When Only Love Remains

  ‘Okay, fine. There are three boys in that group,’ Avanti says and points the straw in the direction of a big group in which two boys are constantly shooting looks at Avanti and Namita. ‘If they come, we will let them treat us.’

  ‘Done. And if they are not interesting enough, we will just leave and let them pay the bill!’

  ‘Wait. Aren’t you like insanely rich or something?’ asks Avanti.

  ‘It’s not about the money, Avanti. It’s about the little thrills in life!’

  ‘Poor guys! They will curse us and every other girl for the rest of their lives,’ says Avanti.

  ‘Guys kind of deserve that, don’t you think?’

  ‘Yes,’ says Avanti and thinks of Shekhar who, frankly, has gone mad after the entire Avanti Changing Her Number incident. He calls twenty times a day and Avanti picks none of them. ‘Cool! We will wait then.’

  Well, the boys come and they are cute, but not great to talk to. Namita and Avanti pose as investment bankers and fib about how tough their lives are. They tell the boys that they are rich, married and lonely. They can see drool collect on the tongues of the two boys. Namita and Avanti are drunk, but not as drunk as they are acting. Namita is now throwing her hands over a boy who’s enjoying every bit of it. She complains that her husband is fat and is really bad in bed. She looks at the boys and asks, ‘Do fat people have smaller penises?’

  The boys, who by this time are ripe red tomatoes, stutter and stammer something only they can understand. Namita and Avanti are clutching their hands under the table, thrilled at how dumb these boys are.

  ‘How do you, like, give a blowjob if it’s too small? It’s ridiculous!’ says Avanti.

  ‘I know, right? I know of this one time when I was really horny and I had to do with the guy who delivers courier packages to my place,’ narrates Namita with overdone sluttiness. The boys look at the two girls in horror, and a little bit of hope.

  ‘Oh! Yes, don’t I remember him! You sent him over to my place as well, remember? And then you walked in . . . and . . .’

  Namita stops her. ‘We just met them, we shouldn’t tell them everything!’

  Avanti tells Namita that she’s right and some things are better left unsaid.

  ‘Please tell us! Please tell us!’ the boys insist, by now thinking that this is the best night ever of their lives and they will find themselves in a steamy foursome after these two drunken women finish their stories. Namita and Avanti finish the story, a story that would make Fifty Shades of Grey read like a nursery rhyme, and by the time they are finished, the boys look . . . well, there’s no other word really . . . they look horny. Like a story out of the Indian pornography comic, Savita Bhabhi, is just about to come true.

  ‘Excuse me,’ says Namita. ‘I think both of us need to go to the washroom now.’ Namita hovers near Avanti’s neck and looks up naughtily.

  Avanti looks at the boys and says, ‘I hope you guys live alone.’

  The boys nod, too dumbfounded to be smooth anymore. It’s the best day of their lives.

  ‘Give us ten,’ says Avanti and they leave, smiling and winking at the boys.

  The boys talk between themselves, slap each other’s backs, congratulate each other, wondering if this is really happening, and start checking their pockets for protection. Avanti and Namita, who are watching all of this, walk out of the restaurant and burst out laughing.

  They take five minutes to get a grip on the situation and then they burst out laughing again. It takes them about an hour of strolling around idly to get over it. It’s almost after one and they are sitting on the pavement. The hotel cab is waiting.

  ‘Have you had boyfriends after that? After your divorce?’ asks Avanti out of the blue.

  ‘Not really. My parents kept a pretty strict tab on me after it happened. And I kept feeling it was my fault for a really long time for having put the family through a divorce and all. Everything changes once a young daughter of the family is a divorcee. It becomes what your family is known by. So everyone is like, “Oh, yes, Mehras. Nice family but their daughter is a divorcee.”’

  They stagger into a cab, still drunk, and still giggling over what they did to the boys when Avanti’s face suddenly droops. She’s frowning now. She was checking Devrat’s profile because a few days back he had updated, ‘Going to the recording studio to record a new song.’ And she liked it immediately and was waiting for the song to come out. But instead . . .

