By now the food that I had ordered had arrived, but I had lost my appetite completely. Moreover, Simar wasn’t in a condition to eat. In her semi-conscious state she had remembered to check with me about my mother and whether I managed to fool her properly!
I helped Simar in getting off the high barstool she was sitting on. ‘Let’s have some food. You must be hungry.’
Back in her seat she rested her head against the back of the couch. She was hardly able to keep her eyes open when she said, ‘I am not hungry at all, baby.’
Later she started murmuring something. She was pleasantly talking to herself and would occasionally mutter something to me. I looked at her regretfully, thinking that had I handled the situation better and not let her get this drunk we could have had a pleasant evening. We had created enough of a scene by now and almost everyone in the restaurant had taken note of what my girlfriend was up to. I wanted to leave and therefore asked the waiter to take back the meal and pack it as a takeaway for me.
All the while Simar continued to mutter things to me, intermittently opening and shutting her eyes.
She first asked me what had happened to her and whether she was safe and all right. I held her hand in mine and said, ‘You are drunk, Simar, but you are safe. You shouldn’t have had those tequilas without asking me,’ I expressed my displeasure mildly.
Her mind only partly registered what I was saying and she then went into another spell of sleep. The next time she woke up she complained of her head spinning. I insisted that she talk to me and not sleep. She agreed and looked into my eyes. Then she smiled and said, ‘You look so cute, Ravz.’ After many moments of anxiety and nervousness with her crazy antics, she brought a smile to my face.
‘Can I eat your cute nose?’ she flirted with me. I smiled at her and ignored her compliment.
The waiter was taking long to get my parcel and the bill. I asked someone at the bar to hurry it up. I wanted to leave as soon as possible. Right then Simar decided to announce, in her funny kiddish tone, ‘Ravz, I need to go to the loo.’
‘Hmmm … All right, there it is.’ I raised my hand to show her the ladies’ room and thought it would be a great way to reduce the alcohol effect in her body. But then here was the bomb.
‘But I want to go with you!’ she said.
‘What? Ha! Ha!’ I laughed at her frankness.
‘You want me to help you till the door?’ I offered.
‘Not just the door, baby.’ And she forced open her eyes to look at me.
‘Then?’ I said and pulled myself back.
She took a moment to compose her thoughts and then said, ‘Let’s go and pee together.’
I bit my tongue in my mouth. For a split second I visualized myself with her peeing in the same loo. Then I stepped back and visualized myself entering the women’s room with a whole bunch of ladies staring at me. I visualized their scandalized reactions. The terror of those thoughts had actually set the pressure within me to pee.
But I could see that all Simar wanted me to do was what she expected out of me. And their seemed to be little doubt in her mind that I would do it.
‘Ravzzzzzzz! Bolo na, Ravz!’ she insisted.
‘No, sweetheart, this isn’t right.’
‘Kyu nahi Ravz?’ she demanded, not ready to accept my answer.
I didn’t answer her and after waiting for a while she yelled like a kid ‘Bolo-o-o-o-o!!’ And when I still didn’t answer she continued pressurizing me, ‘Bol, kyu nahi aa rahe ho tum Ravz?’
I still didn’t respond.
My facial expressions conveyed that I hadn’t liked what she was doing. She calmed down for a few moments and then kicked me hard under the table with her boots.
‘Ouch!’ I screamed, first looking at my knee and then at Simar, wondering what she was up to.
I waited for her to apologize. Instead she smiled. It wasn’t worth explaining to a drunken girlfriend about what not to do. I gave up.
‘Ravz, if you aren’t coming, I may do it in my jeans!’
This new threat scared the hell out of me. There was no way I could talk her out of this one.
I got up from my chair, held her hand and pulled her up. As I walked beside her, I was conscious of people staring at us. We walked from the extreme left of the dining hall to the extreme right, making our way past circular dining tables with people enjoying their food and talking about us.
As soon as Simar uttered ‘Ravz’ again, I forced her not to talk. ‘Shhhh! Calm down! You are too loud.’
‘But Ravz …’
‘Shhhh!!!! Simar, shut up. Don’t create a scene!’
As we were approaching the ladies’ room, in my mind I was already preparing myself for further public embarrassment. I put my hand on Simar’s shoulder to help her balance herself on her feet.
At the door of the restroom Simar went inside first. A huge sense of awkwardness froze my feet. I couldn’t follow her. The best I could do was to wish that Simar would do the needful and come out quickly. But when she was inside she started shouting, ‘Ravin, tum cheating kar rahe ho, na!’
I struggled between going in to calm her down and staying outside to save myself some embarrassment. I forced myself to believe that she wasn’t audible to the others.
‘Monsieur!! … Monsieur!!’ came a voice from behind me. I turned back to see a lady from the staff.
‘Yes?’ I asked and she understood that I was comfortable with English.
‘Sir, our customers are having problems with your demeanour,’ she said in her Chinese accent.
All right, so this was the beginning of my further embarrassment! I didn’t know what to say. In India I would have simply offered 100 bucks for her to leave us alone.
