You Are All I Need Page 5

  His words hit me like arrows. If he had expected me to break down and beg for his forgiveness, he was expecting too much. But the fact is I did.

  He comforted me. ‘It’s okay. Love makes people do strange things.’

  I tried my best to stop those rumours. It took about eight months. Rekha’s wedding with the doctor Mr Shastri had suggested never took place. Mr Shastri told the groom’s family to make some outrageous dowry demands. The result was that your Nana (grandfather) threw them out of the house. And it was Mr Shastri who did all this for me. I think he did forgive me.

  I married your mother a year later.

  A week after my wedding, Mr Shastri, along with Mrs Prasad, disappeared from the colony. They are now rumoured to be living together happily in Delhi.

  I looked at my two daughters, awaiting their verdict. I had impressed myself immensely with my storytelling skills and felt like Prithviraj Chauhan in his full battle regalia, armour glinting in the sun, chest puffed up.

  ‘Well, what do you think?’ I asked.

  Naina was the first to remark. ‘You actually cried when Mr Shastri came to meet you?’

  That’s why daughters are special—a father crying is a big deal for them.

  And somewhere the spirit of Prithviraj smiled.

  6

  Destiny Swipes Right

  Rachita Ramya

  Vaishnavi

  Buzz!

  I felt my phone vibrate on my mattress, indicating another notification from the new guy I had been speaking to for the past twenty minutes. These dating apps were the new way of connecting with people these days. I would be missing out on all these single guys if I wasn’t registered on them. My friend and roommate Sunita had warned me that most of these apps had creeps hiding behind their profiles, demanding all sorts of crazy things from girls. But Sunita was a pessimist. I mean, she accused dolphins of being emotionless sex addicts. Cute, innocent, smiling dolphins!

  So it was no surprise that men as a species fared quite poorly in her eyes.

  ‘Not all men are bad, Sunita.’ I would roll my eyes at her, annoyed.

  But men had proven me wrong—time and time again.

  This was my last attempt at online dating now.

  Although this new guy I was talking to did seem really nice. We hadn’t talked for that long, but I could tell he—

  ‘Are you busty?’

  —he was just like the rest of them!

  I was done. I furiously tapped my fingers on my phone and deleted the app before my dating horror story could worsen.

  I was giving up. Finding your soulmate was harder than I had anticipated.

  Being Indian, it was assumed that I would always have the option of arranged marriage open to me, but my parents were the last people I would trust to find me a guy. For all I knew, they would find the most convenient, accessible guy who would be willing to ‘settle’ for their daughter, and then spend the rest of their unexpended energy convincing me that he was the one.

  No, thank you. Almost six years back, when I had stepped out of my hometown in Punjab and flown to Mumbai, I had sworn I would be leading my life on my terms. This was my dream life.

  Having said that, being ghosted and friend-zoned by the guys in the dating world was not the dream I had anticipated. The dating scene in Mumbai was hell for someone like me. Being the nerd that I was, I hadn’t played any actual games—and now I was required to play all these manipulative dating games.

  Text only after three days of meeting someone.

  When interested, act like you are not interested.

  Don’t mention you are looking for anything serious too early into the relationship.

  These rules were harder to remember than BODMAS in math equations. Needless to say, I was a math geek trying to survive in a world where the laws of logic did not apply.

  ‘I am never going to find anyone, Sunita. I am going be single forever,’ I stated when I met her for coffee near our apartment.

  ‘Join the club!’ Sunita said exuberantly.

  ‘This is nothing to be happy about,’ I grumbled.

  Somehow, we had exchanged roles in this conversation. Right now I was the pessimist.

  ‘How are things with new guy? The one whose profile you saw and mentally decided you are going to marry him before even sending him a “hi”?’

  There were times I wished I could kill Sunita. Now was one of those times. But she was partially right. I was super picky about these guys on the dating apps. And, somehow, I still always picked the wrong ones.

