The World's Best Boyfriend

  Dhruv couldn’t wait for the night to be over. Ritika was too drunk and there were moments when he wanted to smack her face, leave her and the club. There she was flailing her arms around, trying to kiss Dhruv all time, and being a fucking nuisance.

  ‘She’s going to puke, man,’ said Sanchit.

  Dhruv helped Ritika to the washroom. The girls judged Ritika, and Dhruv swore at them. ‘Should I stare at your stubble?’ snapped Dhruv at one of them. The girls looked away.

  The line outside the men’s was shorter.

  ‘SHE’S GOING TO PUKE,’ shouted Dhruv and the boys parted and made way for Ritika and Dhruv.

  ‘I’m not going to puke.’ Ritika smiled at the boys who were sniggering.

  ‘Shut the fuck up,’ said Dhruv and took her inside the boys’ washroom where he threatened everyone to leave within the next thirty seconds or he would smash their heads on the mirrors. The three boys who were fixing their hair slunked out.

  ‘I’m fin—’

  And Ritika puked all over the floor, falling to her knees. Half-digested food, bile and alcohol spilled out on to the floor and a murderous stink rose from it.

  Dhruv held her hair while she retched and emptied her bowels on the floor. Doctors should have been on standby to collect a spare kidney lying on the floor. ‘This is the last fucking time you’re drinking.’

  She kept on retching and muttering apologies in broken words and grunts, feigning innocence and blaming the strong, cheap vodka.

  Dhruv called Sanchit to ask him to get lemonade but the call went unanswered. Meanwhile Ritika had nothing left to vomit but hot air. She was smiling like a guilty puppy that had soiled the carpet. ‘I feel much better.’ Dhruv wanted to smack her square on her face.

  ‘Are you sure?’ asked Dhruv. She nodded. Dhruv picked her up and made her sit on the slab around the washbasins where she crawled to the tap and washed her face. He took the mop and cleared the muck as much as he could. Little sacrifices you have to make when you date someone who fucking doesn’t know when to stop drinking. Dhruv was trying not to explode, but Ritika, having flushed the alcohol out of her system, was sprightly and ready for another round.

  He helped her down and they left the washroom. The boys waiting outside cursed them and crinkled their noses when the ungodly smell of Ritika’s insides wafted in the air. Dhruv made her sit down and suck on a slice of lemon. He looked around for Sanchit and found him sitting with Aranya in one corner, laughing, God knows discussing what. He saw Sanchit put on his best smile and nudge Aranya into drinking, which she reluctantly did and they both laughed and drank.

  Sanchit had never hidden his admiration for Aranya, calling her hot, intelligent, Geek Queen, whenever he got the chance. It made Dhruv squirm. He told himself it was because he was possessive about Sanchit and didn’t want him to cross enemy lines.

  For the next half-hour, he kept a count of how many drinks Aranya had. Their laughter kept on getting louder, their high-fives more intense, the jokes more intimate. Dhruv imagined walking up to them and socking Sanchit’s face. He kept sending Sanchit texts asking him where he was but Sanchit, who seemed mesmerized by his company, didn’t check his phone.

  Dhruv got his chance when Sanchit excused himself and walked towards the men’s.

  ‘Will you be okay?’ asked Dhruv. Ritika mumbled.

  Dhruv followed Sanchit into the washroom, bent over to check the stall and spotted Sanchit’s jeans crumpled against his army slippers. Dhruv entered the washroom stall next to his and banged on the common wall.

  ‘It’s me, you bastard,’ said Dhruv. ‘What the fuck do you think you’re doing with her?’

  Sanchit grunted. ‘We are just talking. I think I’m in love with her.’

  Dhruv banged on the door.

  ‘What’s wrong with you!’ exclaimed Sanchit. ‘I’m trying to concentrate on potty here.’

  ‘You fucking can’t be in love with her.’

  ‘It’s not really in my hands, dude. What is in my hands is this faucet, though, and if you bang on the wall again I’m going to rain water on you.’

  ‘She’s the enemy, Sanchit.’

  ‘She knows the Schrodinger equation by heart.’

  Dhruv banged the door again. Sanchit aimed the faucet at Dhruv who returned it with a toilet paper roll.

  ‘Stop that, you juvenile asshole. And once you get out of this washroom, you have a choice to make. Either you talk to her or you talk to me.’

