Marry Me, Stranger Read online

  Her parents heaved a sigh of relief.

  Mr Bannerjee drove her to the sprawling new Netaji Subhash Airport in their Alto. The moment he halted the car near one of the departure gates, he turned to Rivanah and said, ‘Mini, I called your Meghna di last night. She won’t be able to...’

  ‘...come to the airport because she has office so I’ll have to take a Meru Cab from the airport itself and go to her place, take the keys from the security guard, and get in. This is the fourth time you’ve told me this baba.’

  She climbed out of the car along with her parents.

  Her mother shot a sly smile at her husband and murmured, ‘Meye boro hoye geche, bujecho?’

  Mr Bannerjee nodded in agreement. Their daughter had indeed grown up.

  He tried to hide his anxiety and said, ‘Take out your PAN card and the print out of the ticket. You will need to show it at the entrance gate.

  Rivanah flashed both the ticket and the PAN card at him with a smile. They walked her till the entry point after which she touched their feet and kissed them goodbye. She had not thought this moment would feel so heavy before but now, looking at her parents waving at her with sad faces, she thought it would have been better had she been placed in Kolkata itself.

  Rivanah slept through most of the smooth 2 hour, 40 minutes flight to Mumbai. She woke up when the sun’s rays kissed her face through the aeroplane’s window. The view outside made her stealthily click a couple of pictures from her phone which was on airplane-mode. I will send them to Ekansh once my flight lands, she thought. It had been two months since they had last met each other. She checked out pictures of them together on her phone. One album contained pictures they had clicked the night before he flew to Bengaluru to join a software company. As she tapped on the pictures, every moment seemed to come alive as a memory. They had had dinner in Peter Cat restaurant in Park Street that night. He was looking dapper in a black round-neck tee and jeans while she was in an Anarkali salwar-suit. Post dinner, they had silently walked hand-in-hand giving each other furtive romantic glances without really talking. Finally, they had kissed standing behind a fused street lamp near her place.

  ‘A kiss means a part of me will forever trust you. A kiss means a part of you will forever reside in me. A kiss means a part of us will forever forgive each other,’ Ekansh had said looking deep into her eyes right after their short kiss. Then they had smooched while her eyes cried warm tears. The flight attendant tapped on her shoulder lightly to take her order for the in-flight meal. Rivanah, realizing her eyes were moist, quickly took out her shades and covered her eyes. How much fun would it have been if she was employed in Bengaluru too? She was ready to wait for the Bengaluru-based company’s offer letter and let the Mumbai one pass but Ekansh told her about an impending recession and asked her to join the company she had got an offer from. Then later, she could perhaps move to a different company in Bengaluru. It made sense then but sitting in the flight all she wished was if she could spend all her life in his arms; no work, no reality, nothing to disturb them.

  Her mother called the minute the flight landed. Rivanah kept assuring her the journey was fine and that she was alright.

  ‘Now keep the phone down, mumma. My phone’s on roaming. I’ll call when I reach Meghna di’s place.’ She disconnected the phone and asked around for where the pick-up point for Meru cab was. She found her pre-booked Meru cab waiting to take her to her destination. The driver helped her keep the luggage in the trunk and soon drove her out of the airport.

  ‘Goregaon east mein kahan, madam?’ the driver asked.

  ‘Vishnu Dham,’ she said and quickly updated her Facebook status: Travelled alone for the first time. Mumbai feels awesome!

  Next she called Ekansh from her phone.

  ‘Hey babu, I’m in aamchi Mumbai!’

  ‘How does it feel?’ he asked.

  ‘It’s...it’s...’ She was about to respond when her eyes fell on something beside her on the cab’s seat. It may have been there when she got in, but she didn’t notice it before.

  ‘One second,’ she told Ekansh and took her time to grab the neatly ironed blue kurti. It seemed like an exact replica of the one that she wanted to wear in the morning. Or was it the same one? She was intrigued.

  ‘I’m calling you back,’ she said and cut the call. Rivanah checked the kurti’s brand: BIBA. Size M. Her brand, her size.

  ‘Yeh kiska hai?’ she asked the driver. He quickly flipped his head for once but seemed clueless about it.

