Losing My Virginity and Other Dumb Ideas (18 page)

‘Arjun,’ I said, now having made up my mind, ‘I think we should break up.’

He tried to protest feebly, but I continued, ‘Arjun. You need to be a husband and a father right now. And I need to be with someone who can be with me no matter what. I’m not blaming you. I’m not even angry. But I think we need to release each other from these promises. So that we can live a life that we truly deserve.’

‘Kaveri, don’t …’ he pleaded.

I didn’t know how to exist in a world without Arjun D’Souza, but with each word I spoke, I knew it was the right thing to do, ‘Arjun. I wish you all the best with the baby and I hope you will remember me fondly. I know I will always remember you. Goodbye.’ I hung up, truly feeling the weight of what I had just done. And then I cried for many hours. And this time I didn’t order food or call Aditi or speak to Mom. I cried because I knew I had done the right thing.

Sometimes liberation and emancipation are words that make you feel strong and powerful. But when it comes the hard way, like breaking up a relationship that was The Great Love of your life, it hurts like hell. And so I let it all out. Till I could cry no more. Arjun sent me many text messages telling me to stop behaving like a child and try and understand where he was coming from. But from that moment onwards I knew I had to delete him and his messages from my life. And so I did. And then, I truly turned my life around.

I rightly stopped behaving like a child. And finally became a woman.

The thing with goodbyes is that it really isn’t truly over till you can block that person from your head. Because even if you block him from your chats, your email, your Facebook, he isn’t gone until you can lock him out of your head. And the only way to do that is to let every thought of him come in.

So I decided that I would let all thoughts of Arjun come into my head. Whether it was good or bad, I wanted to experience all of them so that I could purge myself of him, one thought at a time.

At first, I knew I was in trouble because he would write emails to me or try to send a message on Facebook or Twitter or try and chat up with me. It could have been so easy to go back to him. But this time I didn’t. I had this image of him and his wife with a child and it really made me feel disgusted with myself for being ‘the other woman’. I know I had not felt like this earlier because he loved me and I felt our love was pure enough to bear the burden of this anomaly. But now I felt I should have known better. I felt I shouldn’t have let myself go through all that and given up such a huge part of me.

Then again, a little voice in my head said that if I hadn’t given up so much of myself, I would never have experienced ‘The Great Love’ that I had felt. And then it hit me.

‘My Great Love’ had died.

I had killed it.

I knew
he
was still there, but I knew I just could not have the little he was offering. I wanted more. I wanted to have pure love that could carry on forever. I wanted to be in a trustworthy, reliable, mature relationship. I wanted to be able to have the freedom to have a dinner in public without him constantly looking over his shoulder or pretending I was his colleague.

I didn’t need him. I wanted him. There was a difference. I didn’t need him to be able to provide for me, get me a house, pay my bills, and change a flat tyre. I had wanted him for the way I felt in my head about us. I had seen a future. Even if it meant hurting my parents and tossing my head against society. I wanted an honest explanation, whether he would marry me or not.

And I never got one.

Aditi had told me once, ‘Men don’t want to give the truth. They can’t face the fact that they’re assholes.’

But I realized that women can’t face the truth because often
they
are really naive. Really. If a woman had so much intuition, wouldn’t she know that the guy was just not that into her? Wouldn’t she realize after her friends told her so? Wouldn’t she comprehend by listening to herself crib about him continuously? Why do so many women ask for the truth when truth is staring at them right in the face? It’s probably because women need to hear it. From him. The man that she has given her heart to.

That’s the real reason. She needs to hear him say the words, ‘I don’t love you. We can never have a future.’ And how many men have actually said that? None. Because they always want to leave the window of ‘opportunity’ open for a ‘what if’. And that’s why women will be shattered over a break-up for a far longer time than men. Men don’t need explanations. They think, ‘It wasn’t meant to be.’ And have another glass of beer and go back to working on their Excel sheets in the morning.