  ‘He turned out just like the rest of them,’ I muttered under my breath.

  ‘Well, no wonder! You met him on Hickie. That’s a hook-up app. Everyone knows that!’

  I gaped at her.

  ‘You recommended it to me!’

  ‘Yeah, for fooling around and letting your hair down before finding someone worthwhile. I never told you to expect to find your soulmate there,’ Sunita told me in the ‘I told you so’ tone she reserved only for me. ‘If you want a more civilized app for settling down with someone, try this new app called Beloved. People get married after meeting there.’

  ‘You told me two of your friends got married after meeting on Hickie.’

  ‘Yes . . . these were other friends . . . who got married after hooking up on Hickie.’ Sunita hesitated, trying to hide her guilt. ‘But you, with your Indian values, don’t believe in hooking up, right?’

  I gave her a frustrated look.

  Although it had nothing to do with Indian values, I didn’t believe in the casual dating culture that had taken over the world. I was looking for something real.

  ‘Anyway, let’s forget this for now and go out. It’s Saturday night!’ Sunita changed the topic just as we were about to finish our café lattes.

  I nodded. I guess getting lost in a crowd of people at a club was a good way to forget your loneliness.

  After we came back home to get ready, I sat in silence in my room. I hated the empty feeling of being alone in a big city like Mumbai. I wanted someone to be there for me.

  I grabbed my phone and browsed Instagram for something to cheer me up.

  No luck. Just happy couples going on vacays, nowhere close to mirroring my anxiety. These days Instagram was a trigger for me to feel depressed. Truth was, I was alone. And it scared me more than anything else in the world.

  ‘Let’s go!’ Sunita’s booming voice came from outside.

  I scanned myself in the mirror. I looked underdressed for a Saturday night in the city. No make-up, simple clothes, long hair swept back in a messy ponytail. I also had my spectacles on, giving the impression of being dressed for a casual Sunday.

  I don’t care, I said to myself, slamming the door behind me.

  Karan

  The Saturday-night scene in Mumbai was like a celebration of the epic ‘work hard, party harder’ saying. My friends had dragged me to this brand-new club that had recently opened in south Mumbai. The sparkling, shiny crowd of decked-up girls was hard to ignore, but here I was, looking at my phone for the hundredth time. The girl I had been speaking to on this app had gone AWOL. My mistake completely. I was not paying attention while typing and autocorrect decided to change my words from harmless to sexually elaborate. Even offensive.

  I tried to hide my laughter. This was really a funny situation and if that girl had just waited a few minutes for me to apologize, we could have been on a date now, laughing about the incident together.

  I shook my head. Girls these days.

  Suddenly, my eyes stopped at this girl who had decided to come into the glamorous club dressed as . . . herself. This was refreshing to see.

  She looked familiar. I wondered if we had bumped into each other before.

  ‘Hi,’ I smiled at her.

  Her hazel-brown eyes widened. Did we know each other from somewhere?

  ‘The app,’ she said as if she had read my mind.

  So I had already met her in the virtual world.

  Th
is was the same girl from Hickie, the one who had been offended by autocorrect on my phone.

  In the warped real–virtual dichotomy, it was hard to imagine that behind the picture on these apps was a walking, talking, breathing, real person. But looking at her dimple deepen in her cheeks as she flashed me a gorgeous smile was confirmation that she was, in fact, real. And right now she was barely standing a few inches from me.

  ‘Oh yeah! Vaishnavi! You look different in person. Good different,’ I emphasized.

  She did not look like the dolled-up girl from her profile.

  Glancing at her horn-rimmed glasses, I wondered if she was a closet geek like me. That would be so cool.

  I also noticed we had a pretty significant height difference. And she hadn’t attempted to conceal her height by wearing extra inches of heels, unlike the rest of the girls at the club.

  ‘You look great too,’ she replied, looking up at me.

  Had she blushed a little when she said that, or was that my imagination?

