When Only Love Remains

  ‘It still is very awkward.’ Avanti starts to laugh and Devrat asks her what happened. ‘You’re cute, Devrat. Like a pug or beagle! I could just keep you in my handbag and keep playing with you.’

  ‘Okay, now you’re emasculating me. Stop comparing me with puppies. Should I start doing deadlifts and pull-ups?’

  Avanti smiles.

  ‘Now what!’ snaps Devrat.

  ‘I just imagined a puppy doing pull-ups!’

  ‘Uffo!’

  They both smile. The cab is stuck in traffic and Devrat’s quite happy about it. Meeting anyone’s parents hasn’t been his strongest point. Both Karishma’s and Arundhati’s parents had looked at him like he was a parasite, a rat, a pest control problem their daughters should get rid of.

  Devrat’s now thinking of the last time he met his parents. It’s been a couple of months already and he misses them. He thinks of how different life would have been without all the pressure he has put on himself to succeed in something it’s very hard to succeed in. He could have been an engineering student, slogging every day, got himself a job, given his parents the pleasure of looking for a girl for him. And every time he thinks of them, he thinks he has been selfish to not give them that pleasure.

  ‘I’m a pile of nerves. I can die right now,’ says Devrat when they reach her apartment building.

  ‘You will be gone before my father even manages to string a single sentence. He’s conversationally challenged,’ assures Avanti.

  They trudge up the stairs, and Avanti jimmies a key into the lock and opens the door. Devrat’s thinking of whether he should greet Avanti’s father with a ‘Hello’ or go with a more acceptable ‘Namaste’. He’s quite nervous because strangely enough he cares what Avanti’s father thinks of him.

  ‘Where’s he?’ whispers Devrat.

  ‘I don’t know. He’s like a jack-in-the-box. You think he’s not there but then he pops out from his room with ink-spot stains on his shirt and face.’

  ‘Why do you say it like it’s a bad thing? That’s quite a cute definition for any dad.’

  Avanti doesn’t respond and is surprised to realize that it’s actually true. She shrugs it off. ‘Let me get you to your room.’

  ‘Aren’t we rushing into this too soon? My own room? Have you strewn flower petals all over the bed as well?’ Devrat winks.

  ‘Very funny.’

  The guest room is spanking clean but it smells of abandonment. It’s sparsely furnished but it’s much better than what Devrat would have got in the money he has. And that Avanti would be in the adjoining room was a big bonus.

  ‘You can change,’ says Avanti. ‘I will be back in ten?’

  ‘Sure,’ says Devrat and tries not to imagine Avanti, too, changing.

  Devrat lies on the bed for a few minutes, closes his eyes. For a moment he’s thinking of what to wear and that’s when it hits him that he doesn’t have clothes and he has been in the same T-shirt for over forty-eight hours now. He sniffs his armpits and a part of him dies. He smells rotten.

  The washroom has a new shaving kit, packed toothbrush, a tiny tube of toothpaste, shower gel and a clean towel. He bathes thoroughly to beat the ungodly smell of his T-shirt. He’s drying himself when he hears music and running water from the other side of the wall. A little later, he hears Avanti humming the songs as well. God! She can sing! Devrat foams his two-day-old stubble, slowly and deliberately, trying hard not to imagine Avanti in a bathtub, or shower, naked. She does look like a bathtub person, like a movie star, pretty even without make-up and with wet, clumpy hair. Devrat stands there, betting against himself, whether she’s in a bathtub or a shower, and the Devrat who’s betting on the bathtub is winning. And then just like that, he says out aloud, ‘I can hear you from here.’

  There’s silence from the other side. The music stops.

  ‘Umm . . . hi!’

  ‘Hi,’ says Devrat. And just to make sure the conversation is not about whether she’s in a bathtub or a shower, he adds, ‘I don’t have a clean T-shirt to wear. Think we should go shopping after this?’

  ‘Sure,’ says Avanti. ‘Or I will get your one of my father’s T-shirts if he has one in his cupboard. Though I’m not promising you anything. I have only seen him in dull oversized shirts.’

