‘Daman,’ the girl whispered again. Most of her face was hidden behind her thick, dark cascading hair that fell down to her waist. With a jerk the girl turned her eyes to look at Avni. Her face was pale as a corpse and her thick black hair melted into darkness. She held Avni’s gaze. Her eyes were eerily opaque. She was beautiful but there was something terrifying in her beauty, something cold and sinister and hypnotic. The girl smiled at Avni. Avni’s heart thumped. She looked away.
Her arms were covered in goose pimples. Avni pretended to text to pass the time. She could still feel the strange girl’s onyx-like eyes on her. Her relentless stare made Avni feel like a spider had crawled inside her clothes. What is taking Daman so much time? Time passed slowly. She could still faintly hear the girl’s mumblings but couldn’t make out a word except one. ‘Bitch. Bitch.
Bitch. Bitch. Bitch.’
‘Hey?’
‘Huh?’
‘Where are you lost?’
Avni noticed she was sweating. Daman took his seat and blocked the girl out of her view. She breathed easy.
‘I was thinking we should go out and celebrate in the evening,’ said Avni.
Daman flashed a thumbs up. ‘Sure. I will call you. Aren’t you late?’
Avni nodded and he asked for the bill. Before long, the waiter placed the bill on their table.
After he collected the money and left, Avni noticed a stray piece of paper on the tray. She picked it up.
‘What’s that?’ asked Daman and took the paper from her.
On the paper written in a beautiful handwriting was a message.
Daman read it out: Best of luck for the book. I know it will be beautiful.
—Only yours, Shreyasi, The Girl of Your Dreams
A bell clanged loudly in the background. Avni turned towards the noise and saw the girl walk out of the door. The bell was attached to the door. When she turned back, she found Daman laughing. He thought it was Avni’s idea of a practical joke. Avni smiled weakly and then stared at the lipstick impression on the piece of paper.
A deep, dark, ominous red.
3
Daman checked his reflection in the dirty, speckled mirror. His white shirt was new, bought just for today, but it looked pale under the weary tube light. He had been meaning to change the tube for the past couple of months but hadn’t got around to it. He wouldn’t have had to care about the tube light or the faulty stove or the leaking tap if he still lived with his parents but . . . He popped the pills he’d kept on the shelf under the mirror and chewed on them. He hoped the bitter aftertaste would be a reminder to not drink. In any case, the pills didn’t make for happy companions with alcohol. He always felt as if the combination made his brain devour itself.
He shaved twice, cut himself in three places, and dabbed the aftershave balm he had bought the day before. There was plenty of time before he had to leave. He paced around nervously in his apartment. He smoked to calm his nerves. Jayanti had told him these parties seldom started on time. It wasn’t as much a party as a get-together with everyone who had worked on his book, The
Girl of My Dreams. After toiling tirelessly for six months, quitting his job and moving to a one- room-kitchen of his own, draining gallons of coffee, spending hours arguing with Jayanti over specifics, which stopped just short of them verbally abusing each other, the book was due to hit the stands in two weeks and today he would have the first copies in his hands.
Traffic was sparse but he drove slowly, steering away from the faster lanes and the SUVs. His car was practically new. It had cost him most of his advance from the book. He felt rich as he grasped the stitched premium leather on the steering wheel. His father hadn’t been impressed with his extravagance and had called him stupid and rash like he always did. He drove past Rajouri
Garden and Naraina Vihar. He had just taken the serpentine flyover at Dhaula Kuan when it started to rain. A drizzle and then a downpour. He slowed down even further and switched on the blinkers.
He had barely driven for a kilometre when a speeding motorcycle overtook him from his left and grazed his car ever so slightly. His lips turned into a snarl. Daman stepped on the gas. The engine responded with a groan and a roar. Daman’s blood tingled with anger, his scars throbbed. Water splashed all around him. Within seconds he was driving next to the motorcycle. Daman rolled down the window. The motorcyclist noticed him gesticulating. He weaved away from Daman, accelerated and whipped into more traffic. Daman didn’t let up. He chased him down ten kilometres away from the skirmish to the motorcyclist’s destination. Parking right in front of the motorcycle, he jumped out of the car, his hands clenching and unclenching. The motorcyclist had scarcely taken off his helmet when Daman swung wildly, getting the man square on his jaw. His knuckles rang with pain. Before the man could recover, Daman landed three more blows, each one catching the man’s face. The man stumbled and fell. Daman walked away from him, his heart continuing to pump urgently.
