Mango Chutney: An Anthology of Tasteful Short Fiction. (19 page)

“Preity?” Meera peeped around the single shelf in the kitchen, and found
her scrubbing beside a fast diminishing tower of dishes. Meera was con-
cerned about the fate of the glassware though, from the weight Preity
was putting in the scrubbing. Either this was a newfound love for clean
crockery or Preity , as they say, was ‘taking it out’ on the poor dishes.

“Hey, table 3…”
“I don’t want anything to do with table 3, Meera! I will not serve him.
Let his food go cold if you’re busy. Anyway, he’s in no rush to eat.” Pre-
ity’s eyes were glimmering stones.

“Hey! Would you listen. Table 3 has a message for you, and I’m quoting
here: ‘I understand that my staring at your lips caused you discomfort.
I’m sorry. I was just reading your lips. I’m deaf.’ Okay?”

Meera shook her head as she went back to the dining hall to serve bills
and collect tips. Preity was left stunned beside the sink, the sponge in
her hand dripping on her shoes.

T
here is one thing worse than a fingerprint on glass: an obstinate finger-
print on glass. The kind that takes ages to begin fading before it becomes
a smudged ghost of a print. Then after turns and turns under a furious
tap and the most dedicated scrubbing, it disappears off the owner’s pre-
cious vessel. The men, women and children of Paschim Vihar had finally
tired. The kitchen was closed. Preity was wiping dried mango chutney off
a plate and loading it in the sink. Who eats mango chutney with paneertikkas anyway! Her eyelids felt a magnetic pull for her kohl line. Her lips
were pasted together. She barely had the energy to stand and scrub, yet
that’s what she did now, in motion of a monotonous routine. That’s what
Preity did with her life. At the end of the day there were rarely any rain-
bows left over so she could pick some for herself. She wasn’t going to
be enveloped in the musk fragrance of a car. She was going to take the
last bus home. Home was a word for an empty flat. No one was going
to pamper her with a massage, she was just going to brush and flop in
bed. That’s what the life of an orphan with no friends was. Burn yourself
down, up in flames, and ashen shall you rest. In ashes there is chill that
freezes any heat of the day spent burning. Table 3 with all his deafness
didn’t matter anymore. The fact that burger kid didn’t leave a tip was no
surprise, a single burger order rarely does. What an old stranger woman
understood about her had as little meaning as the wretched children of
the baby-cooing mother. She remembered there was another customer in
the cafe but he was quiet as the walls, easy to ignore. It was all ash now.
Fog in her memory; ready to be forgotten. Scrubbed off like easy stains
on the glassware of her mind. She slowly drifted into a sleep that pained
in her joints and furrowed her eyebrows. There was a genuine efferves-
cence in her dreams; they were frames of snow with an over-energetic
‘90s dance. But it would all be okay in the morning, when she woke up
before the other residents of Paschim Vihar and opened the cafe.

Mondays were better than Sundays anyway.
18.
Friendzoned
Shruti Vajpayee

I hate my job. I hate that it’s Sunday and I’m at my desk at 8.50 am. I hate
that no one on any of my WhatsApp groups has woken up from all the
drinking that went on until wee hours of this morning. I hate how there
are no unread mails because everyone is busy enjoying the weekend. And
I hate how it’s been 67 days at this new workplace and I haven’t had a
decent conversation with anyone here beyond ‘Hey!’ ‘Hi!’ Yeah, I hate
people too.

I never thought I’d call myself a journalist, but after contributing my
share towards the Buzzfeedisation of the internet through 10 viral lists,
I landed this job at a popular news website’s offbeat section where my
boss and I dream of competing with Buzzfeed everyday, which is also
the source of all our ideas. It’s the boss’ job to be disillusioned about the
potential of his employees. I haven’t had a decent conversation with my
boss either. The last time we spoke was at my interview. Since then we
meet twice every week to discuss ‘ideas’ where I usually only nod my head
in agreement.

However, I’m not devoid of friends. ‘Smriti, you’re a boy at heart, you
know?’ says my best friend forever; add a less than three after forever,
that’s how special he is. I hate how I never had the chance to date him.
And I hate how I’ll always be his best friend forever (BFF), without a less
than three.

