The car stopped.
‘Why are we stopping?’ asked Avni.
‘Someone else is boarding the cab as well,’ said the driver. ‘You booked a carpool cab.’
‘Can’t we just go? I will pay extra.’
‘That’s against the company rules, ma’am,’ said the driver.
Avni sighed. A few minutes passed by and there was no sign of the person who had booked the same cab. ‘Are you going to wait here for the entire day?’ asked Avni.
‘Just a couple of more minutes, ma’am,’ he said.
Just as he said this, the door of the car flung open. A girl slipped in next to Avni.
‘Hi,’ said Shreyasi and smiled at Avni.
Avni recoiled from her. ‘What are you doing here?’ She fumbled nervously through her handbag and took out two hundred-rupee notes. She flung them near the driver’s seat. ‘I’m leaving,’ she said and opened the door. But Shreyasi held her hand. Avni grimaced. Shreyasi’s grip was strong.
‘Leave me,’ said Avni.
‘We need to talk.’
‘We don’t!’ shot back Avni.
‘I know that you know that Shreyasi is dead,’ said Shreyasi. ‘We need to talk about Daman. It’s for the good of both of us.’
Avni wrested her hand free and stepped out of the car. She walked away from the car. The car followed.
‘GO THE FUCK AWAY!’ shouted Avni at the car. The car still followed. Avni strode to the car.
‘WHAT DO YOU WANT! YOU ALREADY HAVE EVERYTHING! NOW JUST GO!’
The car still followed.
‘I want to talk,’ said Shreyasi. She opened the door. ‘Come on now. For Daman.’
After resisting for a bit, Avni stepped inside. I will kill her, that’s the only thing that’s left.
Don’t cry. Don’t cry!
‘How’s he doing?’ asked Shreyasi passing Avni the box of tissues. Avni waved it away dismissively. ‘I would have seen him but Sumit is guarding him like a hound.’
‘He needs to be guarded from you,’ snapped Avni.
Shreyasi smirked. ‘I would say the exact opposite. He needs me. He needs his Shreyasi.’
‘YOU ARE NOT SHREYASI!’ bellowed Avni, her hands clenching into fists.
Shreyasi chortled. ‘Of course, I’m his Shreyasi. Okay, I’m not the one who died in the accident,
I will grant you that. But I’m Shreyasi. The girl he should have always been in love with. And he will ask for me when he wakes up.’
‘You’re a fraud! That’s what you are. You’re just pretending to be Shreyasi and you’re not. He never wrote the book or the posts thinking of you. That girl he wrote about is dead! You are no one to him,’ flamed Avni.
‘Says the one who has been with him for just a year. I have been with him for three years.’ She raised her hand stretching out three fingers. ‘I waited for a year to talk to him! Unlike you, who just saw him and started talking. WHAT I HAVE FOR HIM CAN’T BE COMPARED TO THE FEW
MONTHS YOU HAVE HAD HIM FOR!’
‘Is that what you wanted to tell me?’
‘I didn’t mean to lose my temper,’ said Shreyasi, softly. ‘I apologize. Actually, I had something to offer you.’
‘And what makes you think I will take up anything you offer? You’re vile and all you know is how to destroy lives.’
‘I didn’t destroy anyone’s life. All I wanted was love. I have that now. And Daman wouldn’t be in that hospital room had Sumit not unnecessarily told him about Shreyasi’s death,’ Shreyasi said.
‘But he’s going to be fine. He’s going to wake up thinking Shreyasi is dead. But the therapist is going to fool him into believing that Shreyasi still lives. That’s the only course of treatment which works for him. Retrieval-induced Forgetting? I guess that’s what it’s called. And when he starts believing that Shreyasi walked out alive from the accident, he’s going to remember me, the stalker- cum-guardian-cum-love-of-his-life. He will connect the dots. The memories will start flooding back in and he will be in my arms again.’
Avni asked what she had been itching to ask her. ‘If you weren’t in the car with him that night, who was?’
‘Shreyasi,’ she answered.
‘Of course I know that but—’
‘The girl’s name was Shreyasi,’ said Shreyasi. She chuckled. ‘It’s strange to say her name.
