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  Where was this kind of good luck before? Neel can feel happiness imploding in him.

  ‘Don’t worry. If you say no, I won’t mind nor shall our friendship be affected in any way. But if you do accept my proposal, then it’s my promise that I shall personally look into the matter that your debut novel gets published soon and marketed as the best novel ever from Word Tree, India. What do you say?’

  Neel opens his mouth and tries to say something, but words fail him.

  It’s 10 pm. The temperature in Jaipur has suddenly dipped by five degrees. The chill has ascended. Neel is standing alone below the budget hotel which is at a ten-minute walk from Diggi Palace. It is where Nivrita is staying.

  After reaching Diggi Palace post their Jaipur darshan, she requested him, in a subtle way, to shift from Diggi Palace to Hotel Savoy Raj.

  ‘I think a piece of this cold night, a bit of alcohol, and a lot of you and me getting to know each other would make the trip memorable. What say?’

  While going out with Nivrita early in the day, Neel had confirmed with the receptionist that the Hotel Diggi Palace booking was indeed done by Titiksha. Hence, Neel didn’t shift his luggage lest Titiksha calls the hotel, and realizes that he has changed his hotel. That would mean a lot of explanations required of him.

  Standing below Hotel Savoy Raj by a quiet road he is waiting for the vendor, opposite to the hotel, who is supposed to bring the alcohol he ordered a minute back. In two days, Nivrita seems to have caught hold of something within him, which being with Titiksha all these years had turned into wood. And now suddenly with Nivrita’s touch, that wooden something seems to be producing music of an unheard and strange quality. That something is his heart.

  Neel has been handed over the desired alcohol in a paper packet. He pays the money and turns to walk towards the hotel entrance. It is then that he happens to look up at Nivrita’s hotel room which has a window with a road-side view. Neel pauses. He doesn’t believe what he has seen. Though Nivrita’s room is dark right now but a second ago there was light and he saw her by the window doffing her tee. It must be an illusion. He prepares to walk on but pauses again. The light in the room has been switched on. Nivrita is standing by the window now in a bra. He has a feeling that she is looking directly at him. He looks around swallowing a big lump down his throat. There’s nobody else noticing them. The distance doesn’t allow him to see her clearly in the nude, and that adds to his emotional arousal and carnal intentions. Nivrita slowly slips off one of her bra straps from her shoulder. The light is again switched off. Neel is standing like a fool and hoping for the light to come on once again. The next instant he gets a message on his mobile phone: I’m wet.

  Neel can feel his breathing escalate reading the message. He rushes inside the hotel.

  It’s 4.50 am now. Neel is used to the darkness of the room. He is lying straight on his back, naked, eyeing the ceiling, while Nivrita is lying beside him on her stomach with the blanket giving shape to her curvaceous body. Neel can see the reflection of her nude back on the clear ceiling fan. He notices some marks on Nivrita’s back but he is too consumed in the post coital bliss to even care to ask her about it. But the thoughts recur. Who could have done this to her? Did she have an abusive father or husband or boyfriend or what? Whoever did that to her should rot in hell. Should he ask her about it when she wakes up? Neel decides against it because scars are always a private matter. Neel covers her back with the blanket.

  Minutes back they were involved in an emotionally and physically intense and desire-draining sex session. Neel in particular liked the way Nivrita made him lick up the salt from her body. How she made him realize what the most important thing in her life is, and how casually she offered her body to him. A body he has been waiting and wanting to devour in every manner possible from the time he saw her. The only thing he couldn’t guess was why did she cry? But there is another equally troubling thought trying to gain Neel’s attention.

  Neel knows he has cheated on Titiksha for the first time. And he is busy choosing the best excuse for it to calm down his busy mind. The mind is such a nice salesman; it keeps selling the best of excuses to the heart. But the heart is both a curious and cautious buyer. It doesn’t buy what the mind has to offer every time.

