All Yours, Stranger: Some Mysteries are Dangerously Sexy Read online

  Next morning the first thing she did was check for a reply from Hiya Chowdhury’s account on Facebook. There was still none. While leaving for her office, she noticed Nitya looking at her. Her face told her that she had read the Post-it. It was Rivanah’s way of telling Nitya that not only was she wrong, but she better keep her unwanted and untrue opinion to herself in the future. She closed the door behind her and walked off, feeling happy after a long time.

  Once in office Rivanah logged on to her Facebook account from her desktop computer. She went directly to Messages. There was still no reply from Hiya Chowdhury’s account. She clicked on her name and realized it wasn’t hyperlinked. It meant either the user had blocked her or had deactivated the account. She quickly copied the URL from her browser, created another Facebook account and pasted the URL on the browser. The profile didn’t open. Hiya Chowdhury’s profile had been deactivated. Shit! Rivanah muttered under her breath. Her gut feeling told her this account would never be activated again. But then why was it active for this long anyway? Only for me to stumble upon it? She answered her own query. That’s odd, she thought. But everything about this whole Hiya Chowdhury mystery was, in one word, odd.

  Rivanah kept thinking about it. During lunch the fact struck her that only Argho’s comment was visible on Hiya’s timeline apart from her status update about the company’s arrival in college, which told her it could be a possible clue to something. Or . . . a dreadful thought occurred to her at that moment. Was Argho . . . the stranger himself? To reach me you have to reach yourself . . . Hiya is a bridge. Rivanah was astounded at this link. Could it be that she had finally spotted the stranger? She would know only if she met up with Argho Chowdhury.

  From the canteen Rivanah went back to her desktop and opened Argho’s profile. She was close to clicking on the Add Friend button but stopped. What if this profile too gets deactivated like Hiya Chowdhury’s? Rivanah instead clicked on the About Me section of Argho’s profile. It opened to tell her that he worked as an HR person in a start-up IT firm called Neptune Solutions Technology Pvt. Ltd. Rivanah googled the IT firm’s name and went to its official page. She further explored its Contact Us section and came to know the office was in the Mindspace area in Malad West. There were a couple of landline numbers too. She called up and told the lady who answered, ‘Hello, I would like to talk to Argho Chowdhury.’

  ‘Certainly, ma’am,’ the lady said, but before she could connect to Argho, Rivanah cut the line. She only wanted to know if there was an Argho working there or not.

  In the next two minutes she made a decision. The decision gave way to a plan. Rivanah would zero down on Argho and follow him first to see what he was up to, and only if need be, she would introduce herself. The plan was put to execution. She complained to her team lead that she had indigestion and had thrown up three times. The team lead gave her a half-day. She immediately left her office and took an autorickshaw to Malad West. She located the IT firm quite easily. She didn’t go inside. If Argho was indeed the stranger then he would know her. In that case, if he saw her, he would either approach her or avoid her. Moreover, how do you enter a company office when you have no appointment or interview? Either way, she didn’t want him to notice her just yet. Rivanah once again called the front office landline number of the firm. When the phone was picked up she directly asked if Argho Chowdhury was available.

  ‘Yes, please hold on,’ the lady on the other side said.

  ‘Excuse me, but what are the working hours?’

  ‘9 a.m. to 6.30 p.m. Please wait while I get Argho sir on the line.’

  Rivanah immediately hung up. Her job was done. Argho was inside at the moment. She looked around and noticed a cafe across the street. She went inside and took a seat from where she could keep an eye on who was going in and coming out. She was sure to identify Argho because she had perused every unlocked picture of his.

  At around 6.30 p.m., people started moving out of the building. By then Rivanah had had three cups of coffee. She stood up with her eyes fixed on the exit. She prayed hard that she wouldn’t miss Argho because the chances of her missing him were more than those of spotting him in the surge of people. A few more minutes of waiting and then she saw Argho coming out, talking on the phone. He walked to the bus stop and stood there, smoking a cigarette while continuing to talk on the phone. Rivanah prayed he didn’t have a bike or any vehicle; otherwise following him would be tough. Soon, he dropped the cigarette, stamped it out and climbed into an auto which had slowed down by the stop. Rivanah quickly took an autorickshaw herself and asked the driver to follow Argho’s auto. The driver did exactly as he was asked to. It was only when the auto reached Andheri West station that she saw Argho getting down. She too got down, paid the auto driver and started following him on foot.