  ‘Mereko nahi pata madam.’

  Maybe it’s another passenger’s, Rivanah guessed though doubting her own thought. She was about to keep the kurti back where it was kept when the driver responded that she was his first passenger for the day. With a frown she averted her eyes back to the blue kurti and unfolded it this time to examine it properly. Something fell off from its fold. It was a piece of white cloth with something embroidered in black in the middle. She picked it up and saw it was a message:

  Be ready Mini.

  Her throat went dry. Only her parents called her by that name.

  2

  The first thing Rivanah did after stepping inside Meghna’s one bedroom-hall-kitchen flat, taking the keys from the security guard, was call her mother up.

  ‘Did you send the blue kurti, mumma?’ She had brought the kurti with her and was looking at it sitting by the couch with one ear pressed to the phone.

  ‘Blue kurti? Which blue kurti?’ Her mother sounded clueless.

  ‘The one I wanted to wear this morning but you said Bishnu hadn’t returned it.’

  ‘Oh, don’t ask about that. I went to Bishnu after you left but he said he had lost it.’

  Rivanah felt a lump in her throat. How, or more importantly, why was the kurti in the cab with her name stitched on that white cloth? A blue kurti from Biba could have been a coincidence but a blue kurti with a cloth having a message for someone by the name of ‘Mini’ couldn’t be just a coincidence.

  ‘But why are you asking this?’ her mother asked.

  ‘Just like that,’ Rivanah blurted. She knew if she told her mother about the sudden appearance of the kurti, it would only worry her and she would ask a series of questions after that. It was only a kurti and a message—nothing more. Does the incident deserve my attention? Does it even matter? Rivanah thought and heard her mother say, ‘How is Meghna?’

  ‘I have just come, mumma. Meghna di is in office.’

  Meghna was Rivanah’s paternal uncle’s daughter. She worked as a senior copy editor with an advertising agency and had married a Muslim colleague of hers. The marriage was considered blasphemy in her family and most of the Bannerjee family had boycotted her except for Rivanah’s parents. Though they didn’t support her decision, they did stay in touch with her for their own daughter’s sake. They knew one day Rivanah would get a job and if she had to travel to Mumbai, then Meghna could be of help.

  It was late evening when Meghna returned home from office. Rivanah was never close to her cousin but she secretly admired her for the stance she took—especially the way she stood up to her parents for her love. It wasn’t easy to do so. Meghna inspired her to listen to her heart, so if anyone stood against her and Ekansh’s love, she too would follow in her footsteps.

  ‘So nice to see you di! After...’ ‘Three years,’ Meghna said. ‘We haven’t met since I got married.’ There was an awkward silence which Rivanah eventually broke by saying, ‘When will jiju be home?’

  ‘He will be late.’ Rivanah strongly felt the sense of indifference in her voice but she didn’t probe.

  After dinner, Rivanah pulled out the sofa, turning it into a bed. Aadil, Meghna’s husband, was still not home.

  ‘Won’t you wait for jiju?’ she asked Meghna when she saw her getting ready for bed.

  ‘What’s there to wait? He’ll come when he has to. You sleep tight darling,’ Meghna said and went to the bedroom.

  Rivanah’s mother had categorically asked her not to tell Meghna any
thing about Ekansh. Though she wasn’t in touch with the Bannerjee family, her mother didn’t want to give any relative a chance to talk ill about her daughter, especially when she knew Ekansh wasn’t from their community. Rivanah had agreed. It was only when she heard Meghna’s soft snores, standing stealthily by the bedroom door, that she dialled Ekansh’s number from the drawing room. The moment he picked up the phone, he showered non-stop kisses, amusing her in the process. He sounded like an adorable puppy who had been missing its master for long. She was happy to be in love with a boy who was so crazy about her.

  ‘Statue!’ she said and Ekansh went quiet. Rivanah took over from him and continued with the non-stop ‘muah-shower’. He should also know the girl he wooed in college was as crazy as him.

