The Girl I Last Loved (22 page)

It had been almost a year since I last saw her. However ridiculous it may sound that time is the best healer, I experienced it. I felt it and I know everything becomes just fine with time. Life was back to normal. Going to work. Eating out. Hanging out with guys at the bar. Smoking only six cigarettes a week. Occasionally getting drunk and losing my senses. Life is much, much larger than love. When one person goes, it creates a void. Other people, work and daily life step in and fills that void.

And obviously I had to return for this one.

I took my cell out and it flickered.

Divya calling.

“Akash, you forgot?”

“Oh, is it already time?”

“Huh, why can’t you be as involved as I am in the wedding preparations?” she yelled at me.

“Because it’s a girl thing,” I yelled back.

“So that means you are going to leave me alone, hanging with all the shopping to be done by myself.”

“Marriages are anyways for the bride.”

“You are not getting away with these lines. So get your lazy ass up here.”

She hung up. This marriage thing had got into her head.

So I picked my ‘lazy’ ass up and got there.

“The black one or the red one.”

“I want to ask again why we are doing lingerie shopping?”

“Because otherwise the spark won’t come.”

I shook my head in a ‘no’ as I already didn’t find that a very great idea.

“Because if the groom buys his bride lingerie, she becomes obliged to wear it at least once,” she explained further.

“Okay… now I get it.”

She gave me a mischievous smile.

“Now let’s go to the designer and check how the
sherwani
is coming along.”

“Why do we have to do all this now? The wedding is after three months!”

“Duh… you yourself answered your question, ‘because it’s just three months.”

With the speed she drove we were there at her designer’s in no less than an hour.

“Hi,” she waved at the people standing there.

“Hi Divs,” a guy with not much of a guyish manner came and hugged her. It was kind of amusing to watch.

“So, taken the measurements?” she inquired.

“Yes darling, it’s coming just fine,” he said, waving his hand in a weird manner.

“So how is our groom to be?” she said, while raising her eyebrows.

“He is confused and tired,” Ved replied, who had been waiting for us there for the past two hours.

“Dude, you are getting married… your whole life is going to be confused and tired!” I chuckled.

“I am the one getting married! The way you two are running around, it very much seems like you are getting married,” Divya became silent all sudden.

“Why aren’t you two married?” Ved went on to add this.

“Because we are not meant to be,” Divya smiled.

“Yeah, as our work here is done. Let’s leave for a drink,” I suggested changing the subject.

Divya with her apple martini joined two guys with beer.

“So what are you two discussing?”

“About his honeymoon,” I spoke with a pretended husky tone.

“Don’t even think about it. That’s my wedding gift to you. Two weeks in Santorini,” she told Ved.

I had been long enough with him to know when he is smiling to hide his fear. Few minutes later Divya announced, “I need a refill” and gave me some solitary moments with Ved.

“What’s it?” I asked.

“I don’t love her,” he said it in plain simple words.

“I know.”

“So?” he asked.

“You are a very nice guy, Ved. You are well established. You are not even an addict like me. You will make her happy in every possible way.”

“But isn’t that cheating her by not telling what I feel?”

I recalled what Kasam has told me as a solution to that girl’s problem who pinned holes in her boyfriend’s condom so that he married her.

“Akash, every mistake is not meant to amend. Every secret is not meant to disclose. What they have now is much larger than what she did four years back.

“It may or may not have turned this way but as it has, she needs to live with it.

“Otherwise her own guilt would drive them apart.

“And she can make up on the guilt part by being a wife anyone including her husband would die for. A wife her husband would be honoured to have.”

“You know Ved, every secret is not meant to be disclosed. And you have so much love in you that even if you get successful in sharing a percentage of it with her, which I am sure you will, that will be enough for you both to live happily.”

Ved nodded, his face seeming a little at ease.

“Anyways, you are going to Delhi for fifteen days to spend time with her. Give all of yours to that time – to her. I think that will do.”

