THE ONE YOU CANNOT HAVE (25 page)

Chapte
r
28

Aman

The sound of the doorbell seems to be coming from somewhere far-away. I struggle to open my eyes. I lie still for a few moments, groggy with sleep, trying to listen for another sound. But there is none. I only hear the comforting buzz of the fan. Then I think that perhaps I imagined it and I go back to sleep. Just as I settle down comfortably, it rings again. This time there is no mistaking it. I mutter a curse under my breath. Who the hell is it? I am in my boxers and I cannot be bothered to wear a shirt. It is probably some hired help who is ringing the wrong doorbell.

I walk to the door and open it a little bit so that I can peep out. I struggle to open my eyes because there is bright sunlight streaming in and all I can make out is that it is a woman.

‘Yes?’ I say not bothering to look at her, still trying to keep the sun out of my face.

‘Aman. It’s me,’ she says.

The voice sends an electric jolt through my body drugged with sleep.

For a few seconds I think that maybe I am hallucinating. And then it registers. Slowly.

I am shell-shocked. My throat has gone bone dry. My heartbeats have increased. In a jiffy, my sleep has vanished and I am instantly awake. This time I look at her in the eye. Just to convince myself that I am not hallucinating and this isn’t some dream. She gazes back at me unflinchingly.

I almost stop breathing.

Standing before me is Shruti. She has haunted me even in my dreams, stolen my sleep, given me such a lot and yet taken away so much from my life. And now here she is, standing before me now.

‘Fuck,’ is all I can say.

She smiles. A smile of familiarity. A smile that says a million things without saying a word. A smile that understands. A smile that can come only from years of shared intimacy and closeness. It is as though she was expecting me to say just that.

‘You look good, Aman. Can I come in?’ she asks as I step aside and she walks in, without even waiting for my answer.

She wears the same perfume. God, I can recognise it anywhere. Eternity by Calvin Klein. There are a thousand emotions running though me right now. Hurt. Confusion, Excitement. Disbelief. More confusion.

I realise that I am still staring at her, like she is unreal. She has walked into my living room and made herself comfortable now.

‘I am so sorry to barge in like this. There was no other way you would see me,’ she says simply.

I am still gaping and somewhere at the back of my mind I am aware that I am still in my boxers.

‘And yes, you look even sexier than you did the last time we met,’ she says as her eyes roam all over my body and smiles.

‘Excuse me, I’ll just be back,’ I say and I rush to the bedroom. I wear a pair of shorts and pull on a T-shirt that is lying around. Then I quickly wash my face and hurriedly brush my teeth, all the time thinking that this is so surreal.

Shruti is sitting just a few feet away in my house, in my drawing room. How the hell did she find me? How did she know my address? Why has she turned up here like this? What does she want? Does her husband know she is here? What has happened?

I hurry back outside and she is in the balcony now, staring out at the pool.

‘Nice place, Aman,’ she says.

I just nod and I am unable to talk.

‘Do you hate me so much that you don’t even want to talk to me?’ she asks

I am unable to speak. Now I know what it means when people say they are tongue-tied. For the first three months after she left me, I dreamt of this scenario, every single day. I prayed for it. I hoped and hoped that she would come back to me.

And now my prayers have been answered. Except that it is two years later. Just when I was certain that I was moving on and that Shruti was a closed chapter. I would have thought that not responding to her mail would have driven the point home. Made it clear to her that I want nothing to do with her. And yet she has turned up at my doorstep and now she is asking me if I hate her.

What do I tell her? How can you hate a person who was the ‘perfect one’? How can you hate four years of indelible, incredible memories, probably the happiest ones of your life? How can you hate the one you have tried so hard to get over and who yet haunts you in every single relationship that you have had since? How can you hate someone whom you compare every woman you meet to?

What Shruti and I had was pure magic. There was no other way to describe it. But she was the one who had walked away. She was the one who hadn’t answered at least hundreds of my mails. I remember the pain, the wait, the torture that she has put me through. And now two years later she has turned up out of the blue, asking if I hate her. What do I say?

‘Say something, Aman. Anything. This isn’t easy for me, you know,’ she says, twisting her stole around in her hands. It is only then that I even notice her clothes. She is wearing an emerald green top with a deep V-neck, casual jeans and a silk stole that she is clutching. She looks bewitching. She hasn’t changed at all in these two years. Short hair makes her look even younger and make her eyes seem larger.

They are fast filling up with tears now. I panic. I don’t want her to cry.

‘I don’t know what to say. I am sorry. Please don’t cry,’ I blurt out without knowing what exactly I am saying.

‘Can I have some coffee please? I have come straight from the airport,’ she says, and I can see that she is trying to blink away her tears, not wanting to create a scene.

God—I know her so well.

‘Of course,’ I say and I walk into the kitchen and switch on the electric kettle and Shruti follows me.

She stands at the kitchen doorway and stares at me while I make the coffee. She likes it strong with just a spoon of sugar. I like mine with a little more milk. I silently hand her the mug and she carries it to the dining table and pulls a chair and sits down.

It is like I have turned into a zombie on auto-mode in her presence. I follow her.

‘You still remember how I like my coffee, Aman? This is perfect,’ she says as she takes a sip.

It is not only the coffee but I remember every single detail about you, Shruti. About us. About the magic that we shared. About how good we were together.

And how carelessly you threw it all away.

‘Yes, I remember,’ I finally manage to say.

She smiles again and her smile is something that does me in. But I notice now that it is tinged with sadness. There is something in her eyes that I cannot comprehend.

We sit in silence for a few seconds sipping our coffees and I cannot bear it anymore.

