After All This Time (2 page)

Shourya slipped into the apartment at 5 a.m., yawning widely. He took off his shoes, and picked them up, careful not to make any noise. Padding softly across the floor, he gently laid them down, and placed his books on the study table. He undressed himself in precise movements, not taking a second more than required. After gathering his clothes and throwing them in his laundry basket, he grabbed his towel, tiptoed out of his room and into the bathroom and bolted the door.

He breathed out. This was the tough part; no matter how hard he tried, the shower was going to make noise. His best bet was to block the spray with his body and make sure it did not touch the bathtub—that made the least amount of sound. He had plenty of experience; he had been doing this every morning for the last four months. He did not know if they couldn’t hear him, or if they knew he was there and didn’t come out of ‘their’ room while he was in the house out of courtesy. Or shame, hopefully.

A minute later, Shourya turned off the shower and dried himself. Wrapping the towel around his waist, he quietly unlocked the door and stepped out, intending to return to his room. Instead, he ran straight into
her
. His heart missed a beat.

Instantly, Shourya felt a dead weight at the pit of his stomach. He had not seen Deepti in three weeks. She had cat eyes and lips so thin they sometimes disappeared completely when she laughed. She was wearing a man’s shirt—
his
shirt—reaching mid-thigh, and her waist-length dark brown hair cascaded down one shoulder in a bundled mess. She looked like she had just woken up; her eyes were still sleepy, yet somehow completely awake upon seeing him. She blinked rapidly as if in confusion.

‘Shourya?’ she whispered.

‘Yes, it’s me. Don’t look so shocked. I live here too, remember, apart from your
other
boyfriend?’ he muttered, gritting his teeth and staring at the shirt she was wearing with disgust.

‘That’s not fair!’ she said, her eyes downcast.

‘Oh,
that
’s what’s not fair?’

‘Why are you being so mean? I thought we were over this—’ Deepti began, but Shourya cut her off.

‘Stop it, Deepti; I’m not in the mood.’

‘Mood for what? I’m not doing anything. You’re the one being mean.’

‘Fine, then let me go to my room and we’ll both forget we bumped into each other just now,’ Shourya said.

‘But I don’t want to forget. I want to know how you’re doing.’

‘Never been happier. Can I go now?’

‘You don’t look very happy,’ she said softly.

‘
Not
born to please you, woman.’

‘What is
wrong
with you—?’ Deepti looked up at him, her eyes wide like those of a hurt puppy.

‘
Seriously
?’ Shourya hissed, flipping his lid completely. The words were out of his mouth before he could filter them. ‘Are you serious?’ he bit out. ‘
Six years
, Deepti. Six years we were together. I gave you everything I had and more. I did every possible thing I could that I thought would make you happy. And what did you do to me?’

‘I’ve said I’m sorry—’

‘And that makes it okay? That makes it okay for you to cheat on me, not once, not twice, but for months . . .
months
behind my back? And that too with one of my closest friends?’

‘What was I supposed to do . . .? I fell in love . . .’ Deepti started sobbing, like always. It was ridiculous how genuinely hurt she looked by his words.

‘Stop it, Deepti. Seriously. Enough with the fake tears already. I still don’t understand how you get to play the victim here. It’s too early in the day for me to care about your bullshit. And the good news is that I no longer have any obligation to deal with it. So just, please . . .’ He held up his hands, palms outward, and shrugged.

He shifted around her, expecting her to not prolong this encounter any more. But it did not seem like she had any intention of letting it go that easily. Just as he turned the knob of his bedroom door, she spoke again.

‘Please don’t be so rude to me, Shourya. You know what you mean to me. I never meant to hurt you. I really loved yo—’

That was the last straw. Shourya simply could not hold it together any longer. In a swift movement, he curled his fingers into a fist and punched the wall. The wood shattered, and his fist got lodged in the drywall behind it.

‘Oh my God! What are you doing?’ Deepti shrieked.

Shourya pulled his fist out angrily and shook it to relieve the pain.

