The Girl of My Dreams

  Internet memes. The video was taken down after she lodged a complaint with the cyber cell, citing invasion of privacy, but not before it had raked up over 3 lakh views.

  She paid the bill and walked out of the cab. She took a deep breath and told herself it would be okay. She wouldn’t be the first one to get drunk and embarrass herself. If they would laugh, she would laugh with them. She strode inside. Heads turned, people sniggered and her boss frowned when she walked in. Some of them didn’t even have the decency to not point fingers at her. The girl from the HR department called her into her office for a friendly chat. I will accept the Barclays offer. Just three months of the notice period and I’m gone from here. But even then, she didn’t want to leave this office with her head hung low and in hiding. So post lunch, she decided to change gears.

  She looked people directly in the eye and cracked jokes about the entire episode herself. She flailed her hands in the air and enacted the scene out a few times in front of bemused colleagues.

  More than her, it was Karan who looked embarrassed. But soon enough, he joined them too. She was no longer being laughed at, they were laughing with her. By the end of the day, instead of frowning and sniggering, her colleagues were winking and high-fiving her. Every time she went up to a colleague and said ‘Will you go out with me?’ laughter ensued.

  On her way back from the office, fuelled by the rush of having tackled the entire thing successfully, she called the recruiter from Barclays. She was told the position had been filled by a more suitable candidate. Why, she asked. The recruiter said that her behaviour had been found unsatisfactory.

  38

  After their scuffle at Sumit’s house a few days ago, Sumit had called Daman numerous times but

  Daman had ignored him. It was only after Sumit had threatened to go to Daman’s parents that he agreed to meet Sumit.

  ‘She embarrassed herself. It wasn’t my fault,’ said Daman.

  ‘Can’t you see what she’s doing? She’s acting out because of you. Just talk to her. At least be with her till the time she wears off you.’ Sumit pulled his chair closer to him. ‘Be nice to her. What did she not do for you?’

  ‘If this is what you want to talk about, I should leave. I need to see Shreyasi in a bit,’ said

  Daman. ‘I can’t keep her waiting.’

  ‘Keep her waiting? Who the fuck is she that you can’t keep her waiting? You’re seriously not dating her, are you?’

  ‘Why do you think I’m not? And why the fuck shouldn’t I!’

  ‘I can think of a thousand reasons but the top one would still be that SHE’S BATSHIT CRAZY.’

  ‘Will you stop fucking shouting?’

  ‘I will not till the time your break up with her.’

  ‘I’m not going to do that,’ said Daman and got up. ‘If you have nothing else to say, I’m leaving.’

  Sumit threw up his hands in the air. ‘Go, do whatever the fuck you want.’

  ‘Thank you for your concern,’ said Daman and left the coffee shop.

  Once outside, he called for a cab. He was shouting instructions to the cab driver on the phone when Sumit came and stood next to him. He disconnected the call. ‘What now?’ Daman asked.

  ‘Drop me till the office at least?’

  ‘Fine.’

  They hopped into the cab. Daman could see Sumit itching to broach the topic again. And he rolled his eyes when he did it.

  ‘I’m not asking you to break up with her, okay? I’m just asking you to hold off for a little while.

  Avni is going through a tough time. Be a little considerate?’

  ‘Considerate? For someone who nearly killed a person?’

  ‘She merely pushed him.’

  ‘Let me show you something.’

  Daman brought out his phone from his pocket and tapped on to the video section. Even before he could push play, Sumit knew what he was going to see. Though shaky, the quality of the video was crisp. He spotted Avni in an instant. She was looking over shoulders and walking with a hasty pace, following someone. The video turned to Karthik talking on the phone, climbing the stairs to a metro station. The video cut back to Avni who nervously fixed her hair and jostled through the crowd to get closer to Karthik. Moments later, she was behind Karthik, tailing him till he got to the top of the stairs. And then, with the slightest of pushes, Avni nudged him down the stairs. The

  video zoomed in on Avni’s blank face, and then on to Karthik who tumbled down the stairs, people stepping out of his way. Stop, thought Sumit. The video stopped playing.

