Someone Like You (16 page)

I have not seen Akshat in the last six days. The very day I had decided to talk to him, he had vanished. I have thought about calling him, but have refrained till now. If he doesn’t come back, I think it makes sense not to talk to him.

We have been waiting for an hour for the match to start, but there are no signs of the players of NITE, Nagpur. Tanmay had told us that NITE is one of the strongest teams of the competition and we were hoping not to have our first match against them. Our team hasn’t had the time to practise and two of our key players are injured. Tanmay said he had tried to convince Mandar to bring Karthik back, but he had turned a deaf ear.

‘Do you think Karthik is going to come?’ Pia asks.

Over the past one week, Pia has not gone to the gym. She says that the equipment is being replaced but I can feel that something is wrong. She has barely slept and kept awake throughout the night, talking to someone on the phone, often crying. I met her only six weeks ago, probably that’s why she doesn’t want to share her problems with me, but I am sure it’s about Vishal.

‘I don’t think so,’ I say. ‘Tanmay told me that Karthik hates the football team and wishes that it would lose.’

‘He hates the team? Then why does he train Tanmay?’

‘He likes Tanmay, that’s why.’

‘Maybe he likes Tanmay because Tanmay is
your
friend,’ Pia suggests with a naughty smile. I ignore it.

‘There he is!’ I point out.

Tanmay, along with the rest of team, comes running inside the football field, surrounded by the 300-people strong crowd that has turned up to support both the teams. The match starts shortly and things immediately look bad for our college. Within the first ten minutes, we concede the first goal. Tanmay is not in the playing eleven yet, and I can see him getting restless on the benches.

At half-time, our team is behind by two goals and the players are already discouraged; I can see their shoulders drooping. The opposite team, on the other hand, looks ecstatic. As soon as the seniors sit on the bench, Tanmay goes up to Mandar and says something animatedly. Mandar says something, and by the look of his expression, I can tell that it cannot be anything pleasant. Tanmay doesn’t relent and still keeps talking.

One of the seniors gets up, puts an arm across Tanmay’s shoulder and walks him away. From where we are sitting, it looks like Mandar is bitching about Tanmay to the player on his left. After a ten-minute break, the match starts again and this time it is no better. We assume that the whole matter is about Tanmay trying to get into the playing eleven, and Mandar not letting him in.

Pia and I look at each other with downcast faces. The crowd from the other college has now gone ballistic and they are shouting the name of their college at the top of their lungs. We can hear the chants of
‘NITE, NITE, NITE’
roaring in our ears, and it discourages us. Tanmay is still walking on the side-lines, pacing about the line, kicking dirt and muttering something angrily to himself. Minutes later, NITE scores again. Tanmay throws his hands up in the air and shouts something at Mandar again.

‘I think he is in trouble. He is messing with the captain,’ Pia whispers, as we see Mandar running towards Tanmay.

Once there, he points a finger at him and then presses it against his chest, and shouts something. Mandar substitutes a striker as a favour to Tanmay and this inclusion displeases the other senior players. They are clearly unhappy about the decision.

‘He’d better do good,’ I say nervously and Pia clutches my hand.

Tanmay, on the other hand, looks confident as he runs up to where he is supposed to play from. He does a few stretches and Pia shouts out loud, ‘
GO, TANMAY
!’

There is muted laughter from behind. I look behind to see who laughed. There is no one. But something tells me it was Karthik. The whistle is blown; the match starts and Tanmay’s eyes are fixed unwaveringly on the ball.

I close my eyes and say a little prayer.

AMAZING
.

We must have said this word about a million times by now. The loud cheers of the name
‘TANMAY! TANMAY!’
is still fresh in our ears as we munch on the pizzas Tanmay has ordered for us in our room.

The match ended at six, 4–3 in our favour with a spectacular hat trick from Tanmay. He was like a kid on steroids in the field. The opposition was zapped, and I am sure they must be thinking now that it was all part of a plan. Concede three goals, give some false confidence to the opposite team, unleash the secret weapon ‘Tanmay’, and win the match.

