Dhruv was expelled immediately. He and his father shifted to a cheaper apartment on the outskirts of the city, and Aranya spent the remainder of her school life at the fringes, being known as the ugliest girl ever!
I Love u Rachu
9
Six years later . . . Dhruv, eighteen, sat in his ex-girlfriend’s house, staring at his dirty Converse shoes, worn beyond their years, a fake tear streaking down his face. He could barely suppress the chuckle that threatened to escape any moment.
No words had been exchanged for the last twenty minutes. Satvika’s father was furious, his face paralysed, lower lip quivering, his frail heart giving up. ‘It can’t be true. My daughter can’t do that,’ her father muttered under his breath.
‘I’m afraid she did, Sir. We did it here. In the bedrooms. On the balcony. Even on the kitchen slab, I’m afraid. I’m extremely sorry to tell you this. I never intended to. But I hope you understand what position I am in.’
Rajat, the girl’s brother, wanted to box Dhruv in his face. Satvika’s mother, whom he had seen in pictures earlier, looked suicidal at the news of her daughter no longer being a virgin. What could be worse for an Indian mother than knowing that her eighteen-year-old daughter had had premartial sex on the kitchen slab and enjoyed it?
Dhruv chose his words carefully to make himself the victim. ‘She was my world. I really loved Satvika, Sir. If I had thought she would leave me I would have never done it. Here. Nor in the bedrooms. Nor on the balcony, or on the kitchen slab. I really thought she was serious about me. God knows I was . . . in love and she . . . sh . . . she . . . she cheated on me, in the same house with another boy!’ said Dhruv, as his voice trembled and he broke down in little sobs.
He should try theatre sometime.
Dhruv had narrated the length of his rather sexual relationship with Satvika in as much detail as her parents could digest, without them wanting to set Satvika, and then themselves, on fire.
He told her parents they had been dating for the past two months, right from the time Satvika had taken admission at a local institute to prepare for the engineering entrance examinations. He ran through the rest of the story quickly, only highlighting the portions he thought were most damaging to Satvika’s life thereafter.
They say, the day you fall in love changes your life, but they are wrong. It’s actually the day your ex-boyfriend walks through the door and tells your parents about you being a nymphomaniac that really does you in.
Dhruv sounded genuine in his shame. Tears flowed out abundantly and ceaselessly from his sorry eyes, erasing any doubt, firmly planting the belief that their daughter was some kind of depraved girl, a pervert who used their bedroom and their kitchen for her misdemeanours.
By the time Dhruv was finished, he had made sure Satvika’s parents were only slightly milder than the Talibans, that they would make sure Satvika suffered a fate worse than death. Okay, that might be an exaggeration, but not by much.
Satvika was called to the drawing room. She stood by the side of her mother, teary-eyed, her hair a mess, and her skin pale like a corpse. Dhruv smiled, seeing her pained and defeated, staring at a shackled life. You deserve it, bitch! You should have thought about this before you let Karan take my place.
‘Is it true?’ they asked her. Satvika had no answer to give them because nothing of what Dhruv had said was untrue. They were indeed dating and he was in love with her for a brief period of time, and yes, they had made out, in her parents’ bedroom, in the stairs of the empty malls they went to, in the washrooms of coffee shops, and it was good, not great, at least good enough to keep the relationship going. But slowly and predictably, distance had crept in and Dhruv, in anger, had told her to fuck off from his life.
She did, quite literally, and decided to go out for a harmless movie date with a below-average boy, Karan.
Dhruv would have probably forgiven her for this slight had she not lied about it. ‘I was at home with Mom,’ she had said, and all hell broke loose. She had lied and for that she needed to be punished, abandoned and tortured for life.
Dhruv was asked to leave. He had just turned on the bike’s ignition, a second-hand, weathered Enfield, when he heard what sounded like a dying animal’s shriek.
‘WHY! WHY DID YOU DO THIS? You said you loved me!’ Satvika waved and howled frantically from her balcony.
