Can Love Happen Twice?

  ‘You sure you won’t step back if you lose? It’s 200-plus euros—the red wine I am talking about. I hope you know that?’ Anthony had said confidently.

  Anthony was a great player and I had known his skills in pool from the past game he had won against me. But I also knew that despite always playing a straight forward game against him without devising any strategy, I had still given him tough competition. I made him accept my challenge. The bet I’d proposed for him was quite big.

  The series ran not just till the fifth rack but with the final black ball on the table—the last ball to be potted in the game of pool. Whosoever pots it turns out to be the winner.

  That was the level of the game. We literally battled on the table of pool—one for the charm of wine and the other for the charm a woman. And none of us wanted to invest our own wealth to win these charms. By the way that reminds me of the third ‘W’ that I keep forgetting: ‘Wealth, women and wine can make anything happen in this world!’

  In the end Anthony potted the black ball.

  The irony was that he potted it in the wrong pocket and thus lost the series to me. I was on cloud nine!

  Anthony kept his promise.

  And finally I was there outside Simar’s hostel—in the Volkswagen, of course. Simar came out and, not able to see me, dialled my number.

  ‘Where are you?’

  ‘Very close to you.’

  ‘But I don’t see you.’ And she looked here and there.

  ‘You are almost looking at me,’ I said, artfully indicating that she should keep looking straight ahead. Her mouth opened in astonishment as I rolled down the windowpane. She stood there with her mouth open for twenty-odd seconds.

  I came out of the car. ‘Run!’ I shouted, calling her towards me.

  She willingly obliged.

  We hugged again and, looking quite pleasantly surprised, she asked, ‘Whose car is this?’

  ‘First sit inside, then I will tell you,’ I said.

  She was happy. And I was happy that she was happy.

  Moments later, I was telling her how I had got the car for her. She put her head on my shoulder and enjoyed listening to my story.

  We spent the first half of the evening buying gifts for her. I wanted to gift her nice formals which she could wear during her placement season. We tried various shops but liked nothing. Actually, I liked a few but she didn’t. Sometimes it was the design, sometimes the colour and if both were perfect then the cloth wasn’t perfect. Girls have this tendency to not like anything in the first phase of shopping. Basically, they want to consider everything first and then make their decision.

  So finally we were in the second half of our buying session. My girlfriend was in the changing room and had been constantly shouting from inside, asking me to either bring a different size or a different colour of the dresses she had been trying on. Every time she would ask for something she would throw a dress over the door. It was like playing badminton with the dresses! Also, she wouldn’t tell me whether she would be throwing her top or skirt out. I had to be alert all the time and when I wasn’t it would land squarely on my head or shoulders!

  But I was game for it all. I had taken it for granted that I was at her command for this time period. It was funny, though, to constantly walk into the women’s section, take the help of a lady assistant to find out a different size or a different colour of that dress and walk back to deliver it to Simar. It turned embarrassing when I repeated this exercise some twenty-odd times—even more so each time I passed the deadly lingerie section full of seductive stuff. I only thanked my stars that Simar wasn’t trying any of them on. I was even scared to imagine myself carrying lingerie of different colours and sizes for her. The salesgirls noticed me smiling. Back in their heads they were probably asking: are you actually going to buy any?

  At times, when Simar liked something, she was kind enough to open the door and show me. One time she opened the door and then laughed when she saw me. I had a dozen ladies’ dresses hanging on both my shoulders. I looked more like a salesman for ladies garments!

  ‘Oh, this one looks perfect on you!’ I had started saying that to everything that she wore to help her decide quickly.

  In the end, instead of formals, we ended up buying casuals for her, just because of the ‘Oh boy!’ factor the moment she put them on. It was a polo-necked, full-sleeved top with horizontal lines of light blue and grey along with grey denims which had a girlish glittering print on the back pockets. She actually looked perfect! I was awestruck watching her in them. She loved flaunting them too and kept posing in front of the giant mirrors—even the ones which were outside the changing room.

