You Were My Crush: Till You Said You Love Me! (8 page)

It had been more than a week since I had found the envelope and the
secret
romance of my mom and dad during the fading years of her life. I had called my father’s assistant and got everything delivered back to his office, after I made copies of everything.

‘Did you call your dad?’ Diya asked.

‘No, I didn’t. I just don’t know what to say to him.’

‘But you said you would?’

‘I couldn’t make up my mind.’

‘Well, if it’s too much of a bother, do it after the exams get over. Have you finished that chapter you had started with?’ she asked.

‘Umm … err … almost,’ I said.

‘Really?’ she asked.

‘Nope. It’s so hard to concentrate!’

‘Whatever. You don’t need to study. This time, you can
just buy
every
professor. And prove Sonil true, you
good-for-nothing
brat!’

It was just a trick to get me to study and it worked every time. There was the
other
reason why I wanted to score well—the more pertinent one. I wanted to impress Diya and eventually ask her about her sister.

Shaina had stopped sketching, but her poems were getting longer, some even longer than a few hundred lines. Her words were as beautiful as she was, only more tragic.

Her last poem was about a little girl found in the rubble of a war zone, who walks about the city’s ruins, looking for her parents and finding nothing but platitudes. I have never been big on emotions, since, as established, I was a curious mix of Schwarzenegger and the Hulk, but the poem had me bawling and crying like a little kid.

I was the little girl.

It was our last exam that day. The exams went well. Like incredibly well. There was an outside chance that I might even score higher than her. But then, even if I did, the entire credit would go to Diya for she made me work as hard as I had. Diya desperately wanted a university rank that year as otherwise her LSE dream would end then and there.

The best part about Diya was that she was like a girlfriend, but a non-fussy and a non-sexual one, which meant no possessiveness, no jealousy and no obligations. But she was always there when I needed her. These exam
preparations just made me love her even more. She was so cute and caring, almost like a mini-
mom
, and that’s why I always thought that Diya and Eshaan were perfect. They anyway treated me like their lost
kid
, so they should have started dating too!

‘Hey, how did it go?’ I asked Eshaan.

‘Not so good,’ he said.

His relationship troubles were haunting him. I partly blamed myself for it because I had put the first seed of doubt in his head about Sonil. But I never felt guilty about it. He had to get rid of that bitch.
Like. Really.

‘Any plans today?’ I asked him.

‘I got to meet her,’ he said.

‘Again? Didn’t you just break up yesterday?’

‘I did, but she just says something and we get back. She just doesn’t let me break up. You were right, she is
very
dominating,’ he said and I really felt sorry for him.

‘Why don’t you just stop taking her calls?’

‘She calls on the landline, talks to my mom; things are not going well, Benoy.’

‘Then tell her that you have started dating someone else? I am sure she will dump you then,’ I suggested.

‘She will ask for her number. What will I do then?’ he asked.

‘You are really scared of her, aren’t you?’ I asked. ‘Tell her that you have started dating Diya! And I will ask Diya to say the same, what say?’

‘Do you think Diya will do it?’ he asked as his phone started ringing.

I told him that I would handle it and then bid him best of luck. I waited for Diya to finish her exam. She
never
left the exam hall until the last minute.

She left the examination hall smiling. Though her smile vanished in a matter of seconds when I told her that she might have to talk to Sonil and pose as Eshaan’s girlfriend.

‘It’s just one call!’ I said.

‘You are so irritating!’ she said. ‘I don’t want to talk to her. She’s probably the last person I would ever talk to.’

We were still arguing about whether I should have done that, and how big a pain in the ass I was, when her phone rang and we knew it was Sonil. I snatched the phone, picked it up and handed it over to her as she kept trying to give it back to me.

Sonil came out all guns blazing, calling Diya a whore and home breaker and what not; Diya gave it back in equal measure, pulling out the choicest of Hindi expletives, insults that even I would think twice about. A girl swearing in Hindi is a dream; it’s like a perfect picture of Women’s Liberation.