‘I hate women as much as I love them. Didn’t I tell you that?’
‘But—’
‘And because you fucked him!’ shouted Dhruv, putting on his helmet.
‘I—’
‘And you lied. I loved you and you fucking lied to me.’
‘You never loved me! And we had broken up, Dhruv!’ defended Satvika.
‘My women don’t sleep with other men. My women don’t lie to me. They fucking stand by me no matter what or I destroy them,’ bellowed Dhruv, the vein on his temple now throbbing, as Satvika’s brother started to drag her inside the house.
Her eyes still searched for an answer, and Dhruv being the gentleman he was, responded by waving his middle finger, and drove away.
I Love u Rachu
10
No matter how strong she was, how many books on feminism she had read, she still felt the need to be desired, missed, loved, talked, objectified, fantasized about and masturbated to, and she hated herself for it.
She dimmed the lights of her room and of her laptop before she clicked the ‘Video call’ on her Skype account. She switched on ‘Show video’ to check if her face or any part of her body was in any way recognizable. Not that anyone would want to see her body. Saying she was fat was an understatement. She weighed 73kg and was barely 5'3" and it constantly weighed on her head. For years she had been battling with her issues with weight.
Sameer, the boy on the other side of the video call, had first met her in an interschool debating competition about five years back. He had been talking to Aranya, on and off, for the past few months, and he showered her with a lot of attention, and it wasn’t friendly attention, it was sexy, overbearing, dirty, sweaty attention.
SAMEER
Hey, I can’t see you. Switch on the lights.
ARANYA
I can’t. My parents are outside. Make do with this.:*
SAMEER
Oh! A kiss! The night just got very interesting! I think I just got turned on.
ARANYA
Show me.
Aranya’s heart throbbed with nervous energy, a tingly sensation took over. Sameer’s ex-girlfriend was tall, slender and reasonably fashionable, the kind who took selfies in changing rooms and labelled them #ugly. Aranya wanted to shove her own Polaroid in front of the ex’s face and shout, ‘You self-serving lowlife, this is ugly, not you!’
To think she had turned on that girl’s ex-boyfriend was a cause for celebration.
The boy teased Aranya a little, gyrating and thrusting his pelvis into the camera like an octogenarian on his first yoga class. Slowly, the guy took off his shirt, and then slipped out of his trackpants. His torso was sufficiently ripped and shaved but his legs were Amazonian-level hairy. He asked Aranya if she wanted him to take his briefs off and before Aranya could type, he started. He slipped them off slowly. Not that the suspense was killing Aranya really.
Aranya squinted as Sameer proudly took his semi-hard king-prawn-like member in his palm and started flapping it around, stroking it, pointing it towards the web camera.
SAMEER
Do you like this? You do, don’t you?
It was hilarious. Sameer kept stroking it till it was hard. Then he took his hands off it, placed them behind his head, and moved his penis back and forth like it was a party trick. By this time, Aranya was disgusted enough to change tabs. She watched a compilation of cute puppy videos on YouTube, and realized how easy life is for little puppies. No one says, hey, look, that’s a hideous puppy.
And though the moving images of a crooked dick on her laptop made her feel sick and queasy, she felt desirable for a change. At least someon
e in the world would give her a second look, want her, in whichever way it might be.
SAMEER
I want to see you naked.
‘No, you don’t, jerk! Even I don’t want to see myself naked,’ thought Aranya.
She then told him that her parents were knocking on the door.
ARANYA
OH MY GOD! THEY ARE HERE . . .
I HAVE TO GO!
She signed out. It wasn’t the first time Aranya had done this. She closed her laptop and gently tapped her head on it, cursing herself, almost in tears. Why? Why does she do this?
Her begging for validation from a complete stranger wasn’t too different from her classmates wanting their pictures to be liked and commented on. And if she had a face worth a second look, probably twenty likes on a selfie would have sufficed her need for acceptance as well.