I knew that I was questioning myself over this entire episode. And I knew immediately it was the wrong thing to feel. So I quickly decided to go to Coffee De to enjoy a good hot cup of cappuccino and indulge in a chocolate lava pie.

As soon as I got out of my apartment and started walking, it began to rain. A sudden shower from the heavens and I instinctively sprinted towards the coffee shop. But then I stopped and realized I loved the rains. I always had. It was one of the reasons I wanted to live in Mumbai. I thought it was romantic and I loved the way it made me feel. Carefree, excited, creative. Arjun had ruined that for me. He was the one always complaining about floods, blocked drains and traffic jams. He was the one who cribbed about the clothes never drying or the walls being damp or the slush in his shoes. I, however, had always loved it. But soon, seeing him so grouchy, I began to change my view. He was right as usual, I had thought. My feelings had all been intangible. After all, there is nothing exciting and romantic about traffic jams.

So I stood right there and took the rain in. It soaked my clothes and made my hair drip. But it made me feel alive again. A part of me came back. And I knew that I would have to let every thought of Arjun D’Souza come in, for me to push him out.

And I knew finally I could now handle his absence.

I didn’t leave for Bangalore. I had never meant to leave Mumbai. I needed to face my demons right here and so I decided to cleanse my apartment of everything that reminded me of Arjun. I wanted to take charge of my life again. Something that Arjun had done for me for many months. And now I wanted the control back.

But saying that I was going to get my life back and actually doing it were two different things. I didn’t know what people do when their hearts are broken. It was happening to me for the first time. I had actually thought that I would fall in love, get married and remain so, till I die. That’s what my parents had done and I figured I would follow. But this entire year had been such a new experience. First, I had decided to sleep with just anybody to rid myself of my virginity, then I had actually fallen in love and instead of getting married to that man and living happily ever after, I ended up broken hearted after I had slept with him! That was a lot for a woman to go through in just one year. Especially, one who had never experienced love or sex before.

A heartbreak, I now knew, actually hurt. Physically hurt. And all along, I had thought it was an intangible feeling because, come on, how could you feel your heart falling apart, right? I mean, does the aorta burst or what? But those who have gone through this will know it feels like a dull ache in your back with cramped shoulders and heavy legs, as if you’ve just come out of a long spin cycle from your washing machine. A lethargy that incapacitates you from even thinking straight. And it takes all the strength inside you to be able to smile at that aunty downstairs or that colleague through the day when all you want to do is curl up like a ball and cry for days in your bed. ALONE. But I had made up my mind.

I was not going to take Arjun D’Souza back. And even though I had been upset with him many times before and had gone back to him, I decided that I would erase his number from my phone so as never to be tempted to scroll down and even send him an SMS. And SMS he did. Many times after our call.

He pleaded, sent angry messages, even tried to ignore me for several hours so I would relent as I had in the past and go back to him. But I didn’t give in. I remained strong. And I cleaned. I cleaned my entire house like I’d never done before. I had always thought that cleaning was a domestic chore and I was above it. But when I started, I realized that it was actually quite therapeutic.

I started with my room, where we had spent several hours together. I removed all the clothes from my cupboard and everything from the drawers of my side tables and bookshelves and dumped them on the floor. Then I removed everything that reminded me of him. I kept them aside. I was going to give them back to him or donate them to charity. My maid looked on in wonder at what I was doing and helped me without a word of complain. Perhaps she had guessed that the man I was in love with and whom she had gotten used to, was now gone. Many a time, I saw her looking at me wanting to say something to console me, but my hardened expression and determination to clean kept her shut.

But I wasn’t done cleaning. I cleaned my living room and kitchen too. I put away the red coffee cups that he used to serve me coffee in. I cleaned till I could clean no more. And then one day, I was finally done. Then I sat down at my door and looked at my clean and purged house. There was not a trace of Arjun.

And instead of feeling relieved like I thought I would, I felt tired. And I cried. I wept copiously. I knew that it would not be the only time, but the healing had begun. I knew that to be strong again, I needed to let go of him and find myself.