  ‘What happened?’ asks Namita. Avanti shows Namita her cell phone. It’s a picture of Devrat with an old woman, probably in her thirties, named Karthika. More stalking reveals she’s a singer, too.

  ‘Who’s she? And who’s he? Is he the guy you were dating in your head?’

  ‘Yes,’ nods Avanti.

  Avanti briefly explains what Devrat means to her, and even though he isn’t her boyfriend, he means much more. Namita consoles her and tells her, ‘You’re way prettier than she is. She must be his older sister or something.’

  ‘But then why are they so close in the picture?’ grumbles a drunk Avanti. Just then her phone rings. And it’s Shekhar and she lets the phone ring.

  ‘Now who’s that?’ asks Namita.

  ‘My ex-boyfriend who still thinks he owns me. He’s a bit of an asshole. He’s constantly after my life,’ answers Avanti.

  ‘Why don’t you tell him that?’

  ‘I’m scared,’ Avanti tell her, and Namita taps her on the head. The phone rings again and this time Namita answers the phone. She puts it on loudspeaker and before Shekhar can say anything, Namita starts to shout, ‘LEAVE AVANTI ALONE, YOU ASSHOLE! SHE’S IN LOVE WITH SOMEONE ELSE! SO FUCK OFF!’ Avanti and Namita are giggling and Shekhar starts to abuse from the other side of the phone.

  ‘AVANTI? Where are you? And who’s this girl? And what guy? ARE YOU DRUNK? TELL ME WHERE YOU ARE! I WILL COME. Tell me where the FUCK are you?’ Shekhar shouts, but Namita cuts the call and Avanti switches it off.

  An hour passes by, and Avanti’s is in her hotel room now, wondering who the hell Karthika is? She wonders where Devrat must have met her . . . she sends Devrat a few mails from those twenty accounts, telling him that he deserves someone much better and goes off to sleep hoping they would break up by the time she wakes up.

  The following day, she wakes up with a massive headache and promises herself that she’s never going to drink again. Groggily, she switches on her cellphone and it has fifty missed call alerts, from Shekhar and from her father. She calls up her father.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Hello, A . . . vanti.’

  ‘Umm?’

  ‘You’re in Mumbai.’

  ‘Umm . . . yes?’

  ‘A friend of yours, Shekhar, came to our house today. He was shouting at the top of his lungs. He was asking for you. He was abusing you. I felt really bad.’

  Crap! ‘And?’ asks a fuming Avanti. Avanti can kill a puppy right now.

  ‘Nothing. I . . . I . . . chased him away with a bat. There were other members from the resident’s welfare, too. So we chased him outside the apartments and told him to never come back again. He is y . . . our friend so I didn’t allow the society walas to call the police. I’m sorry, but he was abusing you and creating a ruckus. Can you give me his parents’ number? I will talk to them and tell them what their son is up to?’

  And just like that Avanti feels calm; she stops pacing around the room and flops on the couch. For a moment she goes ‘awww’ in her head and smiles. Her father, a powerless middle-aged man, trying to stand up for her, wanting to complain to Shekhar’s parents as if they are all students in the fifth standard, is cute. She thinks how her father must look like with a bat in his hand, chasing after that huge, muscular guy.

  ‘It’s okay. You don’t have to call them.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘And I’m fine.’

  ‘O . .
. kay.’

  Avanti realizes that the conversation, if it carries on, will only get more awkward and decides to tell her father that she’s getting late, and she disconnects the call. It was cute, nonetheless.

  She has to leave for the airport in a bit. She checks her phone again. The picture of that woman, ‘Karthika’ is still there, and the question is still haunting her.

  ‘Who the hell is this Karthika and where did he meet her?’

  Ten

  devrat

  Devrat is waiting for Karthika to stop singing. This is Karthika’s fourth gig in four consecutive days and Devrat has been to every one of them. All of them have ended with guys lining up to talk to Karthika, Karthika signing her albums’ CDs for them, Karthika and Devrat ending up getting drunk, that either led to one of them puking their guts out, or the two of them indulging in nasty, angry sex. Today, it’s going to be the latter.