  ‘See? It was a small push,’ said Sumit, collecting himself. ‘She couldn’t have anticipated that.

  She would have thought someone would break the fall. She was just trying to hurt him a little.’

  ‘Are you not seeing what I’m trying to tell you?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Who do you think gave me this video?’

  ‘Shreyasi,’ mumbled Sumit.

  ‘And what do you think she would do if I dump her and go back to Avni? Even if I want to I can’t be with Avni, for her sake and for mine.’

  Sumit stayed shut.

  Daman continued, ‘This video can do a lot more damage than a drunken video.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘There are no buts here. I’m with Shreyasi now. I have nothing to lose.’

  ‘SHE’S MARRIED,’ argued Sumit.

  ‘Yes, and I’m not.’

  ‘You’re telling me what you’re doing is right?’ said Sumit, losing his patience again.

  ‘It’s not wrong, at least. And who knows, I might be able to shake her off in the future,’ Daman said, shrugging.

  Sumit stiffened. He wanted to smack Daman. ‘Have you lost your mind? The girl is crazy. Vo bitch chutiya bana rahi hai tera, she’s making a fool out of you. You can’t be with her,’ urged

  Sumit.

  ‘The girl also has my balls in her palm. Can’t you fucking see that? She has the insurance papers, she has the video and she claims she can get me back my contract.’

  ‘And so you decided to be with her? Are you a whore now, Daman?’

  Daman scowled. ‘I have not slept with her but maybe I will,’ shot back Daman. ‘I will decide when it comes to that. And what’s your problem? She’s into me. She will leave me when she gets over me.’

  ‘She has been stalking you for three years. She needs to see a doctor, she doesn’t need you,’ said

  Sumit, infuriated. ‘Look, I’m only looking out for you. This can’t be good for you. How can you not see that? I suggest you leave the city for a bit. I will pay for wherever you go. Tell Shreyasi it’s not going to work out. Apologize to her, ask her to go back to her husband. Maybe she won’t put the video up anywhere.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘That wasn’t up for discussion. You have to do what I ask you to do. As your bhaiya—’

  ‘I said no,’ Daman cut in.

  ‘What no? She’s crazy! This will destroy you. Well, look at what all she has done till now. THIS

  GIRL IS DANGEROUS, BHENCHOD.’

  ‘She’s setting it right, again. I can’t fuck that up now. And who the hell knows what would have happened had I not crashed my car and had you not given me a fake email ID?’

  ‘NOTHING WOULD HAVE HAPPENED, MADARCHOD,’ shouted Sumit.

  ‘And you know that because you are an oracle?’

  ‘I know that because I was there at the FUCKING HOSPITAL! I was there when you were dying. I saw Shreyasi too!’ shouted Sumit.

  ‘So?’

  Sumit hesitated. ‘This isn’t Shreyasi.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘She died in the car crash, Daman. The real Shreyasi died that night.’

  39

  There isn’t a lot of traffic on the road. Shreyasi is talking about her first boyfriend. Even though

  I barely know her, I feel envy pierce through my heart. She notices it on my face and holds my hand. She tells me I’m cute. I smile back at her. She looks divine. It’
s hard to keep looking at the road. I wish she were driving. She asks me about my girlfriends and I tell her about Ananya, the girl who cheated on me. She calls the girl a bitch. I concur. I should have reached my friends but I’m driving around in circles. She knows that but hasn’t protested yet. If I may hazard a guess, she has even encouraged it. The bottles in the jute bag clang near her feet. She gestures towards it and winks. I shake my head. She insists. It’s hard to turn her down. She takes two beers out but neither she nor I can pry them open with our teeth. She keeps the bottles back in and takes out a bottle of vodka instead. She twists open the cap. She puts it to her lips and takes a long sip. I shake my head. I have to drive, I argue. But she’s not one to listen. She pesters with a scrunched nose. Please, she says, don’t be a killjoy. She puts the bottle on my lips. I sway away. Vodka spills over my shirt. That’s not fair, she cries out. Fine, I say. She puts it on my mouth again. It’s bitter. I close up my throat and spill a little out. Yet a little snakes its way to my stomach and then to my brain. I try harder to look at her. She holds my hand. I feel the warmth envelop my body. I look at her. And then back at the road. I slam on the brakes. A loud screech fills up the car. The taxi in front of us brakes too. It’s too late. I swerve left. I hit a car.

