Losing My Virginity and Other Dumb Ideas (21 page)

I was the first to reach the top. The producers almost fainted, ‘How did you do that? You’re so old …’ said a young intern.

‘Yes, darling, but I took my calcium in the morning and I used my walking stick for support,’ I said sarcastically. She gave me a wry smile. I took off my jacket and started the second part of the triathlon, the trek downhill. One cameraman followed me for company for some part of the journey and then returned to the other girls, who had now climbed to the top and collected there to have a snack.

I was left alone in the jungle for a considerable distance. And I’d never felt better. I couldn’t hear a thing except the sound of the wind and the rustling leaves of the trees. It was amazingly peaceful. I had finally got what I wanted. I was distracted from thinking about Arjun. I sat on a large rock for a bit. There was no one around to pester me. I hadn’t spoken to my parents since I’d told them I would be under house arrest for six weeks without a cell phone. I hadn’t spoken to Aditi and I had definitely not spoken to Arjun. I felt emancipated. And honestly, I was doing pretty well. I had met nine interesting women and one very interesting man.

Another man! I didn’t want another man but there he was. ‘To get over one man, you need to get under another,’ was Aditi’s famous line. And she would have been proud to know that I was moving along.

But I missed Arjun. He had given me so much laughter, fun and comfort. I only had myself to rely on now. For a moment, I thought I was being too harsh on him and I should just get out of this reality show and go back to him. But then, I got off my arse and started walking again. I was not supposed to be thinking about him!

The forest was not that dense and sun shone in through the spaces between the trees and shrubs. It felt as if I was walking on a checkerboard. And I was the Queen. And I thought, this is it, Kaveri. This is your checkmate. You need to do something more with your life. And during my walk to the stream, I kept thinking, why don’t I give this Karan guy a shot. Why was I being so elusive with him? He did like me. And no one was asking me to marry him.

Here I had been given an opportunity to meet an interesting man and I was still pining away for a man who would be just talking about sonograms and diapers if we were still together.

Before I could think any further, I had reached the stream, where there was already a set of cameras and a producer waiting. They asked me a few questions. ‘How did you get here so fast?’ ‘Who do you think is your biggest competition?’ ‘Was Karan the motivation for you to get so far?’

I replied with care and diplomacy and then I got out of my clothes and since I had my swimsuit underneath, I swam across the lake. The water was cold and I could see the other girls reach the lake. Then they all went into the changing room to get into their bikinis and slather on some waterproof sun block. One girl couldn’t swim so there was a boat that was going to bring her across. Another girl started swimming and got a cramp and the same boat picked her up as well. By this time I had finished and was draped in a towel sitting on a rock across watching the antics of these women. The lake was very small. It couldn’t have been more than the size of an Olympic pool but the women were already exhausted and were keen not to complete the last task since they knew I had already won.

Suddenly from behind me a voice rang out, ‘You won!’ It was Karan. I turned and smiled. He was cute. Why wasn’t I a little more open to him? I could at least try.

‘Hi. I guess so,’ I said.

He sat down beside me and I moved slightly away. ‘Still don’t trust me, huh?’ he asked. I didn’t reply. He continued, ‘So guess where my date with you for tonight will be?’

‘Where?’ I asked.

‘On a ranch! We’ll be cleaning horse shit to see if we can live together in the wilderness,’ he said animatedly, as I groaned. Then he burst into laughter, the same way he had in the restaurant and I realized he was pulling my leg. I smiled. ‘Stop teasing me. I need a massage.’ I said, holding my neck.

He swivelled round and caught hold of my back. Then he started rubbing my back and gently put his fingers on my neck and massaged the sore points. It felt so good. He smelt fresh and wonderful. Davidoff. Cool Water. And he was. This cool guy who just wanted to chill in life and have fun.

I must have looked like a train wreck and smelt like one too.

‘Should I tell the producers to get someone else to come with me? I’m sure any of the girls would be happy to take your place. That is, if you’re too tired to go?’ he asked sincerely.

I squinted my eyes and looked back at him and said, ‘Are you threatening me?’

He shrugged his shoulders and said, ‘I’m just saying, dude!’

So I played along, ‘Actually, I would
love
to see you clean horse shit with the designer babe. That would definitely make my day.’

‘Cool,’ he said and removed his hands from my back and began to get up.