It felt good.
He put the key into the ignition and drove away from the scrambling man. ‘I can do with some duelling with Jayanti too today, for tampering with and destroying my book.’ He stared at the rear-
view mirror. He tried to smile. ‘It’s not destroyed. She knows what she’s doing.’ He drove. ‘Calm down. Calm down.’ Jayanti and he had come a long way since they’d signed the contract and the path had been thorny.
*
Daman bided his time in his car, in the parking lot of Olive Bar & Kitchen. It had been half an hour since he had battered the man but he was still antsy. At a distance he saw Jayanti step down from her Audi Q5 and hand over the keys to the valet. Dressed in a shimmery silver dress, she looked resplendent, almost royal. Tall and tight like a whip, she strode towards Olive’s entrance, her thick thighs straining against her dress. In her hands she carried a little brown bag.
‘The Girl of My Dreams. Author copies. My copies. My book!’ His name would be on a book for all of eternity. It would be his legacy. And yet happiness eluded him. He stepped down from the car, checked his hair and his smile in the side mirror. He missed Avni. Things would have been much easier had she been there. She would have calmed him down.
Daman sauntered towards the entrance, practising his smiles.
Hands went up, wine glasses in the air, and everyone shouted his name in unison as Daman walked in. Jayanti Raghunath stepped ahead, smiled widely, hugged him and thrust a glass of wine in his hands. Daman’s refusal withered when it met with shouts of ‘Drink! Drink!’ from the others.
Just one drink, he thought.
She introduced him to everyone. Most of their faces were flushed and they were inordinately happy with the book. They were also a little drunk. Ritwik, a smallish, fat, jovial guy, had designed the cover. Shraboni, a beautiful dusky girl with a strong voice, had worked on the final edits. Farhad, a tall, fair, handsome man with a little paunch, was the fiction marketing head. There was also a bunch of guys from the production and sales team whose names Daman had forgotten as soon as he heard them. The waiter refilled his drink. The wine was expensive and delicious, better than anything he had had before. It’s my day, he reminded himself. I will call a cab.
A little later, a cake was cut and Daman was handed over the first copies of The Girl of My
Dreams, a 350-page-long book with a red and black minimalist cover, amidst frenzied claps and long hugs. They left him alone to enjoy the copies. Daman held a copy in his hands, smelt it, flipped through the pages, and ran his hands over the cover. He wasn’t as joyful as he had imagined he would be all those months back when he’d signed the contract. Jayanti turned up next to him and put an arm around him. Her breath smelt of wine.
‘Like it?’
No. Daman nodded.
‘I told you, didn’t I? It will all be okay when the book comes out. You stress about the little things.’
‘Little things? Shreyasi was not a little thing.’
Jayanti scowled. ‘Now don’t start that again. Those changes w
ere important. That’s dead and buried. This is your day! Enjoy the moment, Daman. This will be the start of something amazing.’
Daman skimmed through the book as Jayanti droned on about how excited everyone was. The more he read the more he was filled with revulsion. Between his words, Jayanti’s words
protruded like ugly, jagged rocks. This book was as much Jayanti’s as it was his; she hadn’t just edited it, she had written large parts herself. He wanted to scream. Instead he drank.
‘Hmmm.’
‘Okay, wait. I will dispel your fears,’ said Jayanti and waved Shraboni down. Shraboni was already hammered. She stumbled twice before she placed herself in front of Jayanti and Daman.
‘She’s read the book. Twice,’ said Jayanti. ‘Who’s your best character, Shraboni?’
‘SHREYASI! SHE IS AWESOME!’ shouted Shraboni, closing her eyes and raising her glass in the air. ‘WOOOHOOOO!’
