When Only Love Remains

  ‘Oh that’s nice,’ says Karthika. ‘Hey! Do you want to go out right now? I can sure have a beer.’

  Devrat shrugs his shoulders and says yes. Karthika is a little annoying but she has this quality about her, which makes him want to stick on, or maybe it’s just the fact that she’s an attractive singer. And you don’t meet a lot of people who are into this full time.

  Karthika drives away from Devrat’s apartment onto the main road and within fifteen minutes they are sitting in an ‘okay-ish’ pub in Salt Lake. It’s just starting to fill up. They order pints and discuss the posters of the music bands that line the walls around them.

  ‘You have a girlfriend?’ asks Karthika.

  Devrat shakes his head. The question has always made Devrat nervous and hopeful. Why do people ask this question? Does she fancy herself with him, which doesn’t seem like a possibility since she’s kind of old, but she’s also asked him out, so that’s in no-man’s land. Or it could be that she wants in on some gossip about him.

  ‘So you’re a player, aren’t you?’ probes Karthika.

  ‘Not really,’ says Devrat, and just to deflect the questions off him, he asks Karthika the same question.

  ‘I’m divorced,’ she says. ‘Got married at twenty-three, divorced at twenty-five and swore that I will never get married again, and I’m sticking to it for now.’

  Devrat drinks from his bottle. He has no intention to dig into something that he has no experience or interest in but she continues, ‘He cheated on me. And well, I cheated on him as well. But then it wasn’t why we broke up. We just didn’t love each other enough to stay together. Oh, and he was an asshole as well.’

  Devrat nods.

  ‘Also, he liked the wrong music.’ Karthika laughs throatily again.

  Devrat is still confused whether he’s attracted to her, because quite clearly, she’s not just an arrogant, perfectionist singer, but also someone who probably thought that love is the centre of the universe, and now doesn’t. She’s also damaged, cheated on, and dumped.

  ‘It happens,’ says Devrat. ‘I just got dumped recently. She’s engaged now. Imagine.’

  ‘Marriage is a sham.’

  ‘I’m too young to know about that,’ says Devrat.

  ‘It’s just a lot of lacklustre sex, responsibilities, fixed deposits, and house loans and questions about when’s the child coming.’

  ‘Maybe.’

  And just like that Devrat drifts off thinking about Arundhati and the boy she’s engaged to. He finds himself wondering if the two of them have slept together, and whether the sex is good, and mostly because he hasn’t slept with anyone since Arundhati walked out and is thinking whether sleeping with Karthika, if the chance arises, would make it any better.

  They both finish their beers and order for another one, and finish that as well, and order for another one as Devrat and Karthika make their trips to the washroom. They are too drunk to stop now. Then Devrat finds his phone ringing. It’s Mom. He’s sane enough to walk out of the pub and talk to his mom. His mother asks him if everything is alright, if he’s eating on time, and if they can come and visit. Devrat tells her that things are swell (and they are this time), and that she shouldn’t worry and maybe they can come next year when he shifts to a bigger, better flat. Her mother tells him that she misses him, and Devrat says the same. His finds his parents to be mighty cute and he hopes he can tell them that some day rather than just being a cause of worry for them.

  He staggers inside and finds the pub a lot darker than before. In the corner, where Karthika and he were sitting, is Karthika, now dancing to the slow beat of the song, her waist moving in perfect harmony, her lips mouthing the song, and he notices that she’s a lot more desirable than he earlier thought of her to be. Or maybe he’s just drunk.

  ‘You took long,’ says Karthika and puts her hands around Devrat’s neck, who’s almost immediately comfortable. He orders another pint of beer while he’s slow dancing with her. He would be lying if he says he hasn’t, in the past half hour, thought of how it would be like to kiss someone like Karthika, a woman far older, wiser and talented than he is. He has thought about it, but every time he has, he isn’t lost in how the act would be like, but in the words he would say later, over drinks, to his friends and acquaintances about his fling with a woman, divorced, no less, when he was just twenty-one years old. The story gives him more pleasure than the arms of Karthika that are firmly wrapped around his neck. And if he had not been thinking about what would give him more pleasure, he would have already tried kissing her, but he hasn’t. Because he knows it makes no sense to do so. He will not miss out on anything if he doesn’t make out with Karthika. Maybe except a little bit of thrill, a little sense of victory, a story to tell his friends, but that’s it. He wonders what Arundhati would think of it.