Anyway, she tried to keep him away from me and look what happened. Poor girl! She ended up broken and burnt and dead.’ Shreyasi looked at Avni. ‘Oh, you look confused now. Aw. So sweet.’
She laughed. ‘Everything you heard that day in the coffee shop was true. I fell in love with him,
read his mails and watched him for almost a year. I knew he was going to Goa. I planned my trip too to the last detail. I was going to give him the love story he always wanted and fantasized about.
I booked into the same hotel as he did. Everything was fine till she walked in . . .’ Her voice trailed off.
‘Yes?’
‘. . . Shreyasi, the girl who shared my name, walked in,’ said Shreyasi. ‘The dumb-fuck at the hotel had switched our rooms because our names were the same. She got the room directly opposite Daman’s and I was given one on another floor. Before I knew it, they had struck up a conversation. That slut! That fucking whore! I was still fighting for my room when they had started talking! I had waited a year and she . . . right in front of my eyes. Can you believe it? They were smiling and laughing like they had always been friends. I wanted to strangle the girl and tell Daman that he was supposed to meet me here, not some two-bit whore from Bengaluru. I was shattered,
Avni, I was . . . For the next three days, I watched on as the wrong Shreyasi shamelessly flirted with Daman! And he had the audacity, the shamelessness to even respond to her! They went out every day, right in front of my eyes. I was there . . . I had done so much for him and yet! He was with the wrong Shreyasi!’ She clutched Avni’s hand and squeezed. ‘You tell me? Was it fair?
Wasn’t he supposed to be with me? Of course he was. He should have been with me! But he was with her! All the time.’ She took her hand off Avni’s and stared at her fingers. ‘The accident scared me so much. But she died.’ She gazed at Avni. ‘It served her right. It had to happen.’
‘Did you want her to die?’ asked Avni.
‘Of course! But that accident . . .’ She sighed. She took a deep breath and continued. ‘I thought he would never wake up. So I got married. I thought I will eventually move on but I couldn’t. I kept thinking of him, I kept praying for him. And three months later, he woke up. He was battered and his head was gone but he was alive.’ She smiled. ‘And then he remembered her. The other
Shreyasi.’
She’s crazy. Get out of the car. Go as far away as possible. Avni said, ‘But you said you were the character from the posts. You did the same things that she did. You said it was inspired by you and that’s why you were furious at him for writing that book that didn’t portray you well. But you weren’t the girl from the posts! He didn’t know you.’
‘YES, I WASN’T THE PERSON FROM THE POSTS! BUT I BECAME THAT PERSON! I became the girl from the posts. SHE WAS ME, AND I WAS HER! THERE WAS NO
DIFFERENCE! I became the Shreyasi he loved, I became who he wrote about, I became the person from the posts, I talked like her, I dressed up like her, I grew my hair long, got the same tattoos. I did all the things he wrote about. I became the person he could have been in love with, the person he would write about . . . and then he betrayed me! I waited for the book for so long. I had imagined the release of the book . . . I had imagined every reader of Daman asking him where this girl Shreyasi was, the girl that I had become . . . and then slowly and steadily I would have revealed myself to him . . . He would have found me to be the spitting image of Shreyasi . . . He would have finally found me . . . He would cry and love me . . . He would embrace me . . . and then he would reveal me to the rest of the world . . . . But The Girl of My Dreams, the pile of garbage he wrote, mocked everything I had
for him! I had had enough. I had to meet him and set things right. What if he wrote another one like that? All that I had done for him would have been
for nothing. The Shreyasi he thought he loved might have died but his love for her could have lived through me. He could love me.’
‘You need help. You are crazy,’ said Avni.
‘Because I fell in love?’
‘Because you’re crazy. I am taking no part in this. I’m out.’ She tapped on the driver’s shoulder asking him to stop the car at the next signal.
‘You can still be with Daman.’
Avni frowned. ‘What?’
‘I’m married and that doesn’t stop me from loving Daman. Daman and I don’t need to be married to keep our love story alive. We have talked about that.’
‘And Daman is okay with that?’ asked Avni, shocked. Shreyasi nodded. ‘And you want me to have a relationship like you do with your husband? Are you out of your mind?’