  I was conscious of the way she was showing off in public. But nothing seemed to bother her. However, she seemed totally unaware of people around her. She was busy twirling in front of the mirrors, watching how her body looked from every angle in her new apparel.

  Once I paid for the dress we were back in the car.

  ‘You almost forgot me, buying these clothes,’ I said, trying to tell her how she was obsessed with the clothes and assumed that I was at her beck and call.

  ‘How can I forget you, baby?’ she asked seductively, coming closer to me, pulling my cheeks and kissing me.

  I was pleased that she loved what we bought.

  I looked at her as I drove. She looked at me, winked and smiled. Her hands were now playing with my hair. Then she kissed me again. Suddenly I applied the brakes of the car.

  ‘What happened?’ she asked.

  I didn’t reply but held her face in my hands and took her lips in mine. It happened on the spur of the moment. She responded with fierce passion. She pulled my upper lip in her mouth while her hands rubbed my back passionately. The taste of her mouth lingered on my lips. I undid my seat belt and leaned over her. We stared at each other, our lips open and throbbing with desire. She looked into my eyes. We began to kiss passionately gain. I held the nape of her neck and kissed her all the way down her cleavage before my lips made their way back to her chin.

  ‘Kiss me harder,’ she whispered.

  The sounds of our kissing echoed within that silent and intense atmosphere inside the car. We could feel and hear each other’s breath. Soon our kisses became longer and more ardent. It went on as if it would never end. Our lips and tongues were locked with each other’s. We continued our passionate smooching in Anthony’s Volkswagen for a long while.

  Much longer than the time Simar spent in finalizing which clothes to buy.

  Later that evening Simar and I went to an Indian restaurant. We had a lavish candlelit dinner. In the light of the candle between us, all I could see was her perfectly beautiful face. Seeing her then I also recalled how she had appeared to me that morning, moments after she had gotten up from her bed, when I had brought her the flowers. And while we ate to our hearts’ content, we talked at length about our respective families back in India, our past and our good friends.

  We continued to talk on the same subject as I drove Simar back to her hostel. It was 11.30 p.m. by then. Her hostel was some 500 metres ahead when I stopped the car. It was a dark and abandoned part of the street. There was a kennel just nearby and I parked the vehicle in the open ground in front of the kennel. Up above, the half-moon in the sky was playing hide-and-seek behind the clouds. She wondered why I’d stopped the car. For a moment I didn’t speak. She waited for me to speak. I raised my chin and looked at her.

  ‘I wanted to gift you something else on your birthday,’ I said huskily.

  She smiled and then said, with wonderment in her eyes, ‘What? … I already have my gifts on the back seat.’

  ‘Not the materialistic ones,’ I answered.

  ‘Okay,’ she said and crossed her arms across her chest and turned towards me, giving me all her attention. There was pin-drop silence around us.

  ‘You will find it stupid, but I wrote a few lines for you.’

  ‘Oh wow, Ravz! Really? Will you sing them for me?’ she said. I nodded. B
iting her lower lip, she waited for me to start, her eyes twinkling with love as they focused on mine.

  I smiled back and rolled my eyes, acknowledging her.

  She clapped and then waited. I began singing.

  ‘Hmmm … jaana suno…’

  I looked at her and paused. I thought it wasn’t going well and I was shy.

  ‘Sing, na, Ravz! I am dying to listen to it.

  ‘Jaana suno, kuch to kaho, hamse yu naa tum rutha karo …’

  As I sang for her I don’t know how or why it happened but the dogs from the kennel above started howling. I don’t know if they were crying or singing with me.

  Simar and I looked at each other and then for a minute listened to the howling of the dogs and broke into a laugh. Nothing seemed to matter—we rather enjoyed it.

  ‘Ravz, continue, na. Let them give the background music.’ And she kept her eyes glued to me.

  ‘I wrote this one when we fought the other day and you were not talking to me,’ I said, telling her the inside story.

  She nodded her head in acknowledgement and waited for me to resume my singing.

  ‘Jaana suno, kuch to kaho, hamse yu naa tum rutha karo.