‘Ravin-n-n-n-n-n!!!!!!!!!’ Simar screamed again from inside.
The lady threw her hands in the air, wondering what Simar was doing. This was enough of chaos for me. I looked back at the people in the restaurant. All eyes were on me. My reputation was no longer at stake. I think I had none by now!
‘Can I help her?’ she offered. I was glad to accept her offer.
As the lady went inside the restroom in anger, she slammed the door. All I kept staring at was the signboard with a girl’s image on the door, below which was stencilled, in French, ‘Elle’ (She).
I could still hear Simar’s voice. She was shouting, ‘Ravz, you are such a liar … I wanted you to take care of me … and you left me in the hands of this bitch!’
I squeezed my eyes shut and prayed that time would run superfast. I wanted it all to end soon.
‘You didn’t even listen to what I wanted to say …’ Simar continued to shriek from the other side of the door. I heard everything.
In no time the door opened again and the lady ran out asking me to rush in and take care of Simar.
Surprised by her body language I ran inside.
Simar had thrown up. Her head was bent low over the sink. She was still puking when I entered. Her hair, which covered her face, was soiled at the ends with the puke in the sink. There was no one apart from Simar in the restroom.
‘Simar!’ I shouted and ran to hold her. She was still murmuring and abusing me of cheating her. Then she suddenly felt me holding her. For a while I saw her face in the mirror. The foul smell of her puke filled the washroom. It was difficult for me to see her in that miserable condition.
In that very moment my entire fear of embarrassment ran out of me. I didn’t care where I was and what people outside were thinking of me. I didn’t even think of thinking anything. All I cared about was my Simar.
I rubbed her back and held her hair behind her ear. With my other hand I held one of her hands. She wasn’t able to open her eyes and look at herself in the mirror. All I kept saying to her was that I was there and she was safe.
It took some time for her to catch her breath. Even when she seemed to have stopped puking I made her stand there for a while in case there was more to come.
Meanwhile, the lady very helpfully got some
water. I made Simar gargle with that water and take just a sip of it. The two of us stood there for some time. She was done throwing up.
After a short while, when she felt better, she simply asked, ‘Ravz, why did you leave me alone?’
I felt ashamed—even more than what I had felt while I was standing out and trying to face the people in the restaurant. Her candidness had left me with tears in my eyes. I touched her cheek and patted her. I didn’t say anything. I didn’t have anything to say.
The difficult time had just passed and Simar was feeling better. I had washed her hair with water and removed the minute stains from her dress with paper napkins. I felt relaxed seeing her regain her consciousness. As the two of us walked out of the restroom, nothing bothered me. I didn’t hide my face from the people sitting outside. Rather, I looked them straight in the eye. I was sorry that we had spoiled their evening, but I wasn’t embarrassed any more. I had already accepted that sometimes such things happen. After all, Simar hadn’t done anything knowingly. She was under the influence of alcohol and my poor girlfriend was harmless to anyone. Plenty of such thoughts made me strong from inside.
We collected our takeaway and drove back. While she sat next to me, Simar apologized for her irresponsible behaviour. I rubbed her head. When she asked why she had vomited I explained that this was precisely the reason why I told her not to mix her drinks. She felt sorry from her heart. I wanted to apologize to her for cheating her at the restroom door but I didn’t. I wanted to do that when she was completely back in her senses. I then made her rest her head on my shoulder as we drove back to my place.
At home, I prepared some lemonade for her. She drank that. Her eyes looked as though she badly wanted to catch up on some sleep. I asked her to change and gave her a fresh night suit from my cupboard.
I held her in my arms. As she slept comfortably, I recalled every detail of that evening—the time Simar expressed her desire to drink, the table that we chose in the restaurant, Simar’s first sip of beer, the alarming phone call from her mom, the tequila shots, a drunken Simar and a panicking, embarrassed me, the mess in the restroom—every scene of that evening flashed before my eyes.
In the end I looked at my sleeping baby and felt the urge to shower all my love on her. I kissed her cheek lightly. That was the first night I felt more responsible for her. I slept cuddling her.
Seventeen
Our love story progressed with the Belgian summer. We would see each other almost every day, mostly in the evenings. If it was a weekend and Simar didn’t have an exam coming up, she would come to my place in the afternoon and be there till late in the evening. Most of the time she would get her study material and spend two to three hours studying, while I completed the miscellaneous household tasks for the day.
As my stay grew longer, I even managed to buy a secondhand car. I’d been feeling the need for it since Simar had came into my life. It was a small black Renault. I was lucky that someone in our Indian community circle was going back to India and was keen on disposing of various belongings before he left, so I managed to buy this car from him at a lowered rate. Simar always referred to the Renault by its number plate—4900.
‘Ravz, 4900 ko ghumaane le chalte hain hum,’ she would say.
Occasionally, we would go to a nearby lake. We would sit on the bank and watch the ducks paddling on the water. We would see the sun set in the western horizon. She would strike various poses beside the rich green palm trees and ask me to click numerous pictures of her. When it came to pictures, she was obsessed. Her cellphone had an uncountable number of pictures, ranging from dead insects found on the road to pictures of herself trying on various dresses in the trial room of an apparel store. Some of the pictures in Simar’s camera were moments captured while travelling in the car. While I would drive she would often demand my attention, asking me to pose for her camera. It was perfectly okay for her to find any location during the ride and suddenly scream at the top of her voice to make me halt the car so that she could get out to click some pictures.