  He keeps dancing, matching his steps with her, while she keeps making her hair dance, lashing his face with her surprisingly soft and fragrant hair. Her lips hover dangerously close to his and he can smell the beer. Karthika jerks him forward and whispers in his ears, ‘Do you want to get out of here?’

  ‘Sure.’

  They ask for the bill, Karthika stuffs his hand with a few five-hundred rupee bills and excuses herself. Devrat pays the bill and is waiting at the door when Karthika comes back. Her hair is tastefully tied now, her red and blue earrings are showing, her lipstick is redone and she looks . . .

  They sit in her car. And this time Karthika drives slowly. There’s no conversation. One part of Devrat clearly wants this, the next part that’s going to happen here, but the other part is terribly against it. The part that wants this is twenty-one years old and it says he deserves it. The other is questioning the motive. After all, she’s a decade older, and there’s nothing new that he can offer to her, and this will be just another story which wouldn’t make any sense later. Will he be any different from Arundhati if he sleeps with her? But then, does he need to?

  The car screeches to a halt. Devrat instinctively jumps out of the car.

  ‘Aren’t you going to invite me?’ asks Karthika.

  ‘My mom’s upstairs. She’s waiting,’ answers Devrat.

  Karthika nods. Devrat searches for any change of expression on her face and there are none. Karthika drives off.

  Devrat walks up the stairs of his apartment, feeling liberated, feeling different. There’s no victory in giving in.

  Nine

  avanti

  Avanti’s feet are killing her now. It’s been three hours since they started off and the flight has been hovering around the Mumbai airport for an hour due to the heavy incoming traffic.

  The passengers are getting anxious and the frequent announcements from the captains aren’t helping. The passengers look at Avanti like it’s her fault that Mumbai is the busiest airport in the country. She doesn’t mind tending to the old, frail people who are scared, but the men, who think they have bought the entire airlines with their cheap, discounted air tickets, have no business shooting her looks like she’s the one not doing her job well.

  ‘Can you please confirm when we are going to land? Our grandson must be waiting outside,’ an old man asks. See! That’s not hard now, is it? Asking someone something politely. Avanti calls the cockpit and a firm voice tells her that it’s going to be a while. The voice is authoritative and little bit sexy, but she doesn’t read much into it. Most pilots, she now knows, are raging alcoholics with potbellies snuck in tightly behind their crisp white uniforms.

  As she passes the last few seats of the economy class, she hears a few men talk.

  ‘That’s the problem with all these Indian airlines. They can’t even land their planes on time. How do you think they will compete with the foreign airlines when they come in? I once travelled with Air France. Impeccable service!’

  Avanti turns back, wanting to ask him what the fuck his problem is, but then she looks at t
he man—he’s in his mid-forties with a belly the size of a whale and his teeth are bright red and half-eaten.

  Avanti leans over and asks, ‘We, at Indiago Airlines, are always at your service. Can I help you with an extension to your seat belt to accommodate your paunch? No? The smaller one is doing just fine? Okay. Thanks!’

  The man shifts nervously in his seat and says he’s fine. The men around him stare at his bulging belly and the seat belt that’s straining around it and they muffle their laughs.

  Avanti walks off. They are still in the air and Avanti’s bored. ‘The guy has been to the washroom at least thrice in the past one hour,’ notes Avanti, pointing out to young guy who’s constantly watching something on his phone. ‘God knows what he’s doing in there.’

  The senior laughs and says, ‘I have walked into old men with magazines in there.’

  ‘Disgusting!’ says Avanti. ‘Hey? Can I go into the cockpit?’

  ‘Sure!’ says the senior flight attendant.