Daman pulled a face and sulked. This is not my FUCKING SHREYASI. It’s JAYANTI’S
SHREYASI. Daman said, ‘You need to congratulate Jayanti for that. My Shreyasi was different.’
‘Don’t say that,’ interjected Jayanti.
‘What the fuck am I supposed to say then?’
‘SHREYASI! WOOOOO!’ shouted Shraboni.
The people at the other tables looked at them strangely. Jayanti asked Ritwik to take Shraboni away. She turned to Daman after she left. ‘See? I told you. Let the book come out. Everyone will love the new Shreyasi. You can mope all you want if she doesn’t work. It will be on me.’
The waiter asked Daman if he needed a refill. He knew he shouldn’t drink; blackouts were common with him. But he needed to forget. He nodded. The waiter filled his glass to the brim.
There was no point in pursuing the Shreyasi conversation any more. What’s done was done.
Jayanti had bulldozed her way into the book and wrecked the Shreyasi Daman had thought of. The
Shreyasi in the book was a far cry from the cracked, lunatic, lovely, peculiar girl he had painstakingly created. His pale-faced Shreyasi was a mathematics major, a gold medallist no less, working with a start-up that made algorithms for search engines. She filled her time reading thick books on organic chemistry and ancient history and dead religions. She liked museums, caffeine, fire, multiple orgasms, Daman (the character), occasional BDSM and knock-knock jokes. The new
Shreyasi—the one Jayanti created and forced down Daman’s throat—was a cow, a girl from a
Mills & Boon book. Coy and polite, she was an English major, an intern at an online news portal.
She was all parts boring and bullshit.
‘This is what will work. This is what sells. Write this, DAMAN! I KNOW MY JOB! LISTEN
TO ME! THE BOOK WILL TANK OTHERWISE,’ she had said every time Daman got into a shouting match with her.
After numerous delays and skipped deadlines, Daman had given in.
Daman drank through the rest of the evening. Slowly everyone left. Jayanti was the last to leave.
She told Daman he could stay if he wanted to. After she left, Daman sunk back into the couch and ordered for numerous refills. Things became muddy thereafter. He started to read the book. The sentences Jayanti had written floated outside the book, coiled around his neck and squeezed it. His chest tightened. Before long he tossed it away. He ordered another drink. He passed out soon after and dreamt of angry readers burning his books in large piles.
EVERYONE WILL HATE SHREYASI.
He woke up to a waiter staring at his face and asking him to leave. He stumbled out of Olive with an unfinished bottle of champagne and walked to his car. He put the bottle to his lips. He sat
in the car and closed his eyes. He fumbled for his phone to call himself a cab but couldn’t find it.
He imagined ripping Jayanti’s throat out. He passed out.
4
When he opens his eyes next he sees a girl in the driver’s seat smiling at him. ‘Hi,’ says the girl.
‘Are you for real?’ he asks, or is this again a dream? ‘Show me your face,’ he slurs. He sees the girl smile. ‘I will remember your face,’ he says. ‘I hope you do,’ he hears the girl say. He mumbles a few words, smiles stupidly and drifts off. He wakes up and finds himself in the back seat.
‘Where are we going?’ he asks. ‘Are you Shreyasi?’
No one answers.
His head swims. The world spins violently around him. In the driver’s seat he sees the girl again. Dark hair, white skin, deep dark eyes, violently red lips, as if she has stepped out of his book, The Girl of My Dreams. She’s Shreyasi. He’s sure of it. He smiles in a drunken stupor. ‘Are you Shreyasi?’ he mumbles and giggles. ‘No, I am dreaming, Jayanti killed you,’ he says in disbelief. ‘She destroyed you,’ he continues. ‘I am dreaming, it’s the pills and the alcohol,’ he says to himself. ‘I shouldn’t have had the last bottle . . .’
‘Sleep, you’re drunk, baby,’ he hears the girl say.
And like a child, he sleeps again. He wakes up. The car is parked in a deserted area. There’s silence. He tries to help himself up but loses balance. Falling forward he cuts his lower lip and bleeds. The girl is reading his book, The Girl of My Dreams. She turns towards him. The kindness has drained out of her face. She is glowering. ‘Why?’ she asks. She pulls out a spanner and keeps it on the passenger seat. Then she takes out a lipstick and darkens her lips in the rear-view mirror.