Karan Mehta has been my crush, my BFF, my love, and my 24x7 What
-
sApp friend for two years now. The only part he’s aware of though, is
that he’s my BFF. We hit it off for some strange reason at my previous
workplace and since then I have been his agony aunt. I’m so obsessed
with him that I’m going to rattle about him for the rest of this narrative.

‘Dude, she has a boyfriend!’ he messaged me in a defeated tone. ‘I think
I’ve been friend zoned.’
That bitch!

 

‘Dude, I really like this new joinee. What do you think?’
I like her too!
‘Yaar, how do I go about asking her out? Is it too soon? I don’t even
know if she’s dating someone!’
Wait, don’t jump into it.

 

‘I’m feeling low.’ *Insert a long inspirational optimistic lecture*

Although I haven’t been in half a decent relationship in my 26 years of
existence, my tryst with women has been fairly long. An all girls’ school
and an all girls’ college have helped me earn the doctorate degree in being
able to identify different types of girls. I’d list a Buzzfeed style 10-typesof-girls-you-should-date to him and we’d set off on a journey to find him
the perfect match.

Karan wasn’t the hunk. He was cute. And really nice. And also had a heart
of gold. And… sigh. You get it, right? I really love him.

We would drink to our heart’s content. I’d sneak into my house after
midnight on most weekends. And we’d spend the rest of the time on
WhatsApp. This was the one habit that really irked my mother.

‘We’re planning to get you married off but you don’t even want to lift
your head off that 4-inch screen! That’s not your life. When you’ll be
getting married, none of your Twitter followers will come and serve the
guests. We will! We are your parents, talk to us.’I never took any of her
‘marriage’ lectures seriously until one day the
kundlis
were matched and
I was told I needed to start learning how to cook. Boiling water, making
Maggi, and being able to toast bread apparently do not qualify as culinary
skills in any household.

I was freaking out! I called up my neighbor Pulkit, a TV presenter, single,
over the age of 35, my beer buddy for the past few months, and my con-
fidante especially after I was drunk. I told him I was scared. ‘Why is this
happening to me? I don’t want to get married to a UP Kanyakubj Brah-
min boy! Those guys come from
paan
chewing,
gamcha
wearing families
who treat women like Maa Saa treats Anandi!’ Ugh. Eww.

‘Is that the only reason you’re scared? Are you kidding me?’ he looked at
me with disbelief and he smacked me hard on the head. We were in the
parking lot right now. I was scratching his car subconsciously. Oh, that’s
why he had hit me on the head.
‘No, I’m also scared because I like this guy I haven’t been able to ask
out.’

‘You’re not a boy. I mean you are a boy at heart, but don’t make that
mistake. If you’re the one who has to ask a guy out he’s clearly not in-
terested.’ I hated how this guy was always right. ‘Pulkit, you could have
offered more consolation.’ I rolled my eyes and left.

Back home the walls of my room were closing in on me. What the hell,
I’ll just go and have beer at Pulkit’s place. I jumped out of my bed and
sneaked out of the house through the back door.

Here we were, on our sixth beer now. Pulkit had a really charming voice
that sounded ten times better when you had lost half your senses to alco-
hol. Anything he said sounded sweet. Even when he said, ‘No, you’re not
drunk-texting him. Come on man. You’re a girl for god’s sake!’ He looked
at the ceiling and grumbled because he was too drunk to get up.

You know that heightened sense of love that fills your head when you
can’t think straight because of your state of inebriation? ‘I’m going to do
this. I’m going to tell him I love him before I get married to any random
Kanpuriya
.’

I thought of different ways of framing a text. And after summoning the
strength to form a coherent love message from the spirit of Shakespeare
in the heavens above, I came up with this flowery message.

‘Karan, I lurrrrrveeeee uuu… so muxh…… bit u dint love me.’

What did I just do? Oh at least I got his name right. Oh no, four typos.
I should really quit my job. Damn, did I just text him that? Wait, let me
add an emoji.

‘Haha, you drunk? We’ll talk tomorrow.’
He doesn’t like me. I knew it. ‘Pulkit, I hate you.’

‘No, we won’t talk tomorrow. We’ll never talk again. I know you don’t
love me.’

 

Nooooooooooooo. Oh no.

 

‘Baba, whatever you say.’

And he was gone–from the chat and from my life. At least that’s what I
thought because I couldn’t think straight. I didn’t know whether I should
be laughing right now or crying. But I’m really happy I got this out of my
heart. I mean I’m happy right now, because I’m drunk and I can barely
read the text he has sent me. I quietly tiptoed back home through the
back door that was unlocked, and hit the bed right away.