‘Don’t you dare say that!’ he roared. ‘Don’t ever say you loved me! If you want to tell yourself that so you’ll feel like a less horrible person, so that you can sleep at night, fine! But do
not
say that to me. I’ve heard enough lies from you to last a lifetime. I don’t want to hear any more.’

‘What the hell is going on here?’ Avik asked walking in, clearly woken up by the commotion.

‘Nothing!’ Shourya snapped. On seeing Avik’s baffled expression, he added, ‘Oh re
lax
, it’s not like you walked in on your girlfriend making out with your friend, roomie. Trust me, that isn’t the same.’

And with that, Shourya jerked open his bedroom door, walked in and slammed it shut. He had half a mind to go out there and confront them again. But the other half of him, the part that craved sanity, pulled him back.
How long was this going to go on? Would he ever be able to get out of the pit he had been pushed into?

He recalled the first time he had seen Deepti. He had just joined college, and was still in the middle of picking and dropping classes, unable to decide which ones he wanted to keep, when he had seen her in the canteen. She was a fresher too, and his choices became easy—he simply picked the same classes she was taking. It took him quite some time to win her over. But when he finally did, after months of wooing, it was incredible.

They were inseparable throughout college. When they reached their final year, Shourya knew exactly what his next step would be: a business finance master’s degree from Harvard Business School. It had been his dream ever since he had realized the direction he wanted to build his career in. Deepti, on the other hand, was still unsure about what she wanted to do after graduating. It was Shourya who convinced her to join him. She was neither as ambitious as him nor as bright a student, but Shourya was determined to go to the States, and he had no intention of leaving her behind and going alone.

All through their final year, Shourya coached Deepti and helped her study for the GRE while preparing himself. They spent every second of every day together, staying up till dawn on most nights, cramming, laughing over shared bowls of Maggi. Shourya would insist on having a tall glass of milk—his one obsessive regression to childhood—as they yawned their way through sunrise.

When they finally decided to call it a night, a few hours into the morning, they would lie down together on his single bed and hold each other as they dozed off. When they woke up a few hours later, they would go to their afternoon classes together. Deepti would head to her hostel afterwards, but would return to Shourya’s again at night. And once more, they would stay up all night to study.

It became difficult to think of them as two separate beings. For most practical purposes, they weren’t independent any more. They were strangely co-dependent, and Shourya felt that was truly the best way to be.

He had been happy.

When they started receiving admits from universities in the US, they were crushed to find out that Shourya had got into Harvard, but Deepti had not. It had been a long shot anyway; her chances had been slim, but they had still hoped. The only university that accepted both of them was the University of California, Berkeley, and even though Harvard was a much better option for Shourya, there was no way he was going there without her. Harvard and UCB were at the opposite ends of the US, and Shourya couldn’t bear the idea of being 3000 miles away from Deepti for two years. They both knew that once school started, the coursework was going to take over their lives. The only way to stay together would be to study together.

When Shourya decided to enrol in UCB, Deepti did not dispute his decision. Not once did it occur to her that he was giving up something truly spectacular for her. She was twenty-one years old, going out of the country for the first time and scared out of her wits; she was much too grateful to have Shourya by her side to think of anything else.

Once they reached California, Deepti insisted they act as friends and not reveal their relationship to their classmates. She thought they would be alienated from the group and not considered individuals once everyone knew they were a couple. Shourya did not see any sense in the argument, but saw no reason to contest it either because he understood that she needed to do things her way to adjust to her new life in a foreign country.

Deepti got an apartment with two other girls and Shourya took another one, in the same building, with Avik.
Avik
. Just thinking about him now made Shourya’s blood boil. He had considered him a good friend, not realizing that his girlfriend was developing feelings for his roommate. Shourya had first seen Deepti and Avik together in their final year of grad school, right before their end-of-term exams. He had come home from class, and when he pushed the elevator button to go up to his apartment, the doors opened to reveal Avik’s arm around Deepti’s waist. The way Deepti jerked Avik’s hand away when she saw Shourya was enough to tell him what was going on.

