The Talisman - Part 2

Ritvik stood outside on his balcony drinking in the grey black sky with streaks of yellow and orange as the traffic and the smoke lent an unnatural underbelly to the evening. He held the cup of coffee in his hand, long gone cold, the thick film on top equally covering the sides of the cup and the dregs of liquid inside. He abruptly felt like throwing the cup far far away into the gloom and had to turn away physically to hold himself back. Normally a happy and lively chap, he found himself sullen and irritable most of the time nowadays, sort of like he was perpetually sucking on a lemon. And he was beginning to realise that it was mostly because of Ananya.

He had developed feelings for her. Feelings that he was so sure he wouldn’t have, feelings that he was afraid to label. He was too young now for anything that serious wasn’t he. But that in itself was only part of the problem. Sort of like a twin bullet hole to the head. Because while he was busy analysing his feelings and what they meant, like interpreting a Rorschach ink blot, Ananya had gone and got a boyfriend. It was like adding insult to injury for him to realise that he was finally admitting that he had some kind of feelings for her only to have her flaunting her boyfriend like the new accessory that she had bought at the mall store.

Not that much had changed between them. They still met on the train, in the evenings at the market, went out for the odd coffee, dinner and talked like they had been waiting to tell each other something all their lives. In the middle of all that, Ritvik suddenly found himself noticing the quaintest things about her, like the way that her eyebrows almost met down the centre when she was concentrating on something simple like even her coffee, about the way she blew that persistent curl off her right cheek from the corner of her mouth, the dimple that stole into her cheek when she really smiled, the soft down on her neck when she bent down to eat. He suddenly discovered a million and one things about her, like a subtitle had suddenly come up on the screen to explain things clearly.

And then Ananya had met Kabir, a simple hulk of a guy who appeared to have a great sense of humour and was also intelligent up there to boot. Ritvik had suddenly found that he saw less and less of Ananya except for the meetings on the train and even that went down as she sometimes took a cab home. One evening, she called him from office and asked if he could meet for a coffee. Arriving early, Ritvik had seen her with a guy who made the whole table that they were sitting at, appear small in size. He looked huge but had an easy smile that lit up his face quite so often. More than that, it was the way that Ananya was looking up at him that made Ritvik squirm in his seat. He was getting angrier by the minute as they sat there and chose to remain silent through the conversation and simply shook hands with them and left.

But it wasn’t so easy. Kabir was a difficult person to not like. His easy familiarity and gentle geniality and a certain genuineness drew out Ritvik over a period of time. Even though he had no clue how to react to Ananya’s statement about wanting Ritvik’s feedback on Kabir before they got serious. What exactly did she mean by that - get serious? In the last 6 months or so, Ritvik felt that he had gone from the time when he mentally felt he was sharing Ananya with Kabir to the time when he now felt Kabir was sharing Ananya with him. And while he had grudged and gimped about it, Kabir was every bit the gentleman who never lifted an eyebrow when Ananya told him that she wanted to go home with Ritvik. How was it so easy for him to do that when Ritvik still felt like he was losing ground every time Ananya didn’t show up on the train? How was it that Kabir greeted him with a gentle bear hug when all Ritvik could bring himself to do was shake Kabir’s hand?

It was all Ananya’s fault was what Ritvik decided. She shouldn’t have behaved so openly and friendly with him, he thought. And then caught himself as he realised that she had just been friendly with him. They were close, quite close. But there was nothing more that she had indicated or even had led him to believe. If he had fallen in love with her, it was his own damn fault. And he had no one to blame for all this but himself. Even though he kept telling himself this, it never helped him feel any better. This constant reminder of his condition over the past month or so had gotten to the point where he had now started feeling like the angel and the devil were both riding on his shoulders and tormenting him by turn.  

And this evening, as he stood on the balcony, staring outside, he was particularly reminded of both of them dancing a merry tune on the balcony railing. A sudden drop on his cheek woke him from his thoughts. He looked upward and caught the flash of light on a few drops as a drizzle started. He stood there letting the drops wash down his face, hoping they would wash his mind clear of the confusion that reigned. After a long while of standing with eyes closed and face upturned to the rain, suddenly, it was like a bolt of lightning struck. The only solution was to tell Ananya how he felt. Then it would be OK. She would understand and then by some miracle, would find a way to make it alright and be back with him again. His eyes opened with a start and lit up. He went back indoors like a man possessed. He couldn’t wait to meet Ananya and talk to her, feeling somehow that the whole thing was sorted now. He had to reign in his enthusiasm and could hardly sleep through the night. He was up before dawn and was raring to go.

He was at the station waiting for it to be 7:30 so that she would come. He had first thought about messaging her and asking her to meet him. But then that would not be normal and so he had stopped and decided to just act normal. As the clock seemed to be moving in slow motion, each minute seemingly taking an hour, he realised he was holding his breath each time as he waited. Forcing himself to relax, he got a cup of coffee and checked the time. It was only 10 minutes past seven as yet. The coffee seemed lukewarm and tasteless as he soon finished the cup and paced up and down, attracting curious looks from bystanders. He decided to slow down and stop walking around and stood at a pillar in the hope that the solidity of the pillar would give his mind strength. As he stood there, his back to the pillar and one leg braced back against it, the events of the last few months rolled through his mind’s eye. The realisation that it all might finally fall into place brought a smile to his face and he felt himself relaxing like the tension had suddenly gone out of a coiled spring.