“Come along with me,” he asked like a kid asking for an ice-cream.

“Don’t be such a sissy. Anyways I am going to visit my parents in Lucknow.”

“Okay, that means I will have to go alone.”

“Now Divya is coming back and if she knows that you are having second thoughts about this marriage which she is planning, she will rip your chest off. So, act cheerful.”

The following day Ved took a step towards his new life and I stepped back in my past to even off a few slips. I was in Lucknow at my parents’ house. Oops! My house. I called up all my three sisters to join us. Somehow we all managed to be under the same roof at the same time after nine long years since my eldest sister started working. Slowly we all left that place for a better future. But now when we all were here together, fighting to tell our stories or fighting for one remote. Again Maa tired of cooking food according to all our preferences and we all abiding to the rules made by our father after being all grown up. I doubt the future was for any good. But as of now, as of this moment, we all were ecstatic to relive our childhood. And my sisters were reliving it with their own children. I knew we were not going to settle there for all our life. But when I saw my parents satisfied with proud faces, I knew it’s real and it’s worthwhile.

All these were possible because of the conversation I had with Kasam on her birthday below that Christmas tree.

“Dad, Maa always wanted to see snow for real and that’s not even that far; just go to Shimla this year,” I tried to persuade my father.

“But who will look after the house?” he counteracted me.

“I will. Anyway, the kids’ summer holidays are going on and Akshat is in the US for an assignment,” my eldest sister spoke.

“There you go,” my second sister spoke with conviction.

Now they had no excuse. We didn’t leave home before getting them packed up and dispatched to Shimla.

Chapter 21

As I stared over the signboard, pulled open the two doors of the conference hall situated across the way from my cabin, her face flashed in my mind. How she used to pull the door on which ‘push’ was written. Thankfully some people rushing into that hall diverted my mind. I noticed the third person entering there, pushed the door open on which ‘pull’ was written. Then the ones following him were in such haste that they never waited for the door to close and kept on pushing it again and again. The very same happens in life. Somebody does something in a wrong way and others follow him by repeating his mistake and then it goes on to become the right way. In all that, what happens to the door is it becames the victim.

Eight years back I did something wrong. Then we got a second chance. Then again I did something wrong by not accepting her love for me. By the time I overcame my mistake, Kasam made the mistake of not taking me back into her life. Her mistake was not to forego me. These small little ridiculous mistakes ruined something beautiful we had and something big which we could have had.

Our whole future.

Our love which remained unexpressed.

Those moments which remained unlived and never got a chance to become memories…

The people we could have been.

The things we might have cherished…

They never came to life.

What would have happened if I had begged for her love eight years back?

What if I had kissed her back last year?

What if she wouldn’t have gone ahead to marry Utsav?

Eight years ago, I thought we never made it because there was no ‘us’.

Now I knew there was an ‘us’, but it was just not big enough than our individual ego.

Just then I saw Rakesh Bedi walking in with his bag. I twisted my watch. It showed 1 a.m. He was three hours late again. It was almost lunch time. After lunch, even normal people don’t concentrate on work. Let alone Rakesh. Why does he even come to work? I was taken into flames. I picked the receiver and called Shireen.

“Let Mr Bedi know I want to see him in my office now.”

People like him are a disgrace to the organisation. They think they can fool us. I know their category; they never change. But if I let him continue, it will mean dishonouring the effort others put in.

And even further, it can promote such behaviour from others. I just hate his guts. I just hate his guts. I repeated that line in my mind again. Was I targeting him and not his mistake?

I recalled what Kasam had told.

Initially we have issues with some person’s habit, his problem. When time passes by, we realise it’s no longer about the problem; it becomes about the person.

This realisation immediately vaporised my anger.

I started analysing.

Did I not like Rakesh Bedi or his ability or I didn’t like the way in which he had been behaving lately?

What was my motive?

To curse him or to change him?