  All of this is not weird at all, Devrat tells himself. It’s a natural progression in a story where a girl meets a boy in a bar in Kolkata, they spend the night in a hotel room, and find themselves in the girl’s house in a different city where the boy is wearing the girl’s father’s T-shirt.

  ‘Sure,’ mumbles Devrat as if wearing her father’s T-shirts is perfectly ordinary.

  Devrat can’t help but think of her in the bathtub, lined with lit candles, her body submerged in foamy water, her legs propped up on the edges. In the image, he’s there, sitting on the toilet seat with the lid down, talking to her. Just to push that image out of his head, he says, ‘I’m done. I will see you outside.’

  There’s no answer from the other side of the wall for a few seconds. Devrat wonders if he should barge in through her door with the excuse that he thought she might be drowning.

  ‘Sure. You could have come over and we could have talked but as with most things, I’m sure this will sound flirtatious and you will come and expect something and be disappointed when nothing happens,’ rues Avanti.

  ‘Why do you think I would come over thinking that something would happen? I’m a perfectly decent boy. And I didn’t imagine you in a bathtub at all,’ says Devrat.

  ‘I’m sure you didn’t,’ chuckles Avanti. There’s silence again, after which, Avanti says, in a voice softer than usual. ‘Come over.’

  ‘Okay,’ says Devrat. ‘But only if you promise not to flash or try to do anything dirty with me.’

  ‘Whatever.’

  ‘Give me a minute.’

  He leaves the washroom, already sweating and nervous. What if she’s looking absolutely devastatingly hot? What if he’s staring at all the wrong places? What if it affects him physiologically? What if she notices?

  Devrat psyches himself up, tells himself that she will be covered in foam from head to toe, and that’s equivalent to a girl in a burqa or something. And also it’s totally harmless; people do this all the time!

  Devrat tells himself that and enters Avanti’s room, which seems to have undergone a little explosion of clothes and make-up stuff. Devrat’s palms are sweaty and the bathroom door is slightly ajar. A part of him, a huge chunk, doesn’t want to enter, rather wants to stay out, run to his own room and later tell Avanti he got caught up. She’s going to be naked. Like naked. Not even a towel. But naked! Stop saying that word!

  Devrat walks in and tries not to look directly at her, instead looks around the bathroom and into his phone.

  ‘You can sit there,’ says Avanti and points to a small stool that’s a little too pretty to be in a washroom. The washroom, itself, is too pretty to be a washroom.

  Avanti’s covered in foam alright, just like he had imagined. He can see two little bumps that are her knees. But he’s imagining much more. Maybe he shouldn’t have taken up on the offer. This is torture.

  ‘You look pretty,’ says Devrat. ‘Fresh.’

  Avanti blushes. The mirror in the bathroom has fogged up and the room is perfectly warm.

  ‘I have this thing of bathing in very hot water. I heard somewhere it’s good for the skin,’ says Avanti.

  ‘If that’s true, you must have been born in a hot water spring,’ says Devrat, his tongue failing him a little. ‘Sorry for that cheesy line. I couldn’t come up with anything better.’

  He can’t help but notice the wet strands of hair that are stuck to her skin, and every time she moves her legs inside the water, something flutters inside him. He stares at his phone, locks and unlocks it.

  ‘When does your father come in? I mean I don’t want him
to walk in on us and see us like this. That wouldn’t be so great, I am thinking?’ asks Devrat.

  ‘He won’t. And why are you so concerned about my father. He barely talks, Devrat.’

  ‘I think I’m just little nervous. I just want him to like me.’

  Nineteen

  Avanti’s glad that she’s not visible from inside the water. Devrat’s last words are simple and yet they open up a plethora of possibilities, many of which she doesn’t want to think about.

  I want him to like me.

  Avanti has been trying to act perfectly calm in Devrat’s presence and it’s been hard to keep up that pretence because the bottom line is that she’s naked and he’s here, the only thing that separates both of them are the rapidly disappearing bubbles and air.

  But still, it’s not shame that’s eating her up. Well, it’s shame but it’s a different type of shame. It’s like watching and enjoying a movie that you shouldn’t enjoy. It’s like a hardcore Harry Potter fan choosing to re-read Fifty Shades of Grey over The Goblet of Fire.