‘I’m as serious as serious can be.’
‘I can’t believe this! You’re shitting me!’
‘I’m not. I just—’
‘There’s a fundamental difference. Your husband doesn’t know of Daman, he doesn’t know you’re a cheating whore, but I know. I know you two are seeing each other,’ Avni spat out. Shreyasi looked on and smiled. ‘What?’ asked Avni.
Shreyasi pulled the sleeve of her kurta up. On her right arm were three bluish-red imprints.
Someone must have held her tightly there. She covered them up.
‘He hit you? You should go to—’
Shreyasi chortled and told Avni she was so naive. ‘I let him grab me and push me. But this was all before I told him about Daman.’ She smiled and continued, ‘Marriages are tricky, Avni. Do you know Akash has never been faithful to me? Take a wild guess who he was sleeping with? It’s almost like a bad movie.’
‘Who?’
‘I always knew he had been cheating on me. He was the only one who could hoodwink me all this time. He was more careful than all of you. The girl had been hiding in plain sight,’ said
Shreyasi and chuckled. She flicked through her phone and showed Avni the picture of the girl.
Shreyasi continued, ‘You know who that is? Does she look familiar? No? She’s my elder sister.
She’s married too, if I may add. Now you know why I never found any suspicious names on his last dialled list. I wasn’t looking for my sister’s number.’ Shreyasi laughed. ‘My marriage was always a lie. And he’s still sleeping with her. I just confronted him a few days back and he lashed out at me just like I had wanted him to. He called me a bitch for breaching his privacy and whatnot, that low-life asshole. Little did he know I recorded everything,’ Shreyasi said and winked. ‘Once I had that I told him about Daman. He could do nothing but listen like a scared puppy.’
She’s a witch. ‘Why doesn’t he leave you?’
‘He can’t and he won’t. His family will flay him. He’s so cute. He’s totally afraid of his mother.
And imagine what will happen when I show the video during the divorce proceedings. He’s not going anywhere. He will be my cute husband on the leash. Well, he stands to gain a lot too. He can do whatever he wants to outside of this marriage and I don’t have to sleep with him any more. Let my sister have him.’
‘But why wouldn’t you leave him and go with Daman?’ retorted Avni.
‘That’s something you won’t understand,’ said Shreyasi. ‘There’s a subtle difference between a wife and a muse. I’m Daman’s muse. He will immortalize us when he writes about me. What does a wife have to gain? A few good years. A few kids. A little security? How’s that any good? Writers don’t write about their wives, they write about their muses. Wives are nothing more than facilitators in their lives. Wives ground them, that’s all they do. Why do you think he didn’t write about you apart from the fact that you’re dull?’
Avni seethed but kept quiet.
‘Because you’re too easy. He sees you every day. He talks to you every day. He can have you in his bed every day. Even if you were interesting, you would no longer be after a little while. You’re like that song which once heard too many times becomes unbearable. The shelf lives of wives are abysmal. Muses are forever. He will always love me. Till he doesn’t totally have me all for himself, he will love me, he will crave for me, he will want me.’
‘I think—’
‘You can be his wife.’
Avni laughed out mirthlessly. ‘So kind of you. But I think I will pass. Bhaiya? Drop me at the next metro station. Take this woman as far from me as possible.’ A wife, and she will still be the mistress, thought Avni.
‘Avni?’ said Shreyasi and waited for Avni to look at her. She continued with a deathly stare in her eyes, ‘You won’t tell anything that I said to Daman about my husband or about my more-than- generous offer to you. Of course, I don’t have to tell you what will happen otherwise?’
‘I’m not scared of your threats,’ snapped Avni.
‘You should be. Unless you want to see Daman back in a hospital bed, shackled to his bed, and you in a prison. Wipe that surprise off your face. I have a video of you pushing Karthik down a flight of stairs. It’s full HD. I would have showed it to you sometime but it seems like we aren’t friends.’
‘You don’t—’
‘I do have it. Daman has seen it too. It serves as a constant reminder for him of why he shouldn’t talk to you.’ Shreyasi smiled.