  As Argho took the West–East bridge, she too did the same. There was a good hundred metres between them. All she wanted to know was where he lived. Once she knew that she could find out a lot more and most importantly if he indeed was the stranger.

  Suddenly Argho kneeled down. Rivanah turned around and in a flash had her phone against her ear as if she was talking to someone. Her heart was in her mouth. She could feel her body was trembling slightly with tension. From the corner of her eyes she noticed Argho was only tying his shoelace. She relaxed. And started following him once he started walking again. He crossed the bridge and finally took the direction for the metro. For Rivanah it was the first time at the Mumbai Metro. Looking around cluelessly, she tried to do whatever Argho was doing. She took the escalator to move up like he did, went a floor above the ground level, walked straight, took a turn and saw Argho in the ticket queue. She tried but couldn’t hear which station he was heading to. She took another queue and as she reached the ticket window, she turned to see him pass through the security check.

  ‘Which is the last stop?’ she asked the girl behind the ticket counter.

  ‘Versova at one end and Ghatkopar on the other,’ the girl said indifferently.

  Rivanah knew Versova was towards Andheri West where he could have taken the auto itself which meant he was definitely going somewhere towards . . .

  ‘Ghatkopar,’ she said. She got the ticket and without caring to take her change rushed towards the security check, after which she proceeded to the automated gate where she touched her ticket on the top of the machine for the gate to open. She passed through it looking ahead. Argho was climbing the stairs for the Ghatkopar-bound train. Rivanah almost scampered towards it, waited by the stairs for a moment and then climbed up. She was gasping for air when she reached the platform. A casual glance to her left told her he was standing amidst other men at a distance. The metro arrived in the next minute. Men were blocking the door through which Argho had entered. Rivanah entered two compartments ahead but walked through the vestibule and reached the same compartment as Argho’s. She hid herself behind a tall man in a way so that she could keep an eye on Argho without him noticing her. One after another, stations went by and Argho finally moved out at Saki Naka station. So did she. Following him, she reached the exit. He was waiting for the elevator with a few others. Rivanah waited at a distance, knowing she couldn’t risk going close to him just yet. As he entered the elevator with the others and the door closed, she hurried towards the escalator. But to her frustration she realized the escalator was going up. The only way she could go down was by the elevator. She waited with some others hoping Argho didn’t go out of sight. She rushed into the elevator the moment it arrived again. In a few seconds it took her to the street below. As she came out on the street outside another set of people rushed into the elevator. She looked around. There was no sign of Argho.

  Damn!

  ‘Madam, is it yours?’ said someone who was about to enter the elevator.

  It was a white piece of cloth with something embroidered in black. It was not hers. But she knew it was definitely meant for her. She stretched her hand and took it from the person. The elevator door closed. She read the message on it:<
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  I’ll be glad if you get to me. But once you do, you shall destroy yourself forever, Mini. The choice is yours.

  For a moment she couldn’t breathe. The passive-aggressive threat that the message communicated hit Rivanah hard. She could feel a certain fear escalate right from within her guts. She took out a bottle of water from her bag and drank from it. There were two things hovering on her mind right then: one, she had finally zeroed in on the stranger; two, the cloth message also told her that Argho knew she would come after him. Once again she looked around but knew she had lost him for the time being. Or maybe he was looking at her from somewhere. She checked her phone for some message, perhaps from an unknown number. There was nothing. Disappointed, she took the escalator up and went back to Andheri first and then home.