  They had studied in the same college but had met each other for the first time during a hunger strike in their college ground against a professor’s heinous beating of a student. Ekansh Tripathi was from the Mechanical branch and she was from Computer Science. It was while screaming her lungs out during the protest with a large group of students who had assembled in the ground that she noticed Ekansh, sitting diagonally from her, put his hand inside a sling bag and then swiftly transfer something into his mouth. He was putting up a pretence of shouting the slogan when he was actually eating something! Rivanah slowly moved toward him and said, ‘Shame on you!’

  Ekansh turned sideways and gave her a guilty look.

  ‘Finish it fast.’ Ekansh quickly swallowed the rest of it and then quipped, ‘I’m sorry.’ He had to shout into her ear to mitigate the shouts of the other students.

  ‘Don’t you know we are on a hunger strike? What were you eating?’ Rivanah said with a suspicious face. Ekansh put his hand back in his sling bag and drew out a closed fist. Rivanah knew it had something. He forwarded his hand as she opened her palm. It was a dry laddu.

  ‘Mom gave it to me this morning,’ Ekansh’s smile had two shades to it—stupidity and nervousness.

  ‘Such a mumma’s boy you are,’ she said with sarcasm and gobbled the full laddu like Ekansh did a moment back.

  ‘Please don’t tell anyone,’ Ekansh pleaded.

  ‘Only if you give me one more laddu.’

  He quickly took out another one and gave it to her.

  ‘God, I don’t know when this stupid strike will get over. I’m so damn hungry,’ she said to herself and gobbled the second laddu as well. With a mouthful of laddu, Ekansh felt like she was the cutest girl he had ever seen in his life.

  ‘Want to have more?’ he asked. She nodded. He quickly gave her another and said, ‘I’m Ekansh Tripathi. First year, Mech. And you?’

  Every laddu was followed with a question from him and an answer from her. Before they knew it, the noise around stopped being a distraction and they hit it off like a house on fire. Everything in him seemed to be complimenting everything in her. Once done with the laddus, they added each other on Facebook from their phones and by the time the students dispersed from the ground, they had fed each other’s numbers in their phone book as well. For the next three years in college, both became a source of hope for other couples. People broke-up, ditched, deceived, toyed right, left, and centre but their bond only grew stronger. They were tagged as FTC by their batch mates. FTC meant a Fairy Tale Couple. There were students who, looking at them, longed to be in love and there were students with multiple heartbreaks who were envious of them. Students in their respective batches were confident that if ever their story would be written, it’d turn into a runaway bestseller. True love, they often told their batch mates, was like stardom; anyone can get it but not everyone.

  Ekansh was the most balanced boy Rivanah knew existed. He never shouted at her, never abused her, never even touched her the wrong way. There were times when she would go hyper about a matter but he would help her calm down, making her understand how unnecessary it was. Ekansh not only loved her, he inspired her, encouraged her, and in a way spoilt her emotionally as well by making her believe that there was someone for her to fall back on.

  During their fourth year in college, they introduced each other to their parents as each other’s best friends. They were young and both agreed on the fact that it would be better if they let their parents know about the seriousness of their relationship only after they were financially independent. One incident Rivanah would never forget was the day she met with an accident on her way to college. A bus had hit her while she was standing with her back to the road. She was immediately rushed to the nearest hospital. It was one of her exam days. When one of her friends messaged Ekansh about it, he left his exam midway and rushed to the hospital. He got a ‘back’ on that paper, which he could have topped otherwise, but he never complained to her about it. His selflessness made her love him even more.

  The first major twist in their story came when he got a job in Bengaluru after college and had to stay away from her; the first time in four years. They were momentarily happy when Rivanah too cracked a company which would have placed her in Bengaluru but with the sudden turn of events, she was now in Mumbai while he was still in Bengaluru.

  ‘I can always come down to Mumbai. It’s not that far,’ he said to Rivanah on the phone as she ensconced on the sofa-cum-bed.

  ‘And what exactly will we do here, Mr boyfriend?’ Rivanah had a naughty tinge to her voice.

  ‘I have a friend who lives alone in Mumbai. He has office on Saturdays,’ Ekansh giggled on the phone.

  ‘My naughty baby. It’s been so long. When will we get to stay together?’