  ‘Stop being a melodramatic bitch, Dhruv. I got to go to her. Not because I’m in love with her, which I am, truly and deeply, but because she’s drunk now. I can’t leave her alone. Also, we are discussing horror movies, Mithun Chakroborty’s Gunda and Indian politics, man.’

  ‘Why the hell would you get her drunk?’ grumbled Dhruv.

  ‘What the fuck is your problem?’

  ‘I just don’t want you around her, okay,’ warned Dhruv and stormed out of his stall.

  Ritika was sleeping, stretched out on the couch. Dhruv ordered a drink to take the edge off. He watched Aranya sway to the music in the distance, clearly drunk, a happy smile on her face and shouting out an occasional ‘Woohoooo’ like any other normal girl would. He couldn’t take his eyes off her. Sanchit walked towards the bar to get another drink.

  This was Dhruv’s chance to talk to Aranya. About what, he didn’t know.

  But before he could start walking in Aranya’s direction, Raghuvir walked in, dressed up in a nice shirt for a change. Dhruv felt a gut-clenching ache. Aranya almost threw herself on Raghuvir and they started to talk animatedly. ‘He is a fucking professor for God’s sake!’ muttered Dhruv angrily. She should have shown some respect, not shoved her breasts on to him.

  ‘What are you looking it?’ asked Sanchit, now sitting next to Dhruv.

  ‘I don’t even know who you are,’ said Dhruv.

  ‘We have shared holy faucet water. We are brothers.’

  ‘We aren’t even friends,’ snapped Dhruv. ‘Go, fucking laugh with her. Why are you fucking sitting here?’

  ‘You have a very limited vocabulary, both of you. She kept saying fucking, fucking, fucking. She’s damn hot, dude,’ Sanchit said, his tone not sleazy but serious. ‘Look at her. Shit.’

  Aranya snapped her fingers and ordered another drink but Raghuvir, the protective bastard, waved the waiter off. A few students looked at Raghuvir and Aranya and whispered to each other.

  Dhruv saw Raghuvir call for the cheque and a little later, they left the club.

  ‘I will be back. Take care of Ritika,’ said Dhruv and left before Sanchit could form a coherent sentence.

  Outside, he saw Raghuvir bundle Aranya into the front seat of his car, a well-maintained Honda Prius. He wanted to slam the car’s door on Raghuvir’s hand, drive the car away, dragging his body hanging from the door. He had heard of Raghuvir being quite the womanizer. A man in his position always had women fawning over him and he couldn’t be blamed if he slipped once or twice. Moreover, no one had heard any of the women he slept with complain about him. Most of them didn’t even admit to having had an affair with him. It was all quite strange. Dhruv was convinced that Raghuvir was a good manipulator no matter how many people talked about him being the nicest fucking person on earth. He found Raghuvir’s niceness rather creepy.

  He had heard stories of his torrid fling with Smriti, the PhD student (who by the way had a boyfriend waiting for her back in her home town—Kanpur), amongst many others. He tried not to draw parallels between the charming principal of his school who wrecked his life and Raghuvir who had just driven off with a drunken Aranya in his car.

  He waited for them to leave, then kick-started his motorcycle and followed them.

  For a good part of the drive, Aranya had her face stuck out like a dog, laughing and shouting and making fun of people they’d left behind. The car missed the final turn to the college and swerved left and finally stopped in an empty parking lot. Dhruv turned off the headlights and killed the engine.

/>   Raghuvir helped Aranya out of the car and they sat on the bonnet. Dhruv couldn’t quite make out what they were talking about, the sound of chirping crickets was louder than the degenerates out in the open. Sanchit kept calling him and he kept disconnecting the calls.

  Irritated at not being able to listen to their conversation, Dhruv lobbed a stone in their direction and it crashed against the boot of the car. They ignored it. The next one cracked the rear windshield, making an intricate web. Raghuvir inspected the damage, shouted ‘Kaun hai’ into the dark, his voice deeper and angrier than Dhruv had expected, and then instructed Aranya to get into the car. They were going back to college.

