Call it coincidence, p.21
Call it Coincidence, page 21
‘So,’ he mutters, lightly, once the shock has subsided, replaced by everything, all at once: joy, sorrow, fear, calm, anger, forgiveness. A blend of every mutually oppositional feeling in my chest. ‘Here on a date?’ he jumps straight to it, defying the awkwardness of the idea. His speed makes it easy to answer yes.
‘First date?’
‘Mm-hmm.’
‘Do you think there’s going to be a story after?’
‘I mean, going by my record?’
Vatsal laughs the same way he always did. He shakes his head and lets out a breathy exhale.
‘What about you?’ I ask, softly. Hoping he doesn’t hear, hoping he doesn’t answer. It’s a ‘yes’ I can’t stand to learn. ‘Also on a date?’
Please say no, please say no, please say no.
‘Something like that,’ he says, grinning.
My heart thuds to a fall. But I manage to say, ‘Right.’
‘So, where’s this date of yours?’
I tell him that’s a good question. ‘I actually have no idea. Sarina has this thing where she sends me on stupid blind dates now, so I have no real clue who he is. The guy is just supposed to find me, I guess.’
‘So he could be here and know it’s you he’s supposed to meet, but you’d have no idea if he were here?’
‘When you put it like that, it feels like the plot of a pretty gruesome serial-killer documentary.’
‘I’m sure it’s not going to be that bad, Naina,’ he says.
An awkward silence lingers as both of us stare at our individual drinks, then around the room. We don’t know how to be around each other anymore—not quite strangers, not quite friends, definitely not lovers.
‘So, when’s your date showing up?’ I ask, wanting to pop the haze, this dull ache between us.
Vatsal looks up from his drink and then twists his neck to gaze right at me. Without looking at his phone, without moving his attention even a little away from my eyes, he says, ‘Oh, I think she’s cancelled.’
‘And you’re still here?’
‘Apparently so.’
‘What do you plan on doing for the rest of the night, then?’
‘I guess I’ll spend it hoping your date doesn’t show up?’
‘And if he does?’
‘Then,’ Vatsal says, finally looking away.
‘Then?’
‘Then he’s just going to have to wait, Naina,’ he exhales. ‘Because I’ve been first in line for a long, long time.’
I don’t let the flush on my face show. Instead, I ask: ‘So what do you suggest we do until he shows up?’
‘I don’t know, maybe we start from the beginning?’
‘The beginning.’
‘Yeah, you know, the part that comes before the rest of the other parts and the end, usually.’
‘They teach all this smart-talk at law school?’
‘No, this is all self-taught,’ he chuckles, remembering. ‘Can we?’ he asks. ‘Start at the beginning?’ His eyes are so fixed on mine, I have to stop myself from feeling crushed under the weight of their hold.
‘We tried, though,’ I say, interjecting. ‘I don’t know what’s changed now.’ I despise myself for not continuing this game of push and pull, laying all the cards out at once. Give or take. Win or lose. Now or never.
‘You’re right, nothing’s changed,’ he sighs. And maybe once again, maybe for the millionth time around him, my heart breaks. ‘Nothing about the fact that I’m so, so in love with you, always have been, always will be, has changed, Naina.’
This is the first time one of us has ever said it.
‘Vatsal,’ I begin interrupting him, but he grabs my hand before I can.
‘No, let me finish. I love you. I always have. I want to say I’ve loved you since the moment I saw you outside that washroom,’ he says, pointing straight ahead, ‘at this very restaurant, but back then I was mostly petrified that a gorgeous woman is going to think I’m a disgusting pig.’ I giggle as he pulls my bar stool closer to his. ‘But I have loved you since that day and I know this because I have not crossed paths with anyone else since and thought they’d ever hold a candle up to you, Naina. I love you. I have gone three years without saying this but I have felt it every single day.’
I don’t say anything. Not as tears brim my eyes. Not as my throat tightens.
‘I will give you literally anything you want if that means you’ll be mine. I swear, Naina, I’ll ask you to marry me right now if you’d let me.’
‘I don’t want that,’ I say, mascara tears flowing down my face. ‘It’s not about that, Vatsal.’
‘Then tell me, what is it about?’ he asks, wiping my cheeks dry.
‘I just need to know you’re here, that you’re not going to leave,’ I say. ‘I need to know that I won’t have to spend another day waking up in the morning and not having you by my side.’ I don’t let him interrupt. ‘I thought all this time that I needed to be married to you to have that certainty, like it would physically chain you from ever leaving me.’