Aranya stood in front of the mirror, turned her head from side to side, inspected herself, found herself crying and with the same schizophrenic, self-pitying argument running in her head again.
Why do you do this? Why? You don’t need validation from others to tell me how beautiful you are. A hard-on in the pants of a boy you barely know isn’t appreciation.
But I’m not beautiful. Look at me! I’m ugly and fat and undesirable.
You’re not ugly! Looks aren’t the only thing.
No, I’m ugly! Look at the other girls from school, their thin, shapely legs, and their perfect complexions. They are the ones who get stared at, not me, no matter what I do. Look at my skin! No one will ever look beyond that. I’m fat and I’m ugly.
Shut up. It doesn’t matter. At least you’re not dumb like the other girls. You’re a national-level debater. No one can touch you there. You’re funny and you’re smart.
But all that makes me a boy, not a beautiful, desirable girl, and that’s what I’m trying to say. Why do you think I was leading that guy on to strip? Wanting to know if I can turn him on? Wanting to know if I can turn anyone on? Because it makes me feel good, it makes me feel wanted.
So do you feel better now?
No. I don’t know.
Then don’t do it again.
I might.
There will be someone.
There won’t be anyone. Do you want me to remind you what happened the last time there was someone? He called me the ugliest girl in the world.
Forget him. It’s been a century since then.
Feels like yesterday.
Shut up.
Shut up.
She deleted Sameer from her Skype list and texted him that her parents got to know about their little escapade and they would get him jailed if he ever tried to contact her again. She pulled the blanket over herself and lay there staring at the trophies she had won in the past few years, thinking of all the moments she had decimated her fellow competitors, mostly boys, razed them to the ground, insulting them and questioning their intelligence, and yet here she was, wishing that she would be fairer, more beautiful, skinnier—she would trade all the trophies, all the little and massive victories over those boys, for just one of them to come to her and tell her that she’s beautiful.
Ashamed at her regressive thoughts, she blamed fairy tales, nice boyfriends, happy endings, red hearts with arrows through them, and she said, ‘Fuck you, fuck you, boys! I don’t need you,’ and closed her eyes and saw the boy who was the first person ever to call her ugly, a burden she’d carried all these years. The boy she loved. The boy named Dhruv.
She bore no guilt about what had happened years ago, about the lie she said to save herself from her parents and a life full of misery. It was a desperate attempt of a young ostracized girl at self-preservation. What could she have done? Dhruv should have got that. Instead he hit back like a coward and single-handedly wrecked her life. He was the first one to tell the world she was ugly, unwanted, repulsive. It was he who had sown the seeds of self-doubt that had torn her apart for years now. He snatched away what little normalcy she had hoped for from life. She wished he were dead now, or at least as unhappy as she was with her life. She hated him with all her might.
I Love u Rachu
11
Dhruv regretted his decision of riding the damned motorcycle to Delhi Technological University (DTU), the college he had gotten through. Still about fifty kilometres to go, the rotting piece of shit had broken down twice. He stepped into a dhaba while the mechanic refilled the coolant.
‘Ek chai, bina chini!’ Dhruv shouted asking for a cup of tea without sugar.
Earlier, Dhruv had filled his shaker with three scoops of 100 per cent whey protein, two scoops of glutamine, three scoops Amino and two scoops of BCAAs, topped it with water and shook it till a little bit of the froth had dribbled out. It smelled like shit but it was essential for rapid muscle growth, and to help him break out of the plateau he had hit with the overhead and the bench press.
A couple of houseflies started to hover around the dirty bandage on his right hand. He needed a new dressing for that wound. He leaned back into his chair and smiled thinking of how he had smashed Karan’s face while the latter tried to run away from him, crawling on all fours, of the sweet sound of his nose crushing against his knuckles. But that’s how Dhruv operated. People needed to be punished and left with scars that would remain for a lifetime. What had really cracked Dhruv up was when Karan staggered to his feet and threw a rock at Dhruv who caught it with his right hand, and used the same to break Karan’s nose. Dhruv still thought he let him off easy.