Then I felt kind of terrible. I had been joking. I had become a bitter woman. I didn’t want that to happen. Did I mention he was cute? So I caught hold of his hands and said, ‘Karan! I don’t want anyone else taking my place! So tell me where we’re really going.’

He smiled and kissed me on the nose, ‘Wait and watch. And for the record, I’ll never let anyone take your place,’ he said quietly.

Jesus, he was such a
boy
! But I immediately straightened my wet hair and fixed my towel closer around myself. The cameras were capturing all this and the producers were having a field day. We immediately realized and our moment was broken. But it had been a ‘moment’. And I was so pleased with myself.

I warned him before he left, ‘But we’ll always have cameras on us, so we can’t do anything
naughty
.’

‘Naughty? Huh?’ he said, laughing and leaning in a little more towards me. He smelt great. What was it about a man’s smell that made me go weak? First it was Acqua de Gio and now it was Davidoff. I liked!

And then he leaned in and kissed me. At first, it was a gentle hesitant kiss, but when he saw that I was reciprocating, he moved his body in. I reached out and held the back of his head and he pressed my chest closer to his body. He held me tightly and kissed me deeply. It was romantic and passionate. Gentle and strong. Soft and supple. Something I hadn’t felt for a very long time. The warmth from his body permeated into my skin and I felt myself tingle. I could feel the longing in his body. We were lip locked for a few minutes when it dawned on us that we were on national television. He let go of me gently, still not caring whether the world was watching and I looked into his eyes and smiled, suddenly not caring either. If there was an art to a perfect kiss, Karan would have been the van Gogh of it! And then suddenly, I realized Aditi was right, the best way to get over a man, was to find another one. All along I had thought only Arjun kissed well, and now I knew I was wrong.

Karan made me realize I had lived my life by other people’s rules for too long. It was time that I explored my sexuality on my own terms.

I looked at him with a twinkle in my eye and said, ‘Yes Dr Karan Raparia. Naughty!’ And then got up and walked away. I looked back at him and he was watching me walk. God, I hoped my arse didn’t look big in the swimming costume. Still, I tossed my hair back and looked at him and I knew he was checking me out. I was a new woman!

Then the interviews started, which was the norm before, during and after every task. We had to answer questions and Karan was asked if he was happy to be going on this date with me. He looked right at me and said to the camera, ‘Oh, I’m definitely looking forward to it.’

The girls were burning, but my body was already on fire.

Then Karan did something nice. When no one was looking, he went and wrote a note for me on a piece of paper and put it in my jacket pocket. On the way back to the House, in the bus with the girls, I found it. It read, ‘I’m so glad you won. I wanted to see you again. I need to repeat our kiss.’

I was really looking forward to our date once again. Maybe Karan was my second chance with Love.

Back in the House, the girls started fighting again over who was going to use the showers first. A few of them went into the three bathrooms while the rest of us sat around in the large drawing room sofas and chatted.

‘My body is screaming in pain,’ said Shalini, the girl from Lucknow, who just a few days ago was wearing a full sleeve salwar kameez, but had shed it for the tiny shorts today.

‘I need a drink,’ said Shweta, the biker chick from Bangalore. We all looked at her and she replied in a hushed whisper, ‘I know we’re not allowed, but I smuggled some in.’

And then we were all in it. We all wanted some of that alcohol.

‘First, we need to cover all the cameras here. At least in this room,’ I said, organizing the whole thing. So we all got up and walked to the respective cameras and threw our jackets over them. We muffled the microphones in a similar fashion with other pieces of clothing and cushions around. Then we sent Shweta to her room to get the alcohol out. She came back with a large bottle of vodka.

‘See, it will never smell on us and we can all have a little bit,’ she said in a conspiratorial whisper.

I wanted to throw my arms around her and hug her, but refrained—it might be taken as a lesbian act and I would be voted off, if nothing else!

We all sat down with a large peg and began to chat. The tension just evaporated with this common factor called Smirnoff, as we bonded against the producers and opened up to each other.

‘So, Kaveri,’ started Pooja, the web designer from Hyderabad, ‘where are you supposed to be going on that date with Karan?’

Before I could reply, another woman intervened and asked me, ‘How did you finish the task so quickly, yaar? How did you rig it?’

‘I didn’t rig it. And I have no idea,’ I replied. ‘I guess I’ve always loved nature and I used to go trekking with my dad when I was young. I hadn’t done that in a long time and I just got into a rhythm … it was fun and I kept going,’ I shrugged my shoulders.