  Neel is trying to keep it simple. He believes—or better still, has compelled himself into believing—that he has done what he has in the last few hours because he wants to get his debut novel published by the big publishing house Nivrita works in. After attending some of the author sessions at the festival, he has come to understand how difficult it is to get one’s debut work published. Rejection can quickly become a way of life. And here he has been almost accepted before he has penned the first word, even before he knows the story himself. He tries not to think about it for some time. Then he wonders: if love is a huge sea, then Titiksha is a boat which has eventually led him to a giant ship, Nivrita. Should he leave the boat behind and climb up the ship for his book’s sake? He can always clarify it to Titiksha later. Or, what if he doesn’t tell anything to Titiksha ever? Hiding the truth is not lying. Hiding the truth is hiding the truth.

  ‘Neel?’

  He hears Nivrita speak. Her voice is groggy. She turns her head to look at him.

  ‘What if I tell you that love itself is afterlife? From the time one loves someone, he or she transcends normal life as we all know. And death is a means to bring someone back to that very life so that one can fall in love and transcend it yet again; a cycle of sorts?’

  Again one of those queries which if he responds to, he knows, will make him sound stupid since he doesn’t know what she is actually talking about. First she said love and life are like parallel tracks and now she says love is afterlife.

  ‘I’ll believe you.’ A safe answer indeed. ‘But why do you say so?’

  ‘I heard it from someone.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The one on whom my story is based.’

  ‘May I know your story Nivrita?’

  ‘For that we will have to go back to Kolkata first,’ she says and turns her head in a concluding manner as if she wants to use the subsequent silence as a lullaby.

  Chapter 5

  WHAT IS THE STORY NIVRITA HAS FOR NEEL?

  ‘Lit by day, clit by night.’

  ‘Neel smiles to himself remembering what Nivrita had whispered to him during their carnal encounter the night before. It was vulgar for his standard but it definitely gave him a kick. Both are sitting side by side in an aeroplane flying them back to Kolkata. Their being in the same morning flight, as Neel has learnt, is a coincidence.

  ‘Thanks for the pleasure pilgrimage, Neel.’

  Pleasure pilgrimage, the words amuse him.

  ‘Pleasure because the skin was involved. Pilgrimage because we were pursuing the soul through the skin,’ Nivrita clarifies. Neel loves her way of expressing how well he has fucked her.

  Thirty minutes in air and breakfast is served. When Nivrita sees a tiny piece of bread on his chin, she leans sideways to lick the bread piece off Neel’s mouth, and swallows it herself. Neel doesn’t react. By now he is used to her impulsive kisses, sudden touches, and abrupt licks. Nivrita reads Mario Llosa’s The Bad Girl for some time, and later takes a short nap while Neel sits still trying not to think of the sex session that had occurred last night, and what he will tell Titiksha if and when she asks, ‘How was Jaipur?’

  The flight lands in Kolkata on time. As they stand by the pre-paid taxi queue, Nivrita asks him, ‘Where do you stay?’

  ‘Ultadanga. And you?’ asked Neel.

  ‘Salt Lake. Tell you what, let’s take a single taxi. I can get down at the Ultadanga crossing and take another taxi from there.’ Nivrita says with a smile and in that smile Neel reads an emotional fetish for taking decisions for others. Or is it she likes to control only his choices? Before he can answer, he reminds himself that whatever Nivrita asks him, he is not going to say no. Not till he writes her story and gets it published on his name. Once
success comes his way then—only then—he shall call the shots. He smiles at her hoping she doesn’t read his intention. By now he knows she is a sharp girl. At that time the premise of the story which Nivrita told him a few minutes before the plane landed echoes in his mind:

  My story is about two innocent lovers and the not so innocent world around them. The story shows how their inability to cope up with the world they don’t belong to, but have to live with, costs them their love. In the first half, the protagonists are teenagers.

  ‘What about the second half?’ Neel had enquired.

  Nivrita had dismissed his question by plugging her iPod in her ears and closing her eyes to surrender to the music. Neel didn’t dare ask her again.

  After standing for fifteen minutes in the queue, one minute to book a taxi, and another five minutes to get the taxi number from a counter outside the airport, they finally get a taxi. Nivrita doesn’t seem to mind sitting with Neel but he is somehow acutely aware of the distance between them. Maybe for her it’s an unnoticeable distance, but for him it’s a disturbing proximity.

