I don’t think I can do this to you, Aranya. Being right is a hard thing to do. But seems like it’s what I’m going to do this time.
Best of luck for your life.
Regards
Dhruv
(Forever in love with you)
He was about to hit the SEND button but he felt weak. There was nothing other than humiliation to be gained out of sending the mail. Once he sent it, there was no looking back. Aranya and Raghuvir would read the mail together and laugh at him. He couldn’t allow that.
Instead, he left the mail in the Drafts and slept restlessly for whatever was left of the night.
Every few days, a similar mail from Aranya would reach Dhruv’s mailbox and he would spend the entire day reading it, furiously typing his confession of love, deleting it, and drinking the night away.
I Love u Rachu
69
It was three at night. Aranya was returning home in a company cab after another nineteen-hour shift. Her body ached at places she didn’t know existed. Thankfully, Raghuvir had bought her a treadmill desk, one which allowed her to walk while she tapped furiously on her laptop hence delaying the onslaught of spondylitis, spine problems and early death.
She was rudely woken up from her slumber when her phone rang. She sat up straight and wiped the drool off her face. She took the call. ‘Hello?’
‘WHAT’S UP!’ shouted a voice from the other side. ‘It’s me, Sanchit! I’m shouting because I want to pretend this is a long distance trunk call.’
‘What do you want?’ asked Aranya, still groggy.
‘What do I want? Can’t a friend just call to ask how you are doing?’
‘We are not friends.’
‘That’s not hurtful at all.’
‘What do you want, Sanchit? I don’t have time for this. I have to sleep. I have had a long day.’
‘So are you going to sleep with Raghuvir or alone? Is he cooking today or are you going to order in? Is he going to paint your nails or you will massage his hair? Just asking because you have taken to updating Dhruv about your daily activities!’
‘You have a problem with that?’
‘Just the one. Why are you doing this? What would you get out of it? You already know he loves you and what you’re doing is putting him through hell. Then why are you persisting?’
‘Because I think he deserves it.’
‘I think he has had enough, Aranya. I know you guys have a past and I wouldn’t even try to imagine what damage he might have caused you then and now but it’s time to call it quits.’
‘Are you pleading on Dhruv’s behalf?’
‘No. I’m pleading on mine,’ said Sanchit. ‘He’s never going to ask you to stop. But I can tell that it’s killing him. He’s draining bottles of alcohol like they’re water. He’s being all filmy and dramatic right now. You know how he is! So you need to stop before he self-destructs.’
Aranya laughed. ‘Why? Isn’t he too busy in love with Ritika? At least that’s what he texted me.’
‘What? No! Ritika went back home long back. He drove her away.’
‘I know he lied. The picture he sent me was old; anyone could see that. He’s a pathetic liar.’
‘I always told him that. But that’s not the point. The point is . . . just stop.’
‘I won’t stop till I get what I want. That’s how I work, Sanchit.’
‘AND WHAT THE HELL DO YOU WANT, ARANYA? HE’S ALREADY BROKEN,’ said Sanchit.
‘I don’t need to answer your questions. And DARE you shout at me, Sanchit.’
The cab reached her apartment and she stepped out. She signed in the register and walked in.
‘Fine, Aranya. Have it your way. I’m sending you a mail Dhruv wrote but never sent. Read it and hopefully you will have a change of mind. I’m just requesting you to leave him alone.’
‘I will think about it,’ said Aranya and disconnected the call.
She rang the bell and Raghuvir opened the door. He had waited up. There was a warm pizza waiting for her. She forgot it was pizza night. Of course. Right on schedule. Every Tuesday. Raghuvir had it marked on the calendar. That’s how you make relationships function—schedule everything and follow it. What is love if not a routine? Raghuvir had totally nailed it. Together they could have written a self-help book on it.
‘If you had taken one more minute, I would have dozed off,’ said Raghuvir.
‘Which movie are we watching today?’ asked Aranya.
‘I thought we would eat and do something more fun tonight,’ answered Raghuvir and waved a wine bottle in Aranya’s face.