  These party clubs, with their over-the-top music and neon blinking lights, seemed to have psychedelic powers that could almost play with your head.

  I could see her friend was trying to nudge her into a private gossip session.

  ‘Well, if you are busy now, we can catch up later.’ I winked at her and hoped that she would forgive me for my mistake earlier. Or, rather, excuse my phone’s mistake.

  As she looked at me with a surprised expression on her face, I realized it must have finally dawned on her.

  ‘Oh, so you meant busy earlier! I just thought . . . actually, I just thought . . .’

  ‘ . . . That I am a creep,’ I finished her sentence. ‘It was a typo, but you were quick to judge me, like I was quick to judge you. I thought you were this really glamorous, high-maintenance girl.’

  ‘I am anything but that,’ she said, a little defensively.

  ‘Yes, she is not high-maintenance at all!’ her friend chimed in.

  ‘It’s really nice to meet you in person,’ I said, looking into Vaishnavi’s eyes meaningfully, hoping she would get the hint.

  I did like her, a little more than normal. Her heart-shaped face was hard to ignore. She stood out even when she clearly wasn’t trying to.

  As we continued staring at each other, I realized maybe this was meant to happen. Otherwise why else, in a city of about eighteen million, would two people run into each other twice on the same day?

  ‘Could you excuse us for just a second?’ her friend decided to interrupt again.

  ‘Sure.’

  What was it about girls talking to their best friends about everything?

  She whispered something into Vaishnavi’s ears while I tried not to eavesdrop.

  ‘We will just be back,’ Vaishnavi said with an expression that was hard to read.

  They disappeared into the crowd and I was left wondering if I had done something wrong again.

  The DJ was finally in the house and in a matter of seconds, the club walls started thumping with Bollywood pop remixes. I could see the dance floor was lit with a crowd of people determined to break a leg. I hoped it would be their own.

  I looked at my watch. It had been fifteen minutes since Vaishnavi and her friend had been gone. There was a strong possibility that they weren’t coming back.

  ‘Hey! We are all going to this other club in Bandra. Do you want to tag along?’ One of my friends shouted at me over the unbearably loud music.

  ‘No, you guys go. I will just go home now.’

  It had been a long day. And, most probably, I had been stood up by the same girl twice—on an app and now in person.

  I hated this millennial culture. I was done.

  Never again was I going to rely on these dating apps to meet my soulmate.

  Vaishnavi

  Last night, because of Sunita, I had managed to lose the guy from the app. By the time we came back with drinks, he was gone. Vanished into the sea of people.

  Except it wasn’t my intention to lose him this time. Meeting Karan in person had made him more human. And I realized he never meant to make me uncomfortable in our virtual interaction. It was just a silly mistake. One made by his phone’s intuitive memory.

  I had made the mistake of judging Karan too soon. And after literally being handed a second chance by serendipity, I had lost him again.

  Today, I downloaded Hickie again, only to find that he had deleted his profile from the app.

  I didn’t even know his full name. There were a gazillion Karans on social media. I would never find him.

  ‘I hate you!’ I said to Sunita for the umpteenth time. ‘Why did you have to convince me to get drinks to loosen up?’

  ‘It wasn’t my fault. The line was too long, and the bartender was inexperienced. And I thought your friend would wait for us . . .’

  ‘It’s no use discussing this now,’ I said, as Karan’s handsome face loomed before my eyes. ‘He might have gone home with some other girl.’

  But even as I said those words, my mind refused to believe that. We had something. A spark. A feeling. A strange kind of chemistry?

  My math brain quickly brought me back to the sad reality of logic.

  Sparks don’t last a lifetime. Commitments do. And Karan had decided to leave without even saying goodbye. While heroes in famous love stories could wait a lifetime to get a glimpse of their lady love, Karan hadn’t even cared enough to wait fifteen minutes.

  ‘Maybe it wasn’t meant to be,’ I announced with a heavy heart.

  ‘Listen, don’t feel bad. There are plenty of guys in Mumbai and—’

  ‘—and none for me to date,’ I groaned.

