Losing My Virginity and Other Dumb Ideas (9 page)

‘Arjun,’ I started in my ‘we-need-to-talk’ voice, ‘I’ve had an amazing time. Of all the places I’ve travelled, and all the people I went around with, these two days with you, have been the best vacation ever.’

He smiled and sipped his coffee. I wanted to continue but didn’t know how to.

Maybe I was just jumping the gun. Maybe I should play it cool and not sound clingy and needy like most women. So instead of continuing, I just said, ‘Thank you.’

‘What’s with all the thanks Kaveri? I’m having a great time too, you know.’

Well, that was a relief. I didn’t want to be the bore in the man’s time off in Goa. But suddenly he became quiet. ‘But there is something I need to tell you,’ he said seriously.

You know when you have this intuition that if everything is so good, something must be wrong? Well as soon as he said that, I could sense something was wrong. And then suddenly, my world was torn apart. Right there, I would know what a broken heart felt like for the very first time in my life.

‘I’m having this great feeling about us. I know we can have something special …’ he said and I felt relieved for a moment. But then he continued, ‘I don’t actually live full time in Goa, you know. I live in Mumbai. That’s where I’m working. As I told you earlier, in a channel?’ he asked if I remembered and I nodded yes.

‘Well, I live in Mumbai with my wife.’ He paused for a second, while looking at the flower vase in front of us real earnestly as if he was trying to convince it that it was an okay thing to say. I thought I hadn’t heard right but he continued really quickly, ‘I’ve been working in Mumbai ever since I finished my studies here because I really wanted to do something better …’

‘Go back to the earlier part …’ I cut him off. He sighed and reluctantly started with the details. He looked as if he was defeated. As if he knew that by telling me he was hurting me, while talking he laid his hand on my hand and even moved towards my space. ‘We met when I had just started working. She had joined the same company as a marketing intern and I was trying to find my footing. Then I got a great offer in Delhi and she gave up her job to be with me. We decided to get married then. When I got this position, we came back to Mumbai.’ He paused, since, by now, the expression on my face was of pure confusion. I felt my face dropping and my heart wilting.

Again he moved closer but I quickly moved away. He had already moved into my heart. I wasn’t going to let him move into my side of the sofa. I know I sounded ridiculous but I was determined he sit exactly where he was, opposite me.

‘My marriage is on the rocks. It’s only a matter of time before it’s over. We just need to settle the …’ he was mumbling away and all I could think of was what a fool I had been to fall for the basic charms in a man—humour, intelligence and an amazing body. I had never done that before! I had scrutinized every man in every way possible. Even in the last two months, I had given up on men on flimsy grounds because I had thought they weren’t worthy of my love. And here, in a matter of minutes, I was throwing myself at this man.

‘I haven’t even seen her for so long. After we came back from Paris …’ he was mumbling, but I was already analyzing the situation. You had always been practical about men, so what was it about him, Kaveri, that made you go all wrong, that little voice asked. And a feeble answer came back, maybe it was the exotic location, a vacation after a long time, a departure from the normal, a lot of alcohol and a free day from daily domesticity.

I looked up and he was waiting for my response. I had blanked out. I had been pretending to listen. ‘You just committed adultery. With me. That makes me an accomplice in a crime!’ I completed softly. Instead of being shocked at this statement, he suppressed a smile and said, ‘A very beautiful accomplice. In a crime of passion!’ I looked at him wryly.

There was no more hope in this. I needed this infatuation to die, but all I could do was say, ‘This is an affair. And it’s wrong. And we’re hurting an innocent person.’

‘No. It’s not like that.’ He tried to reassure me, though I had no idea why. ‘This is the first time I’ve ever felt this way about anybody. I’m sorry, but I’m a very faithful husband and have been for eleven years. It’s just that …’

‘Stop!’ I didn’t want to hear anymore. It felt like all my dreams were collapsing. But my logical side was already taking over and saying, he was just a great fling in Goa. And if I stayed on he would convince me otherwise. So I got up and said, ‘Thank you for everything, but we need to stop now before we go any further and hurt a lot of people. I must go …’ I choked on the last few words. I knew that I wanted something more but I would never forgive myself for getting involved with a married man.