  ‘Why? What can we do staying together that we can’t now?’

  ‘Oh no, we aren’t going that way tonight. Di is here.’

  For the next half an hour, had the most amazing phone sex. With her eyes on the small passage leading to the bedroom, hoping Meghna doesn’t appear there all of a sudden, and her mind fuelled by Ekansh’s dirty words, she kept touching herself till a gigantic pleasure wave swept her off her conscious self. She didn’t know when she fell asleep. She woke up with a start after hearing someone screaming. It was only then that she realized there were not one but two people in the room. One was her sister and the other was her jiju. She could hear Aadil hurling abuses at Meghna and she reciprocating equally. She wanted to go inside the bedroom and see what the matter was, but their pitch scared her and she remained put. She picked up her phone to check if Ekansh was awake. It was 4:15 am. She was about to call Ekansh when she noticed a message on her phone from an unknown number. She opened it. It read: Beware of the darkness that engulfs you in the form of light.

  Rivanah frowned and typed a reply: Who is this?

  After sending the message, she checked the phone number. As she read the digits one by one, she could feel her heart beat ascend. It was the same as her phone number! She immediately called back at the number. The voice at the other end said exactly what she was expecting: ‘The number you are trying to reach is busy. Please try after sometime.’

  Just then, another message popped up. Don’t waste your time, Mini. Know your worth.

  3

  ‘Can two people have the same phone number?’

  It was the next morning and Rivanah was in an autorickshaw on her way to office. She had called Ekansh in the autorickshaw itself.

  ‘Two people with the same phone number? Maybe if the SIM card is duplicated, but I’m not sure if it can be done. Why are you asking?’

  For a moment, Rivanah was lost in her thoughts. Why would someone duplicate her SIM? Even if someone did, the question was how? She had changed five mobile phones from the time she bought her first, but the SIM card was the same since her first phone in standard eleven. She used to keep her phone with her twenty-four-seven. Only thrice had her phone been away from her for a considerable amount of time. One was when she had forgotten it in a cab but later found it thanks to the honest driver. The second time was when she had misplaced it somewhere in college. She had to buy a new phone after that but was able to reactivate the same phone number for herse
lf. And third was when her purse was robbed in a local train while she was travelling to a friend’s house to Khorda from Bidhan Nagar station a few days after her graduation. But she only thought it was stolen. She had found the bag in the train’s compartment itself while getting down.

  ‘Hello? You there?’ Ekansh asked.

  ‘Yeah, sorry.’ Rivanah’s trance broke. She tried to get all this out of her mind and focus on her new life ahead. It was her first day as a working professional.

  ‘Why are you asking about the same phone number?’ Ekansh said.

  ‘A friend asked,’ she lied so he wouldn’t prod further and said, ‘Anyway, I’m on my way to office. It’s my first day. Wish me luck babu.’

  ‘My best wishes are always with you. Have a great day ahead. And be confident.’

  ‘Thanks!’

  ‘Call me whenever you are free.’

  ‘Sure.’

  Tech Sky Technologies had three branches in Mumbai but luckily for Rivanah, she had to join the Goregaon east branch which was two kilometres from her sister’s place. She climbed out of the auto and paid the driver. She then came and stood right in front of the humungous building, clicked a quick selfie, and Whatsapped the image to Ekansh with three kiss smileys. Five kisses came in as a response. She smiled and took a deep breath looking high up at the Tech Sky building. She had been waiting for this moment since a long time and it was finally here. For an outsider it was just a building where people came and worked, but for her it would give her an identity that she had studied hard to attain. It was also a symbol for her impending financial freedom.

  ‘Rivanah Bannerjee, you are a corporate girl now,’ she said to herself as she entered the premise feeling jubilant.

  The first day was more about submission of documents and certificates, meeting some of the other freshers, and undergoing an orientation programme where an HR personnel from the company briefed the newcomers about Tech Sky’s corporate goals, ambition, and what the company stood for. The appraisal process for the employees and other benefits and rights were discussed too. Coincidentally, the HR person who presented the company profile to the freshers was Prateek Basotia—Rivanah’s senior from school.