  Today, the cockpit is being manned by Vikram Singh and Arun Gawli. Arun is a middle-aged guy whom Avanti has no interest in. He can quietly get sucked out of the cockpit window for all she cares. Vikram, on the other hand, is painfully handsome, and not only that, Vikram has conveniently ignored her and that makes him slightly desirable. He looks a little old though, like twenty-eight or something, which makes him a decade older, but ogling is okay, she reasons. She already feels she’s cheating on Devrat.

  ‘How much time will it take?’ Avanti asks Vikram, pretending to look in the direction in which Vikram’s looking. She doesn’t get shit. And staring at the blinking, glowing light panels only makes her more nervous. So instead, she stares at Vikram’s jawline. Oh God! That twenty-eight-year-old jawline!

  ‘We should be there in fifteen,’ says Vikram in an irritatingly dispassionate voice.

  ‘That is if we don’t crash, right?’ says Avanti and giggles.

  Arun and Vikram stare back at Avanti. They shrug their shoulders as if to say, ‘What the . . .?’

  Avanti smiles nervously and slithers out of the cockpit. Just as she’s leaving, Vikram leans back and asks Avanti, ‘Are you guys going out somewhere tonight?’

  And so much for the beautiful jawline. Vikram’s over- eagerness and his leering eyes just killed it for Avanti. She realizes she only likes men till the time they are not interested in her. ‘My boyfriend is in Mumbai. Devrat. So I will be a little busy with him,’ says Avanti and leaves the cockpit.

  A little later, the flight lands and the passengers deplane, muttering the choicest obscenities, swearing to themselves that they will never take this flight again. Avanti still forces a smile and wishes them a good day ahead. She wishes they would fall off the stairs and break their necks or get run over by the airline bus.

  The flight attendants retrieve their bags and wait for their car. Despite the long, tiring flight, the unsavoury passengers, and the slip of the tongue in the cockpit, Avanti’s still looking forward to the evening. Today can be her first night out, unsupervised by anyone. Even though she’s tried, she’s excited as hell.

  ‘So what’s the plan?’ asks Avanti, but her fellow flight attendants are already dozing off in the cab to the hotel. Soon, she drifts off, too. She wakes up with a jolt and finds the cab driver shaking her. Her mouth is open and she has drooled all over her uniform. So much for the weeks of training when you are taught how to act lady-like and professional at all times.

  By the time she reaches the reception, after wrestling with her luggage and her heels and her wayward hair, the other girls are already on their way to the lifts. The entire airlines staff has checked in with the precision and timing of a Ninja.

  She flops on the bed in her room while the bellboy arranges her suitcase. She can’t positively stay in the room or she will go bat-shit crazy. She’s not in her city. She’s unsupervised. It’s an eighteen-year-old’s dream! She can’t NOT abuse this freedom, for if she does that today, God knows what she will do tomorrow. Maybe she will turn down a free shopping trip. Maybe she would want to get married. Maybe she will want to have five kids and a fat husband. ‘This is where it all starts,’ she thinks.

  Maybe that’s the life of a flight attendant. To fly for a few hours, sleep in the cab/bus, and sleep like a log after popping a few pills for the backache, the bad skin and the eating disorder. Maybe her dreams of travelling to different cities, partying out with pretty girlfriends and hot captains was all a mirage constructed to fool willing, naïve girls into joining the aviation industry. Maybe there will be no Shahrukh Khan jumping ropes and getting past security lines to get to you, you, a beautiful flight attendant like in 1994’s Anjaam.

  She has to get out of the room!

  She calls her three colleagues who flew with her. Two of them are old and they refuse to go out anywhere, straight out. They don’t even have the courtesy to tell her that they are chumming and hence in great pain, or that they have a ginormous loan they have to pay off and hence can’t afford to spend on anything other than water, air and food. They just say NO.

  The third one, though, jumps and squeals, even lets out a few expletives, when she hears Avanti’s voice. It was a surprise because this girl, Namita, was snapping at everyone throughout the flight. She almost even slapped a drunken passenger. Avanti had immediately judged her to be a veteran, someone who has been in this industry long enough to hate every bit of it.