  This, by far, is The Boldest Thing she’s ever done. This is dirty. Like hot, dirty, like not pornographic dirty, but still dirty, dirty in a good sense, a kind of dirty she can’t explain.

  Quite frankly, she feels a bit like a pervert right now to be enjoying this. She likes how Devrat is stealing glances at her, she likes how he’s all shy about it, she likes how he’s red in the face, just like she is, she likes how he must be thinking in his head, and she likes how he thinks that she’s pretty.

  ‘I think I’m done,’ says Avanti when she realizes that most of her bubbles are gone and her refracted nakedness might be visible from outside.

  ‘I’m not sure if I’m happy about it,’ says Devrat.

  ‘Stop being a pervert. You don’t play it well. You have been looking at your phone all this while!’

  ‘I’m a shy pervert.’

  ‘See you outside,’ says Avanti. Devrat leaves. She dries herself, wipes the condensation on the mirror and watches herself intently. While dressing up, she also searches for the term ‘exhibitionism’ just to check if she’s slowly turning into some kind of a desperate weirdo.

  When she comes out she finds Devrat on the floor, in front of the television, flipping through the comic books she remembers having seen in her father’s cabinets.

  ‘I see you have busied yourself,’ says Avanti.

  Devrat looks back at her and it takes him an extra second to react. Avanti has come to like these little amazing pauses he takes, the double takes, how he stops looks at her, smiles coyly, looks away and then answers.

  ‘This is awesome! I have never seen a collection like this before,’ remarks Devrat. ‘Come! Sit. Look at this! I never thought people owned these in India. This is pretty awesome.’

  ‘I didn’t know you were a comic book fan,’ says Avanti, a little disappointed because she thought they would talk about how big a fan he is of Seeing Avanti Bathe thing. You’re a pervert, Avanti, stop it!

  ‘A big fan! But comics weren’t really widely available. So I had to stick with Nagraj and Doga and Super Commando Dhruva and Shakti. And they weren’t that good.’

  ‘I haven’t heard any of those names,’ says Avanti. ‘But tell me about them.’ She likes how Devrat’s eyes have suddenly lit up. She picks up a comic and immediately hates Wonderwoman for her huge bust, and keeps the comic out of Devrat’s reach.

  ‘Oh! There’s so much about them. I remember renting them for ten bucks for a week. I liked Nagraj the most though. His backstory itself used to be so intense. And hey! Look there’s the Dog Welder.’

  ‘Dog Welder?’ asks Avanti, immensely amused by this supposedly half-famous singer getting excited like a kid.

  ‘Oh. He’s one of the worst superheroes! He used to weld dogs to bad people’s mouths so they died of starvation. I had only heard of him and his pack of eight superheroes. Never saw a comic that actually had him!’

  ‘What used to happen to the puppies that he welded? Just asking because ever since I have started comparing puppies with you, I’m deeply concerned about them.’

  ‘Why don’t we find out?’ asks Devrat and picks the three comics that feature the Dog Welder and his pack of superheroes. Avanti hides the one with the huge-breasted Wonderwoman by sitting on it. And just like that they are sitting on the couch, reading the first of the three comics.

  ‘Spoiler alert,’ says Devrat. ‘The dogs are all dead.’

  ‘That’s a relief.’

  They start reading the comic and Avanti, surprisingly, is into it. It’s more because Devrat narrates the backstories of the characters like it’s his own.

  ‘So this guy dressed in a black jacket and shades, quite burly, a little bit like your ex-boyfriend, is called The Defenestrator. He throws criminals out of the window that he carries,’ explains Devrat.

  ‘So I’m guessing it was the lowest point of comic writers, was it?’

  ‘There are only so many superpowers that you can give people. You’re bound to run out of them! Okay, what superpower would you give yourself if you had the choice?’ asks Devrat, smiling, because he’s thinking his superpower will be what every boy wants, to be invisible. For obvious reasons.

  ‘I would be Wonderwoman!’ says Avanti without thinking.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Umm . . . because she’s hot?’

  ‘You’re hotter, Avanti. If you and Wonderwoman were in a to-death match in hotness, she would cover up and shy away.’

  Avanti feels rather shy at this and they get back to the comic, which is getting hilarious as they read on. A guy named Flemgem is now producing ungodly amounts of phlegm to blind the enemy.

