a matter of fact—
no
. He did
not
do it for fun. He was going really fast and he lost control of the bike. And he was going fast because someone was chasing them. He got scared and panicked. And no matter how fast he went, the jeep kept following them … they intended to knock the bike over.’

There is a short silence from the other end, and I presume that Akshat has done his split-personality thing again. He is back to being the sweet-and-caring guy I first met. ‘Jeep?’ he asks slowly. ‘What jeep?’

‘There was a jeep full of four or five guys that was tailing Ratul and Tanmay.’

‘Whose jeep was it?’

‘I don’t know …’ I say, pondering over it. ‘It could be guys from the college they had beaten in a match? Maybe? Or someone who didn’t like him? Or Ratul?’

‘Are you sure there was a jeep?’

‘Yes! What do you mean—
sure
? It’s not like I know everyone who owns a jeep in the entire city of Nagpur!’ I joke, just to lighten the strained mood. ‘In fact, I guess the only jeep I have seen since I came to Nagpur belongs to that college president friend of yours. But that does not mean that it was
he
who did it!’ I remember having seen Chetan drive around in a jeep with Akshat. It was a long time ago, when Akshat had been stalking me around the college campus. It was a yellow open jeep, with flashy red and green graphics on it. It would stand out anywhere it goes, so obviously, I remember it.

There was a longer pause from Akshat’s end this time, and I almost think the call has got disconnected. But then I hear his breathing. I don’t know what’s wrong with him. Why did he start acting so weird all of a sudden, ever since I mentioned the accident?

‘What are you trying to say?’ he asks, finally breaking the silence.

‘What do you mean? I was just telling you how the accident happened …’

‘Really? Then why do I feel like you are
accusing
my friends of something? Just because they have a jeep? And for what? To save Karthik? That fucking son of a whore! You’re thinking too much. There was NO jeep. It’s all Karthik’s fault. Do you fucking get it?’

‘
Akshat!
Mind your language. He did nothing to deserve this.
The accident was not his fault!
’ I yell, now very angry. Things are getting way out of hand, and I have no idea why.

‘Then whose fault is it?
Mine?
Are you trying to say
that
? Just because I happen to know a guy who owns a jeep?’

The angry quiver in his voice was freaking me out. It was like he was losing control.

‘I never said—’

‘THEN WHAT THE FUCK
DID
YOU SAY? That
I
sent them to knock Karthik over? Are you accusing
me
? Is that why you called me today? To accuse me?’ Akshat shouts out.

I freeze.

Did he just say
Karthik
? I start breathing heavily, but my mind is strangely calm. It begins to process everything that has happened in the conversation. My head feels like it would implode as it dawns as on me as what might have happened. Akshat? I go over the incidents again in my head. I can’t be wrong. There was no other explanation. It actually is Akshat who planned all of this. It is he who is behind that accident that killed Tanmay.

First, he freaked out as soon as I mentioned the accident. Then, he kept blaming Karthik, even when I told him that it was not Karthik’s fault. He just wanted to shift the blame and change the topic. And as soon as I mentioned the jeep, he asked me if I was
sure
I did not recognize it. He was just making sure that he wasn’t in any trouble. But then, when I mentioned that I remember Chetan—his friend—owning a jeep, he freaked out totally.

And when he said, ‘That
I
sent them to knock Karthik over?’ it became more than obvious that it really was the case. He said
Karthik
, not
Tanmay
. Now that I think of it, it makes perfect sense. Akshat had asked Chetan and his guys to knock Karthik over, and those dumb idiots had confused Karthik for Tanmay, just because it was Karthik’s bike.

‘Niharika?’ Akshat says. He clearly does not realize what he has just said.

I hang up. I feel sick.

An hour passes, without me moving even an inch. I sit, frozen in my place, running it all through my head. I have always known about the hatred between the two guys—Akshat and
Karthik—but I never thought it could grow to this extent. Was the hatred, which had developed because of a stupid reason, enough to warrant someone’s death? Is Akshat really capable of
killing
someone, just over a petty brawl? How could I have read a person so wrong?