The next morning was a day off, a rare occurrence since I had switched
jobs. I checked my phone to see the time and found 35 messages from 3
conversations including a long message from Karan.

A certain Gaurav had sent me three forwarded messages followed by a
meek ‘hi’. This guy religiously texted me every alternate day with at least
five inspirational messages for god knows what glory. Move on, bro.

‘I know you like me, but I don’t feel the same way about you. I’m sorry I
have to do this. I really don’t want you to suffer. You mean the world to
me. You’re my best friend. Don’t get me started on that. Please, let’s just
be good friends.’

There was a lot of other stuff in between. The crux of the matter was
that I had been friend zoned for the third time in life. I felt like a 16-yearold all over again, the one who calls the radio station to tell Love Guru
that she has a crush on her teacher who doesn’t love her back. I felt like
those SRK fans who use his DPs on Twitter and whose mentions he
scrolls through on Twitter without wasting as much as a microsecond on
them. I imagined myself as Shah Rukh Khan sitting on a fake set in front
of Deepika Padukone’s poster singing ‘
Jag soona soona laage
.’ I felt like Ka-
jol and I wanted to tell a certain Rifat Bi ‘
mera pyaar adhoora reh gaya
.’

And then my phone buzzed. 14% battery remaining. Plug in charger.
Gah! ‘Karuuuu, sorry. I was drunk. We’ll remain good friends for life.’

What? Why? Never mind. We kept texting anyway and I never failed to
bring up how he had friendzoned me in every conversation we had. I
dragged conversations endlessly until I made him feel awful about him-
self. He was meeting prospective partners now. I knew I’d be weeping
with his wedding card in my hands in another two months with ‘
Tujhe
yaad na meri aayi
’ playing in the background. I sent him more drunk texts
until things grew so awkward that I stopped seeing him. I had begun
acting like a jilted lover on days I wasn’t drunk. If I were a true
Gujjar
from Noida, I may have even splashed acid on Karan’s face or shot him
at point blank while riding a Bullet with a black helmet on. But I was one
of the few decent Noida residents.

I wept every morning for the next two weeks. Sometimes because of the
fear of getting married, sometimes because Karan probably knew how
desperate and clingy I was, and sometimes because I just hated work. He
had stopped messaging me completely now.

I felt terrible and then fatigue set in. I started reading a pile of books I
had once ordered from Flipkart but never touched. I started living in the
world of fiction. One day I was a character out of ‘Jana Bibi’s Excellent
Fortunes’, the next day I was an emotional wreck because of ‘And the
mountains echoed’, and then I was flying from one city to another in my
imagination because of ‘The Pelican Brief’.

One fine day I magically got tired of weeping. I rose from the ashes like
a Phoenix. It felt as if someone had flicked the switch and the tubelight
was now shining bright. Everything became clear. I didn’t feel like crying
anymore. I was like a fully charged smartphone. I felt the kind of joy I
would on receiving a hundred likes on my profile picture. Karan had sud-
denly become nicer. He would text me on his own. I stopped replying. I
even made a list of ‘10 signs you know you’re friend zoned’ and it became
the top story on our news website.

All of a sudden, work seemed like a blessing on weekends. I would work
on weekends to avoid any contact with the real world. I was holding
Karan’s wedding card right now without an iota of pain in my heart. A
week later I was dressed and looked rather pretty in a yellow suit that hid
the extra kilos under the heavy
dupatta
that I could have draped around
my face if I could to escape being seen at a typical Punjabi wedding.

There was everyone from my previous workplace there. Argh! I put on
a fake smile, head straight to hog on the food, and graciously exchanged
hellos with everyone without glancing at the stage even once. After the
regular stepping on stage, smiling stupidly at the flashing lights, pos-
ing endlessly for pictures that will go right away on Facebook, I found
Gaurav. He had forwarded me another message on WhatsApp just three
hours ago.

‘Hey! Long time!’
‘Yaa…’ I really needed to work on my communication skills.
‘Leaving? Want me to drop you?’
‘No, no! I’ve called a cab.’
‘Oh…’

And then I sped off, on spotting my cab waiting right outside the gate.
By the time I reached home Gaurav had texted me again. ‘I wanted to say
you were looking really nice today ’