Definitely it would be the best way out if he could change or improve his behaviour a bit and contribute to the team as he did earlier.

Would my constant yelling at him help me to make him return to his previous self? I guess ‘no’. So that means for changing him first, I needed to change.

I thought more of Kasam. It came to me she said something about sandwich criticism. How much I liked the idea at that time, but it was all in theory. I never applied that practically.

Well now I had my chance.

I calmed myself before Rakesh entered.

He knocked.

“Yes.”

“You wanted to see me?”

“Yes, come in and have a seat,” I said.

“So, what’s the progress?” I asked.

“I am kind of stuck because I don’t have the SRS documents yet. The customers haven’t specified their requirements.”

“Customers never do that anyways. We are the ones who need to extract every possible detail from them. Even better give them a projection of the things they don’t know yet, but they want.”

He looked up at me in surprise. I continued, “Two years down the lane I heard these lines from a very dynamic Team Lead in this very same office. You know who that person was?”

He hung his head.

“You,” I pointed at him.

His face lit for a while and then faded.

He looked away.

“I can’t believe that not getting the SRS comes in your way of progress. So tell me what the real thing is?”

“Yeah, I was that person. I loved my work. I was crazy for my work. I motivated others as well. But where did it get me? Slogging all day long, what has it given me? I missed out on all the fun. I don’t have any idea how I got a few grey hair and when…”

“You got so many promotions; every one respects you. You set the bar of performance to a much higher level,” I spoke, cutting him out.

“You don’t understand. My wife cheated on me,” he shouted out aloud.

I was taken aback.

This was not at all what I expected to deal with.

“She cheated on me and the worst part is I don’t want her to leave. I don’t want a divorce.”

I got up, went to his side and patted his back.

“I can’t concentrate on anything. I come to work, I stare on the computer screen and get lost. I keep on working and I forget my aim. I can’t tell anyone about it. I can’t discuss it with my wife as well, as it makes me sick. She makes me sick.”

“I understand,” I said what sounded appropriate at that time. I didn’t expect to be dealing with something like this.

“You don’t understand. I am not weak. It’s just that I love her too much to let her go.”

“Wow,” I whispered. Perhaps if I and Kasam would have thought like this, things wouldn’t have turned this way.

“I keep fighting with myself. I stay awake at night. I don’t find peace at home. I don’t find peace at work. Most of all, I feel responsible,” he kept on talking.

I thought what Kasam might have suggested at this point. Then it was all easy.

“Why don’t you tell your wife how much you still love her? Try it once. I bet things will change for good.”

His face showed some expression of conviction.

“I want you take a week of leave. Go some place faraway. It has been a long time since you took a holiday and I know that when you will be back, things at work will also take a U-turn.”

He nodded, recollected himself and left.

Huh! I got through with that. Sometimes you have no idea how you acquire qualities of the person you stay with, be it good or bad. I believed in religion but never really followed the norms of it. When I first started working I had to stay in a two-room shared flat. My flat-mate, he was a very religious guy. He never allowed me in his room wearing slippers. Prayed two times a day. Chanted for around one hour in the evening. Gave me odds looks when I entered, wearing slippers in kitchen. In the evening after doing
aarti,
he used to come to my room for giving me
prasad.
After dropping two pieces of cashewnuts in my hand, he used to repeat ‘Wash your hands’. I found him so ridiculous, mainly because he used to tell most of the superstitious rubbish. In everything he used astrological references. Most of all he was always telling me ‘what to do, what not to do’. Besides he wasted a lot of time in these stuff. One day we were shopping together. He bought a lot of stuff. And I was dangling with my cornflakes and frozen food packs. We stopped at one section where he bought
agarbatti
. I even bought one with the thought of using it as a room freshener. A few initial days I enjoyed the fragrance on coming back from work. Then slowly I started roaming around in the whole room with them and chanting
Hanuman-chalisa
and
Gayatri mantra
.