  Devrat had thought he would not meet Karthika, and that giving in was easy, but then when he heard about Arundhati’s wedding date, he couldn’t quite take it. What made it worse was that Arundhati uploaded pictures of them snuck in a blanket in what seemed like a hotel room. All this while there was a slight hope in Devrat’s head that probably they haven’t had sex yet. But now they have and that’s something Devrat refuses to take lying down. No matter how progressive, a guy can’t take his ex-girlfriend sleeping around with another man.

  Now Devrat doesn’t know what kind of revenge this is, but but he is set on his plan—he would have sex with Karthika everywhere that he had with Arundhati, and when Arundhati eventually breaks up and comes crawling back to Devrat, he can tell her, in explicit detail, that all of Arundhati’s memories are now tainted with memories of Karthika and him having sex. So it’s important for Devrat that he doesn’t pass out today even as he downs his fifth pint of beer.

  A few days back, he uploaded a picture of him and Karthika, his arm around her, her face stuck to his cheek just so Arundhati can see it. Quite a few people liked that picture, calling them a beautiful couple and they can’t wait for Karthika and Devrat to perform together. But surprisingly, his fans in Dehradun weren’t impressed. They mailed Devrat telling him that he deserves much better and they weren’t too happy knowing that he’s dating Karthika. They were angry to say the least. He’s trying not to think about it that much.

  On the other hand, much to the happiness of Sumit, the video they recorded for the song went viral and notched up two million views in the first two weeks itself. Gigs were now easy to get, and for the first time, they were in the position to negotiate their terms.

  ‘That girl, Arundhati, was bad luck for you,’ said Sumit. ‘See! Ever since she has gone, you’re doing so well for yourself.’

  ‘That’s what. Ever since she’s gone I have been a better singer. For every time I go on that stage, I’m thinking about her,’ argues Devrat.

  No wonder most singers and actors and artistes have such screwed up love lives. They are all looking for that heartbreak, that failure, that death, that will change them as a person. And the pursuit of that leads to strange people and strange places. So what after Devrat gets over Arundhati? Will his music lose its soul again?

  It’s obvious that he will not fall in love with Karthika and when Karthika decides that she has had enough with the little boy, he will not be heartbroken, maybe a little bored for a while but definitely not heartbroken.

  But he does have to admit that the sex with Karthika is great. In fact it’s much better than what he had with Arundhati. He’s forced to compare because now he has legitimate reasons to; Arundhati, too, must be making the same comparison.

  With Arundhati it was never sex, it was always kissing, prolonged kissing. It was like they kissed, and bumped into sex, like it was an object and they used to think, well, not bad, we can try this too. But it always never about sex. Sex was the thing they never talked about.

  Devrat isn’t sure if he really enjoyed having sex with Arundhati. Sex for Devrat was more about pressure than pleasure. Arundhati was the first girl Devrat had done it with while Arundhati had been with other men. So it was always a competition going on in Devrat’s head. He had to be better than all the guys Arundhati had been with before him. So more often than not, sex wasn’t enjoyable at all. It was an assignment Devrat wanted to ace. He didn’t want to put a single foot wrong.

  Even when she was naked and wrapped around him, he was thinking of how her ex-boyfriends must have performed. He wanted to last longer than her ex-boyfriends so he used to start thinking about failures in his life to distract himself from the act. He wanted to be perceived as passionate so he kissed her a lot. He had read somewhere that love alone can make sex better and hence he would slip in an ‘I love you’ somewhere during and after the process. He would always snuggle and try hard not to fall asleep after they used to come. It’s like if the dessert is nice, you’re fooled into believing that the dinner was, too. Having sex with Arundhati was science. It was calculated and measured to make Arundhati believe he was the best in bed she had ever had.

  ‘That was the best sex. EVER. Nothing even comes close,’ Arundhati had said once. More than seeing her naked, those words used to turn him on more, even now. He feels victorious whenever he replays these words in his head. Like he beat all her previous boyfriends!

  But with Karthika, it’s easy. It’s just sex.