‘Kaveri!’ he held my hand, stopping me. ‘Please just hear me out and then leave.’

So I sat back down. I don’t know why. Maybe I felt I owed the guy that, after all that he had done for me the last two days. And he wasn’t the one who initiated the first kiss. I had. So I heard him out sincerely instead of being uncomprehending and vacant.

‘I’ve learnt the hard way that you shouldn’t marry your best friend. Marriage should mean more than that. She started resenting all the sacrifices she made for me and I started resenting how our lives had turned out. We stopped giving each other space to grow. And then we started giving each other too much space not to even bother. It was a dichotomy that loosened all the threads of our marriage. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t even tell you what the problems are. But all I can tell you is that I swear on my parents that this is the first time I have kissed a woman besides my wife.’

I could only nod. Aditi would have screamed and shouted and slapped him right there. But all I could do was agree with him and feel sad for myself. So I just repeated myself, ‘Arjun, I think I should go now.’ And then I kept sitting …

He looked at me while I was looking down at the table. I blinked back my tears. I didn’t want to go. I didn’t want him to be married either. I have no idea why I stayed put. But I did.

I guess that was the first of my dumb ideas.

He sighed a long deep breath of relief and motioned for the waiter to fill our glasses with water.

After taking a sip he continued, ‘You know, on a funny note, marriage really kills conversation and you’re the only person I’ve talked to the most in these last few months … on a personal level.’ He tried to break the ice. I tried not to feel sorry for him. ‘My wife and I are no longer in a loving marriage. She wanted to try and make the marriage work a few months ago by taking us on a four-day trip to Paris … I spent most of my time in museums and she went shopping … We didn’t even connect in the most romantic city. Since then, we’ve been living separate lives … I mean, she came back and a few weeks later, left to be with her parents. She needed to tell them we weren’t working out. And I could no longer hide it from my parents, so I came here to break it to them … And then I met you … I met you and felt like there was a breath of fresh air in my life. After so long.’

‘And how do you think I should fit into this life of yours?’ I asked with hope and trepidation that he wouldn’t brush me off. My parents would be mortified if they came to know that I was having an affair with a married man. I would be mentioned in hushed conversations in the cocktail parties they go to, and their friends would smile at them apologetically, blaming my behaviour on modern day evils and influence of the bad Bollywood culture of Mumbai, which I am not even a part of. Oh, how cruel life was!

‘I don’t know … I know that’s too much to ask for anyway,’ he mumbled in the background, but my mind was already trying to plot as to how this could work.

‘Hmm. What? So what are you asking for?’ I said, still praying silently.

‘I’m asking for your friendship. No strings attached. You can lead your life any way you want … I just want to be part of it somehow … because I can’t lose you.’

‘You can’t lose me?’ I asked tentatively it’s crossing my arms and sitting back, keen to look more fierce than I felt. ‘What does that even mean? We’ve known each other just two days. It’s okay if we never see each other again, na?’ I asked trying to sound cool and undemonstrative, but my high-pitched voice, that came out whenever I was nervous, made my words squeaky and shaky. I kept playing his words in my head over and over again, now and for many months to come.
I don’t want to lose you
. Something that a man in love generally says. Or so I believed.

‘Kaveri, please. You yourself admitted that you had a great time with me and I can see that we’re both very attracted to each other, so why are you hesitating so much? I’m just asking to be your friend.’ I must admit I was a little foxed at this point. I was the one who had fallen for him! He had never shown any signs of reciprocation except for the stolen kisses I had pulled him into. Man, I had been a slut and was paying deeply for it!

‘… So why can’t we just continue to have a great time?’ he was saying, ‘Look you’re leaving tomorrow morning. Let’s just enjoy the rest of the evening together and then I leave it completely up to you. If you want to stay in touch—great for me! If you don’t …’ he hesitated and added, ‘I don’t even want to think about it.’

I began thinking about it. It was true that we’d had a great time together. Even in that short span of two days, he’d come closer to me than any man ever. In fact, he’d been the one and only real date I’d ever had. That itself was nice. Who says women can’t be friends with married men, I questioned. People don’t make friends by asking ‘are you married’, do they? They become friends for so many other qualities—and I liked the qualities in Arjun. He was fun to be around. He had a wicked sense of humour, and, for the first time, I had felt comfortable around a man. I wanted to do better, think harder, love deeper around him. I didn’t really want to give that up!

