Sadist ?
‘Congratulations,’ I say, shaking his hand and forcing my mouth into a big, fake smile that hurts the insides of my cheeks. I avoid his eye and quickly move on to greeting her, the petite brown-haired beauty by his side. She is almost a foot shorter than him, even in heels; a contrast that would have been comical had it not been so utterly depressing.
I was just two inches shorter than him, perfectly matched to his six point two feet of rugged good looks.
‘It’s like you two just fit together, in every way.’ I remember people saying once, a seemingly long time ago.
They had been quick to change the statement when we no longer ‘fit together’: ‘It’s like you were never meant to be. You’re way too different from each other.’
As if echoing my thoughts, Shruti repeats the statement now, for the nth time in the past six months. She places a hand on my shoulder as we move towards the buffet table. It is supposed to be a way of reassuring me; that everything will be all right, that I will be all right, but I am beyond reassurances. Nothing can put me right now; he is a married man.
***
Scrolling through the worst memories of my life, this is right up there at the top, even worse than losing Mum and Dad in the terror attacks four years ago. At least I had him by my side then, my sole rasion d’etre. I would have been catatonic for life perhaps, but he’d managed to pull me through to the brighter side, my knight in shining armor, my childhood sweetheart and first love, my steady boyfriend since tenth grade, my Raj.
It seems like centuries ago, tenth grade, when we danced all night at the end of junior-school party, and shared our first kiss, under pulsing red disco lights as George Benson’s classic Nothing’s gonna change my love for you played in the background. In that one moment, it became our song, the signature tune of our relationship. Because with each other, we could see forever, oh, so clearly. At least I could. I dreamed of us being together through high school and college and graduate school, and then getting married, at a quiet little ceremony with only close friends and family, because neither of us liked much fanfare or extravagance.
***
This wedding is all out extravagance. It is as if the entire city has turned up. And why not? After all, the eminent Raj Khatri has at last tied the knot, after years of topping every match-making aunt’s most eligible bachelor list. What a lucky girl Pavitra is, everyone opines, and what an ideal couple they make. He, the youngest billionaire in the country, and she the badminton champ daughter of a legendary cricketer.
I am a badminton champ too. At least, I was once upon a time when he had been my mixed doubles partner. We were famous at college, my Raj and me, the firebrand, made-for-each-other badminton partners cum life partners. The latter part of that had obviously turned out to be some sort of sick joke; a joke that everyone seems to be silently laughing at while they cast sympathetic looks at me as Shruti and I make our way across the hall.
I don’t know why I have come to the wedding; it was obvious that I would be receiving a lot of unwanted attention. I am the jilted ex-girlfriend after all. The one people sneak sidelong glances at, as if I have no peripheral vision and won’t see them, the one they nudge each other about and nod towards, and clear their throats around every time someone mentions the beautiful newlyweds.
I hate being here, but it would be worse had I not come. They would label me a coward then, and proceed to flood my inboxes with condolence messages tomorrow, as if someone had died. Not realizing that I am the only who has, and their messages would be like insults in my eulogies or rotting flowers upon my grave.
‘Do you want to leave?’ Shruti asks. We are seated at a table and she is looking at me with eyes wide with concern. ‘We don’t have to stay for dinner; let’s go.’
I look at the food in front of me. I’ve piled my plate with roast potatoes and butter chicken and several pieces of naan and samosas.
I don’t remember serving myself such hearty helpings. I feel close to puking just looking at it all. Shruti tugs at my arm. I look up to find she has gotten to her feet and taken her bag.
‘We shouldn’t waste the food,’ I say. My voice sounds foreign, as if I’m struggling to string the words together in proper sequence.
The concern on her face turns to serious worry, but she sits down again. I know she is about to say something to soothe me, so I fork a potato and push it into my mouth to have an excuse not to speak. It is an explosion of spices: salt and paprika and oregano and mint. He used to love roast potatoes, I think, and cannot keep my eyes from wandering over to the stage where he stands now. With his wife. Accepting an unending stream of congratulatory messages and beaming at the many cameras going click-click all around him. The wedding is being covered by the local media. It will be the Page 3 special tomorrow morning.
I make a mental note not to buy any newspapers the next day.
‘Are these seats taken?’