‘Not a word about this.
Ever
,’ she said as she disconnected the call.

‘You were good,’ I whispered in her ear. I could see her smile, even though she tried hard to hide it. ‘I have to say you were dirtier than the kids in the slums near my house. I need to treat you for this.’

‘Benoy, I really have to go out with my sister today. I had promised her that I would. Tomorrow, maybe?’

‘So what? Or do you have a problem if I come along? Anyway, I haven’t met your sister. Oh, let me treat you guys.’

‘My sister is sort of boring. I love her and all, but she’s into sketching and writing really boring stuff. And moreover, I don’t want guys like you hovering near her.’

‘I am sure she’s not boring,’ I countered. I wanted to prove it by narrating the best parts of a few of her poems I had memorized.

‘Fine,’ she conceded. ‘And don’t blame me if she starts to talk about Byron and Keats.’

‘I won’t. And I love poetry!’ I said. I only love
her
poetry; the only other poet I truly appreciate is Jane Taylor, the woman who wrote the twenty-line poem, but we know only four of the lines: ‘Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star’.

We drove to her sister’s college. Miranda House. Shaina was in her first year there. Diya and I did not exchange a single word. I was busy constructing sentences that I would say. Obviously, I could
not
have said,
I have been stalking your profile and your blogs obsessively, and I think you are like a beautiful flower, like a heartbeat—sensitive and beautiful.
I was nervous.

Will her eyes be as big as they were? Will her words rhyme? Will her hair be as perfect as it looked in the pictures?
We reached her college and Diya got down from the car.

‘I will just go pick her up,’ Diya said and left.

I nodded and waited. As I sat in the car, I doused myself with perfume and checked my hair, and then I saw her, walking like she didn’t know how unarguably pretty she was.

Crap.

This isn’t the movies
, I remember telling myself, but why had the people walking next to the car frozen in place and why did time slow down. I could only see her walking
towards me as if I had blinders on. She was in a bright yellow T-shirt with a SpongeBob graphic on it, and bright green skirt-pants below, looking brighter than the sun.

I could see her smile from far. It was shy yet pretty, confident yet tragic. She resembled the girls in her sketches, beautiful and complex; the world seemed like it would end every time she blinked, hiding her big, brown eyes.

She reminded me of her poems, magical and complex, each feature of hers hiding a different story; her prettiness was epic and rich, just like the words she wrote and the sketches she drew.

She was not that tall, maybe five feet four, but those eyes, man, those eyes.

My heart thumped as she got inside the car, my breaths were heavy and deliberate, and I trembled. There was certain happiness in her prettiness, like she would smile and everything in the world would be okay.

‘Hi,’ she said. ‘Shaina.’ And she held out her hand for me to shake. I shook it.

‘Benoy.’

‘I know who you are,’ she said and smiled wider. ‘Nice car, by the way.’

‘Thank you.’ I blushed.

‘He’s just a spoilt brat,’ Diya interrupted and punched me in the arm. ‘Let’s go?’

‘Sure. Where are we going?’ I asked.

‘I don’t know. I am okay with anything! Where do you want to go, Shaina?’ Diya asked.

‘Umm … I know you will kill me for this, but can we go to Pragati Maidan? The French film festival just started
and they are playing
Queen Margot
today. I really want to see the movie!’ she said, jumping in the backseat.

‘French movie?’ Diya said, disgusted. ‘We won’t even get a word of it! And your movies are so boring, Shaina. Can’t we do something interesting for a change? Say like watching a Hindi movie that I would understand?’

‘I am okay with it,’ I said. ‘I have never seen a French movie. I have heard they have, like, naked scenes and stuff?’

‘Oh! Lots of them. Let’s please go,’ Shaina pleaded. ‘I will translate whatever you don’t get.’