Karan had admitted to kissing his ex-girlfriend and had the gall to say, ‘But you had broken up with her!’ Seconds later Dhruv’s fist crashed into his ribs, snapping them like dry twigs.
‘You need to ask me before taking my things,’ Dhruv had whispered in his ear.
A serving boy came with the tea. It was the sweetest fucking thing he had ever tasted and he spat it out.
‘Fuck.’
Before Dhruv could have called out to the boy and given him a mouthful, he was already serving a meal to a girl who sat at another corner of the dhaba with her back towards him. Dhruv gargled with the tea instead, not wanting any extra calories in his bloodstream, and spat it out, making sure the cashier noticed it. ‘Cheeni thi’ (It had sugar), remarked Dhruv. A small round steel plate with the bill reached his table.
Dhruv got up from his chair, picked his tattered backpack and slung it over his shoulder. He walked to his bike, paid the mechanic, and kick-started it to life. The waiter scurried to Dhruv’s table to collect the money for the tea and found just a bloodied bandage. Dhruv was gone.
I Love u Rachu
12
Aranya noticed how pale the waiter’s face was after that boy, whose face looked familiar, drove away on his motorcycle leaving behind a bloodied bandage. She burped.
‘The food was good,’ she told the waiter. Frankly, she wasn’t an authority on food. Everything bathed in oil, sprinkled with cheese, dipped in sugar syrup tasted good to her. She hadn’t had sex but it couldn’t be better than a creamy bowl of pasta.
She caught the bus that would take her to DTU, her home for the next four years away from her tyrannical parents. It would be a new start for her and she would not be ignored and taken lightly there, she had decided. Unlike school, she would rule the college with an iron fist.
The bus dropped her off at the gate of her new college, from where she walked to her hostel, her home for the next four years. She signed the register, submitted photocopies of her existence and shifted into her barren, prison-like room.
Before long she unpacked, changed, threw her clothes inside the cupboard, arranged her books, put bedspreads, and flopped on the bed, thinking about her first day in engineering college—where she would be the cause of disappointment to a lot of expectant guys. ‘Screw them,’ she thought.
She was dreaming soon.
‘Come out!’ the voices shouted outside. She woke up with a start . . .
‘Come out!’ the voices shouted again.
Ten minutes
later, she was standing with fellow students from the first year in front of a motley group of seniors, boys, uncles pretending to be boys, and a smattering of girls.
Things had changed quite a lot for Aranya since primary school. No one mentioned the story of the naked, diseased girl any more but the repulsion towards her disease remained. Her condition was always a looming shadow over her associations with people. She knew it was always at the back of everyone’s minds, like it was on hers.
‘Introduce yourselves,’ said a fat senior whose gut was far bigger than Aranya’s.
The girls started to rattle off their names, the name of the schools they were from, and some went as far as to tell them their hobbies which were as boring as their faces. Aranya could almost feel the insults flying at her. Obviously, she would be picked out and ridiculed and shamed for her weight and how she looked, but she was ready for it. She wouldn’t live on the fringes of the college like she did in school.
‘What’s your name, fatso?’ asked the senior in the front row.
‘Your mother is a fatso!’ snapped Aranya, putting her ruthless, debating face on. The boy clearly hurt looked left and right, hoping someone would back him up and when no one did, he said, ‘You don’t talk like that to a senior.’
‘Why not? My seniors sit around in boxer shorts and harass their juniors, shame them for their body and their face.’
‘I didn’t even say anything about your face. And I’m not harassing anyone!’
‘You’re fucking rude! You—’
‘Your mother’s rude,’ said Aranya.
‘Fuck off,’ said the boy.
‘I wish I could say that back to you but that would only mean a waste of moisturizer and tissue paper.’
The boy looked at his classmates for support, but they were too busy giggling, memorizing the repartees to use them somewhere else. ‘You will be dealt with later. None of the seniors will ever help you. Never! You screwed with the wrong person.’