Putting the lipstick back in, she raises the spanner as if to smash his face with it . . .
‘Why?’ shouts Daman.
‘This is not me,’ he hears the girl say.
‘But . . . but, you left me,’ says Daman.
‘The book, the fucking book!’ the girl mumbles and brings down the spanner in a deadly arc . . .
*
He woke up with a jerk. He tried to feel his face; he wasn’t hurt but he was bleeding from a small cut on his lip. He was in the driver’s seat of his car. It was parked outside his apartment building.
He stumbled out of the door on all fours and promptly vomited. He belched and retched and vomited till there was nothing but air inside him. He slumped against the front tyre. Sitting there he drifted in and out of sleep, sweating under the beating sun. It wasn’t until noon that he was wide awake. He found himself inside the car with the air conditioner on full blast. He shivered. He turned the AC down. Sitting inside the car, he cursed himself for having drunk so much and strained to think what happened the night before. The motorcyclist. The party. Jayanti. The book.
The waiter. The dream. The girl? Another fucking dream. He rummaged through the glovebox for
his phone. There were twenty missed calls from Avni and a few from his parents. He called Avni first. ‘Hey?’
‘What the hell is happening, Daman? I have been calling you since forever. I was so scared!’
‘I . . . I just got drunk last night,’ he said. ‘I only just got home.’
‘I called Olive and you had left when they closed. Where were you?’
‘Yes, yes. I drove back home and passed out in the car. I just woke up,’ he said. He pressed his hand against his head which was bursting with pain. He needed a Crocin.
‘You drove back home drunk? What is wrong with you, Daman?’ she snapped. ‘And what was that text you sent me?’
‘What? What text? I didn’t send you anything . . .’ he said. ‘. . . that I remember.’
Avni read out the text. ‘Bitch. You don’t deserve him.’
‘I didn’t send that,’ he said. He added after a pause. ‘I must have been trying to send it to
Jayanti.’
‘Why her?’
‘The book, Avni. I got the author copies and it’s . . . it’s not what I expected. I will talk to you in the evening. I feel like I’m dying right now—’
‘Do you want me to come over?’
‘No, I will manage. See you in the evening? Okay? I will talk to you in a bit,’ he said and disconnected the call.
He found the
text he had sent Avni in the Sent folder. He was glad he didn’t end up sending it to
Jayanti. But he wondered why he referred to himself in the third person. ‘I should stop drinking.’
He looked around for the books in the car. He checked the glove compartment, the boot of the car, even below the seats. He couldn’t find them. He figured he must have left them at the restaurant.
Disappointed, he stepped out of the car to call Jayanti and ask for more copies. He had just dialled her number when he noticed what he thought was the burnt jacket of his book a couple of yards away from the car. He disconnected the call. Is it the book? He walked closer to inspect. He bent over the smouldering heap of ashes. All that was left of the five author copies of The Girl of My
Dreams was blackened paper and ash. He picked out one half-burnt jacket which had miraculously escaped the flames. When did I do this?
He texted Jayanti asking her to courier him more copies of the books. Daman trudged back to his apartment thinking of the book. The opening line that described Shreyasi written by Jayanti came rushing to his head—Born in 1988, fair-skinned Shreyasi was every boy’s dream; nice and soft- spoken, she was a bundle of joy and kindness. Daman’s stomach churned.
Jayanti’s words ran in Daman’s head.
‘Everyone will love the new Shreyasi.’
Fuck.
5
‘Daman Roy, the author of The Girl of My Dreams, reached for Jayanti Raghunath’s neck and crushed her throat. He grabbed her by the hair and rammed her head repeatedly against the glass walls of her cabin till the cracked glass dribbled with blood and brains. Her body slumped to the ground, her fingers twitching, her legs trembling. Daman stomped on her smashed skull till she was unrecognizable. A fitting punishment for changing his book to a hunk of shit.’