  Satisfied, Dhruv hopped on to his bike and drove off. He stopped at the police picket and pointed at the car Raghuvir and Aranya were in and said, ‘Bhai sahab. Gaadi andhere mein parked thi. (Sir, the car was parked in darkness). God knows what the couple was doing.’ And he drove off. In the rear-view mirror he saw the police guy stop Raghuvir’s car and ask for his licence.

  Dhruv rode back to the college, and almost forgot about Ritika back in the club. He called Sanchit to check on her, who told him that he had dropped her to the hostel, and Dhruv wondered how little, if at all, he loved Ritika. Later that night, he bought the Security Room guards with a bottle of Red Label and they handed over the security tapes of that night to him. Dhruv had never been of much use with computers but he spent that night carefully editing a video of Raghuvir and a visibly drunk Aranya entering the college, and Raghuvir helping her to the girls’ hostel.

  It wasn’t incriminating. But people have fertile imaginations.

  I Love u Rachu

  39

  Ritika woke up with a bitch of a headache. This was the closest she had felt to death. She spent the morning vomiting, grunting and moaning, dehydrated like a century-old mummy.

  She was rolling on the floor, the cold mosaic calming her down when the Jaundice Girl walked in. She made Aranya sit on the bed, marshalled her girl troops, none of whom seemed hung over, and they nursed her back to normalcy.

  ‘Are you coming for the class?’ asked the Jaundice Girl.

  ‘I will decide,’ said Aranya. Lazily, she looked over the timetable. It was Raghuvir’s class. She dragged herself out of the bed and washed her face. She owed Raghuvir an apology for last night. She had been a pain in the ass, she remembered, begging him not to drop her to college, to go on a long drive. She faintly remembered Raghuvir talking to a policeman, playing his professor card and wriggling out of the situation.

  She was fifteen minutes late for the class and Raghuvir still wasn’t there. The moment she walked in and took her seat, she sensed the class shift in their places, their voices lowering to a murmur. She could feel the stare of her classmates, and heard stray sentences with her name and Raghuvir’s. And that’s when she knew what it was all about. She remembered those moments faintly when she had walked through the college gate with Raghuvir the night before, leaning on him because her steps were unsteady and she was seeing things in triplicate. She had thought the college was deserted and was sure no one saw them. But she also knew it took only one person to concoct a rumour and make is spread like wildfire.

  ‘Did you see this?’ the Jaundice Girl came up and fired up a video on her cellphone. It was Aranya and Raghuvir stumbling through the corridors.

  ‘People are saying you seduced him to get a spot in his research team.’

  ‘Are they blind? Raghuvir would get seduced by me? Fucking retards.’

  Despite knowing the truth, her eyes welled up. Everything intensified in her head. Despite her talent, the years of hard work, she would never be able to live this down.

  Her options were clear—to wait for things to settle down or clear it out. The first was a defensive move and Aranya didn’t play defensive. She reminded herself of the twenty-three trophies she had won in debates in the last decade, shredding her opposition to pieces, making them crawl on to her side, and she felt the anger rise and gust through her veins. She saw Dhruv sitting on the last bench, feet propped up, without a care in the world.

  The tears were gone. Aranya’s split personality took over. Like a manic werewolf she tore through her sobs and bared her canines. She walked to the teacher’s table and wrote in bold letters on the blackboard and underlined it—PROF. RAGHUVIR IS HOT.

  She sat on the teacher’s table. She often leaned over the podium to show how relaxed she was. She had ten simple rules. She pointed at what was written on the board.

  Debating Rule No. 1: Start with a fact and hook your audience with a question.

  ‘Let’s not pretend otherwise, right? He’s hot. And let’s start the conversation with a fact. Nothing happened between Raghuvir and me, and I regret it. Let me tell you why.’

  She had the attention of the class now.

  Debating Rule No. 2: Flood the opposition with facts that may or may not matter. Make them feel underprepared and like a congress of baboons.

  ‘At thirteen years of age, Rahguvir made a high-powered telescope and found three asteroids, all named after him. At fourteen, he completed his Bachelor’s of Engineering from MIT and filed eighteen patents and sold thirteen of them. At seventeen, he completed his Master’s of Engineering in nuclear physics from MIT and filed thirty-three patents. At nineteen, he was part of the team in France that successfully executed the first controlled fusion reaction.’

  Debating Rule No. 3: Act like a judge, not a participant. Make the audience feel like dirt.

