Part-Time Devdaas... (16 page)

“What’s wrong?” she asked, then following the line of my sight she finally noticed her father. “Oh hi, Pa,” she pecked him on his cheek and disappeared in the crowd.

The guy went unusually silent. I mean anyone would in the given situation. I began to mentally prepare myself for a royal thrashing by the supposed father-in-law and his warrior family.

“You see that guy in the brown blazer?” he said in a stern tone.

“Advait, and that’s his father sitting beside him.” I saw what he wanted me to see and got back to intently listening to him.

“Do you like him?” He asked.

“Sorry sir I’m not into boys.”
I thought of saying but thankfully he didn’t give me much time to respond.

“He specially flew down from San Francisco to meet Devika, but she refuses to meet him.” I readied my right arm to cover my face in case he decided to slap me.

“You know why?” My eyes twitched and body froze as he raised his hand,
“here comes a slap, here comes a slap”
a voice yelled in me, but he held my shoulder.

“Because she thinks she loves you, bloody fool!” he said poking his index finger into my chest.

“You know he is an American citizen, reaps around four hundred thousand dollars a year, owns a Jaguar and a bungalow back in SF.”

“
Wow uncle, can you put in a word for me? I’ll meet him if Devika isn’t ready.
” What do I care how much he earns or what he drives or where he lives.

“Honestly, I’m not a huge fan of the work you do,” the way he said, it I felt like I picked pockets for a living.

“But if being with you is what makes her happy, I’ll have to make do with you.” His eyes were on me. “You better be good, son. We warriors don’t take messing around with our daughters too kindly.” I pasted a very innocent smile and nodded my head vigorously to agree with him.

“I’ll see you around.” He patted my shoulder and joined the crowd.

Devika’s father’s subtle threat made me push a few more drinks down my throat. I climbed up to the roof and collapsed on the charpoy. The winters weren’t far gone so the cold was enough to shrink my ball sack and send shivers up and down my body. A few rounds of heavily inhaling and exhaling the air later, I felt warm air on my lips. The familiar scent of a body brought a smile on my lips.

“Thank you,” she whispered taking a break from kissing.

“Hmm.” I responded and moved to make room for her to sleep besides me.

“Your ‘the talk’ with ‘the father’ really saved my ass,” she said now resting her chin on my chest. “Did you see that guy?”

“Who? Mr Francisco? Yup, your dad even gave me a guided tour of his assets.” 

“Bozo was staring at me throughout.”

“I don’t blame him.” I opened my eyes to look at her. She grinned and nuzzled on my chest. “But I wonder what he does with all that money. No booze, no smoking!”

“Spends it on flight tickets to meet girls who don’t want to see him.”

“Ouch! That's mean. You know, I think my dad likes you.”

“Really?”

“Ya.”

“He said that?”

“No, but I can tell from the body language and the way he looked at you. He even referred to you by your name while talking to me.”

“So?”

“I mean, he generally refers to my boyfriends as
that guy
,
that
loafer, loser, joker
or whatever, but never by his name.”

“
Aacha
!” I pulled her close and wrapped my arm around her. “I see that all the warriors have a liking for this Brahmin.”

“Hmm.” She wrapped her hands around my body and held me close.

You can never tell what life has planned for you. I mean a year ago, I was sitting in some cafe talking to Devika about my wedding plans with Hrida. All of a sudden, I am in Gwalior to convince
Devika’s
father to let her marry me. I opened my eyes and grazed at the stars as they had stopped spinning around me. Visuals of happy faces of people flashed in front of me – the whole warrior clan, the father, the cousins, Nishi bhaiya, Devika. For a change it was nice to have people around. Coming here wasn’t a bad idea after all, I thought.

“I have to tell you something.” She said still hugging me.

“What?”

“I’m late.”

“For?”

(Long silence)

“I missed my period.”

“Are you saying you are pregnant?” I asked and a while later I looked at her as what I asked her sunk in me.

“Yes, I think I am.”

All I contributed was dead silence.

“Don’t worry, I’ll deal with it when we get back.” She said and hugged me tight.

The words “
Yes
(then a pause)
I think I am
” ricocheted inside me for a billion times. The miasmic clouds of guilt began to accumulate in my head. The memories of all my blunders in my life began to ooze out of the plugged dark hole. I messed up my relationship with Hrida, then broke up with her, hurt my parents with my stuck-up shit, dumped Raghu and Shashank, and now I had slept with my best friend and got her pregnant. I was such fabulous selfish fuck up that I screwed my relationship with the only person left in my life who stood by me, no matter how much I sucked. The guilt inside me muted me around Devika. I hardly spoke to her on the wedding day but there were barbarous riots inside me which were ripping me apart.

“What the hell have I done!” Voice One mumbled looking at Devika as she fastened her seat belt in the flight.

“We asked you to get laid, not knock up Devika,” Voice Two said.

“How different are you from the rest of the jerks she has dated?” Voice Three said.

“Ya at least they don’t pretend to be her best friend to use her,” Voice Four said.