She had confessed to him later. There had been a dirty scene where Avik claimed to have had no idea that Shourya and Deepti were in a relationship. Deepti had gone from having two boyfriends to none in a matter of minutes.

After graduating, Shourya had joined a firm, which sent him to train at Fremont for three months. The timing was perfect; Shourya had run away to Fremont, far from all the fucked-up-ness.

Unfortunately, once his training was over, he had to come back to the apartment he had shared with Avik. He had just started working and could not afford to move into a new place, so he was stuck in this nightmare. When he returned, Deepti and Avik were openly dating. He was not interested in finding out how that had happened, but Deepti claimed she was in love with Avik and he had forgiven her for lying to him. Shourya had tried to avoid them as much as he could, restricting his presence in the apartment, sneaking in and out before they got up and spending most nights crashing at the office or the library.

But his lucky streak had ended that morning. He had seen her after three weeks, and now he wanted to run away again. When his company had asked for his site preferences, he had chosen California, not because he had any special love for the state, but because he had too much there that he could not let go of. Maybe it was time he did. They were way too painful, these encounters.

He stared back at the door. He could hear the faint sounds of Deepti and Avik talking, a burst of laughter. Shourya’s jaw hardened. He would ask his manager if the spot was still open at their Boston office.

It was time he moved out.

Lavanya blinked.
This can’t be right. Something has to be wrong with this report. This simply cannot be right. There was no way.
But no matter how many times she denied it, the truth did not change. The proof was in her hand.

That concrete piece of evidence slipped from her fingers, swayed softly in the air-conditioned room for a moment before landing on the carpeted floor. It was swiftly followed by her own body as she sank to her knees. The carpet in her cubicle barely cushioned her fall, but the pain in her knees did not even register; her mind was suddenly swimming with memories of the past,
way
back in the past, a time that she had actively, completely shut out of her conscious mind, creating a barrier between her past and present.

So much for starting over.

That piece of paper took Lavanya back six years, when she had run off to Harvard Law School right after finishing school in Delhi, where she had spent the first eighteen years of her life. She had not looked back. Once in Massachusetts, she had drowned herself in her coursework and not come up for air until she graduated. And once that happened, she drowned herself again, this time in her job, working as a junior associate at Paxton-Stark-Meester.

Every second of every day she lived and breathed, she had thought only of ways to do her job better. She had been obsessed with proving her bullies wrong, of establishing her worth at PSM, her days and nights devoted to work, work and more work.

This can’t be happening. This
cannot
be happening.
The thought repeated itself over and over in her mind. She was too young. She felt like she had done nothing of consequence yet. She could not stop living in the middle of her life. It could not end that suddenly. Could it?

What did being HIV positive even mean? Did she have AIDS? Was she going to die? Her fingers started shaking violently, and her body suddenly felt very cold. Her breath was coming in gasps, and it felt like the earth was moving so fast that she couldn’t even stand. Eventually, however, she managed to grab the edge of her desk and hoist herself up.

Get it together
, she told herself.
You’ve been through worse.

She took a deep breath. Wasn’t someone from the hospital required to call her? It had to be protocol to deliver such news over the phone; sending the reports without a warning was just too cruel. Maybe they had called her; she needed to check her voicemail one of these days.

She did not know what to do next. The obvious first step was to go to a doctor and find out more. She would need to repeat tests, and also take specific diagnostic tests for HIV. It was only logical to get those tests done before meeting with a doctor to discuss her case. Or maybe she ought to look up on the Internet what being infected with HIV precisely meant. Though she doubted she would figure out much until she knew how badly she was infected, and to what stage the virus had spread. She was used to taking care of herself—mostly because there had been no one else to do that for her for a long time—and her brain automatically started working on a game plan.