The sound of the train brought him back to earth and he looked around for Ananya. Not catching sight of her, his smile transitioned into a frown and he walked forward towards the train, all the while desperately searching. The train left the station and he was still standing there, a frown on his face and a feeling that something had gone wrong, a feeling like that piece of china was falling all the way to the floor. He decided against going into office and went to Ananya’s apartment to check on her. He waited outside her door ringing the bell twice and then gave up on debating ad called her phone. After three tries, he gave up and decided to go down and ask the Security about her. He found that she had left home the previous night with Kabir and hadn’t come back till then. He decided to message her asking her to call him as soon as she could. The day drew on; long and dreary as he found he could not concentrate on anything at all and was biting the head off anyone who even cared to talk to him. Taking the train back in the evening, he gave up on the day and decided to go and get drunk. While leaving for the bar, he checked his phone for the 7 millionth, 24 thousandth 3 hundred and 49^th time and then just decided to leave his phone at home and put himself out of his anxiety misery.

Walking back woozily from the cab that he got off from about six hours later, he decided that drinking was hardly the cure for what he had - that deep sickness of the mind when his heart felt like a bottomless pit from which all kinds of nightmarish thoughts were creeping out. Turning the corridor to his apartment door, he fumbled for his keys and instantly dropped them as he saw someone sitting outside his door, head with hair just like Ananya’s buried in between hands just like hers and which were framing knees that ended in a pair of blue sneakers just like the ones that she wore. Falling to his knees before her, he suddenly regretted having drunk so much and needing to focus so badly. His “hey” got no response and he sat down on suddenly shaky knees and his legs shot out from underneath him and bumped into hers. The sudden move woke her up and she lifted what appeared to be a puffy face with bloodshot eyes to look at him. That did it.

He quickly hustled her into his apartment. A cup of tea and a toast later, she appeared to come back from the zombie zone into the world of the living. He decided not to push her and just waited it out. She asked to have something strong and he brought out the only bottle of untouched spirits in the house – a bottle of Glen Morangie that he had been saving up for an occasion. Well this occasion was as good as any other, he thought as he poured a healthy portion into a glass filled with ice. She drank her first one like she had travelled a desert for the past few weeks. Into her third one, he noticed that she slowed down and got that distant, far-away look in her eyes. A suspicious looking tear slid down her cheek and soon her sniffles gave her away. He waited with a patience that he had learnt being around her. And soon, it all spilled out in bits and pieces in between snorts and wails and hiccups. It appeared that Kabir had taken her out on a trip and she had assumed that he was going to propose to her and when it did not happen, she blew up and had a rip roaring fight with him and had run away.

Ritvik felt all of his plans to tell her what he wanted to, running away into the gutter like a patch of oil being carried away by a driving rain that it had no chance of outstaying. He turned away to the sink to hide the sudden flush of tears in his eyes and put away the glasses and busied himself with something to bide time. When he finally turned around, he had made up his mind on what he would do. He had to do it, for her sake, for the sake of what he felt for her. He went into his room and got her a flat knit to keep warm and then called a cab. Seating her in it, he got in next to her and asked her to tell the driver the way to the resort where she had been staying with Kabir. A startled look in her eyes was met by a calm reassuring one in his and she gave the cabbie the address and off they went. As the cab wound its way through the night time roads, he told her what she needed to do and when she finally gave up and rested her head on his shoulder, he just held her. It was all he could do to not bury his face in her hair and hug her as hard as his heart was telling him to.

He reached his apartment at dawn feeling at once like his life had ended and that he had done the right thing. They had spoken to Kabir who had been waiting, ashen faced and completely at a loss to understand. As Ananya and Kabir had hugged each other, words falling over each other in the eagerness to explain them; Ritvik had silently let himself out of the room. The cab that had been waiting had brought him back to the apartment. He changed and got into bed wishing he would never wake up. The loud and insistent ringing of his phone woke him up in what seemed to be like 5 minutes time. He glared out of half an open eye at his phone which told him that Kabir was calling and that it had been nearly 4 hours since he had gone to sleep.

He held the phone up to his ear only to hold it away, wincing in pain as he heard Ananya shrieking that Kabir had proposed and that she had accepted. He tried to bring up his best cheerful voice and keep even the slightest pain from showing in his voice as Ananya was obviously jumping around in joy. They were planning on going meeting his parents that evening. It was all decided. When they were hanging up around half an hour of details later, Ritvik knew he had done the right thing and healed the cracks in their lives. The devil on his shoulder though, was digging the pitchfork right in and he felt like he was cracking down the middle, most horribly painfully. As they were hanging up, Ananya’s final words nailed the coffin shut “All this would have never happened without you Ritvik. You made everything right. You know I love you, right?”