Aranya smiled weakly. ‘I will just go and change.’ She left the room and locked herself in the washroom. She closed the seat of the toilet and sat on it. She waited for the mail. She refreshed her mailbox again. Inbox (1).
It was the same mail which had been lying in Dhruv’s Drafts folder for a while now.
She read the mail twice. Her eyes welled up. Her phone beeped. It was Sanchit.
SANCHIT
?
SANCHIT
No reactions?
SANCHIT
Made of stone or what?
ARANYA
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.
I know why he didn’t send the mail.
SANCHIT
Why?
ARANYA
Because it’s funny. LOL.
SANCHIT
Stop doing this to him.
ARANYA
You wish.
Aranya’s phone rang. ‘Hello, Sanchit,’ she whispered into the phone. ‘Why are you calling?’
‘To hear your voice. I’m lonely tonight.’
‘Stop wasting my time.’
‘It’s you who’s wasting your time, Aranya. I called to see how convincingly you can lie and I know you can’t. Stop taking me for a fool.’
‘Lying?’
‘I did think for a bit that all what you were doing was for revenge, or to make Dhruv feel bad about himself but it’s much more than that, isn’t it?’
‘What are you talking about? It’s just revenge!’
Aranya’s breath stuck in her throat. Sanchit was on to her plan.
‘Of course it’s your plan. You are giving him reasons to fight for you. You want him to ball up and save you from a life without love, aren’t you?’
‘That’s nonsense!’
‘STOP LYING.’
‘. . .’
‘That’s why you sent all those mails! Damn. To ensure he wakes up and smells the coffee.’
‘. . .’
‘I’m almost impressed!’
‘I never agreed to what you’re saying,’ snapped Aranya, her secret now out.
‘But if you want this plan to work, you need to hurt him a little more. You need to trust me on this, Aranya. I’m on your team and I will do anything to make the fucked-up love story of you guys work. I admit I was rooting for Raghuvir and you for a bit but seeing how desperate you guys are—you being all scheming and him being all mopey and depressed—it seems I made an error in judgement. And that’s a first even for me!’
There was silence on the other side for a bit and then Aranya spoke, taking a leap of faith, hoping Sanchit could help her, scared if he would laugh at her. ‘What do you have in mind?’
‘Dhruv needs to hear or see or feel something that will crush him. These mails won’t work. You have to do something bigger, something he would never forget, something very dire, something big.’
‘Like?’
Sanchit thought for a little while and spoke with a great deal of excitement in his voice. ‘Though it kills me to say this because I love Dhruv, have sex with Raghuvir and make him listen to every moan of yours,’ said Sanchit as a matter of fact.
‘What!’
‘Trust me, it will work! It’s the best plan ever.’
The door was knocked on again. ‘Are you talking on the phone?’ asked Raghuvir.
‘No!’ said Aranya and cut the call.
br /> ‘Are you okay in there?’ asked Raghuvir.
‘I’m fine.’
Aranya washed her face, stared at her reflection in the mirror, sprayed herself with deodorant, pasted a smile on her face and stepped out of the washroom. Would it work? She found herself thinking about Sanchit’s crazy idea.
Her phone beeped. It was Sanchit. Go for it, trust me, it’s going to work, it said.
‘There you are,’ said Raghuvir, a slice of pizza hanging from his hand and his glass of wine half-empty. There was a light in his eyes. He poured Aranya a glass.
‘What are we drinking?’ asked Aranya and sat next to him.
‘God knows. I just picked wine because it sounds more romantic, doesn’t it?’ said Raghuvir and chuckled. She picked up her glass of wine and started sipping from it. She had to get sufficiently drunk tonight to do what Sanchit had suggested. The plan seemed so crazy that it might work.