  ‘No! That’s not true!’ Sunita, the reformed optimist, urged. ‘Wait, let’s get you on Beloved.’

  After one hour of vehemently refusing, I finally let her create my profile on Beloved.

  I was still unsure about this. Were people really that replaceable in this new era of dating?

  ‘Voila!’ she exclaimed as she signed in with my social media account. ‘Now let’s find your soulmate.’

  I looked at the profiles, feeling dejected for some reason.

  Why couldn’t I have asked for Karan’s phone number? Or his full name?

  These new men were all good-looking, but I felt I had shared something special with Karan. Something intangible. Maybe it was just a spark, but I wanted to explore more.

  ‘I think I want to go off this app, Sunita.’

  I instinctively decided to pull the plug on this online dating thing.

  ‘But at least look at some of them . . .’

  ‘I don’t want to look at anyone,’ I said stubbornly as I tried to snatch my phone from her hands.

  But just as I wriggled to free my phone from Sunita’s claw-like grasp, her fingers swiped to the next profile by mistake.

  And I saw the face I had been seeking.

  Dressed in a grey T-shirt and black shorts, he was standing in the middle of what looked like Juhu beach. His face was partially covered with a pair of Ray-Ban sunglasses, but I could still see his lopsided grin. The one that had made me want to meet him in person. The grin that had melted my heart when I had actually met him in person.

  ‘Isn’t this the same guy?’ Sunita asked in surprise.

  I stared at his picture in disbelief.

  There come moments in life when people get exactly what they have asked for and they don’t know how to deal with it. Sometimes, in these moments, confusion precedes joy.

  I played around with his picture smiling up at me—left, right, left . . .?

  ‘There,’ Sunita announced as she swiped right for me, relieving me of my anxiety. ‘Maybe it is meant to be.’

  Or not. His profile had been marked inactive.

  I would find out soon enough.

  But after hours of frantically checking my phone, I realized there was a possibility of never hearing from Karan.

  I looked at my phone again, hoping something had changed in the last thirt
y seconds.

  And, sure enough, there was a notification.

  7

  Love Transcends Generations

  Rupali Tiwari

  I am sitting in front of my granddaughter. She is crying but I can’t hear her. Maybe because my hearing has faded with age or maybe because she doesn’t have the strength to cry loudly.

  Since when have we become so powerless that all we can do is watch our children cry?

  ‘Darling,’ I say, putting my hand on her head, ‘if you won’t tell me what the matter is, how will I help you?’

  She looks up at me with red eyes. She must have been crying for a long time. She coughs, dries her eyes with her hands and smears her kajal and the other gooey thing girls put on their eyes these days. In my days, it was just kajal and that, too, in a brass container, made from the smoke of earthen diyas.

  I wipe her eyes with my sari’s pallu. That is what we are supposed to use it for. To wipe our loved ones’ tears. Girls nowadays have no interest in learning how to wear saris or even bother with suits or dupattas. All of them wear jeans or short dresses—our culture going down the drain while we watch.

  I watch as my granddaughter gets tired of crying.

  ‘Did someone say something to you?’

  She shakes her head.

  ‘Did you fail your exams?’

  ‘I am a content writer, Dadi. I don’t go to school any more,’ she scoffs.

  I smile. Kids these days can cry and still have the strength to belittle their elders.

  ‘It’s something else,’ she finally says.

  I wait for her to continue. But that is all she says.

  ‘Look, Anaya. You need to tell me what the matter is or both of us are sitting here in this room all day.’

  I can see the eyes widen. I know how hard it can be for a grandchild to stay shut in an old person’s room. It’s torture. The smell, the old stories.

  ‘I can’t marry Pranay.’

  Finally, some success.

  ‘Is that it? You don’t like a boy your parents have chosen for you?’ I laugh. ‘Okay, I will tell your father that you are not interested. Go now, and don’t cry any more.’