She Broke Up, I Didn't: I Just Kissed Someone Else!

  ‘But I know it did …’

  I had already decided I would not tell her. I couldn’t have. She had trusted me and there was no way I was breaking that.

  On our way back to the room, Malini kept assuring me it was not a big deal and I should not feel guilty about it. ‘You wouldn’t even know what happened had I not told you,’ she said, and even though it was wrong on so many levels I decided to believe her.

  ‘Were you in your senses?’ I asked her.

  ‘As in?’

  ‘I mean … did you know what was happening?’

  ‘You mean if I knew I was kissing you?’ she said as she lit her cigarette. She offered me one and I refused.

  ‘So?’

  ‘I did. Why are you obsessing so much about it, Deb? Nobody remembers. Nobody cares. It was a stupid night and that’s how everyone will remember it.’

  ‘I do. I care.’

  ‘Stop being such a girl about it. I have an idea. Why don’t we get sloshed again and think about it deeply? What say?’ asked Malini and dangled the bottle of vodka in front of me.

  ‘I don’t think so. I’m still hung-over from last night.’

  ‘Oh c’mon, Deb. And don’t worry, I won’t kiss you again. You are not my type,’ said Malini and poured the drinks.

  ‘Aren’t we drinking too much?’ I asked.

  ‘I have to forget what happened too,’ she said.

  ‘You are not going to tell him?’

  ‘No and neither should you,’ she said. ‘And there is no such thing as too much drinking! There’s only too much thinking.’

  20

  As I walked out of the airport and my eyes scanned the crowd for her, my heart was heavy with the guilt it carried. I badly wanted to see her, and then I did.

  ‘I missed you,’ Avantika said as she hugged me.

  ‘I missed you too.’

  ‘You two make me cry,’ Malini mocked. Avantika smiled at her.

  ‘Hey, man,’ Mittal said. ‘Welcome back! Hi, Malini!’ He smiled at her flirtatiously.

  ‘Hi, Ganesh!’ She smiled back.

  ‘It’s Mittal,’ he corrected.

  Avantika rolled her eyes. We drove back to college and I kept asking myself whether I should tell her. She was smiling excitedly, asking me about the presentation and our competition, and I did not want to snatch that away from her. Stay shut, I told myself. ‘Relax, you look like shit,’ Malini told me.

  Things were worse by the afternoon.

  Avantika wouldn’t leave my side and wouldn’t stop doting on me and telling me that she had missed me and every such gesture made me feel worse about myself. I excused myself and told Avantika I had to meet Shashank. She told me she would miss me and I wanted to smash my head against a wall and die. Malini’s words kept ringing in my head.

  I was being a girl. I really didn’t need to tell Avantika anything. She did not need to know something that I did not even remember happened. I was not guilty of anything.

  Shashank listened patiently, nodding his head, shaking his head, while I narrated the incident to him, making sure I didn’t miss out any of the details. Farah was in his room as well, nodding and judging me all the time, looking at me like I was a diseased puppy and needed to be put down.

  ‘Mittal would have been so proud of you,’ said Shashank.

  ‘I haven’t told him. And you don’t have to tell him,’ I said.

  ‘I will not. But I think you should tell Avantika. You might fight for a few days, but things would be fine.’

  ‘I don’t want her to feel bad. I mean I don’t even remember what happened!’ I tried to defend myself.

  ‘All these arguments are okay, but you still need to tell Avantika. If you tell her right now, she will know you love her and you wanted to tell her. The later you tell her, the more problems it will create.’

  Farah nodded.

  ‘If you want, I can talk to her,’ Shashank said.

  ‘Thank you, but I think I will do it,’ I said.

  ‘Anyway, you really don’t remember any of the girls you kissed?’ Shashank asked and I shook my head.

  I left his room and trudged to Avantika’s room, trying to rearrange my words. I knocked and she opened the door.

  ‘We need to talk.’

  ‘You?’ she said. ‘I thought you were with Shashank and Farah.’