  She opened the flat with her spare keys. The silence told her there was nobody inside. She switched on the lights and was about to take off her sandals when her phone buzzed with five messages. For a second she thought it could be the stranger—Argho—messaging her. She checked the messages. A couple of audio messages from Nitya. She played the last one. Nitya’s voice said, Congrats indeed, Rivanah. She played the second-last audio message and heard Danny’s voice. What he said stole the air out of her lungs.

  11

  Rivanah was sitting on one of the two La-Z Boy chairs in the drawing room, trying hard not to think about the messages Nitya had sent, and yet she could still hear Danny’s voice from the audio. Her body temperature had risen a bit and she could feel anger gushing within her like a fierce wind. And with the anger there was a certain instability that she could feel that wasn’t letting her think straight. The doorbell rang after a good one and a half hour. Nitya’s laughter was audible and so was Danny’s. Rivanah got up and opened the door. The way she stalked back to the chair without even caring to look at them piqued both Danny and Nitya. Danny immediately sensed something was wrong.

  ‘What happened?’ he asked.

  Rivanah, with a straight face, glanced at Nitya once. There was a slight hint of amusement on Nitya’s face which told Rivanah she knew exactly what had happened. Rivanah gave the phone to Danny. He took it and played the audio file. He knew exactly when this had been recorded. In the morning after Rivanah had left for her office, when Danny was having his green tea with Nitya sitting on the couch in the room he was in right now.

  ‘I don’t know what to do really!’ Danny’s voice from the audio reverberated in the quietness of the room.

  ‘Why, what happened?’ It was Nitya’s voice.

  ‘Whenever Rivanah talks to me about marriage it just gets to me. I want to be with her, but I don’t know why she keeps harping about marriage all the time. As if we are in a relationship only to get married. Why does she do it?’

  ‘Did you tell her that?’

  ‘You think she’ll understand? I always have to lie to her face that we’ll get married, but the whole idea of marriage screws my mind up. I love Rivanah. But this one thing about her just irritates me.’

  ‘So you don’t want to marry Rivanah?’

  ‘No, I don’t want to. I mean I don’t understand the need for marriage.’

  The audio was over. Danny didn’t know where to look. He had said whatever he felt in the audio and that made him feel all the more guilty. He couldn’t look at Rivanah. He turned to Nitya instead.

  ‘What’s this?’ he asked.

  ‘Rivanah said you would marry her. I said you won’t. A little game between us which she thought she won last night.’ She glanced at Rivanah and said, ‘You now know who won, don’t you?’

  Rivanah didn’t look at Nitya. Looking straight at Danny, she said, ‘Why couldn’t you tell me this?’

  ‘I wanted to, but I was scared that you wouldn’t understand me.’

  For a moment everything about Danny seemed like Ekansh to her.

  ‘What else didn’t you tell me, Danny, safely presuming that I wouldn’t understand it?’

  ‘Trust me; I haven’t hidden anything from you.’

  ‘Trust? If you don’t already realized it by now, then let me tell you: this “trust” becomes a funny thing once you realize the person can lie to you.’

  ‘I didn’t lie to you, Rivanah. I just—’

  ‘Yes, you lied. And don’t you try to tell yourself or me otherwise. When I asked you last night you said you were more than okay with marrying me. Why can’t you men just be straight about a few things?’ Rivanah turned and was about to dash towards the front door when Danny grabbed her hand.

  ‘Let go of me, Danny.’ She was fuming.

  ‘I’m sorry, Rivanah. It’s not what you think. I can explain. I love you,’ Danny pleaded.

  Rivanah shot a glance at him. I can explain . . . the same words Ekansh had once used. When you are a tourist every place is exciting but as a native every place is the same, monotonous. The first day she had seen Danny in a towel she had been a tourist. Now she was a native. She knew him better. A bud of an ironic smile stretched her lips but before it could flower further, Rivanah checked it.

  ‘I understand, Danny, and that’s why you don’t have to explain anything.’ She shook his hand off and added, ‘Just message me when you won’t be home; I will come and clear out my stuff.’

  ‘What? Where will you stay?’