Half an hour later, the pizza was finished and Raghuvir led Aranya to the bedroom. He planted little kisses on her neck as they walked. Aranya felt a little woozy from the alcohol. As he dropped her on to the bed, she reached out for her cellphone in her pocket and dialled Dhruv’s number. Then, she threw it on the carpeted floor. She could faintly hear Dhruv’s ‘hello’ over Raghuvir’s frantic breathing.
Raghuvir and she had sex, and she wished Dhruv heard it all. He would have to. This could work, she thought to herself the entire time she lay there.
The next morning, Aranya found her phone lying where she had dropped it, out of battery.
Aranya texted Sanchit.
I hope it works.
SANCHIT
It will. Trust me.
I Love u Rachu
70
It had been a long time since the moaning incident. Dhruv hadn’t texted, called or mailed her. She was freaking out. Maybe it was all for nothing. It had failed.
‘Calm down,’ said Sanchit. ‘It’s working.’
‘How the hell do you know it’s working? He didn’t even text me! We were counting on his world coming to a standstill!’
‘Trust me, it has. My closely placed sources, Ramadhir and Arshad, the hostel cleaners, tell me he has been drinking himself to death. So sooner or later he will put on his armour and come save you!’
‘What if he just drinks himself to death? After all, it runs in the family.’
‘Whoa. That’s insensitive.’
‘I’m just fucking tense, Sanchit,’ snapped Aranya.
‘Fine, if he doesn’t make a move in the next few days, I will go pay him a visit and see what the hell is wrong with him,’ said Sanchit.
‘You’d better.’
‘Hmmm.’
‘Thank you, Sanchit.’
‘But Aranya, have you thought about your exit strategy? How will you get rid of Raghuvir? Your parents love him! They will crucify you if—’
‘Of course they love him. Their responsibility was over the day he came into the picture. They are even taking credit for it. After all they were the ones who had goaded me to study and ace every examination, something they think led me directly to the arms of Raghuvir.’
‘. . .’
‘I am still thinking about it. Leaving him will kill me with guilt. I have tried everything to wreck my relationship with him but nothing is working. Just like he said, he’s working on this relationship like it’s a fucking science project,’ said Aranya.
Aranya felt strange even saying this because after all Raghuvir was proving to be quite the flawless boyfriend! He was all she had ever dreamt of in a guy.
But she could not get herself to be in love with Raghuvir. It’s not to say she didn’t have a galaxy-sized crush on him ever since she first knew of him. Meeting him in college and getting to know him was a dream come true. They didn’t get to work together a lot but the time she spent with him in the laboratories was invaluable. She would cherish it for the rest of her life.
Then as if she had all the luck in the world, Raghuvir wanted to be with her. Why her? Was it because she was smart? Was it because finally he found someone intelligent? She always felt uncomfortable with these questions.
For the first few days that she was with him, she was quite suspicious, like a woman married to a star. But slowly, she started to feel at home with the knowledge of him just liking her. After all, he was a changed man. There were a trillion girls in AMTECH, Bangalore, but he had eyes only for her.
Raghuvir was proving to be the perfect ladder out of the pit Dhruv had pushed her into and not reached out for. But her goddamn luck!
She couldn’t push the thought of Dhruv out of her head. Why did she need the thing she knew would destroy her? The choice was so simple. A second grader could have made it. But why? She had grappled with the question long and hard and hit a blank. There was no reason to love Dhruv and yet she did.
The guilt of being with Raghuvir and yet not being in love with him, free riding on him, trying to find the way out of the labyrinth using him, started to eat her up. The burden was too heavy to carry and she would have to carry it for the rest of her life.
But she had no other choice! Either it was Dhruv and his mad love or Raghuvir and the comfort of a routine life. She would have picked the former a million times over. But for that she had to get rid of Raghuvir somehow and not offend her parents for whom he was a living God.
It was easier said than done. Raghuvir was fucking perfect.
She had to find a chink in Raghuvir’s armour.
And that’s when Sanchit came to her rescue and told her. ‘Temptation! Raghuvir might be a saint but temptation can take any man down. Raghuvir has always been like that! People change but people don’t really change. All you have to do is lay down the perfect trap, Aranya. If Raghuvir falters, that’s your exit strategy. Neither him nor your parents would be able to blame you! Paraphrasing Godfather, give him a girl he can’t refuse.’