  In panic, I swerve right . . . Shreyasi’s thrown wildly to her side. She’s wearing her seat belt.

  The car veers towards the divider. I gasp. I should hit the brakes but I would hit the taxi head- on. I notice the taxi driver. I see death in his eyes. The taxi is empty. I swerve farther to avoid the taxi. I push down on the brake. The car hits the divider and flips. I look at Shreyasi. I’m hanging from my seat. She falls head-on to the roof of the car. The disquieting crunch of her neck fills my ears. She groans. The car flips again. She’s thrown against the window. Pieces of glass protrude from her face. She bleeds. Her eyes look at me lifelessly. Her hands flap around limply. She’s dead. Before long, she’s flung out of the car. The car comes to a rest. I’m strapped to my seat but I can see her clearly. Her face, her hair, her mangled body, her dead eyes, I can see it all. There’s fire. Flames lick at her body. I scream. Her hair singes, her skin turns black. I retch. I can smell her skin burning, I can see the eyes melt out of her sockets, those beautiful eyes . . . those lips. I can see the teeth now. I pass out.

  Daman woke up with a startle. The bed he was lying in was drenched in his sweat. He cried out hoarse. All but a silent scream escaped his mouth. His throat was choked from all the shouting from the last seven days he had been here in the hospital, often restrained to his bed. His head burst, as fever burned through his body. He shook and trembled. Two ward boys rushed inside, shouting instructions at each other. Daman swung wildly getting one of the ward boys in the face.

  Before he could swing again, the other pushed him down to the bed, pinning his shoulder under a

  knee. Having recovered, the injured ward boy restrained Daman’s hands. Daman writhed in agony and anger, arching his back and kicking his legs to break free. A doctor and a nurse followed soon after to sedate him. ‘Shreyasi’s dead, I killed her,’ he muttered, before he closed his eyes and feel asleep.

  Outside the hospital room, Daman’s parents sat, his father sobbing softly and his mother rubbing his back. The doctor emerged from the room and asked his parents to follow him to his chambers.

  They did so quietly. In the cafeteria of the hospital, Sumit and Avni sat in front of each other. Avni wanted to cry but seeing Sumit absolutely wrecked, she held back her tears. Sumit hadn’t slept a wink in three days.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me before?’ asked Avni.

  ‘Only the family and I knew. I couldn’t have risked it. Of course, if you guys were to be married

  I would have told you, or maybe the family would have but—’

  ‘I know where you’re coming from.’ Avni sighed. ‘So if Shreyasi died in the car accident a year ago, who’s this girl?’

  ‘A stalker. That’s what I told Daman, and then told you, but both of you had bought her story hook, line and sinker. I didn’t know how else to make you believe. And when I did . . .’

  ‘It’s not your fault. You couldn’t have known he would . . . get this anxiety attack again,’ said

  Avni. ‘What is the doctor saying?’

  ‘It’s too early to make a conclusive judgement but it’s worse than the last time. They have called the doctor who treated him earlier. He will be here in a day or two. But they are saying his behaviour suggests it’s a full relapse.’

  Avni nodded. ‘How did they treat him the last time?’

  Sumit leant into his chair. He let out a deep breath. He explained, ‘Things were trickier back then. First he had to get his movements back. Both his brain and body were mush. He had forgotten how to even hold a spoon. The doctors had concentrated on getting those back and make him physically capable. It was only much later that he started getting nightmares of the accident and of

  Shreyasi. He hadn’t asked for Shreyasi for the longest time. He didn’t even remember much of her except her name and the car ride they took together,’ said Sumit.

  The waiter got their sandwiches.

  Sumit continued, ‘When we first told him about Shreyasi’s death he had acted the same way as he is right now. Seizures, acting out, running up a high fever . . . the very same symptoms you’re seeing right now. He acted out strangely and lost his temper every now and then. Following which he would sit quietly for hours on end. But then suddenly he would have a vision and lash out. Quite often, we would find him huddled into a corner of the room, shouting. We found him on the ledge of the roof once,’ said Sumit and sighed. ‘We thought we had lost him.’

