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  Neel’s mind is already bouncing off thoughts about his girlfriend Titiksha. How would she react if she saw him like this? He had taken a decision twenty days ago and that punched a hole in his five-year-old ‘steady’ relationship with Titiksha. Before tonight, he never knew he had the guts to cheat on her. All Titiksha knows is that he is attending the Jaipur Literary Festival. He even told her the mobile network is weak where he is putting up and thus he won’t be able to take her calls. In reality he has removed his mobile phone’s battery while coming up to the room so that his number is unreachable. The girl had remarked that she hated interruptions. It has only been two days and three nights since he met her and he is already more loyal to her than his half-a-decade old girlfriend.

  Men!

  Right now, he only wants to live in the moment. The guilt, the moral bugs, and the canines of relationship ethics—they can all wait.

  Neel has taken off his black jacket, pullover, tee, trousers, shoes, and socks. He is about to tug his underwear down when the girl switches on the light and says, ‘Keep that on.’

  And he does.

  ‘Come to me,’ she says. He follows.

  A couple of steps and Neel shrieks out with pain.

  ‘There are glass pieces all over,’ he complains pulling out a sharp piece of glass from under his feet with a distorted expression.

  ‘Pleasure is more exciting when you get to it by confronting pain,’ the girl hisses.

  A confused Neel somehow manages to stand straight as he notices the girl sitting on the bed. She is only wearing a pair of shorts.

  ‘Some Tequila?’ she asks holding up a bottle.

  ‘Fine with me.’ Neel keeps the other bottle of alcohol he had brought with himself on a nearby shelf.

  He observes how swiftly she readies a shot of Tequila for him. Her preparation surprises him because it means she knew he would give in. Men are pretty straight that way. Women, on the other hand, are always a work of translation. If you want to get to a woman’s essence, you have to read her in the language she has originally been written in, and not the one she has been translated into. What’s her original language? Neel wonders and watches her spread a pinch of salt on her bare shoulder line.

  ‘Take your shot Tiger,’ he hears her say with intent.

  Neel goes to her, licks up the salt from her shoulder line, gulps the shot, and sucks the lime which she has kept in her mouth with the juicy side outward. The sucking seems like a small mouth-duel.

  For the next shot, the girl lies down on the bed and spreads the salt on her navel and puts another lime wedge on her mouth with the juicy side out. Neel licks the salt, making sure he has every grain of it in his mouth—even the ones which have gone inside her belly button. He gulps the Tequila and sucks the lime harder this time. While licking the salt, he feels her squirming sexily. It arouses him.

  For the third shot, the girl rubs the salt on her lower lip. She is holding the lime in one hand and the Tequila shot in another. First the salt, then the shot, and as Neel is about to suck the lime, she moves her hand upwards. Neel tries to reach it, she moves it downwards. Neel suddenly grabs her hand, sucks the lime, and compulsively kisses her on the lips till she pushes him away.

  He distances himself presuming she has taken offense.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Neel apologizes wiping his mouth.

  She reacts by getting up from the other side of the bed and going around it to reach him. Somehow the more time she takes to get to the final act, the more fire Neel can feel in his loins.

  ‘Look out!’ Neel warns her but by then she has already stepped on a tiny glass piece.

  ‘Pain has become such an intrinsic part of me that it has stopped disturbing me anymore,’ she says. Neel is amazed to see that she doesn’t even flinch even once though a glass piece has pierced her feet. She plucks out the glass like it’s nothing.

  She is standing right in front of Neel now. He looks down at her breasts. Her chocolate brown nipples seem tight. It calls for a high degree of will-power to avert his eyes from the nipples and look up at her.

  ‘You told me what’s important in your life. Won’t you like to know the most important thing in my life?’ she says caressing his chest softly with her fingertips. All Neel can manage is a subtle nod.

  ‘Okay. I’ll do something to you now. It’s the code for the most important thing in my life. You have to decode it if you want me tonight right there on the bed with you,’ she says with an air of mystery.

  The intensity of the statement makes Neel glance at the bed. He can visualize their bare bodies on the bed in a carnal wrestle.