One of the usual things for us to do was to drive in the late evening on the road next to my office. For some unexplained reason we loved to make out with each other inside the car. Maybe it had something to do with the romance of being together and also warmly enclosed in the interior of the car.
‘I smell of you whenever I spend time with you in your car. It kinda turns me on,’ Simar had once revealed.
Soon our families became aware of our romance—though strictly only the part that we made them aware of. At times, late in the evening when Simar would be with me and her mom would call up, she would lie to her and say that she was in the hostel.
‘Shhhhhh, Ravz! Its Mom’s phone call. Don’t utter a single word!’ she would shout before jumping to answer the phone.
Gradually, our friends in Belgium and a few dear ones back in India got to know the truth about us. In one of the conference calls that Amardeep, Manpreet, Happy and I used to hold once a quarter, I broadcasted this breaking news to them.
There were occasions when Simar and I also fought. Most of them were sorted out in a day’s time. There were some which lasted longer than that. But we would exchange some sentimental messages which would make us call off the fight and soon the quarrel would be history.
Once in a blue moon, on a weekend night, we would go out to a disco and party. But that was only when we had plenty of friends, including Sanchit with his wife and Simar’s college friends, to accompany us. Late in the night, when I would go to drop Simar back to her hostel, I would park my car outside and we would go for a long walk. We simply loved doing that. The sky above us would be dark and occasionally calm. As the night proceeded, the midnight airplanes would interrupt the silence of the sky. Seeing the twinkling wings and tail lights, we both would remember India. She would turn nostalgic and ask, ‘Ravzu, yaar. Why aren’t they taking us along with them?’ And I would rub her head lovingly.
Occasionally we would go to see an Indian movie. One of the Belgian theatres was owned by an NRI—in this case, a Gujju. Whenever a new Bollywood movie did well at the box office in India, he would put up the same as a weekend movie in his theatre. I remember when Simar and I had watched the Aamir Khan starrer Ghajini, she’d got completely scared while watching the scene in which the villain kills the heroine. She’d gripped my wrist and squeezed her eyes shut. I realized she was crying. I consoled her in that hall which had only Indians in the audience. It took me twenty minutes to make her believe that it was all fiction and that in reality the heroine was doing well back in India. Later at night when I’d dropped her at her hostel, she’d made me check her room thoroughly before I left. She wanted me to check if, by any chance, there was a stranger hiding in her room, just the way it had happened in the movie. Even though this seemed a bit stupid to me, I actually searched the room because she was so scared. She was relieved when I found none.
We both showed up together for all the festivals and events that the Indian community in Belgium celebrated. We spent a great deal of time together. We enjoyed each and every moment of being in love. Together we drove, we ate, we exercised, we laughed, we fought, we cried, we patched up, we confronted and we celebrated. In our best moments we made love.
Autumn was ending. The trees in the courtyard of my office had shed the last of their leaves. It was one of those unusual Belgian afternoons when the sun and late-year rain were playing hide-and-seek. I had just got back to office after having my lunch with Simar at our regular diner. I logged into my laptop to work but I felt restless—I didn’t feel like I’d be able to work for the rest of the day. There was an email for Sanchit and me sent by our account manager in India. It read:
Dear Sanchit and Ravin,
The Belgium project will now be fully operated from India. The client has agreed to double the workforce as we wanted and has extended the project for 2 more years. This is great news for us. The management here wants both of you to come back, transfer the knowledge to offshore folks
and lead your respective teams from offshore.
Plan your travel back to India before the new year.
Best,
Anand
Account Manager
India Office
Eighteen
It was the evening of 25 December. The world outside my house was decorated in the shades of red, white and green—red Santa Clauses, white snow and green Christmas trees.
Simar and I too had got ourselves a small Christmas tree which we placed in the balcony of my house. She’d enthusiastically decorated it with all her heart with glittering baubles and then had even put up some cheerful coloured lights. But unlike the world outside, happiness didn’t prevail within my house. All my belongings from the entire one-bedroom house had been reduced to two travel bags.
After ten months of being with each other, the time had finally come when we were to part—though only physically. Simar had been sounding low ever since I’d told her the news of my going back to India. There had been times when she wasn’t able to cope with the situation and would burst into tears. I too was sad. Simar had eight more months of studies left before she could come back to India.
But I tried to cheer her up.
‘Baby … you are anyway coming to India in your next term break, na?’
‘But that’s four months away, Ravz!’ she wailed.
I kissed her forehead and gently rubbed her back. I looked at her closely. She seemed to be on the verge of crying, so I cracked a few jokes. The initial ones didn’t work but the later ones did rescue her from her depression.
When she was able to speak a little later, she said, ‘I have got something for you.’
‘Aaaiiiin?’ I pretended to be ignorant in a mischievous way.