Even though he did not look like how Karthik did that day, Tanmay did end up with a similar fan base for himself. No one expected anything from him; he was just a short, skinny junior, eager to play for his college team. Who would have imagined the kind of talent he hid within himself? He
dazzled everyone and I will never forget the image of his teammates picking him up on their shoulders and carrying him off the field. The match ended at six and we had to rush back to the hostel while Tanmay went off with his teammates to celebrate. He was back in the campus by eight and had ordered pizzas for us, to treat us for the win.

‘It was brilliant, wasn’t it?’ Pia says for the zillionth time this evening.

‘Yes, it was,’ I agree.

‘Where is he anyway?’

‘I think he is out with Karthik. The last time he called, I could hear Karthik in the background.’

‘What’s the deal with Karthik? I will not be surprised if he transforms into some Batman or something like that. He is always so mysterious and stuff. Don’t you think?’

‘A little bit, yes,’ I say.

‘You haven’t talked to him after that day, have you? I am amazed he didn’t try to get in touch with you. I thought he liked you … anyway, what happened to Akshat?’

‘Argh. I don’t want to think about all this. Akshat is missing. I don’t know what or who Karthik is and I don’t know if I care! Let me just concentrate on the pizza,’ I say, now irritated by all this boy-talk. I seriously don’t know how I got myself into all this.

Our conversation dries up after a little while as she keeps on texting her boyfriend, and I keep on refreshing my profile on a social networking site, hoping for something exciting to come up. Bored, I put on a movie that seems interesting. Tanmay, with his strange laptop and scores of other computer hardware accessories, had transferred a good stock of movies on my laptop. A lot of them are superhero/mindless action movies, but there are a few good romantic comedies as well. I put on one and get lost in the handsome guy’s wonderful words in the movie.

A little later, I see Pia wave her hand at me from her bed.

‘What?’

‘Someone’s outside!’ she says.

I pluck out the earphones and try to listen. I am pretty sure that someone is shouting our names. It doesn’t take me long to realize that it’s Tanmay, a different Tanmay, a
loud
Tanmay! We both run to the window and look down.

‘HEY! PRETTY LADIES!’
he shouts and waves his hands at us. He is swaying from side to side.

‘What the hell!’ Pia shouts back at him.

‘PIA! I’M
NOT
DRUNK! Or maybe I
am
.
Shhhhhhhh
…’ he shouts and turns to look to his right. Our eyes follow his and we see Karthik sitting on his bike, smiling back at him, from a few feet away.

‘You need to go. Right
now
,’ I shout. The warden could come out any time and report him, and that’s the last thing I want happening to Tanmay. I wonder if it is Karthik who made Tanmay drink.

‘I ain’t going nowhere!’
he shouts in a fake twang and starts laughing maniacally. He can barely stand straight now. His spectacles are all wrong and tilted to one side, his hair is ruffled and windblown, his clothes are dirty and he looks like shit.

‘GO! Go back before someone complains about you. NOW!’ Pia shouts, clearly concerned.

‘But I LOVE YOU!’ he says out loud and flashes a smile at her.

I do find it a little funny, but I also know what will happen if someone catches him doing this. I ask him to go to his hostel, ‘We can talk about that tomorrow! You need to go now.’

Pia, meanwhile, has started to blush.

‘I LOVE YOU! I LOVE YOU! I LOVE YOU! YOU’RE SO BEAUTIFUL! YOU’RE MY SUNSHINE!’ he starts singing
totally out of tune, but totally cute. He keeps tripping over himself as he sings the self-written, self-composed song.

‘KARTHIK!’ I shout. He is sitting quietly on the bike and enjoying the show. ‘CAN YOU TAKE HIM BACK?’

He throws his hands up in the air and drives close to Tanmay. He pulls him and forces him on the back seat of the bike while Tanmay is still singing his ‘I LOVE YOU’ song.

‘Goodbye, ladies!’ Karthik shouts out as his bike roars away.

‘AND I LOVE YOU, PIA!’ Tanmay shouts.

When we see the bike turn around the corner we come back inside our room. We are both too shocked and bewildered to say anything. There is a pause in which we try to digest what just happened.

‘Tanmay drinks?’ I ask.

‘He loves me?’ Pia asks.

‘Crap!’
we both say.