  ‘Okay,’ he manages to blurt with a semi-dry throat.

  The girl raises her heels slightly to stand on her toes and reach his ears. From his left ear she licks him downwards, with the tip of her tongue and stops at his shoulder blade.

  ‘Clue number one,’ she says looking straight at his eyes. She then kneels down next and slowly encircles his belly button with her tongue. She does so with a fervour Neel always wanted to see in Titiksha but never did. He wonders if they are in a dream and if he will wake up soon? But how should he confirm if it’s a dream or not? Probably if he never wakes up it’s reality else it’s a dream. But what if this reality is the biggest dream of all?

  ‘Two,’ she whispers next. He looks down at her but this time instead of returning his look, she goes further down and moves her tongue over his underwear, on his crotch: first a slanting lick downwards from left and then a slanting lick upwards towards right.

  ‘Three,’ she murmurs and stands right up on her toes, reaching his right ear. She licks him there as if making two ‘C’s; one below the other.

  ‘And four.’ She smiles at him. ‘Now tell me.’

  Neel has no idea what the clues stand for. Judging from his face, the girl tells him she can do that only once more for him. This time Neel is able to make sense of it. The lick from his left ear, down to the side of the neck, and then towards her right following his shoulder blade seems like an ‘L’? The encircling of the belly button is an ‘O’. The slanting lick downwards and then upwards is a ‘V’, and the final licks on the ear—a ‘C’ below a ‘C’—could be…

  ‘I got it.’ Neel sounds relieved more than anything else.

  ‘The word is L. O. V. E.,’ he says.

  The girl sucks in both her cheeks a little and pouts her lips looking at him with an intent which smells of raw lust.

  ‘Congrats. You’ve just won yourself a ticket to a lot of places inside you.’ A pause later she adds, ‘Take me to bed Neel.’

  As he picks her up, she looks deep into his eyes and says, ‘There are two kinds of love: one that exists because it has never been tested, and one that lives on because it has passed all its tests. What kind of love do you have for Titiksha?’

  Neel doesn’t care to answer. Instead he places her on the bed. He is about to kiss her when he notices she has tears in her eyes.

  ‘What happened?’ Of all things, Neel hadn’t expected her to cry.

  ‘I told you I’m wet.’

  Before Neel can understand what she means, she forcibly bites his left ear.

  Chapter 3

  WHO EXACTLY IS NEEL CHATTERJEE?

  Couples fight. The ones that don’t, smile unnecessarily all the time. That way they remain at peace with each other. Sooner or later, one of the two gets bored with the peace in their relationship, and then start talking honestly about it. Next, they fight.

  Titiksha and I have been a couple for four years, ten months, and twenty-one days. I have never understood why we fight. But we do. Not all the time. In fact, it wasn’t like this always. The time when we knew less of each other, things were better. A relationship is always allergic to possessiveness, giving it rashes of insecurity. Titiksha is extremely possessive about me. Worse, I am insecure about her.

  Two things pissed her off today. One, when I told her I want to be an author. And second, while she was shouting at me, I told her that I
had an erection. I couldn’t help it. Her anger is one of the sexiest things about her. And if you are a guy, or a girl who has a guy in her life, you will know how involuntary an erection is. It can happen anytime, anywhere, and for any reason. Or at times for no reason at all. I was trying to fight Titiksha’s anger, but seeing her in the taut black shorts and white spaghetti top which gave me a glimpse of her bouncing boobs every time she shouted at me rendered me off track. I didn’t tell her about the bouncing-boobs part else she would have scratched me bad. Why? Wait, you don’t know Titiksha yet. I do. She simply needs an excuse to scratch me with her long nails.