But eventually it proved to be too much for her. She was too confused and clueless and scared to think rationally. She could not understand what she was feeling—there were so many thoughts racing through her mind at the same time. She felt like crying . . . and she never cried. She desperately wanted to talk to someone about it, but she had no one. A dead weight was stuck in Lavanya’s throat.
This cannot be happening.
Moments after telling herself to get it together, she dissolved into full-blown panic. Her migraine was worse than ever; it felt like her head was going to explode. She did not know if she could handle it after all.

She rifled through the documents on her desk madly, trying to find a pen. When she finally found one, she reached for a notepad and her laptop. She keyed in ‘hiv positive meaning’ and opened the first few links. After reading halfway through them, she opened another tab and searched ‘hiv and aids specialists in new york’. When the results came she pulled out her cell phone to dial the first phone number that popped up.

‘What are you still doing here?’ Mr Cather, of course, had taken that moment to stop by her cubicle.

Lavanya quickly exited her browser and closed the flap of her laptop. She did not turn around to face him. She never wanted anyone to catch her weak or vulnerable.

‘I asked you a question, Suryavanshi.’

She took a few deep breaths, her chest heaving with fury. Maybe that was the emotion that decided to overtake all others at this time of extreme crisis. Maybe it was the distraction she needed. Anger was better than sadness, hopelessness, helplessness.

‘Not now, Cather,’ she said, spinning around in her chair and looking him in the eye.

‘What?’

She just glared at him.

‘
What
did you just say to me?’ Cather asked even though it was clear he had heard what she had said and was furious about it.

‘I said,’ Lavanya said, very slowly and clearly, pausing at each word, ‘not—now—
Cather
.’

‘How dare you!’ Cather thundered. ‘How dare you speak to me like that! Do you know what I can do—?’

‘Yes, I do! I do, you . . . you unethical, unforgiving, grudging, chronically resentful asshole,’ she spat out every word with deliberation and distaste. ‘I do. In fact, not just me, every junior associate in this office knows what you could do to me, and what you
have
been doing to me all this time. It’s been over a
year
. You know how many days that is? How many nights? Nights I haven’t slept, trying to do everything right, getting
every last detail
right, trying to not give you a reason to show me
exactly
what you could do to me?’

Cather just stared at her, obviously not having expected such an outburst from Lavanya, who, having begun at last, could not seem to stop. All the pent up emotion—the frustration, the anxiety, the terror she had faced, not just at PSM at the hands of Cather, but from when she first started preparing for her LSATs eight years ago—finally found an outlet.

‘I have done everything I thought would make you happy, would make you see my work for what it is, not a biased perception of it. Would it kill you to be a normal human being? Seriously, just freaking act like a professional and do your job! Why the stupid power games and plots to insult me repeatedly?’

Cather finally found his voice. Nostrils flaring, he started, his anger making him stammer, ‘Do you . . . do you have
any
idea . . . what you’re saying . . . ?’

‘Yes, I do,’ Lavanya replied vehemently. ‘I’m saying exactly what I should have said months ago. This has to stop. You have to stop! You call yourself a mentor? You make us junior associates do all your work, and all you do is find new ways to make my life hell.’

‘I—I don’t know what you’re talking about . . . you . . . insubordinate, disrespectful . . .’

‘I respected you long enough without you ever having deserved it. Now I’m . . .’ Lavanya paused, shaking her head in dejection. ‘I’m . . . I’m done. I’m tired of this. I just . . . not any more.’

For a minute, it seemed like Cather was at a loss for words. People were peeking out of their cubicles to witness the commotion. But Lavanya saw nothing except Cather, her gaze piercing him. She kept shaking her head slowly from right to left.

‘You are just a bully. You ruined my life,’ she forced out through gritted teeth. ‘This used to be my dream. This is what I always wanted to do . . . and you killed it. You killed my dream . . .’

To his credit, Cather did not say anything. It was the first time he, or anyone in the PSM offices, had seen Lavanya Suryavanshi so rattled. She had usually ignored all their jibes, not caring about anything anybody said or did to her. It was difficult to read Cather’s expression. Other than the anger he was obviously feeling, his face also gave away confusion and . . .
Concern
?