  He doesn’t give a shit about whether he’s big enough for her or not, whether he is man enough for her or not, whether she’s happy with all his moves (not many!), whether he’s satisfying her, whether she comes, too, or not. For when he’s with Karthika, it’s all clear and on the table. It’s like Russian Roulette. Some days you win, some days you lose. And they talk about it. ‘You sucked last night,’ Karthika would often remark. ‘As if you were any better,’ Devrat would retort. It is easy. There is no pressure.

  Devrat wonders if Arundhati’s fiancé undergoes the same pressure, in fact, he wishes it on him. But he’s with her for life and that’s enough time to prove himself. But what if Arundhati already thinks her fiancé is better than Devrat?

  He has found himself thinking on this same loop almost every few hours, and it makes him sad and furious. Thinking about it and getting sad has also become his superstition now. He does it just before his show starts. He likes going up on the stage, a little angry, a little disappointed, but as his listeners say—mostly awesome.

  He sees Karthika walk up to his table, her male admirers fall back when they see Devrat stand up and claim Karthika as his own. They sit down and Karthika looks at Devrat. The question is in her eyes and Devrat is supposed to answer it before she says it.

  ‘You were great today!’

  ‘Oh. Was I? You’re just saying,’ says Karthika as she looks at the waiter and orders her pint.

  ‘No, I’m not,’ says Devrat. He was just saying. He has heard the same song so many times now, he even knows the parts Karthika doesn’t like or screws up slightly.

  ‘Thank you,’ says Karthika and she says it while her lips hover close to Devrat’s ears. It’s sexual. Everything Karthika does is sexual and Devrat now believes that every older woman who’s single has major sexual needs.

  ‘Is your friend coming? What’s her name? Karishma?’ asks Karthika.

  ‘Yes, she is coming. She’s a little late though.’ He has not seen Karishma in a while now. Karishma LOVED the video and the song that went viral and has wanted to see Devrat for quite some time now, but Devrat has been avoiding her. Meeting her meant telling her about Karthika and he wasn’t sure how comfortable he was with that.

  ‘Who’s this girl you have uploaded a picture with?’ Karishma had asked a few days back. ‘I hope you’re not dating her! Are you? Are you? Please tell me you’re not. She’s way older than you, Devrat.’

  Karishma was clearly not fond of this new woman in Devrat’s life. Devrat had given a noncommittal answer bac
k then but now he has tackle the problem head on. Not only meet her and tell her, but also make her meet Karthika and tell her what’s going on between the two of them.

  ‘Here she is,’ says Devrat as he sees Karishma walking through the door. Devrat and Karishma hug and Karishma hits Devrat for being so elusive all this while.

  ‘Big celebrity you’re now, huh?’ mocks Karishma.

  ‘Yes, obviously. Don’t you see all these girls flocking around to see me?’ Devrat says mockingly looking around him. ‘A video going viral doesn’t make anyone a celebrity or anything.’

  ‘But it did make you into an asshole,’ quips Karishma.

  ‘Oh, by the way, this is Karthika.’

  Karthika embraces Karishma. It’s not a hug, it’s an embrace. It’s a very elderly thing. Her arms wrap around Karishma in the most comprehensive manner, like she’s consoling Karishma, like someone close to Karishma has died. When they are in that embrace Devrat realizes how ridiculous he and Karthika must look together. Karthika is . . . old.

  ‘You must be Karishma,’ says Karthika.

  Karishma is still looking at Devrat, searching his face for explanations. ‘Yes, supposedly, I’m his best friend but I don’t know about you.’

  ‘Oh, there’s nothing to know really. We just met on the music circuit and we talk music. That’s it,’ says Karthika. Devrat is confused here.

  ‘Oh okay! I thought of something entirely different! I thought both of you were dating! I got scared for a moment!’ says Karishma and starts to launch into a How Stupid Of Me laugh.

  ‘Naah! He’s a kid,’ says Karthika and ruffles Devrat’s hair. It’s all very confusing to Devrat. Never before did Devrat feel so young in front of her, but suddenly Karthika, is in his head, like a school teacher he’s sleeping with. Karthika adds, ‘I need to go. Both of you can carry on. I need to get some work done.’

  Devrat protests but Karthika insists and leaves. Devrat’s phone rings and it’s Karthika and she’s telling him that she will see him at his place later when he’s done.