  But she had noticed the erection, after all. She told me to stop being an animal at odd hours. Going by her logic, her horniness is ‘her love for me’ and my horniness is an animalistic trait. I agree we haven’t had sex for a long time now, but I wouldn’t have caused such a thing for distraction. I even apologized stating it wasn’t my fault that she looked incorrigibly edible so early in the morning. It was the truth. Her hair was all muffled. The kajal she had applied the previous evening was smudged. She smelt of dry sweat. She doesn’t know it but I like her this way; stale. I couldn’t convey this to her because she can’t even take praise when she is angry. And if this was not enough, I could also see her nipple poking out from her top. That’s serious distraction, ask any guy. How could I argue with a girl with her nipples eyeing me?

  Coming to the primary thing that pissed her off this morning was my decision to quit my three-year-old managerial job at a private bank. It was the first thing I told her when I opened my eyes. She asked me why I didn’t consult her or my family about this, and whether I knew how insecure is the life of an author, or how she had planned our future. Did I mention Titiksha is a financial analyst?

  According to her, we would get married by twenty-eight, have a child by thirty, adopt another by thirty-two (she says every financially stable couple should conceive one baby and adopt another), and then together we would retire by forty-five in some hill station and watch our kids grow. All my life I have lived by others’ expectations of me. I’m twenty-seven now. I haven’t yet done anything that I thought I should do. Twenty years from now I’ll be forty-six and I want to use these twenty years in-between to do things my heart stands for, so that after forty-six I don’t waste time having life-consuming-monologues all the time concerning my self-chosen cowardice. I really loved to write but nobody ever encouraged me. And now when I see someone’s novel in the market or read about the Indian Publishing boom in newspapers and magazines, only I know how much I want to be a part of it.

  Of all people, I thought Titiksha would understand the latent pain associated with the non-realization of my long-nested dream. She said I should have consulted her first. I don’t understand this. Is being in a relationship customary to lose one’s individuality? I didn’t feel like discussing it with her. Period. Does that mean I don’t love her? Five years into the relationship, and only this morning I realized how much we chew on each other’s choices.

  In angst Titiksha left me with an erection. What kind of girlfriend does that? In the five years that we’ve been together, she should have known I can’t tolerate a wasted hard-on. I CAN’T! But she left. I doubt she must have done a crash course on how-to-be-rude-to-your-horny-boyfriend, if that sort of a thing is possible.

  Alone, I sit down on the floor. There is nothing in this rented flat of ours except a mattress, a few old saris of Titiksha’s mother which we have turned into curtains, two laundry bags (hers is bigger than mine), and a small almirah. We earn considerably well but we never buy anything for the flat. She never lets me. ‘I’m saving’, is her excuse. Titiksha is like that—weird about certain things.

  I wipe my face and chest with a towel. It’s very humid in Kolkata today. I’m only in my knickers. I rest my back on the wall and look up at the ceiling. To be precise, I stare at the ceiling fan which is rotating furiously. There’s something about its movement which makes me ponder…

  As far as I remember—and I don’t remember very much—I have always been a loner. Ma was there. Dad was there. But nobody was there by my side—you know what I mean? I never felt the need for anything except the basics. My basic needs were always met, and hence I concluded my family did well.

  From the time I was a kid, I was kept away from people. Ma once told me I was allergic to some dust ailment which, if I was exposed to, could be fatal. Her statement was never tested so I don’t know if it’s the truth. But then truth is what one thinks it is, isn’t it?

  Now I have somewhat recovered in the last few years of the dust ailment. Or so I’m told. I’m free to roam about freely, though I don’t go to many places as such. I live-in with Titiksha here in this rented flat in the Lake Town area of north Kolkata. My parents let us live-in together because they think we’ll get married eventually, even though Titiksha and I have never even discussed marriage yet. Marriage is only a social license to procreate. Titiksha and my relationship is more serious than that. We are seeking companionship and that doesn’t need any social licensing.

  Let me tell you something funny. I have a couple of photo albums of me in hill stations, beaches, or riding a camel in a desert—but I don’t remember these moments well. Perhaps I was too young. Is the ability of making one memory after another so that secretly we can be with it at our leisure, one of the signs of maturity? In that case I matured pretty late. That’s what my parents tell me. Hence I never attended school. Not like others. Private tutors used to teach me at home while I went to school whenever there was a class test or a term exam. The other students never talked to me. I was an alien to them. I could tell from the way they looked at me. I was physically different from them as well—bigger in size. The school uniform undoubtedly looked funny on me while I had a definite thick moustache compared to the others who only had a soft thin line. And only I know how disgusting my stubble looked in comparison to others’ supple cheeks.