  Apna to saath kuch aisa, jaisa chaand ka sitaaro se ho.

  Hmmm … Jaana suno, sunti raho, hamse yu naa tum rutha karo.

  Apna to saath kuch aisa, jaisa nadiya ka kinaaro se ho

  Hmmm … laaa laaa la laa, laaa laaa la laaa …’

  I stopped. But, surprisingly, the dogs continued.

  Simar kept looking at me.

  ‘Bas itna hi tha,’ I said smiling.

  She didn’t laugh. She came closer to me and held my face in her hands. I could see her eyes were wet.

  She kissed my forehead.

  The dogs continued their cacophony in the background.

  ‘There is something that is left,’ I said.

  She wasn’t in a state to talk and could only raise her chin in question. I could see that she could no longer control her tears which were now making their own way down her cheeks. I watched her in silence and even allowed her to cry. She probably wanted to say sorry for the other day but wasn’t able to express her apology. Her tears seemed to transform into vapours of divine happiness somewhere in the air between her and me.

  I went ahead to say, ‘You have given a new life to me. I had been in love in the past. This now seems like déjà vu. I don’t know how this is happening. I don’t know if this is the right thing to happen or not. But I am sure this is happening … Looking back at my life, I realize that I had accepted the fact that I could cherish my share of love only in the memories from my past. I never wanted to lose those memories and I still don’t want to lose them. This is the very reason I thought I could never and I would never be in love again. But it’s all different now. On the one hand, I am still holding those memories close to my heart and willing to accept that it was my past; and on the other hand, I am willing to shape up my future. And to shape up my future it is not essential that I forget my past. Memories will still be there. Things are changing now. Yes, they are. Honestly, I didn’t yearn for this metamorphosis. But now that it is happening, I am finding myself slipping into this pool of love again. In the initial days I couldn’t believe it. I have struggled with myself to believe it, to feel it, to accept it, to digest it and finally live it. But now that I am so sure I want to say this to you …’ I paused before continuing again, ‘… I am in love with you. Yes, I am. And I am so sure about it that I want to propose to you … Will you be mine?’

  She continued looking at me with rapt attention. Her eyelashes were still damp. She nodded her head slightly, showing her acceptance, and closed her eyes. Her body language seemed to say that she too was sure of what she was promising and that she didn’t need to think about something so obvious. In a sudden gush of tears she hugged me. We held each other in that magical space filled with those vapours of divine happiness and we now breathed in that magical air.

  ‘I will be,’ she whispered in my ears.

  I kept hugging her for a while.

  Some more time had passed—I don’t know how much, but the dogs were quiet now.

  She said it was the best birthday she’d ever had. We drove back.

  Story of the fight we had the other day:

  ‘Ravz, cancel it then. I don’t care!’ Simar says, sitting with one leg draped over the other, her right foot suspended above the ground and shaking purposefully. Every time she sits like this, she keeps shaking her free foot. With her arms across her chest she continues to look away from me. She is furious.

  We had planned an outing for this evening but all of a sudden I have this urgent conference call with my offshore team at the same time.

  ‘Why would you care, baby? It is my meeting, na? And I’ll be held responsible for not conducting it.’ Saying this, I smile. And I continue to look at her.

  I had just supplied fuel and oxygen to the fire in my room.

  ‘Ravz, don’t you dare laugh, okay!’ She turns and looks at me only to scare me with her big eyes and her raised finger.

  Once a month, only for a few days, my charming sweetheart transforms into a furious avatar. Biology offers a decent biological name for these days—menstrual days. I had my own dictionary term for it—my hopeless days!

  She would be irritated with every little thing. Every action–reaction of mine would go for a toss. Logic, rationale and, most importantly, common sense will, all of a sudden, fail to exist. Mood swings drive everything. And I, an author of a national bestseller, would go from being her boyfriend to becoming her puppy at her command.

  And it wasn’t only limited to handling her tantrums. I had gone as far as standing in the women’s section of the chemist shop, trying to hide my embarrassment and gather my strength, all at the same time, before having to speak up and announce what I was looking for.