When I finally came out of my reverie and looked up, he was watching my face intently—his eyes hopeful, pleading, even, and full of dread for my decision.

Maybe we would not have a forever. But I suppose I could have a few more hours with this great man I’d found. A thought that would become my biggest blunder later. But for now, I didn’t want to give up on this. I wanted someone who understood me as well as he did and make me laugh and live spontaneously as much as he did. Once my decision was made, I didn’t for a second think that I should have gone with my earlier logic instead of my heart, a decision that would wrench me in deep sorrow subsequently.

I had made up my mind.

I wanted to remain friends with this man and I told him so. But we didn’t know what to do with each other any more. After nearly two hours passed we planned to have dinner at a shack close by.

We exited the hotel on his bike and drove to a beach. As we were walking on the beach he took my hand. That’s when I started getting emotional. On hindsight, that was not a good thing to do with a stranger, but I had had a pretty hectic, tiring and heartbreaking day. He took me in his arms and assured me, ‘Kaveri, please don’t cry. I’m so emotionally attached to you already. I don’t want to lose you. I promise we can work this out. I promise,’ he said sincerely.

So I dried my tears and felt better. He took my hand and we started walking towards the shack. How fickle a woman’s mind is when she’s in love. She oscillates between confusion and logic—all the while trying to find scraps of hope and reassurance. The unspoken truth is that a woman always knows that her first instinct is right. Not the one that her heart led her towards, but the one that told her to be cautious.

We sat at the shack and he broke the ice by talking about my favourite subject, art. We were chatting about our favourite painters when he suddenly said, ‘You know I’ve always wanted a tattoo.’

‘Really? Why?’ I asked, sipping on my third glass of wine hoping I would get drunk enough quickly to obliterate the last few hours.

‘Because I think a tattoo is an expression of something that is inherently you, and is a permanent piece of art.’

I smiled and said wryly, ‘Ya, till you’re about sixty with shriveled skin.’

Then he leaned over and caressed my arm and said tenderly, ‘You’ll
never
have shriveled skin.’

I looked at him warmly, but shook my head and became all prim again, ‘Okay, so here’s a question! Since we are all changing as human beings, what if who we are today, is not what we will be at sixty? Do you still want that permanent piece of art on you?’

He looked thoughtful and rubbed his stubble chin. The one that I had become so used to kissing some four hours ago but was deliberately trying not to maul right now. ‘I think most people get tattoos because it’s cool or funky or some such shit. They don’t realize that it’s not like a new pair of jeans that you can throw away after a year. A tattoo has to be symbolic as well as be aesthetically pleasing. Like people who get “Om” tattoos because they believe in its philosophy. But if you get something dumb like an ancient Egyptian sign that means nothing to you, just looks very good, all over your backside, well …’ He shrugged his shoulders and continued, ‘I have nothing to say about that.’

I smiled again. It was so easy to be with him. He could pull me into a conversation on any topic and we would be laughing and debating in no time. But the nagging feeling of him being married just wouldn’t go away. I didn’t know how I was doing this. A few hours ago, I had wanted to take him back to my hotel, and now we were discussing some lame tattoos. What was happening to me? Why didn’t I just leave and go back to Mumbai and forget about this man? But since I had made up my mind to be his friend at least, I thought I should be chummy and nice. In any case, this was the last evening we would have together before I flew off to reality. I should make the most of our last supper. But I fell silent. I couldn’t go on talking about random things. It became tougher as the night wore on. My mind was conflicted for the first time and I didn’t have control of the situation at hand.

God, we had got along so well! Is this what a real relationship would be like? I thought.

We had had a great time together, pulled each other’s leg and we could talk about anything under the sun. And to feel all this for a man in just forty-eight hours was so unexpected and pleasant. It was then that I thought of Aditi again. I hadn’t spoken to her in the past week. What would she say about this new development in my life? Would she tell me to just go with my heart or slap my face and tell me that I can do better with my life?