  Not a word is exchanged between them throughout the journey. The taxi slows down behind a bus whose driver is verbally abusing a rickshaw-wallah around the Teghoria crossing. Neel looks amused with the proceedings but then his expression changes. He has seen someone at the other side of the road. He frowns and gets down from the taxi.

  ‘What happened?’ Nivrita inquires after him.

  ‘Back in a minute…’ Neel retorts and carefully crosses the busy VIP road.

  Nivrita looks out through the taxi’s closed transparent window. She notices Neel is standing behind a half-bent person on the opposite footpath.

  The man is bent forward and is busy buying vegetables from one of the many roadside vendors. Neel taps on the man’s shoulder who, in response, straightens up and turns to look at Neel with a blank face.

  ‘Don’t you recognize me, Arindam?’ Says Neel.

  The man looks at him with an open mouth now, and nods his head in the negative.

  ‘We used to work together in Hindustan Bank.’

  The man shuts his mouth and adjusts his specs a bit; conclusively.

  ‘Sorry, you are mistaken,’ he says and continues to select his vegetables. Neel keeps looking at him aghast. It can’t be a mistake. Something dawns on him, and he pulls the man’s shirt from behind and notices a cut on his neck.

  ‘You are Arindam Dey! You have the cut-mark too. Why are you denying it?’

  The man goes off balance because of the sudden pull on his shirt. He gets up and pushes back Neel forcefully.

  ‘Get lost, you mad fucker!’

  The push and the abuse escalate Neel’s heartbeats. He hears Nivrita call out to him from the other end.

  ‘That was strange. He is Arindam Dey. We used to work together till last year. Then he left.’ Says Neel once he is back inside the taxi.

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘I am. We used to be good office buddies. I saw the cut mark he had on his neck. It was a deep one. He got it when he accidentally scratched his neck with the sharp end of a compass. He’d told me so himself.’

  ‘Then why didn’t he recognize you?’

  Neel shrugs and keeps looking at Arindam as he selects vegetables on the other end of the road.

  Nivrita seems a bit ruffled by the sudden alteration in Neel’s poise. She takes out a packet of cigarettes. In all these four days, this is the first time Neel notices the cigarette packet with her. It’s Marlboro. By the time she brings out one cigarette from it, Neel blurts, ‘If you don’t mind, could you please not smoke while I’m around?’

  Nivrita glances at him once, then at the cigarette, and keeps it back inside her bag babbling a soft apology. But she is not done. Neel sees her fidgeting with her bag and soon she takes out a photograph. She gives it to him. Neel checks it with a sense of scepticism. The picture looks old and has a boy in a white shirt and black jeans. Beside him in the photograph is a girl wearing a blue top and royal blue cropped trousers. The boy has one hand over her shoulder while the girl has her hand around his waist. Their smile looks forced, as if they weren’t ready for the photograph. Neel finds something familiar about this photograph. But he doesn’t know what exactly. He views the photograph up close just to look at their faces but cannot tell what is similar. Both the boy and girl are standing at a distance and the faces are not very clear. The light in the photograph isn’t that good either.

  ‘These are the characters of my story,’ he hears Nivrita say.

  ‘What do you mean by “your” characters?’

  ‘It’s a true story.’

  ‘You mean whatever you are going to tell me has happened in reality?’

  ‘Yes, but why do you sound scared?’

  Neel does sound scared.

  ‘Are you sure I’ll be able to pull it off? I mean you haven’t even read my writing. How come you trust me so much?’

  Nivrita looks at him straight. ‘I insisted you to write the story not because you are a bad or a good author.’

  ‘Then?’

  ‘Stop here, dada.’

  ‘What?’ He doesn’t know what she means. A second later he realizes the taxi has stopped.

  ‘I’ll call you soon,’ Nivrita says and gets down with her luggage.

  As she waves at him, Neel waves back, and then at the next traffic signal asks the driver to take a U-turn from Ultadanga. It is evident he has lied to Nivrita. He doesn’t live in Ultadanga. He lives in Lake Town with Titiksha. He didn’t tell Nivrita the truth because he didn’t want to take the risk of any sudden visit from Nivrita at his place, especially when Titiksha is around. He wants to keep Nivrita away from Titiksha for obvious reasons—he knows too less of Nivrita while he knows too much of Titiksha.