‘Whatever,’ Diya said.

‘You can understand French?’ I asked, shocked and impressed.

‘And Spanish,’ Diya added. ‘She is such a pretentious show off.’

‘I don’t say that when you talk about fiscal policies, do I?’ Shaina quipped.

Shaina pushed me to drive faster because she did not want to miss the first scene of the movie, while Diya sulked, hoping we would.

They bought the tickets and I parked the car. Diya made sure she sat between the two of us during the movie. The movie was about a woman stuck in an arranged marriage during a period of religious war, and she hoped to flee with a new lover. Periodically, Shaina would make us understand the nuances of the story, and while Diya would shrug, I found myself staring at her, listening to her as she described in great detail the anguish and the pain of the woman in the movie.

I felt inadequate.

Finally, during the interval, while Shaina and I waited in line to buy popcorn because Diya said she would rather eat than watch the movie, Diya visited the washroom.

‘So? Miranda House?’

‘Benoy, that’s a bad conversation starter,’ she said.

‘Let’s see if you do better,’ I said.

‘I am equally bad at first sentences. But I really thought you would be arrogant and haughty. And yes, a lot uglier.’

‘Uglier? Which means right now I am just ugly, not UGLIER?’

‘No, no! I mean, you are cute. I thought you would be ugly,’ she corrected.

‘That’s just damage control. But why did you think I would be even uglier?’

‘Diya always said so! Don’t tell her I told you this. She’s a little possessive about me, so for her every guy is ugly and irresponsible. She’s very protective.’

‘I can see that,’ I said and wondered what proportion of her face were just her immense, beautiful eyes.

Diya came back and asked us why we were smiling. We said nothing.

That little stolen moment between Shaina and me made my day. The movie ends with the beheading of the lover, and the woman, Queen Margot, lived on, carrying with her the embalmed head of her lover wherever she went.

We did not get to talk any more that day because they had to rush home as soon as the movie was over, but there were times that Shaina and I had longer-than-usual eye contact and we smiled at each other.

It had been exactly three days and I had not been able to push the thought of her out of my mind. I kept daydreaming about her, constructed fake dates with her, where I would just sit there and she would recite her poems, and tell me about her favourite movies.

My calls to Diya had tripled over the last three days because I wanted to hear Shaina’s voice in the background somewhere. It just kept ringing in my head since that day and no matter what I did, it stayed there. It didn’t take long for Diya to put two and two together.

‘Benoy, one word about her and we will never talk again,’ she said.

It was the millionth time that day that I had picked her name up in a conversation.

‘I don’t want you near her again. Do you get me, Benoy?’ she said.

‘But why? It’s not as if I am hitting on her.’

‘No, but you were staring at her! I don’t want a guy like you hovering near her,’ she said.

‘Did she notice? That I was staring?’

‘I didn’t ask her,’ she said.

‘Did she say anything about me?’

‘I didn’t ask her that either,’ she said. ‘She is too simple for all your games, Benoy. And you know my parents. Please stay away from her.’

‘Okay, fine. We will not talk about her.’

‘Better,’ she said.

No matter how hard I tried, I could not change Diya’s perception.

‘And you are not adding her on Facebook!’

‘What’s wrong with that?’

‘Just like that. I don’t want you to go about liking every picture of hers, like you have done in mine.’

‘You noticed?’ I asked.

‘Obviously, Benoy. I am not blind.’

‘Oh, okay. But—’

‘Nothing doing. No adding her on Facebook,’ she said this sternly, and we did not discuss it further.

Like a petulant child who does exactly what he’s asked not to,
I sent Shaina a friend request
. The more Shaina was treated like a guarded princess, the more I was drawn to her.

My eyes grew weary and tired waiting for the friend request to get accepted, but I couldn’t make myself give up on the hope.

And then, a message came.

Shaina Gupta: Are you sure?
☺
Didn’t Diya ask you not to add me?