“Look how heartbroken and shattered she was and what you did to her,” Voice Two said.

“Stop it, stop it, stop it, stop it.” I whispered as the visuals grossed me out.

“Hey, what’s wrong?” Devika asked, and I realised my blunder. 

“Nothing, it’s the flight, take offs make me jittery.” I said and tightened my seat belt. Devika wasn’t clearly convinced, but she simply smiled and held my hand throughout the two hour long flight back.

“Bloody pile of poop, all you can do is stink,” Voice Two continued.

“Look it isn’t entirely my fault.” Voice One said.

“Classic Arjun Kulkarni, he’ll always find someone to blame,” Voice Three said.

“Go ahead; blame her. Say she seduced you into giving up your innocence,” Voice Two said. 

“You disgust me man. If you have empty sex with someone, at least have the balls to own up to it,” Voice Four said.

“It wasn’t empty sex,” Voice One shrieked back.

“Oh great so now you love her too.” Voice Two said.

“No, I don’t, I just...” Voice One said shrieked back.

“Arjun, your bag!” Devika squeaked and ran behind it as the conveyor belt at Mumbai airport began to drag it.

“Freak, it broke my nail,” she said sucking her finger.

“I’m, I’m, I was just, just...I’m really sorry.”

“It’s okay, let’s go now,” she said pushing the trolley away.

My patience was wearing off and the self-belittling voices within had left me disoriented. I closed my eyes and began to breathe heavily. A few minutes later, I saw Devika staring at me as the cab stopped outside my house.

“You want to get down or you coming home with me?” She asked.

“No, I think should go home.” I got off the cab and pulled my bags out.

And the cab zoomed away, the look in her eyes stayed back.

Ten days later, when I was busy holed up out of guilt, an e-mail from Devika tinged on my Blackberry.

Hi,

I am not pregnant anymore. I took care of it. Sorry to have spooked you with the news. You know me, I don’t think much before I talk. Besides that, I told Pa that, it was all a hoax so you don’t need to pretend anymore. Arjun, I am yet to understand the nature of our relationship in the past month. What happened was ought to end, but for that I don’t want to trash the years we spent together. I know you love Hrida and will always do. And another thing I know is that I’m not Hrida, so it’s all cool. You don’t need to worry about anything. ANZ made an offer that I couldn’t resist, so I took up the job. Just boarded the flight for Delhi so will call you when I land. Take care.

Love, Dev.  

PS: I’ve left box full of joints back home. They should last a month. Have fun.

W
hen life fucks you, it is advisable to not resist, because your resistance will only leave you feeling raped. So after the fight at the café, I let my life drag me by my leg. Weddings didn’t exactly evoke the feeling of excitement in me but there was nothing to do here in Mumbai other than have endless nerve wracking conversations with myself which could happen irrespective of location. In addition, Voice One came up with reasons to convince me:

One
, I
had
to go away from Hrida or anything that would remind me of her.

Two
, I needed something so buzzy that it would annihilate all the psychological aftereffects of my result of 10-flunked-subjects.

Three
, I would get to meet the newly-born offspring of my cousin Malini and,

Four
, with a year to kill, Raghu was ready to go with me.

So when Mom asked me to pack my bags for Jammu, I quietly agreed.

Billions of images of Hrida and the everestine Abhimanyu cozying and snuggling up to each other brought out best of my mind’s preposterously outrageous comments, abnormally amplifying the level of frustration in the thirty-six-hour-long train journey from Mumbai to Jammu. I was so exhausted by the internal contorted noises of the voices speaking to themselves that I muted myself externally. All the conversations happening around me were a montage of sequences that I wasn’t interested in.

“Radzzz!” Malini didi screamed and hugged Radhika as she unlocked the netted door of her house. A minute after screaming, hugging, kissing and jumping with her, she squeezed me and then Raghu after screaming our names out loud. Touching of the feet of my parents by jiju, Bittu and other younger members in the house took place followed by me, Radhika and Raghu repeating the same with didi’s in-laws and other senior members. Thanks to Radhika and Raghu’s excessive chattering, I got away with only a smile which I had to force my face to display. But then when my facial muscles refused to fake the smile threatening to blow my cover, something happened and I no longer had to force a smile.

“Here, bug your Mamu now.” Malini di said handing Rishi to me.

My first nephew. A five-month-old with balloon-like pink cheeks, dark brown glinted eyes, scanty hair, red drool-dripping lips, four frontal teeth and tiny fingers with cuspated nails that clawed my face at the first opportunity. I could only look at him and smile, and smile. No matter how good you are with words, it is impossible to explain the feeling that holding a baby that belongs to your bloodline generates inside you.

“Hello baby!!” I said and shook his hand.

“Phhrrrrrrrrrr...” came the reply with a spray of drool, followed by “Kheerrrk, kheerrrk, kheerrrk kheerrrkhhh,” some hearty laughter.

Never in my life had I thought I’d enjoy being spat upon by someone. Conversations with him were simple. Everything was phrrrrrrrrrr, kheerrrk, ghrrruup, yaaayaamm, oowwhuuoohh. The best part was the giggle he attached to his vocab. In just a few minutes, the baby unleashed its charm on all the Mumbaikars and got them gyrating to his clowning.