  I looked at her and she looked as beautiful as she always did. She had just got up. Long, flowing hair covered a part of her face and her eyes looked at me from behind those strands of hair—full of love, hope, optimism and belief. My eyes welled up wondering if that would be the last time we would meet like this, without an iota of distrust.

  ‘I need to tell you something,’ I said. ‘Please don’t be mad.’

  She took me by my hand and made me sit down.

  ‘I won’t be,’ she said.

  I started from the point when Malini and I had reached the guest house in Mumbai. I narrated in detail everything that happened over the next two days. Her eyes began to quiver and her grip around my hand became loose and my hands began to tremble. Tears trickled down her cheeks and the light in her eyes slowly died out.

  I cursed my existence. I cursed that moment of envy that had made me go to Mumbai; every tear of hers pained me and made my life a little bit more miserable. By the time I finished, she sat there, chipping at her nail polish as she sobbed softly.

  ‘I am sorry. I don’t deserve you, I guess,’ I said.

  I waited for her to say something. She just kept looking down at her hands. I felt terrible and decided that I should leave her alone. I stood up to leave when she reached out and held my hand.

  ‘Avantika, I am really sorry—’

  She did not let me complete my sentence. She stood up and hugged me as if she would never leave. I do not know how much time passed as we stood there hugging, crying; her body shivered in my arms.

  ‘It’s okay,’ she muttered, as if to herself, justifying what I had done.

  Avantika finally looked at me, held my face in her hands, and kissed me.

  ‘Were those kisses better than this?’ she asked.

  ‘I told you I don’t remember, and even if I did, it couldn’t be.’

  ‘You would compare?’ she asked again.

  ‘Never,’ I said and hugged her.

  I cried like a little girl bunched up at her knees and she patted my head to console me and told me it was all right and she had forgiven me. I promised never to do anything silly thereafter and she asked me not to feel sorry about it. Her goodness only made me feel guiltier about what I had done.

  ‘So you did have a good time!’ she mocked.

  ‘Can you stop it now? I am feeling guilty enough already.’

  ‘I am sorry.’

  ‘I am sorry. Why are you sorry?’

  ‘… because I am attaching so much importance to something you don’t have any knowledge of doing.’

  ‘You are way too sweet, Avantika.’

  ‘I know that, you horny bastard. And what has happened to you? You are drinking too much. I asked you not to.’

  ‘I am sorry. I will stop now. Sure.’

  We kissed and made love, taking breaks to cry and to tell each other how much we were in love and that we would do nothing that would endanger our relationship.

  It was love. It is usually very stupid for guys to put up status messages on Facebook telling the world how much they love their girls; that is usually reserved for the girls to do. But moments like these make you want to tell the world how much in love you are—put up a status message in capital letters. I contemplated putting it up, but the testosterone kicked in and I decided to be a man.

  After all, I did not need the world to know. I only wanted her to know what she meant to me.

  I kept whispering ‘I love you’ into her ears until she dozed off, hoping I could hypnotize her into believing that she needed me for the rest of her life.

  21

  Avantika cried for a few days, mostly in
solitude, before she came to terms with it. She said she was being irrational and she said she understood how I must not have known what I was doing. Avantika had been a raging alcoholic and a drug addict during her early college days. She knew what it was like to get hammered and carried away.

  I had just finished eating when Malini waved at me from a distance; Mittal was sitting next to her with a bowl full of watery daal and a roasted poppadom. I had not talked to her for the last few days. I had just texted her to tell her that I had told Avantika everything about us and things were fine.

  ‘Hey,’ Mittal called me over.

  ‘Hi,’ I acknowledged her presence with a smile.

  ‘Hi, Deb,’ she said.

  ‘Not coming for the class?’ I asked them.

  ‘Mittal is taking me out for a movie,’ said Malini and Mittal smiled at me—a wicked, eat-that smile.

  ‘Oh that’s nice.’

  ‘Why don’t you come along too?’ she asked and Mittal vigorously shook his head to ask me to turn down the offer.

  ‘Thank you, but short attendance, can’t come. Maybe next time.’

  ‘Fine,’ she said.