‘So Karan likes you,’ added Ramneek, the girl from Delhi who was working in the hospitality industry.

‘I don’t really care,’ I said, acting indifferent. But I knew I did. It was a nice thing to hear that a man preferred you over nine other women!

‘Are you crazy? Why don’t you care? We’re all supposed to be competing for the love of this man,’ spoke Meher, the costume designer from Mumbai.

‘You know what? I don’t care too much either. He’s kinda stupid,’ spoke Anandita, the Bengali woman who was a theatre artiste.

Then the women who had gone for their showers came out and joined us. But none of us wanted to move. ‘Hey! What are you guys having?’ asked eighteen-year-old Namrata who walked in first. ‘I also want!’ she spoke in a high nasal tone. I could just imagine her being a total brat in a rich household, having got everything she wanted from her rich daddy, including the spot in this show.

‘You’re not legally allowed to, darling,’ said Pooja sarcastically, and who had probably just turned legal enough to drink.

‘Oh ya?’ said Namrata. ‘Then I won’t share my smokes with you!’ and she went and got a packet of cigarettes and lit up extremely seductively in front of the others. Shweta got up and snatched the packet from her while handing her a glass, ‘Stop being such a bitch. Here. Baby!’ Then turning to me she asked, ‘So what do you really want from Karan, Kaveri? Sex? Marriage? A baby to take home?’ Everyone laughed at her joke. She lit up a cigarette and held it while plonking herself back on the sofa.

I just smiled. ‘No, babe,’ I said casually, ‘I don’t want any of that stuff. I’m here to meet interesting people. And I have.’ And then I raised my glass to the lot of them.

‘So you don’t care if you get eliminated tomorrow?’

I shook my head and said nonchalantly, ‘Not at all!’ I didn’t want to give away my secret.

Misri, the Punjabi girl who was half Parsi and a model, lit a cigarette as well and said, ‘I want to just make this a platform to go on to TV serials, you know.’

‘Me too,’ said the reticent Anandita, ‘I’ve been doing theatre for far too long and I’m not going anywhere. I need to make money. I can’t live on roles for the soul.’

Shweta laughed, ‘That’s what they call it? What a loser you are!’

‘I’m here to get married,’ said Ramneek, the Delhi hotel girl, suddenly. Shalini, the woman from Lucknow, stared at her. I could sense she also felt the same way, but she didn’t want to say it out loud to give away her feelings. So she got up and muttered she was going to take a shower.

Ramneek continued, ‘I’ve been single for too long. I’ve gone through the matrimonial ads, the Internet and the friends of friends’ thing. But nothing has worked out. The men I’ve met have been mostly losers. Not to mention ugly.’ She took a long sip of her drink and continued, ‘I’m ready to settle down. And Karan seems like a nice guy. He’s intelligent, caring, NRI, doctor, rich! What more could a girl ask for?’

‘Are you serious?’ asked Meher, the costume designer and continued without a response, ‘There are so many better men out there than Karan. I mean, you don’t know anything about his parents, his background, if he has a girlfriend stashed away in the US.’ I could make out that Meher also wanted to marry Karan, but was dissuading Ramneek from doing so.

Namrata butted in here, ‘Oh, he had a girlfriend. A steady one.’ We all looked at her. This eighteen-year-old was giving the rest of us information! ‘Ya he told me on our meeting. But he said it was over some time back. And oh ya, I forgot to mention, he kissed me!’ We were all in shock. She seemed smug and content.

I could see that some of the women were taken aback and would take up the issue with Karan the next time they met. I didn’t know how to feel. I had begun to feel this fondness for him, but if he was just being a Casanova, then maybe I would have to back off and treat this like it really was. Just a show. Before the girls could grill Namrata further, one of the producers came in and gave orders for us to get ready for the elimination round. He also brought in some dresses for us that were sponsored by a leading brand store. We all had to shower, get into make-up and these gowns and head downstairs in half an hour. So we all rushed and forgot about the camaraderie that the alcohol had induced a while ago. But I could hear Ramneek crying in the bathroom later. This show was teaching us a thing or two. It had made me even more confused. If all these girls wanted Karan as their husband, who was I to have a fling with him and ruin the whole equation. And Karan was a fling. He could never be a husband for me. And suddenly I felt guilty. How could I not distinguish between Love and Lust? It was time I grew up.