Three hours later, when the superstar got drowsy and everyone finally got saturated with the greetings and jubilation, Raghu and I exchanged a look. It had been close to forty hours that both of us had let cigarette smoke inside us. The house was so crowded that it would get extremely challenging to notice two missing boys for a few minutes. So at the first opportunity, both of us ran to the nearest cigarette shop and burnt the hell out of our lungs.

Raghu instantly befriended the convenience store owner.
s
ince we were going to be here for fifteen days, it was extremely necessary to gather information on location of nearby cigarette shops.

“Can you believe it? This guy delivers suttas at home.” Raghu said almost jumping at the news. I found it oddly comforting. Since we were not in Mumbai, there was no reason for us to step out of the house frequently.

“Did you get it?” Bittu asked Raghu.

“Hmm.” Raghu responded.

“Quick, light it.” She ordered Raghu.

“Do you want one?” she asked the girl who was with her. She shrugged a
yes
, so Raghu lit three cigarettes and handed one each to Bittu, me, and the girl.

“Poncho, you guys haven’t met before right?” Bittu asked as the smoke escaped out of her nose and mouth.

“No,” the girl said and I shook my head.

“She is Smiley, my cousin.” She said, “Arjun, bhabi’s cousin, and this is Raghu, her almost cousin.”
e
veryone laughed.

“Bittu!” Radhika barged in banging the door open.
Crap
! I dropped my cigarette in fright, Smiley hid hers behind her while Bittu continued smoking,

“I saw that,” she said glaring at me.

“You smoke too?” she asked Bittu in a scandalised tone. “Yuck!”

“And you two… imagine what jiju will do to you when he finds out you are supplying cigarettes to his sister.”

“Ya, but he won’t find out na.” Bittu pulled Radhika close, “Will he?
w
ill he?
w
ill he?” she said kissing her after every ‘will he?’.

“You smell of smoke. Go away!” Radhika said disgusted. “Your hubby to be is here and is asking for you so come down fast.”

“And you… you are dead,” she left piercing her nails into my arm.

I know,
I said in my mind.

Angad, the hubby to be, was an IIT-D, IIM-A pass out. He now helped his dad in his apple export business. Why do people waste time, money and effort to do something that they know they’ll abandon eventually. But why blame him, even I was somewhat of the same brand.

“Poncho!” Dad called me. “Ravi Uncle, Bittu’s father-in-law,” he said and I bent to touch his feet.

“So, civil engineering haan?” he said placing his hand on my shoulder. “Which year?”

“Third year starts when we return,” my dad said.
Crap, I still have to tell him about the results
. I felt a huge thud in my stomach.

“Uncle is a civil engineer as well,” he continued.

“From IIT, not to miss.” Bittu”s father-in-law boasted.

“
Oh so it’s you from whom Angad gets his stupidity?”
I thought of asking.

“But you know, Arvind, Angad after IIM-A has made me proud. I mean, even I got a degree from IIT, but it felt good that my son surpassed me.” 

Dad gave me a hopeful look. Maybe he wanted to shoot the same line someday. What he clearly missed was the familial stupidity of exporting apples instead of using the degree that they obviously slogged their asses to earn. But my dad was so awestruck by the fool’s bragging that it was pointless to say anything against him. As for the highly literate moron, it’s useless to inject sense into such great souls. They are so happy boasting of how they chose their family business over a hotshot job the degree offered that they’ll never see logic in anything said against it. Coming from a guy who planned to drop out of engineering, let alone surpassing his father, would in all possibility fuse him. I would have any day preferred to listen to Rishi speak in his stress relieving ununderstandable language than get caught in a hareheaded conversation that reminded me of the things I had run away from. Since the supply of words from my brain was scarce, I glided out of the IIT-IIM-bragging crowd with a smile.

I spent the rest of my days in Jammu ferrying the bride to costume fittings or Smiley and other cousins to parlours, accompanying jiju and his family to random relatives for dinners where there was awesome Punjabi food, expensive alcohol which I couldn’t drink or sitting in corner through painful discussions on colours and patterns of saris by the overcritical ladies who were yet to shop for Bittu’s wedding or going vegetable shopping with didi’s father-in-law or babysitting Rishi. But I didn’t mind the inanity of any of the activities as long as it kept the obnoxious memories of my results or Hrida’s ‘cheating on me’ away. It had been sixteen days since doomsday, but the noxiousness of that day refused to stop harrowing me. The moment I stepped away from the high pitched exultant buzz, the wicked voices took over.  

“You coming?” I asked Raghu to avoid being alone.

“No, I am fine, don’t feel like it,” Raghu whispered stretching a sari as he stood in the centre surrounded by ladies.

“At least give me company,” I gritted.

“Raghu hold it properly ya...” Malini di scolded. “Poncho, shoo, go play outside.”

“Like this?” Raghu slouched looking at me in helplessness and began to drape the sari around him.