‘You bitch!’ retorted Avni. She said after composing herself, ‘Fine, you win. I’m out of this. But before I leave I should tell you that there’s just one little problem, Shreyasi.’
‘What?’
‘Even if the psychiatrist makes him believe that Shreyasi lives and he gets better, he will always know that you’re a stalker and that you staged Goa. He will never love you the way you want him to,’ argued Avni.
‘Oh, how stupid of you, Avni! You still think that these little details can keep Daman and me apart? You don’t know anything about love, do you?’ Shreyasi smiled.
Avni got down at the next metro station. She asked Shreyasi just before she got off, ‘Did you cause that accident?’
‘No,’ Shreyasi answered. ‘I would never endanger his life.’
The cab drove off.
41
He’s so beautiful, thought Shreyasi looking at Daman.
‘Why didn’t you come visit me earlier?’ Daman asked.
I wanted to see you, baby. I wanted to hold you and kiss you and make love to you. I wanted to be with you, baby, but your stupid parents . . . Shreyasi pushed the cake in front of him. It had the words ‘Welcome back’ written on it in red icing. It had been three weeks since Daman had been discharged from the hospital and he had been living with his parents for the first two weeks.
‘You think I didn’t want to? Your parents hate me. I didn’t want to make it worse,’ said Shreyasi and held back her tears.
In the two weeks that Daman had been at his parents’ house and away from her, she had been inundated with texts and calls from him. He kept telling her they have to meet, that he needed to talk to her, that he missed her. His language in the texts was not of a friend or a foe or someone who had been vexed by a stalker, but that of a forlorn lover who had been kept away from his love.
Shreyasi had read those texts countless times. She had taken printouts of the screenshots of the texts, drawn hearts around them and had stuck them on her cubicle’s pinboard. She would read them every now and then, and blush like a newly wed wife.
‘I thought you would never come back to your place,’ said Shreyasi.
Daman held Shreyasi’s hand and said, ‘Maa didn’t want me to but I told them I had to finish the book and I couldn’t do it in that house. I only came because I had to see you. I couldn’t have waited any longer,’ Daman responded with a gentle squeeze of her hand.
He loves me!
‘Why?’ asked Shreyasi.
‘I . . . I just wanted to hold you. I wante
d to feel this,’ he said and grasped her hand tighter. ‘I wanted to feel you close to me. I had been going crazy in the therapy . . . the dreams . . .’
Shreyasi leant into Daman and kept her head on his shoulder. He smells like spring. ‘Do I still die in those dreams?’
Daman put his arm around Shreyasi and kissed her forehead.
‘Do you remember how you got the first seizure?’ she asked.
‘I don’t want to dwell on that. I want to talk about us,’ he answered.
‘I just want to be careful, Daman. I read everything there is to be read on PTSD. There are certain triggers that bring on these panic attacks. I don’t want you to be in the hospital again,’ said
Shreyasi.
‘That’s sweet of you but I don’t remember. The last I know is Sumit talking to me.’
‘Was it something he said?’ asked Shreyasi.
‘Can we cut the cake? It looks delicious. The hospital food made me want to kill myself.’
‘In a bit. Tell me?’
‘No, I don’t remember. Sumit is the last thing I remember. After that I just remember everything in little flashes. I remember that I was restrained to my bed. I remember hearing my mother cry, the ward boys shouting. I remember seeing Sumit sobbing, my father fighting with the doctors. Then of course, I remember sitting in front of the psychiatrist and crying. I remember telling him how scared I was thinking that I had killed you, that you had died in the car crash. I remember the psychiatrist telling me that you hadn’t died and yet the tears wouldn’t stop. I knew you hadn’t died because I remembered us, because I remembered your face . . . yet the feeling was so strong that I kept thinking you were dead. I just wanted to see you so badly. But my parents . . . I was so confused . . . You were alive because I remembered your face and whatever happened between you, me and Avni but in the dreams you were dead, I could feel you die. The doctor kept telling me otherwise, he kept telling me you are alive. I knew it was the truth because I had met you after the accident, I remembered that. I remember telling the doctor about you, how you came back into my life in the strangest way possible. About how you told me you had stalked me for a year.’