  The taxi reaches the Lake Town footbridge and is waiting for the traffic ahead to clear. Suddenly two plain clothed men appear from nowhere, open the taxi doors, and get in.

  ‘Are you Neel Chatterjee?’ one of the two men inquires.

  ‘Yes I’m. Who are you?’ Neel is visibly unnerved. The taxi driver is about to shoo off the men himself when he hears one of the two speak.

  ‘Kolkata Police. You have to come with us.’

  Neel looks at the men, one at a time. Their eyes scare him.

  Neel cannot believe his parents had filed a missing person report with the Kolkata police while he was in Jaipur. It was only when they left him at his place that he understood why the men barged into the taxi. They were following him from the airport. All through the Jaipur trip, he thought Titiksha must have told his parents about his trip. She often informed them whenever he did anything without telling them. He didn’t like telling his parents everything himself because they didn’t like Neel going alone anywhere. His parents love Titiksha though. From the time he introduced her to them they accepted her as their future daughter-in-law. Minor relationship hiccups occurred when Titiksha, being the woman she is, proposed to live-in with Neel for a year or so to see their compatibility, and then take a decision about staying together for the rest of her life. She has a thing against blind faith. At first Neel thought she may have been rejected by someone in the past because of which she has developed such preferences, but she has always told him that he is her first relationship. For reasons best known to her, she never used the term ‘first love’.

  Initially Neel was against the idea of living-in simply because he thought his parents would not accept it, forget allowing it. Marriage is the only way a man and a woman can live together under one roof, he thought. But to his surprise Titiksha managed to convince his parents. She never let him meet her parents since they lived abroad. Neel still doesn’t know why she does not even let him talk to them over the phone.

  In the bedroom of his rented flat in Lake Town, Neel patiently waits for Titiksha to come back from office. It is 10 pm. Normally she comes back by 8. He is worried about her and the wait is only adding to his worries. The surprising thing his parents have t
old him is that Titiksha hasn’t picked up their call in the last four days. Not even once! That is strange considering the fact that Titiksha has always treated his parents like her own. And if she can book the hotel room for him in Jaipur, then can’t she tell his parents where he was in the last five days? Alright, she can’t even pick up their calls? And then it dawns on him that Titiksha is yet to respond to his messages as well. On an impulse, he dials her number again. He has by now tried her number several times but every time the number is busy. Who is she talking to all the time? He gets ready to message her again when he hears the door unlocking. He switches off the bedroom light to surprise her.

  ‘It was great to be with you,’ Neel hears her say.

  Then come slurping sounds. It’s too sudden for him to guess what those sounds could be. But chances are he knows what’s going on in the drawing room. It’s the same sound Nivrita and he made in Jaipur. Neel immediately stands up. He cheated on Titiksha because he needed something from Nivrita. Why would Titiksha cheat on him? Does she need something he doesn’t know about? No way! It must be a girl who has come to drop Titiksha at home since he wasn’t in the city. But nobody ever dropped Titiksha home. He holds his head and sits down on the floor. He can now feel a mild headache.

  ‘Bye baby,’ he hears her say next.

  Titiksha is humming a song. She seems to be in a good mood. She comes to the room, switches on the light, and shrieks out loudly on seeing Neel inside.

  ‘What the hell are you doing here?’

  Should he ask her the obvious: was it a he or a she who dropped her? Or should he wait for her to clarify on her own? Will he able to take it if she says it on his face that it’s a he? It can just be a friend. The slurping sounds hovered in his mind. Friend? Really? Who is this new friend?

  ‘It’s my place, remember?’ Neel says with deliberate curtness.

  ‘It’s equally mine Neel, remember?’ she says and and tries to calm herself down. The initial surprise in her eyes seems under control now. She keeps her bag on the bedside table and lies down on the bed to relax. Neel can feel a change in Titiksha. She didn’t even care to hug him or ask how he has been and what all he did in Jaipur. Not that he would have told her what all he really did there, but still.