  ‘Never mind.’ Rivanah spoke softly this time. She stepped out and shut the door behind her. For some time Danny stood still, looking tense and anxious. Then he looked at Nitya who was now sitting in the La-Z Boy where Rivanah had been a moment back.

  ‘It wasn’t just a game, was it, Nitya? You wanted her place, right?’ Danny said.

  ‘No, Danny. What are you saying?’ She stood up and came to him and, putting her hands around his neck, said, ‘I wanted my place, not hers. Don’t you get it? You and I were always supposed to be together. It was foolish of me to get into another relationship, but, after the break-up, I realized if there is someone who will always understand me, that’s you, Danny. That’s you!’

  ‘Before recording that message, didn’t you think that I actually loved Rivanah?’ he said, removing her hands from around his neck and moving away.

  ‘I did, but then Rivanah and you don’t have a future. You said so yourself in the audio. You both want different things from the relationship. But you and I want the same thing. I will never ask you to marry me. Never ever.’ She tried to come close again but Danny stopped her.

  ‘I want you to go back to your flat, Nitya.’

  ‘Danny . . . listen . . . you are not able to—’

  ‘Right now, Nitya, before I forget you were my best friend once.’

  Nitya staggered. Danny went into the bedroom and locked himself in.

  From her flat in Andheri Rivanah took an autorickshaw straight to Meghna’s place in Goregaon East. She had called her to check if she was at home. She was. Rivanah kept rubbing her tears off but they didn’t seem to stop. She knew there were things that even she had never told Danny about, and she was blaming him for the same emotional crime that she too had committed. And yet she couldn’t bring herself to forgive him. She wouldn’t be able to go back to the flat. That was final. Would she go back to Danny? She wasn’t ready to answer this because she didn’t yet know if it was even a question.

  Meghna opened the door for Rivanah. She was meeting her after nine or ten months. After she had left her place Rivanah had gone to live on her own for the first time. So much had happened since then, she thought, and hugged Meghna.

  ‘You remember your Meghna di only when you need something, no? Where were you all these months?’

  ‘I’m so sorry, Di. I always wanted to call up and meet but—’

  ‘But time flies, I keep busy and all that. It is okay; even I give the same excuse to everyone.’

  They laughed as Meghna welcomed Rivanah into the drawing room. Meghna excused herself to finish some office work on the laptop while Rivanah relaxed on the sofa-cum-bed in the drawing room. The same one on which she had had the most
amazing phone sex of her life with Ekansh. Where did that time go? What happened to that Rivanah who was so happy with life? Life kills you more acutely than death, she thought and tried to close her eyes to sleep when the doorbell rang.

  ‘Mini, will you please see who it is?’ Meghna shouted from the bedroom.

  ‘Sure, Di.’ Rivanah stood up and went to open the door. It was a young guy with spiked hair, red tee, royal-blue denims and Converse shoes. His ears were plugged with white earphones. He took out the earplug on seeing Rivanah.

  ‘Yes?’ she said.

  ‘Umm . . . This is where Meghna lives, right?’

  His accent told her he was from the North-east. ‘Yes,’ Rivanah said without registering why such a young guy would refer to Meghna by name.

  ‘Then who are you?’ he asked.

  ‘I’m Rivanah, her cousin. But who are you?’

  ‘I stay here.’

  ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘I live with Meghna.’

  Before Rivanah knew it, her jaw had already dropped. Meghna was standing behind her by then.

  ‘Come in, Riju,’ Meghna said. Rivanah slowly moved out of the way as Riju came in.

  ‘Freshen up. I will make tea for you,’ Meghna said. Riju nodded and disappeared inside. Meghna closed the door and said, ‘Aadil and I are divorced now. Nobody at home knows. And I hope you will keep it to yourself,’ and went to stand by the window in the drawing room. She knew Rivanah would come up to her.

  ‘Aadil da and you are divorced?!’

  ‘We tried our best but it didn’t work out.’ There was silence, after which Meghna continued, ‘Or maybe we didn’t really try our best because we knew that if we did we would have saved our relationship but neither of us wanted that. A saved relationship is no relationship, after all.’