The Bestseller She Wrote (10 page)

‘The person you are looking for is there,’ he pointed to Aditya’s iPhone lying on the desk.

‘What?’

‘There,’ he again pointed to Aditya’s phone. ‘See that.’

Aditya walked up to his table and picked up his phone. There were seven SMSs from one person—Shreya.

Aditya picked it up and swiped through screens to get to his inbox.

And finally the last message:

He was worried. Had he said anything which had upset her? Had someone else noticed their closeness? He started sweating as he assumed the worst.

‘Whatever you are reading, I presume it doesn’t bode well, eh?’ Sanjay spoke after a long time. Aditya looked at him blankly.

‘Aditya, you are old enough to decide what you want to do. But why do I get the feeling that you are not headed in the right direction?’

‘What, what do you think is going on, Sanjay?’ Aditya looked straight back at him.

‘Nobody is blind here, Aditya. We hired her on an impulse. You know that. I placed her in your team because she joined a month early. Do whatever you want to do, but for fuck’s sake, please be discreet.’

‘Save some healthy flirting, there is nothing going on,’ Aditya said through gritted teeth.

‘Whatever! All I can say is play it carefully, dude. If it comes to my attention formally then there will be a problem. So watch it.’

‘What’s going on here isn’t even a fraction of what is going on between Diana and you,’ Aditya smiled and patted him on his shoulder.

Sanjay was flabbergasted. He hadn’t expected him to bring her into this discussion. Except for a one off occasion, Aditya had largely stayed away from treading down this path.

‘I am not having fun, Aditya,’ Sanjay retorted. ‘I am single. And we are giving it a shot by trying to see if we can develop it into something long term. Both of us have suffered in our previous marriages. This is the first time I am with the person I love.’ There was an angry look on his face. Unlike you, I have always had poor luck in relationships. So, both Diana and I are playing it safe. There is no comparison between what you are doing and our relationship.’

‘You are thinking too much, Sanjay.’

‘Paid to do that, my friend,’ Sanjay said as he got up. ‘Poor Maya. Wonder why she trusts you so blindly. I don’t know what she saw in you,’ he said as he exited the room, shaking his head in disgust.

21

T
HE MOMENT
S
ANJAY
left the room, Aditya dialled Shreya. Her phone was switched off. He walked to her desk. It was clean. Not a shred of paper on the table. He casually checked with people around. No one seemed to know anything.

Creases appeared on his forehead as he walked back. He had seen the build up of tears in her eyes and that had him worried.

He fidgeted around in office till five in the evening. He called her at least seventy-five times but her phone remained switched off. He toyed with the idea of sending someone to her house to see if everything was fine, but then decided otherwise.

Finally he decided that he had had enough and picked his bag and walked out. There were a few actionables which had arisen out of the conference call that morning, which were still pending. He decided to come back later for them.

Aditya drove out of the bank. He had Shreya’s address; she had given it to him. He knew the building so it was easy for him to get there. He parked his car in the lane and walked straight up to her apartment.

Standing at the door, he composed himself, straightened his jacket and rang the bell.

He could hear some muffled footsteps coming from inside the apartment. He waited patiently for a couple of seconds. He could hear the door unlatch. And then it opened.

He stood spellbound.

In front of him was Shreya looking extremely sensuous. Someone had once told him, that every woman, at a particular age, looks good. He disagreed today. Shreya would look good at every age, and that too, irrespective of what she was wearing. She looked fabulously attractive even in her house clothes. He sized her up in a glance. In that fleeting moment he noticed that she had not worn a bra under her flimsy t-shirt. Her shorts ended a foot above her knee giving him ample sight of her silky thighs. A male mind can process so much information in nanoseconds when it comes to a woman’s body that no supercomputer can match it.

Almost immediately he felt guilty, for Shreya was in a horrible state. Her nose was red, probably because she had been crying. Her eye make-up had smudged and dark circles had formed around her eyes. Her hair was unkempt. She looked as if she had woken up from a nightmare. Emotionally she was a wreck.

‘Shreya!’ Aditya exclaimed. ‘What have you done to yourself?’

Shreya ignored his question. ‘Aditya, you should not have come here. I stay with extremely conservative people. They might not approve of me meeting someone in this state in their house,’ she stuttered. It was a bad attempt at getting him to leave and Aditya knew that.

‘Don’t worry. I will go away, but before that tell me what happened.’ Without giving Shreya a chance to react he walked into the living room and sat down on the sofa. ‘And why is your phone switched off?’ he demanded.

Shreya came and sat down next to him. She was still snivelling and the tissue in her hand had almost completely gone to pieces. There was a tissue box in front of them, on the centre-table. Aditya picked it up and extended it towards her. As she pulled out a tissue he looked at her legs. The glowing skin on her velvety legs, made her look like a goddess. For a moment he chided himself for being able to compartmentalise Shreya into two distinct boxes—the box of physical appeal, which he admired and that of emotional distress which he was trying to fix.

He waited for her to wipe the remnants of the tears from her eyes and then asked her again:

‘What happened?’

She looked away from him, tears building up yet again, ‘Nothing.’

‘Before the dam in your eyes breaks and we go through one more round of tissue paper, can you tell me what happened?’

Shreya snivelled a few more times. Her cheekbones tightened and her eyelashes fluttered in a laboured manner—the way they do when you are trying to hold back tears that come rushing into your eyes. ‘I am ashamed of myself, Aditya. I am a failure. I can never do anything good in life.’

‘Says who?’

‘Look at you, Aditya. India’s number one author . . . A big success. Everything you touch turns to gold. You have everything going for you. And me?’ she sniffed through her tears, ‘Me . . . nothing.’