And then, just when I went into the kitchen to make myself a cup of tea, I found it. Lying on top of a heap of discarded junk mail was the visting card I had put away all those months ago. The TV and film director that I had met at the parlour when I was getting a makeover—Deepa Malhotra.

I came out to the living room with the card and sat down on the large comfortable cushion. I thought this was the sign. This was what I had to do. Arjun had always told me that my job was like a hobby. It gave me money but I couldn’t do it forever. And I had thought I would. But here was an opportunity to not only clean out my house, but to clean my entire life. I could start afresh with a new career, meet new people, and have a new life. And only then would I be able to completely rid my thoughts and my heart of him. I knew I needed to step out of my box. If there was one thing I felt I could take from the relationship, it was Arjun’s advice to do things that were not in my comfort zone. If you don’t take this chance, Kaveri, I thought, you could just go to Bangalore and wallow in self-pity, with your parents nagging you to tell them what’s wrong.

I decided to call the lady the very next day and see if I could find a new path in my life after all. I finally went to sleep peacefully for the first time in many weeks. My house was rid of everything that reminded me of Arjun. And now I was going to cleanse my mind too, one step at a time, one day at a time.

The next day, I called Ms Deepa Malhotra, the TV and film director, and asked if we could meet. At first, I thought she wouldn’t remember me since our brief encounter at the beauty parlour many months ago. But obviously I had made some impression because she told me to come see her on Friday. I was anxious, to say the least. What was I going to say to her? I didn’t know whether I wanted to act or help make tea on the sets. But reminding myself about my new resolution to try everything once, I decided to be excited and go.

Two days later, I reached her office at eleven in the morning and waited for Deepa to come. She was about forty-five minutes late with no apologies. A cool, calm, collected woman in her mid-forties, she was dressed in jeans and a flowing, floral designer kurta that covered her heavy hips. Since I saw her last, she had cut her hair again to a really short Victoria Beckham style that made her look fierce and dynamic—a well thought-out look. She nodded her head at me while talking into her BlackBerry and simultaneously taking out a large envelope from her huge Gucci bag and giving it to the receptionist, who was now waiting for instructions.

‘Mail this out immediately,’ she told the receptionist in a low tone, while still on the phone. The receptionist sent me in after another ten minutes of waiting. Deepa’s office was grey. Literally. There was a grey couch on one wall, with a small table in front and a lamp on the side. The two chairs in front of her office desk were grey. The wall behind her was grey. And everything else was black and white. Paintings, cushions, photographs, certificates, everything. It seemed as if I had stepped into a 1920s monochromatic film. Despite the cold look of the room, the director was surprisingly warm, especially compared to her earlier fierce demeanour.

‘Kaveri darling!’ she said as if she had known me for a lifetime, ‘you haven’t gone back to the parlour for a long time have you?’ She seemed very forthright. While my jaw fell in shock, she continued laughing, ‘Your colour has grown out, so I know.’

‘Oh yes. I just haven’t had the time or …’ I trailed off.

‘… The inclination?’ she completed.

I smiled. She sat down behind her desk and I sat on the grey chair in front. I guess she wasn’t as friendly to invite me on the sofa for a chitchat. She ordered coffee and then asked, ‘So tell me why you called?’

I took a deep breath and said, ‘Well, I want to do something new with my life and I want to be able to have new experiences. I feel I’ve been stuck in a rut for too long and I was hoping you could help me.’

She nodded and asked, ‘How?’

Just then, the receptionist came in with cake and coffee and I got a few moments to think about a question I had been asking myself the entire day. ‘Kaveri, you’ve lost it,’ said a voice in my head. ‘You’ve come to a powerful woman in the TV and film industry with not a clue in your head about what you want from her!’

But when she smiled at me warmly and after taking a sip of coffee, I decided to tell her the truth. And so I started, ‘Ma’am, I’ve just come out of a bad relationship. And I need to do something that will distract me. I am willing to do anything. I need a new experience to completely rid my thoughts of this man and my current life.’