‘Shruti, I think you owe me some kind of an explanation. What is all this about? Where is your husband? Is everything okay? Why have you suddenly turned up like this? And how did you find me?’ The questions tumble out.

‘Whoa, slow down. I will explain. Let me recover,’ she says.

‘If anyone has to recover, it is me Shruti. You at least knew you were going to see me, but heck, I am totally unprepared for this.’

‘I know. That was the plan,’ she says as she looks at me over the rim of the coffee cup as her hands go around it.

I have now got over the initial shock of seeing her and I am angry now. But yet I am not able to ask her to leave. Every sane and sensible bone in my body is telling me that it is what I should do. I should just ask her to disappear just as she appeared. I can then go back to my life.

‘Look, I am sorry, Aman,’ she says as she reaches out and places her hand over mine. I withdraw my hand quickly, like she has touched me with burning coal.

‘Do you hate me?’ she asks again.

‘Why do you keep asking me that? Don’t tell me you caught a flight from Mumbai just for that?’

‘So you knew I was in Mumbai?’

‘Yes,’ I admit. ‘I looked you up on Facebook once. Even though you had blocked me. And changed your name.’

‘Aaah… yes. I am sorry, Aman. I can now say with certainty that I was not in my senses then. You know, I so desperately wanted my marriage to work. I so badly wanted to get over you and trust me I tried. I tried hard Aman. But…’ She is unable to go on.

Is she telling me that her marriage is over? Is that why she is here? God—this cannot be happening. Just when my life was beginning to fit back together. Just when I finally thought that I was over her.

‘Is your marriage finished? Is that why you are here?’

‘I don’t know, Aman. I do not know. Nothing makes sense anymore,’ she says. The earlier coolness and assured demeanour when she had just rung my doorbell and walked in, is gone now. Shruti looks so sad and vulnerable that all I want to do is to rush to her, take her in my arms and assure her that everything will be okay. I fight hard to control the urge.

‘What happened, Shruti? Are you okay?’ I say. I cannot bear to see her like this.

‘I have never felt so uncertain in my life, Aman. Things between Rishabh and me, they aren’t so good anymore. We haven’t spoken properly to each other in months. I do not know what to do,’ she says.

So her marriage isn’t over. A part of me is sad to hear that but another part of me is hugely relieved. Had she ended her marriage and walked out, I don’t think I would ever have the strength to bear it, face it or accept it.

‘Do you want to talk about it?’ I ask.

‘I don’t know where to begin,’ she says.

‘How about we start by you telling me how in the world you found out where I lived?’

‘Hmmm. I have my ways.’

‘I can see that. But who told you my address? How did you track me down?’

‘It wasn’t so hard, Aman. I knew you were with the same organisation from your Linked-in profile. But I wasn’t sure if you were in India. So all I had to do was call up your head office and ask for you. I told them I am from your college and we were trying to gather all the alumni for the golden jubilee celebrations and hence wanted to trace you. I got to know you were in Bangalore. They told me you are in the company guesthouse and even gave me the number. I called up the guesthouse and came to know that Shukla is there. I pestered him and he had no choice but to agree. I made him promise me that he won’t breathe a word to you.’

‘He sure kept up his promise,’ I say dryly.

Shruti’s eyes are damp now. ‘I feel miserable now to have walked out on you like that, Aman. I was such a fool. But at that time, what I did seemed right. My mother was too ill back then. All I wanted was for her to recover.’

I don’t want her to cry. She is looking at me now, waiting for me to say something.

‘Two years is a long time, Shruti. I was devastated after you left. I think I must have written a hundred mails to you? Did you even read them?’

‘I did. Except that I read them a week ago. And that is why I am here,’ she says.

I am stunned.

‘You read my mails after two whole years? And then you decided to see me?’

‘It isn’t quite the way you put it, Aman. I did see the mails that you kept sending. But I was going through a very hard time then. I had made up my mind to marry Rishabh. We had broken up. Whatever we had, it was over. So I didn’t read your mails in detail. I merely glanced at them, without taking in the words. We hadn’t exactly parted on great terms, had we? We were so immature then, Aman. Or at least I was.’

‘What made you read them now?’ I ask.

‘Rishabh. He read all the mails between us and he was shell-shocked to know I had been in a relationship. He feels betrayed. He hasn’t been talking to me properly ever since. He feels that I have wronged him deeply.’

‘You hadn’t told Rishabh about us?’

‘No. In retrospect, I have wished a thousand times that I had. Maybe I wouldn’t have been here had I told him.’

I don’t know what to say to that.

God does have a cruel sense of humour. For two years I dream, wait and hope that Shruti will come back. For two years, I struggle to get over her by burying myself in work. I suffer. I hurt. And finally when I am healing, she is here.

I think about Anjali. I think about my mother. I think about how hopeful my mother is that things between Anjali and me will work out and how much she looks forward to welcoming Anjali as her daughter-in-law.

‘Aman, do you think… You and I… a second chance, Aman?’

I realise that Shruti has just said something and I haven’t been listening. I have been so caught up in my turmoil of thoughts which are coming down like an avalanche now. All I have caught are the words ‘second chance’.

‘Sorry Shruti. I haven’t been listening. What did you say?’ I ask.

‘Was talking about us, Aman. About how we deserve a second chance. Don’t you think?’ she asks.

I am quiet for a long time.

Or at least it seems like a long time to me.

I have made up my mind. Some things are just fated. They may not work out exactly like how you had wanted, but they are meant to happen so you learn to grow.

‘Shruti,’ I say and she looks at me with eyes so full of love that I have a hard time going on. The lump in my throat feels like a million jabbing pins. There is no way out but to end this once and for all.

‘Look…’ I say but I am unable to go on.