  More than becoming her monthly problem, it all had become my monthly problem.

  I attend my conference call. We don’t go on the planned outing. Back at her place she is sad and isn’t talking to me. Alone in my home I am being creative working on a jingle to please her: ‘Jaana suno, kuch to kaho, hamse yu naa tum rutha karo!’

  Fifteen

  Anthony had to go to Germany to handle a field installation of our product. He called me in the morning to update me on this unplanned trip and, more importantly, to inform me that his Volkswagen would be in my custody for another day till he returned.

  ‘Love you, Anthony. And you better work hard!’ I teased him over the phone.

  ‘Bastard!’ he yelled at me and then laughingly said, ‘Take care of it more than you take care of your girl.’

  I utilized this opportunity to the fullest. Instead of catching my bus I drove the car to the office. I consciously matched my timing with that of the bus so that I could overtake it and show off to the others travelling in the bus to their respective offices.

  His car had the inbuilt function of linking my cellphone, through Bluetooth, with the car’s speakers and the overhead installed microphone. I had heard Anthony taking calls by using the controls on his steering wheel. With that system one doesn’t even need to wear a hands-free. On one occasion Anthony had taken his wife’s call who wasn’t aware that I was sitting next to Anthony. She kissed into the phone so noisily that it echoed in the car’s woofers. Anthony had been embarrassed.

  I synchronized my mobile with the car’s system and then I dialled Sanchit’s number.

  ‘Hey, are you guys in the 9.10 a.m. bus?’

  ‘Yes. Why didn’t you show up today?’

  ‘Look to your right.’

  Sanchit, who was at the third window seat from the front, turned to look out. He smiled first and then waved at me. Others followed. I waved at them back. For a short while I was a hero.

  ‘Kiski churai hai?’ Rishab grabbed Sanchit’s phone to talk to me.

  ‘Anthony ki.’

  ‘Vo jiske saath tu pool khelta hai?’

  ‘Ha
an.’

  ‘Raat ko ghumne ka plan banaatey hai phir. Bol, chalega?’

  ‘Chalunga, but Simar ke saath… Hahahaha …’

  Rishab cursed me before putting the phone down.

  I waved goodbye, pushed the accelerator and overtook the bus.

  In the evening I left the office early to pick Simar up. I had already spoken to her about our plans in the evening.

  I met her at the gate of her hostel. She was wearing a purple dress. It had a thin lacy strap running across her shoulders. The shades of purple got a little darker just above her knee where that dress ended. Her legs were smooth, long and attractive. She was wearing a pair of silver stilettos to match her dress.

  We drove out of the city towards the east. It took us fifteen minutes to get on to the highway. Simar connected her little light blue iPod Nano to the music system of the car and some peppy numbers came on. The ride had just turned amazing. The weather that day was awesome. We drove by the countryside. On our way we passed various big and small hamlets. Every other house had a lush green courtyard. Some among them had their domestic animals harnessed under bamboo shelters. Simar got very excited when she saw a few white horses with styled hair at their hooves. They appeared like a royal species.

  The highway lanes were wide and there was almost no traffic. After every five to eight miles we would find a gas station. From a distance, we noticed one which also had a coffee shop symbol on its billboard. We stopped there.

  We loaded the vehicle with gas and got ourselves some coffee. Then we came out and stood near our car. The miles and miles that stretched before us were all green. Just about two or three trucks in the far distance made up our vision of the road ahead. The limited number of people we could see were at the gas station itself.

  Simar and I walked to the front of the car and perched on the bonnet with steaming cappuccinos in our hands. It was quite pleasant to be in the countryside. The sun hung low in the western skies. The birds chirping high above our heads were probably returning to their nests. It was a beautiful evening. The countryside air smelled nice and refreshing. There was greenery all around us. The tall trees stood firm on both sides of the highway. They looked old, probably more than hundred or even two hundred years. It was different and amusing for us to not talk but simply enjoy being in that moment.