I snatch my eyes away from the couple of the day and find a woman addressing Shruti and me. Shruti tells her the seats are free. She plops down on one and her two children grab the remaining ones. There is one girl, about six years old, and a younger boy. Both are adorable, like all children are. I feel a familiar stinging in my eyes and will myself to focus on the food. He loved children, my Raj. We had planned to have three. He had wanted all girls; I had wanted boys, so that they could be his mirror images and grow up to be just as sweet and charming as him.
‘But I want three little girls with your beautiful smile,’ he used to tell me. ‘I can never have enough of your smile, Roxy.’
Roxy . His own short version of my first name, Roshni. What would be his short form for Pavitra? Does he love her smile as much as he loved mine? I stop the train of thought short; it is making me feel queasy again.
***
Someone switches on a music system and the lingering notes of a romantic Hindi song fill the colossal hall. People fall silent and look towards the stage. The crowd around the couple has dwindled. He has led her down and is offering his hand, asking for a dance. The traditional first dance of Christian weddings, with an Indian touch to it. Raj is half Christian; his mother – Tanya Aunty – is Protestant while his late father had been Hindu.
I never knew Raj’s dad; he passed away a very long time ago. But Tanya Aunty has always been like my own mother, even more so after I was orphaned. She has called me up several times in the past six months, even checked up on me in person. But I have been so beyond consolation that she soon stopped, probably assuming that her presence added to my grief by serving as a reminder of him.
I look over at her now, my pseudo-mom, resplendent in a pink silk saree, mingling with the guests, smiling her heartwarming smile, accepting congratulations and, ever so often, letting her gaze wander to her son and daughter-in-low, her face aglow with pride and affection. Will she still continue to be my mother? I wonder.
The wedding is a beautiful confluence of Hindu and Christian rituals, Goan and Punjabi traditions, a lot like how I’d dreamed my wedding would be, minus the seven-star hotel and the extensive guest list.
The Indian tune blends into a western one and the fork I am eating with slips from my hand and lands with a clang on the glass plate. The song. Our song. Is this someone’s idea of a prank? The memories come flooding back to me as George Benson’s deep baritone croons: ‘If I had to live my life without you near me, the days would be all empty…’
I think of two years ago, the last time the two of us were truly happy. He’d flown me to Goa as a surprise, the first of many weekend getaways to celebrate his mounting successes as an entrepreneur.
We dined on the beach, under the moonlight. There was fresh seafood -including oysters – and specially imported French champagne, and Belgian chocolate ice-cream for dessert. We danced barefoot in the sand for hours, to the varied strains of music that drifted from the various beachside pubs, and finally wound up the date by making love at the seashore, the crash of the waves drowning out all the noise we made. Somehow, magically, our song had played then too, somewhere in the distance. ‘Nothing’s gonna change my love for you…’
I’d thought it had been symbolic.
If only I had been less naïve, recognized that it was all too good to last.
He tried to gift me a diamond necklace the next morning. From Tiffany’s. I still remember how it had glinted in the sunlight that streamed in through the French windows of the luxury suite he’d booked. Hundreds of pure, white diamonds sparkling at me as I lay ensconced in his arms. There was no way I would ever accept it, even if we’d been married.
That was the beginning of the arguments. They’d gradually increased, in both number and intensity. But they always stemmed from the same issue: gifts, ludicrously expensive ones.
I witnessed him turn into someone else, right before my eyes, my Raj. But there was nothing I could do. I had always known he would make it big one day – he was so diligent and so smart – but neither of us had imagined that he would make it SO big, so SOON. He’d wanted his girlfriend to match up to his constantly increasing standards; so had bought me a less showy but equally pricey necklace (I Googled the cost of everything he bought); followed by a limited edition smart phone with hundreds of fancy features that I had no idea how to use, and Louis-Vuiton bags and tailor-made Jimmy Choos. The high point had been the Valentino dress costing more than I earned in a year. It had been red and short and minimalistic; something I would never wear. He had insisted but I had stood my ground and refused to even try it on.
‘It’s just not me, Raj. I don’t wear skimpy dresses.’ I had said, irritated.He had lost his temper then.
‘Geez, Roshni, you’re so nineteenth century sometimes! Girls would kill for this dress, look at Pavitra!’
I had frozen. But not because he had called me Roshni (he NEVER called me that.)