  I took their leave and heard them laughing as I walked away from them. Mittal was on to her in a flash. Not bad at all. I wondered if Malini had told him about what had happened in Mumbai.

  ‘Mittal is cute. I wonder how he’s still single,’ Malini had told me in Mumbai. I thought she wasn’t serious. The retail franchise class was boring. The professor kept making obvious flowcharts on the board expecting us to ask questions, and I couldn’t stop thinking about what Mittal and Malini were doing. Maybe I should have accompanied them to the movie. Maybe next time.

  ‘Where is Mittal? He is not picking up the phone. He has to report to the placement committee office at ten,’ grumbled Shashank and tried to reach him again.

  ‘I don’t know. He went to watch a movie with Malini in the afternoon, haven’t had a word since then.’

  ‘Call Malini,’ he said.

  ‘Why? Is it important?’

  ‘Obviously!’ he said, pissed off.

  Shashank had our passwords to our official MDI email IDs and handled everything that needed to be taken care of. That day, Mittal had received a mail from the placement committee and every mail from them was important and sacrosanct. The students on the placement committee were responsible for our placements and hence they wielded unquestionable power over other students. They were equally hated and respected.

  I called up Malini, and Mittal picked up the call. I could hear Malini giggle in the background and I felt like she shouldn’t.

  ‘Hey.’

  ‘Where the fuck are you?’ I asked him.

  ‘I am at a friend’s flat,’ he said.

  ‘Flat? What are you doing there? Weren’t you watching a movie?’

  At this Shashank snatched the phone from me and blasted him for ignoring mails from the placement committee; he was furious.

  While they accused each other of screwing up, I felt strange to think Malini was up to something with Mittal. I could not put a finger on why it felt a little quirky. I let the feeling pass. It took him an hour to reach the college and I was a little restless until they reached. I felt guilty that I actually cared about those two being together.

  ‘When did I have to report?’ he asked as he approached us. Malini followed closely behind.

  Shashank asked Mittal not to act fresh with the placement committee guys. They were a bunch of arrogant, snotty people, and Shashank told Mittal what excuse he should give them. Mittal nodded and went inside the office. Shashank left to meet Farah soon after and asked me to take care of Mittal.

  ‘How was the movie?’

  ‘We didn’t watch it,’ Malini said.

  ‘Aha,’ I smirked. ‘What did you do then?’

  ‘Oh please. Nothing happened,’ she blew me off.

  ‘I never said anything happened.’

  ‘But you meant that, Deb.’

  ‘I didn’t,’ I said.

  ‘Don’t give me those jealous-boyfriend looks,’ she said. ‘Anyway, why have they called him?’

  ‘No idea. And I gave you no looks, Malini!’ She rolled her eyes. ‘Seriously!’ I asserted.

  We waited for a couple of minutes before he came out of the room with his head hung low and a dead expression on his face. Something had gone wrong.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ Malini asked him. He looked at us with mournful eyes and sagging shoulders.

  ‘I got PLACED! I FUCKING GOT A JOB! EAT THAT, MOTHERFUCKERS!’ shouted Mittal and pointed in the direction of the academic building.

  He threw his hands around me and picked me up. My bones were crushed in his grip and I could hardly fathom what happened to the girls he dated.

  ‘This is incredible. I’m so happy for you,’ I said and we shook hands like men.

  We called up Shashank and Avantika and told them about the offer and they were excited for him. It was a big day for him, and for us.

  ‘Where are you taking us tonight?’ Avantika asked as she walked into the canteen a few minutes later.

  ‘Today?’

  ‘Why? What’s the problem with today?’ she asked.

  ‘Shashank isn’t here. He told me he had to go somewhere with Farah and he couldn’t say no to her,’ Mittal said. ‘Such a pussy.’

  ‘You can take him out some time else. Do not lose this moment!’ she argued.

  ‘Where do you want to go?’

  We decided on a new unaffordable nightclub near MDI that we had never thought we would go to. Night-outs at Management Development Institute were far and few since we were expected to turn up at sharp 8.30 a.m. every day for an early morning dosage of accounting or international marketing.