  The girls looked at me with a sense of pity. One or two smiled. It made me nervous. A girl smiling at me is something that petrifies me the most. No, second most. The foremost is a girl giving me a flying kiss. It has happened a few times in the past. Even now whenever Titiksha and I make love, which is rare, she initiates it. I have a problem initiating anything. Except an erection.

  In a way I was happy to be at home. Within the four walls of my room, I had my best friend—my imagination. Self-talks. Headaches. Masturbation. Medicines. Tears. Smiles, too. And some music. I never read newspapers. Never sat in front of a computer until I joined college. Even the window panes of my room were done with black glasses through which I could see outside but nobody could see me. Just imagine eighteen-shit years, like this! You may ask if I didn’t get bored or how I hadn’t turned plain crazy by the end. I didn’t. Why? How? I was made to believe that everyone, by and large, lived exactly the same life as me—again and again and again. I always believed what I was told. Like I have been told that God is everywhere around us, and humanity within us, and nobody controls anything. Everyone is controlled by destiny. That respecting one’s own religion and taking part in rituals is important to keep the Gods happy and seek their blessings. That blessing is stronger than karma, and so on. Funny thing is, I believed it all without asking for proof.

  The good thing about being alone all the time was that I never had to share anything with anyone, or I wasn’t ever back-stabbed, never wasted time advising anybody what he or she should do, never killed time by thinking about someone. The same thing happened after school. I told my parents I wanted to study computers. Thanks to Pritam, a friend whom I lost all contact with after school, I made the decision. What happened was I saw him cheating during a school term exam. He saw me notice it but I didn’t complain to the teacher. He thought I could have complained when the reality was the concept of cheating was new to me then. I understood he was cheating much later. Anyway, so when I went to school for the next semester class test he gave me a disc, out of gratitude, saying it was
his favourite computer game. I took the disc alright but had no clue what to do with it. I had computers as a subject then, but all I learned were some silly languages. A computer game was alien to me back then. I went home and read whatever was written on the cover. That curiosity led me to take up computer science during my graduation but I knew that only few colleges would have agreed to have me as a student. I always had low grades in school. I studied alright. Teachers said my grasping power was pretty low. Surprisingly, I passed AIEEE with better marks than most students, and got into a good college on the outskirts of Kolkata to study computers.

  The college was good. The seniors, professors, freshers— everybody kept to themselves. Nobody talked to me. Nobody ragged me. I was dropped at the college gate in my father’s car and picked up right after college. My academics improved during college. I once heard someone say real friendship begins in college hostels. But I could never experience it. My parents would have never agreed to it. They always have been protective about me. I rarely have any interaction with them except about what I should or shouldn’t do. And of course the medicines. I have frequent headaches. I get them since childhood, they say. And for that I have to regularly go for check-ups, have medicines, and answer some irritating questions thrown at me by doctors. I try hard to avoid going to the clinic but headaches get the better of me always. To cut a long and boring story short, I have lived a very shitty life than most of the people out there. But tell you what, there are certain fragrances, if followed well, take you to that very point in life where everything seems perfect. Love is one such fragrance. And it happened when Titiksha joined my college in the second year.

  There’s a power cut. The fan rotation slows down and I come back to the present. I hear the main door open and shut. Titiksha has come. I tell her I knew she would be back. Hearing this she rebukes me for not reminding her that she wasn’t wearing a bra while going out. But how could I? I was enjoying the bra’s absence. I don’t tell her this. I only tell her that I shall stick to what I have decided to do with my life henceforth: that I would be an author and for inspiration, I shall visit Jaipur in the coming week for the Jaipur Literary Festival. Titiksha is staring at me now. She shows me both her middle fingers and asks me to go to hell. She leaves again, and I shout at her from behind in a mocking manner.