  ‘At nineteen, you’re still sleeping on month-old bed sheets and masturbating to Sunny Leone and asking your parents to pay for your cigarettes. You dress like you’re homeless and you dare to talk about a girl who has beaten you in mid-semesters by a mile. You are students who shake in fear when he walks inside the class knowing that he was better than you can ever be when he was younger than you. And look at you!’

  Debating Rule No. 4: Your body language should be such as to show that you have already won.

  She laughed for dramatic effect and whipped open the class register.

  Debating Rule No. 5: Attack the opposition. One on one. RIP. THEM. APART.

  ‘Amit Singhal. I know you were talking about me back there. Yes, you. The guy who I just heard saying, “Obviously, they slept together. How else would she make it to the research team.” There you are in your oiled hair, rubber chappals and the fake Diesel shirt. Look at you. So virginal. What are you sniggering about, Sameer Garg? It’s not that you have ever talked to a girl. You know how easy it is for me to check what you searched for in your browser? You look flushed? What did you search for?’

  Debating Rule No. 6: Threaten. Scare. Create fake panic.

  ‘I don’t think you took me seriously. Let me just tell you the IP addresses of your laptops. Let’s check your mails. The desperate mails you would have sent to your ex-boyfriends, ex-girlfriends? No?’ She fished her cellphone out. She played Temple Run on it.

  Debating Rule No. 7: Douse the panic.

  ‘Maybe I shouldn’t be that cruel now, should I? Why share your misery with the rest of the class? So let’s come back to the topic of you gossiping about Raghuvir and me. I feel blessed that you, who are as intelligent as a pack of chimps for Raghuvir, have decided to gossip about Raghuvir and me.’

  Debating Rule No. 8: Address everyone. Divide the crowd. See them turn on each other.

  ‘And don’t kid yourselves, girls. You know you would rather be linked to Raghuvir than to any of these boys here. I don’t mind if you keep talking about Raghuvir and me because I know, I understand, it comes from the deep-rooted feeling of wanting to be where I am today. We have all been jealous of the girl who has it all, haven’t we? I have been in your place. And who wouldn’t want to be linked with Raghuvir after all? I understand your envy. Last night, I saw many of you dancing with boys who don’t deserve you and you knew that, but you rationalized in your head that it’s the best you can get in our college. I don’t feel bad when you talk about me and him. I
understand.’

  Debating Rule No. 9: The final blow. Leave them thinking that they were wrong from the word go.

  Her voice was now soft. She made it sound like she was almost mourning for the class, like someone had died. ‘I would like to thank you all for linking me to him. It’s good for my self-esteem. I really needed that. In fact, I want you to keep talking about it. But I hope every time you boys talk about Raghuvir, it would NOT remind you of your own failures and inadequacies. And when the girls of my esteemed class talk about me, I request you to please NOT think of the last boy who had shown a smattering of interest in you and feel any less beautiful or accomplished than I am. I know it’s painful to see someone have it all in life while you’re stuck in a less-than-equal relationship. Everyone lied. God didn’t make us equals.’

  Debating Rule No. 10: Whatever be the result, celebrate your victory.

  ‘Class of 2014, I wish the best of luck to you.’ She beamed, bowed in front of the class, sure that it would be the last she heard of the gossip, and walked out.

  I Love u Rachu

  40

  Raghuvir put on a white shirt, tucked it into his freshly pressed beige chinos and prepared himself for a meeting he knew would end in an ugly way. Still, he didn’t want to feel that he didn’t put his best foot forward. Raghuvir knew what soiled reputations could do to someone’s career. He had been way too careless in the past to not know that. An irresponsible philanderer, that’s what people thought about him now, and for good reason. He had been doing things he shouldn’t have for the last few years. Sleeping around with PhD students wasn’t warranted, it was even illegal, but he had made sure none of the students opened their mouths. He was charming enough to keep them from saying anything.

  But he had rotted long enough. It was time for him to change. He had found himself changing the day he saw Aranya. It subtly reminded him of a younger him, lonely, yes, but also ambitious. He was drawn to her. He felt something for the girl. You could call her his muse even. Even while he slept with Smriti (and others), he caught himself thinking about the girl and her unwavering drive. It rekindled something inside him, and that’s why he wanted her to be his mentee. To kick-start a few projects he had been planning.