  ‘How did they finally treat him?’ Avni asked.

  ‘Therapy and medication. He responded well to the treatment but just when we would think he was ready to go home, a nightmare or a stressful episode would trigger something and everything would be undone. He would spend days in the hospital room asking for Shreyasi, asking where she was and if she was okay. Every time someone told him or he remembered that she was dead, he worsened. He would start getting fits again. He would pass out and ask the same question. Where is Shreyasi? It seemed like he wanted an answer but not the one we gave him or the one he found in

  his repressed memories. His mind would continually negate the reality of Shreyasi’s death. His body rejected that he was in some way responsible for her death. The doctors realized a strong correlation of his guilt of Shreyasi’s death with his seizures; the seizures were how the brain coped. Since the doctors found that his mind was rejecting the possibility of him being responsible for Shreyasi’s death they tried to make him come to terms with it,’ said Sumit.

  ‘So?’

  ‘The cycle kept repeating itself till the doctor found a breakthrough. He tried a largely experimental treatment called Retrieval-induced Forgetting,’ said Sumit.

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘It means creating false memories. If you keep telling a lie to someone who suffers from dissociative amnesia, someone whose memories are repressed because the event was traumatic, he starts to believe in the lie. So the doctor started lying to Daman. Every time Daman asked where

  Shreyasi was, the doctor lied to him. And then he asked us to corroborate the lie. It worked.

  Slowly, his dreams started to change. Many times, she wouldn’t die in the dreams,’ said Sumit.

  ‘You told him the lie that Daman wasn’t driving the car? And that Shreyasi survived the car crash and left the country since?’ Avni guessed aloud.

  Sumit nodded. ‘It worked like a dream,’ he said. ‘Within weeks, it was as if our old Daman was back. Of course, he kept asking me about Shreyasi and whether I had talked to her or if she had reached out. I kept lying about it all. We made him believe that none of us liked Shreyasi because she was the one driving the car and had ended up almost killing him. The more we made him rehearse the lies, the more he believed in them. I should have never—’

  Avni shift
ed her chair closer to Sumit’s and took his hand into hers. She said, ‘It wasn’t your fault. You were just looking out for him.’ She asked after a pause, nervous, ‘So what will the therapist do now?’

  ‘He will undo what I did. I told him Shreyasi died in the car crash two years ago and brought on the seizures and the nightmares. The therapist will tell him otherwise and get rid of them,’ said

  Sumit.

  ‘But there’s a Shreyasi lurking around this time,’ muttered Avni. ‘Once he makes him believe that Shreyasi is alive, he will think of her to be the same one. He will go running to her, won’t he?’

  ‘Probably.’

  ‘Would the memories of the Goa trip come back to him? Is there a possibility that he would recall the face of the real Shreyasi? If he does then he will know that this Shreyasi is an imposter.’

  ‘No. Those memories won’t come back. They are long gone.’

  40

  Avni called for a cab back to office. She had spent a good part of the last three days in the hospital.

  ‘You staying here won’t make a difference,’ Sumit had said—who had taken a leave of absence himself—and bid her well. Sitting at the back seat of the car, she took out her little pad and started to scribble. She wrote Shreyasi’s name, both the one who died in the crash and the one Sumit called a stalker and wondered about the connection between the two. If the stalker was to be believed, she had been around for more than three years, a full year before Daman had even met the Shreyasi who died that day in the accident. And she had proved herself to be in Goa when

  Daman was. Avni closed her eyes and massaged her temples. Her phone rang. It was Karan from office. She had been late on a few presentations they had to work together on. It was only yesterday that Karan had sounded her off for being lax. She had not fought back because he was right. Ever since the Barclays deal fell through, she had been out of sorts, being late to office, leaving early, spending hours staring at her computer screen. No one talked about the viral video any more and yet it marred her existence there. She wanted to get out. But there were no replies from the places she had sent her résumé to. She stared at the scribbled piece of paper again. It’s all because of this stalker—Shreyasi.