  Avanti is trying to pick what she wants to wear. Namita isn’t a bad-looker at all and she doesn’t want to look average.

  She finally chooses a black dress that is tantalizingly little and uncomfortable, but she looks dazzling and that’s what matters. She doesn’t necessarily believe the feminist bullshit of what’s inside is what matters. If it worked that way all feminists should make sure they get married to ugly, haggard men with facial hair concentrated on their earlobes.

  She calls Namita and tells her that she’s coming over. Namita doesn’t believe in the feminist shit, too, and is rocking a leather skirt that ends inches above her knees and a halter top. She looks rather cute. Like an innocent girl who will have whips and handcuffs at the back of her cupboard.

  They take the hotel cab because they think they will roll like that today, like rich girls. And it turns out that Namita is actually rich.

  ‘Then why are you doing this?’ asks Avanti, who now knows that Namita’s father has factories that make cardboard boxes.

  ‘I’m twenty-nine,’ says Namita.

  ‘Twenty-nine? No! You can’t be! You look as old as I am!’ says Avanti.

  ‘And how old are you?’

  ‘Eighteen.’

  ‘That’s the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me. But yes, I’m twenty-nine and I’ve been divorced for the last six years.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Don’t worry. It was a long time back and surprisingly, I don’t feel any different. I still feel like I’m eighteen, twenty-one max!’ chirps Namita.

  ‘Okay.’ Words are melting to mush in Avanti’s mouth. ‘Why did you . . . umm . . . get divorced?’

  ‘It was just a wrong decision. We were in love. It had been a year and I thought this is it. We were too young. Our parents, especially mine had objected but we were too stubborn for our own good. Took us two years to realize we’d made a mistake and then we walked our different paths. He’s married now,’ says Namita.

  ‘So now you’re okay?’ asks Avanti.

  ‘It’s been years that I have been okay! Time heals everything and this was just a divorce,’ says Namita.

  ‘But you still haven’t answered why you’re in this?’ asks Avanti.

  ‘I’m getting married in a year and this time it will be someone my parents choose for me.’

  ‘So you’re not looking for love?’

  ‘I’m not sure I know what love is. I’m not sure anyone knows. I just wanted to do somethi
ng before my time runs out. My parents wanted to send me off on a holiday but that would have been boring. So I suggested working for an international airline. I have never worked in my life and this was the only industry that would accept me.’

  ‘And your rich father was okay with it?’

  ‘They threw a major fit! A MAJOR FIT! But then I cried, and it was okay.’

  They enter WTF, a small Karaoke bar in Versova, and quite a few heads turn, only for a split second though because this isn’t Delhi, and unlike Delhi, people have better things to do than mentally undress girls walking on the road. They take a table with high stools. Namita says she feels like a Long Island Iced Tea today and so they order two of those.

  ‘I’m not sure I can drink,’ says Avanti.

  ‘Don’t do that, now! You have to drink! Don’t kill the vibe,’ protests Namita. ‘I don’t want to be the only one drinking and talking shit.’

  ‘Okay, fine. But only one!’

  ‘Yeah. We will see.’

  By the time the clock hits ten, the place is full. There are groups of good-looking men, good-looking women, good-looking men and women, talking animatedly. Three boys have come and asked if they can join them, and although they had asked nicely and they seemed like nice boys, Avanti couldn’t let them join them.

  ‘I have no idea why we asked them to go,’ says Namita. ‘They looked cute.’

  ‘It’s because I’m already dating someone in my head.’

  ‘That’s the strangest thing I have ever heard. What does that mean?’ asks Namita.

  ‘It means I have been sort of dating him in my daydreams and he obviously has no idea of it. He’s kind of like a hurt puppy and he’s gorgeous. Also I have never met him. I have just heard him sing and seen his pictures. And I do know I sound a little bit psycho here so I will just stop talking and never mention this again,’ says Avanti, embarrassed.

  ‘That was interesting. But that doesn’t mean we can’t talk to anyone else,’ argues Namita and winks.