‘Fuck the preamble. Tell me what it is. And why are you doing this to yourself?’ Aditya delicately placed his hand on top of hers and pressed it comfortingly.

She quietly got up from the sofa and walked towards a room at the far end of the hall. Aditya couldn’t help noticing her swaying hips through the flimsy fabric of her satin shorts. He sighed and looked the other way, to distract himself. Within a minute he saw her emerge and walk back towards him, a paper in hand. He could see the silhouette of Shreya’s body through the apology of a t-shirt that she was wearing. The narrow frame of her body, with her breasts projecting beyond the silhouette looked enticing.

Aditya took the paper from her. ‘What is it?’

‘Read.’

It was an email.

22

‘
D
EAR
M
S
K
AUSHIK,

Thanks for submitting your manuscript to us for
publishing . . .

Aditya looked up at her, surprised. ‘Manuscript?’ he muttered before going back to the letter.

‘. . .
We are grateful that you considered us for publishing your book. However, we regret to inform you that the manuscript does not fit into the kind of books that we would like to publish. Hence we will be unable to take this up for publication.

Please note that this is in no way a reflection of your skills or . . .

Aditya stopped reading because by then Shreya’s sobs had filled the room. He looked up to see her crying uncontrollably, her body shaking.

‘I am a failure, I am a failure,’ she kept repeating even as tears trickled down her cheeks.

Aditya kept the letter on the table and turned towards her. ‘You never told me about it,’ he said in a low voice.

‘I was . . . was . . . like . . . like . . . scared to tell you,’ she covered her face with her hands. ‘I was worried what you would think of me,’ she continued sobbing.

She appeared to be hurtling towards a nervous breakdown, mumbling all the while. ‘Nothing that I do turns out to be good. One thing I wanted to do in life and even that I can’t do properly. You will also start hating me now. Why does this happen to me? It always does, it always does.’ She started howling even louder.

A worried Aditya slid towards her on the sofa. When he was within arm’s length, he reached out and hugged her. ‘Calm down, calm down. It’s okay,’ he consoled her. He held her head against his shoulder, trying to pacify her.

‘It’s okay. Rejections are common in this trade.’ It was an uncomfortable posture for him. He could feel the softness of her breasts pressing against his chest. It was turning him on. He was worried. He couldn’t be seen getting turned on especially at a time when she was going through trauma. He abruptly released his hold. She didn’t show any signs of moving away. He let her be for some time, forcibly trying to bring some other thoughts to his mind, to distract himself. After a couple of minutes, when he felt that she had calmed down, he pulled himself away.

‘Look, Shreya,’ he began, ‘it’s no big deal.’

‘It is, Aditya. For me it is,’ she screamed. It took him by surprise. ‘You can afford to say it’s no big deal. I cannot,’ she howled. ‘I have given it my sweat and blood. Who is that fucking editor sitting in a godforsaken publishing house to take a call on my book and on me? I bet they can’t write a line for nuts.’

‘That is not what I meant, Shreya.’

‘Then what did you mean?’ she cried. ‘Don’t demean my effort. What’s the difference between you and the goddamn publisher?’

Aditya kept calm. ‘You know, Shreya, it is not about you or your writing. In publishing no one knows what will do well and what will not. Sometimes the best-written books fail and the miserable ones do well. It’s also a matter of luck. The editors just go by their instinct. Unfortunately your manuscript may have landed up on the table of an editor who does not appreciate your style of writing. That’s it. It doesn’t in any way mean that you are bad. I always advise new authors to reach out to a publisher through an agent or through someone they know. There is no point sending the manuscript directly. Those that are sent directly go into a slush pile,’ he finished.

‘Slush pile?’ Shreya asked.

‘Yes. That’s what the publishers call a pile of unsolicited manuscripts. Do you really think they have time to read thousands of manuscripts that land at their doorsteps? The easiest thing is to flip through it. See if there is anything worthwhile as per their limited vision. If not, they just dump it. A lottery gives you a better chance at success than getting a book published. I haven’t seen anyone cry over not winning a lottery. Then why cry over a book contract? I just wish you had told me about this manuscript. I would have pushed it with publishers. Some of them do listen to me.’

‘Maybe. In any case I had sent it to them before I joined the bank. I wanted to succeed on my own,’ Shreya said. She looked at him and then at the letter on the table and tears started to flow again. However, this time she was not hysterical, nor was she sobbing. Aditya went closer to her and hugged her. She hugged him back. ‘Thank you, Aditya,’ she said.

‘Send me the manuscript.’

‘I will after refining it a bit. Now that it has to go to the biggest author in India. Might as well rework it and bring it up to his standard.’

‘Whenever you are ready,’ he tightened the embrace.

She felt his grip tighten around her and, after momentarily jerking her body, eased into his embrace. They stayed there for a long time, Aditya stroking her back and Shreya lying with her head on his shoulders. His shirt had become wet with her tears, where her head rested. He didn’t care. Her hair cascaded down, right next to his face. It smelled wonderful. He inhaled the fragrance and then in a momentary lapse of self-control, planted a kiss on her bare neck. She let go of him instantaneously as if hit by an electric current and pulled back. She looked at him, right into his eyes. Her face was in front of his. For a fleeting moment he glanced down, just to escape looking at her face and could see her nipples taut against the thin cotton of the t-shirt.

He moved his glance upwards to meet hers. This time, her eyes held a soft appeal. An invitation he couldn’t resist. He inched closer. She waited. He moved a bit forward. She closed her eyes. Their lips met. As if on cue, she parted her lips and kissed him passionately.