‘I don’t think it will work. Raghuvir puts a lot into this relationship. He doesn’t even look at other girls! He wouldn’t be easy to mislead.’
‘Yes, it won’t be easy. But the only reason he doesn’t look at other girls is because they aren’t perfect. The girl we will create for Raghuvir will be perfect—a girl conforming to every standard every guy has in the world.’
‘You mean Kim Kardashian.’
‘Don’t disappoint me, Aranya. We can do much better.’
‘Like?’ asked Aranya.
‘I have some rough ideas,’ said Sanchit.
I Love u Rachu
71
Aranya knew she had only three weeks to pull this off. After that she would have to go back to college and live in the agony of owing her life to Raghuvir, the saint, while being in love with the bastard who didn’t come for her, Dhruv.
To fool someone like Raghuvir she needed to be meticulous and pay attention to every small detail. She got down to the task. She, with Sanchit, created a perfect mistress for Raghuvir.
Step 1:
Decide whose identity you want to steal. Make sure that person isn’t on Facebook because the chances of your profile being taken down increases dramatically. Find someone on Instagram instead. There will always be more pictures to choose from. Choose someone who’s hot but not that hot. More in the range of cute. Someone approachable. Someone who looks shy but also has a naughty twinkle in her eye.
Aranya chose a girl named Swati Dhamija, an eighteen-year-old girl from Mumbai but now studying in the US. She didn’t have a Facebook profile and was hot and cute in the right measures. She named the girl Farah Iqbal. Being diametrically opposite was a bonus.
Step 2:
Don’t be lazy. Go the whole hog. Create an e-mail ID. A Twitter account. A Skype account. Even a Google Plus account and a blog. Link all of them together. Make sure all of these are locked because new profiles raise suspicion.
Farah Iqbal was now a real person on the Internet with accounts, blogs and pictures.
www.facebook.com/farahiqbal124
www.farahiqbaltalks1.bloigspot.com
www.twitter.com/farahiqbal1A124
Skype ID: FarahIqbal1A124
Step 3:
No cute girl in the universe is without friends. Choose a profile that you would use to establish contact with your target. Make yourself an active and a popular person on that profile.
Farah Iqbal got some friends. Aranya created twenty more fake profiles of a heterosexual friend group. All these profiles were locked except a profile picture. These twenty fake profiles commented on every picture of Farah Iqbal on Facebook. There were compliments, jibes and internal jokes. It was important to portray Farah as a demure, shy girl but not someone who lacked a sense of humour. The conversation on the third profile picture of Farah went something like this:
Amar: Great picture!
Smriti: I clicked it after all.:) You look great, Farah.
Farah: Thanks guys.
Ruhil: Such a poser.
Farah: At least I can pose. Your eyes look like dead fish.
Ruhil: Blah.
Kanika: HAHAHAHAHAHAHA.
Smriti: LOL.
Amar: Friday plans?
Farah: Ya? Anything yet?
Kanika: Check Whatsapp group people!
Ruhil: Okay.
Step 4:
Make sure you have common interests. Like the same pages—movies, bands, books—that your target has liked. If you do that there’s less chance of running out of conversation when the time comes. But keep the girl interested in domains your target would know nothing about.
Aranya made Farah Iqbal like all major newspapers, blogs and science journals. Also a few movies that had roaring popularity amongst men—Fight Club, Snatch, the works. What men really want is a girl who acts like a man when it comes to lifestyle choices and like a woman when it comes to appearances. Farah Iqbal was now in final year law. She was not only a scholarship student but had already bagged a job at a reputed law firm as an intern. They put in a lot of pictures of books she intended to read. She was quite accomplished—just the way Raghuvir liked it. Aranya made Farah Iqbal a voracious reader and a yoga enthusiast. It helps if people can imagine their prospectives in yoga pants.