‘Pavitra?’ I’d repeated. ‘Who’s Pavitra?’
Silence.
‘Tell me!’ I’d cried, feeling something I had never felt around him before: threatened; panicky.
‘Pavitra Sharma’ he’d said.
The name had rung a bell. She was always in the newspapers, for her Badminton achievements, as well as for her gorgeous looks and fashion sense. It was a fairly uncommon name. Still, I remember hoping that perhaps he was talking about some other Pavitra Sharma.
‘What about her?’ I had asked, insecurity flooding every cell of my body.
‘She practices at the Sports Club where I go every weekend.’
Of course, the elite Sports Club, another aspect of his fast changing lifestyle that I was completely alien to.
‘So?’ I’d continued, beginning to feel weak inside.
Couldn’t he decipher the questions written all over my body language? He was so good at doing that usually. Couldn’t he see that I needed to be enveloped in his arms and reassured that I had no reason to feel threatened by the small but super sexy national Queen of Badminton? ‘Why did you just say “look at Pavitra”? What is that supposed to mean?’
‘It’s supposed to mean that you ought to learn a thing or two from girls like her. She’s just so…classy. Nike while playing, Chanel for day wear and Versace by night. YSL perfume and Victoria’s Secret lingerie!’
His eyes had taken on a distant look, so it wasn’t surprising that it took him a moment to realize what he’d just said. My whole world had come crashing down around me as I gaped at him, aghast.
‘Lingerie?’ I’d choked. ‘How do you know what lingerie she wears?’
The answer was obvious but one I very badly didn’t want to believe. He looked down at his shiny Italian dress shoes, silent. I’d left then, in tears, too emotionally drained to hurl insults at him or yell in frustration or say anything at all.
He had made no effort to patch things up. I’d hoped and prayed that he would call, and apologize and promise that it would never happen again, and perhaps even lament about how he couldn’t live without me, but there had been nothing, not even a text message. Barely a few days later, the gossip mills had started churning about the new ‘it’ couple in town, Raj Khatri and Pavitra Sharma. They’d made it to the front page of the Bombay times, incredulous as it sounds.
Four months later they’d gotten engaged and made it to a few more front pages.
And now, they are husband and wife, bound in holy matrimony, till death does them apart.
***
My eyes find him once again. He is sitting now, with her by his side, hand in hand. He is leaning close to her and saying something. Even from the distance, I see her smile and blush at his words. I want to scream. Or cry. Or both.
I wonder if God will put him in hell, for what he’s done to me. Not that I’ve ever believed in the hereafter or anything remotely religious. Neither he nor I ever prayed. In retrospect, I think perhaps I should have, considering how things have turned out.
I tear my eyes away and fork a piece of chicken this time. I wonder if he’ll ever think of me now. Will his badminton champ wife ever remind him of his old badminton buddy? Or has his wealth exceeded his cranial matter to such an extent that he is incapable of remembering me at all?
Even if it has, the extra special wedding gift I have got him – or them, rather – will surely serve as a very good aide memoir. It is a photo album cum scrapbook, four inches think and a foot wide. Crammed with eight years worth of memories of the two of us. Good times, bad times, fun times, private times; every photo I owned and every memory I could glean is in there somewhere, uncut, unrestricted, in the form of either a picture or a written anecdote. There are even some photos from our childhood, when we were just best friends, not lovers.
It is a masterpiece that took me over two weeks to put together. I’d had the urge to burn it to ash when it was finally done but had patiently wrapped it up in silver wrapping paper with blue wedding bells printed on it.
I smirk to myself thinking of it, a little sadistically. It contains even our most intimate pictures; Pavitra will have a fit on seeing them. But I don’t care about causing her discomfort; all I want is to let him know that I’m tossing him out of my life completely by returning all our memories to him. Even if I can’t quite toss him out of my heart yet.
I want him to repent cheating on me and hurting me so ruthlessly. I’ve poured out all my bitterness onto those few hundred pages, and topped it off with an inscription on the inside cover:
Dear Raj, enjoy your new life.
But know that there are some things money can’t buy. Like the eight precious years of MY life that you wasted. If they were material, I would ask for a refund.
No love left, your Roxy.
Eternal Love
A College Romance
The Memory of Eden
The Lonely Bus Stand