Maybe he thought she would kill herself and he would be blamed. For one crazy second, she thought maybe she should—just to get back at him.

But Lavanya did not have the time or energy to sit and try to decipher Cather’s moods and expressions any more. She grabbed her coat off the back of her chair, shoved her cell phone in her handbag and walked out of her cubicle, away from . . . everything.

When she walked out of the Paxton-Stark-Meester office, she knew she was never coming back.

For the next five days, Lavanya was a zombie. After reaching home, she had slept for sixteen hours straight. When she woke up, it was dawn. There was faint light outside, indicating that the sun was about to rise. She felt muddled, unsure of where she was, what she was doing there and how much time had passed. She had not slept for those many hours since . . . ever.

Lavanya was starving, but there was nothing to eat at home. All she found in her kitchen were some cups of flavoured yogurt that had expired, dry cereal and take-out menus. She decided to go out. She wore a long overcoat over her sweatpants and hoodie, zipped up her tall boots and wrapped a thick scarf around her ears and neck before stepping out. It was 1 December and as expected, it was freezing outside. Pulling her coat tightly around herself, she shivered as she walked, without any idea of where she was going.

From her apartment in West Village, she headed north on the vacant sidewalks, until she suddenly realized she was at Times Square. Having covered the two miles in a haze, she stopped only when she noticed the bright lights coming off the gigantic screens, brightening up the still-dark morning. The Square was always crowded, no matter the time of day or year. Lavanya saw a man wearing a round plastic head painted like a bald child’s. He grinned at her, several teeth missing. It was December, in New York City—yet he wore nothing except a giant white diaper with a big fake safety pin on it and a pair of white booties. The things people did for money.

The thought struck Lavanya, and she stopped walking. She stared at him, her brows knitted in concentration as the man went from person to person, impersonating a baby, asking them if they wanted to have their picture taken with him, looking to get some money in exchange. And then she rushed to find the nearest ATM, took out cash and went back to the full-grown, almost-naked man-baby and gave him a hundred dollars. He grinned and insisted she take a picture with him on her phone. She did so, and walked on.

For the next five days, that was all she did—take cash out and give it to musicians at Subway stations, artists at Washington Square Park, dancers at Central Park and so on. She gave away a considerable chunk of her savings to fast chess players, painters at the streets, magicians and all sorts of other artists trying to earn some cash by performing for people. The one good thing about having drowned herself in work was that she’d never had a chance to spend any of her salary except on food, rent and her student loan instalments. She explored more of the city in those five days than she had done in the last sixteen months she had been living there.

By the fifth night though, Lavanya was exhausted. Her legs almost gave way because she had been walking so much. She decided to go home. She was scared, she was paranoid. She found it hard to understand the strange mix of emotions she was feeling. Was she so fatigued because of the miles and miles she had walked, or was it her disease?

Lavanya had completely ignored her test report after she first saw it. She hadn’t been to a doctor, looked up anything on the Internet or called anyone for advice. She was hoping that if she did not think about it, it would eventually go away on its own. Of course, she realized that she was being delusional and needed to come out of it. But she was not ready to face the facts, not just yet.

First, she had to face something else—something she had been running from for too many years.

She picked up her phone and called a number she hadn’t in a long time. It rang three times, and then, ‘Hello?’

Lavanya paused for a short moment, and said, ‘Mom? I’m coming home.’

Shourya finally managed to zip up his large suitcase, practically sitting on top of it to get it to close. As much as he adored his little sister, ordering him to bring twelve pairs of shoes from California to New Delhi was ridiculous, even bordering on mental abuse—he was going to kill Shreela. To her credit, she had made his job easier by sending him links of online stores and telling him what sizes and colours to get. All he had to do was go to the links, buy the insanely overpriced shoes, somehow shove them all into one large suitcase, add a few pieces of his own clothing, and he was packed for his trip to India.