  ‘They could have got any middle-aged north Indian man to do that,’ remarks Avanti and they laugh.

  Then there is Bueno Excelente who defeats people by acts of perversion. He’s not shown killing anyone but there’s a newspaper byline in one of the comics that screams that one of the villains was fatally sodomized. So he was a pervert with good intentions.

  They finish the three comics, which made little or no sense, but Avanti still felt she had spent the best two hours of her life.

  ‘That was interesting, very interesting . . .’ says Avanti, a bit sarcastically.

  ‘You think it’s crazy, right? You have to suspend all belief to like them. Comics are like Salman Khan movies on steroids.’

  ‘Don’t get offended. I liked it. I just have to get used to Bueno Excelente killing people by having sex with them,’ says Avanti and chuckles.

  ‘Yeah. Whatever.’

  And they are still arguing who would win between a three-way match between Phlegm, Bueno Excelente and the Dog Welder, Avanti is placing her bet on the sex-guy and Devrat on the animal rights welfare nightmare when they hear the study’s door unlock. Avanti’s father walks in; dressed in oddly fitting faded blue trousers and a shirt that hangs over the belt.

  Avanti knows Nani would have talked to Dad but still she’s wringing her fingers thinking what he would say seeing a boy in his house.

  ‘Namaste, Uncle,’ says Devrat.

  ‘Namaste,’ says her father. ‘Your parents know that you’re here?’

  Devrat nods.

  Dad looks in Avanti’s direction. She is quite amused by her father’s measured behaviour. ‘Your Nani called,’ says Dad. ‘If y . . . ou need anything, do let me know.’

  ‘I will,’ says Avanti. She’s strangely proud of her father for being so well behaved and chilled out.

  ‘I have ordered pizzas for you,’ says Avanti’s father and looks at both of them. ‘I hope you like pizzas?’

  Devrat nods and Avanti has half a mind to throw a tantrum because as a teenager she’s supposed to do that but she refrains. Avanti’s father disappears in his study.

  ‘Sweet,’ mutters Devrat.

  ‘He’s
not like this,’ says Avanti. ‘Usually.’

  ‘What’s he like?’

  ‘I don’t know. He’s always lost, always a little nutsy. He just says a few words and locks himself in the study. As long as he lets you stay, I’m okay with him. Though he did chase Shekhar away once with a bat . . . ,’ she trails off and she is thrown back to the time she was leaving for Kolkata and her father lied about his trip to Nagpur so that he could spend some time with her. ‘He’s trying to reconnect with me,’ Avanti thinks, smilingly, and says this aloud.

  ‘Then what’s stopping you?’ asks Devrat.

  ‘I hardly know the man.’

  ‘You hardly know me as well and I saw you bathe today.’

  Avanti is about to find the words to argue with that when the bell rings and Dad comes running out of the room to pay. He struggles with the boxes and Devrat reaches out and takes them from him. He’s then about to go back to his study when Devrat invites him to share the pizza with them.

  ‘I’m okay. I will eat what the maid has cooked,’ says Avanti’s father.

  ‘But Uncle, eat with us. It’s too much for two people.’

  Avanti wants Devrat to let her father go, but Devrat insists and her father joins them. There’s awkward silence at the table and Avanti wishes the Defenestrator would throw her out of his window and put her out of her misery.

  ‘Six-pack never realized what his true power was,’ mutters Dad.

  ‘Huh?’ Avanti mutters.

  She finds Dad looking in the direction of the three comics. The Wonderwoman remains hidden, but it doesn’t matter anymore since Devrat said Avanti’s hotter.

  ‘But wasn’t his superpower the strength he got when he was drunk?’ asks Devrat.

  ‘No, it wasn’t. It’s an awful comic but the main guy is said to be a commentary on alcoholics. Six-pack was so busy being drunk and imagining his successes that he never found out what his real powers were.’

  For the first time, Avanti’s father, doesn’t seem like a man whose hopes are lost; who’s leading a slow life that eventually ends in an old age home or death or both. Her dad’s excited when he shows the last few panels of Hitman #18 to Devrat and they are reading it like eight-grade students would.