  ‘You need to join us,’ Mittal told Malini who was quiet all this while.

  ‘Thank you, but I can’t. I have some work to do,’ said Malini.

  ‘Like what? Getting drunk alone?’ Mittal retorted. ‘You’re coming with us or I’m not celebrating today.’

  Malini frowned. ‘Okay. Fine. You’re such a brat.’

  ‘Yay! Thank you,’ Mittal said.

  While Mittal and Malini argued on whether he was a brat or not, I could see Avantika shifting in her place. She did not look too comfortable with Malini tagging along but she could not have said anything.

  22

  ‘It is fucking ten thirty, man,’ Mittal said, pacing in the mess, angry, his gelled hair now falling out of place.

  ‘Girls.’

  ‘Call Avantika. Malini isn’t picking up.’

  I called up Avantika and she did not pick up either. The last time she had picked up, she had said she would be ready in five minutes and it had been half an hour since then. It wasn’t until another twenty minutes had passed that they showed up.

  And I am not kidding when I say that every eyeball in the college cafeteria turned towards them as they sashayed towards us in their short dresses, radiant faces and beautifully done-up hair.

  Avantika wore a flaming-red off-shoulder dress that ended a few inches above her knees. Her bright red stilettos made her look almost as tall as me. She had left her hair open and she flashed a big enrapturing smile as her eyes met mine. Her eyes had never looked as big and captivating as they looked then. She had never looked more beautiful. I do not know how many times I had said this to her in the last three years.

  ‘Stop staring. Let’s go.’ She winked.

  ‘You just kill me every time.’

  ‘I know. That’s the intention.’ She smiled.

  She was a work of art. It was only later that I noticed that Malini chose a little black dress that evening, and yes, I have to admit, she looked raging hot.

  Avantika, the quintessential beauty, versus Malini, the hot temptress—it was a fair match and neither Mittal nor I were complaining.

  ‘Let’s go?’ Mittal said as he put the car in gear.

  ‘I love what you are wearing,’ Malini said.

&nb
sp; ‘Thank you. You look pretty! If only I were not straight,’ Avantika answered. They both laughed out and hugged. To see two extremely hot women touch each other is such an undeniably remarkable sight. No wonder good old girl-on-girl action porn always finds space in every guys’ hidden folders.

  ‘I am sure MDI has never seen such beautiful things before,’ Mittal said to me.

  The ‘things’ comment didn’t go down too well with the girls in the back seat whose feminist genes kicked in and they bashed us for being dishonourable, chauvinistic pigs. We were not to blame though, not as much. They looked hot—as if they had come straight out of magazines that guys take to their washrooms for a little alone time.

  Mittal kept the mood chirpy, regaling us with anecdotes from his illustrious school and undergraduate college days, until we reached there, while I was just busy looking at Avantika and sometimes at Malini. They were innocent glances, that’s all they were. It took us just over an hour to get there.

  ‘It’s very flattering, but will you stop staring?’ said Avantika and walked ahead of me.

  Malini nudged me from behind. ‘She does look awesome, doesn’t she?’

  I nodded and added, ‘So do you.’ She smiled.

  We entered the gates and immediately knew why this place was so highly rated; the huge dance floor was lit up with a maze of laser lights of a million different colours. The place stunk of money, brats and expensive alcohol. It felt that we were late because drunken couples were making out everywhere, and I tried not to think of that night in Mumbai.

  ‘Here we are!’ Mittal shouted out to our deaf ears.

  ‘Let’s get drunk!’ Malini joined in. Avantika shouted out her approval.

  ‘What will you guys have?’ Malini asked all of us as she pushed and shoved her way to the counter.

  She ordered shots for all of us. Avantika was the designated driver for the night so she refused to have any.

  ‘Can we dance? Or you need to be more drunk?’ Avantika asked me, a little miffed at my decision to drink that day. I could already see her feet moving even while she was sitting. She was a great dancer; the Bharatanatyam and Odissi lessons she had taken as a child gave her an innate sense of rhythm and music and made her aware of her body and what it could do.