‘Naina, I don’t want to ever leave you.’
‘But I’m always going to be afraid that you will,’ I say, terrified for my life.
‘How long?’
‘How long, what?’
‘How long are you going to be afraid for? Is forever enough time?’
I slap his chest away. ‘Don’t try your lines with me.’
He pulls my stool in closer. ‘Naina, remember you asked me how many women there were before you and I told you, what, seven,’ he adds.
‘Still so fucking furious about that number,’ I say, laughing through my tears.
‘And then you asked me how many women after you.’
‘Yes.’
‘Do you remember what I said?’ I nod. ‘What was it?’
‘None,’ I say, faint as a whisper.
‘Good, you remember. Now ask me how many there will be after you.’
‘Why?’ I say, pulling one hand away, already knowing the answer, not needing to hear, knowing now that no matter how far away either of us try to run from the other, we’ll find our way back here.
‘Just ask me, Naina.’
‘How many women after me?’ I say, half crying, half laughing.
He doesn’t answer. He kisses me unprompted, right there in front of the bartender, in the middle of the same restaurant from three years ago, inches away from the exact spot where my life changed, all at once, forever.
No blind date comes looking for me that night. Only Vatsal, in the same black shirt I first saw him in—outside the washroom, that one night, years ago.
That night, for the first time in the entire while we’ve known each other, Vatsal and I have our first, proper date. Later, I take him home, only for him to never leave again.
Five years later, he still calls it a coincidence.
Epilogue
You wake me up in the morning with a cup of coffee and ask if I slept well. ‘Of course,’ I say, ‘I was sleeping next to you,’ and you smile, because you know to expect the same answer no matter how many times you ask. We get up off the bed and you lead us into the living room where you have already laid out your newspaper, my magazine subscriptions that have just come in the day before and Bittoo’s breakfast. You spoil him dirty, I often tell you this.
‘How come he eats at the table like us?’
Sitting down, you pat the empty space next to you, saying, ‘Come?’
Although it made me nervous to live alone in a house filled with so many memories, I’m glad I kept the apartment after Sarina and Nipun moved out and left Delhi entirely—Nipun now works freelance with SaaS startups, whatever that means, Sarina takes on a gig wherever they’re travelling, and I’m . . . well, I’m still here. Before that day at the restaurant, I was so sure I’d fill the gap they left with flatmates I’d never learn the birthdays of. I believed I was fated to live and die in this apartment, alone, one day—surrounded by however many kids Bittoo leaves behind.
But it was a dry renting season. My broker had some unresolved issues with the landlord. Sarina and Nipun’s room had too much seepage damage. There was every reason to fill those rooms—yet they stayed empty.
Until you.
Until us.
And then, everything else.
So this house remains: with all its memories intact, newer ones forming daily in the shape of upholstered couches and sage-green walls that we painted together. I no longer worry they’ll have to scrape my dead body off the ground, except on those fearful nights where I dream of a world where you somehow get taken away before me.
This morning, like every other morning, I pad towards you, pausing to browse through a stack of magazines you’ve collected in a neat pile on the table for me, before taking my spot next to you. Sometimes I’m in a Vogue mood, other times it’s The Economist. You say it depends on what I dreamed of the night before. It doesn’t make sense to me, but it makes sense to you.
You sit cross-legged on the couch and Bittoo hops and nestles into your lap in the gap between your legs, so his body rests on the cool leather couch. He sits there, aimlessly, his chin placed on the edge of your knee, like he understands the ten different headlines you read out to him. When you’ve scanned the first page, your free hand scratches his head and he purrs; since you’ve been around, he never purrs for me anymore.
Having decided that today is a Vogue kind of day, I finally scoot in next to you two—impatient for your eventual dream analysis. I place my coffee, the one you get for me in bed, every day, right next to your mug—two of a set of four we bought from the same shop we got our Diwali party trinkets from, years ago.
Placed together, the mugs look like they’re holding hands. Instantly, I take yours away from Bittoo’s head and clutch it in mine. Looking at us, you wouldn’t be able to tell that only yesterday, we had a fight—something about us having to go to your work friend’s party, something about me saying that your friends don’t give me great vibes and ‘Urgh, do we really have to go?’ You got cross at the suggestion. You didn’t say ‘I don’t ever say no to going to one of Sarina’s gigs’, but I heard it anyway. Sarina is different and you know that, but I get it—that’s not the point. So we go to the party; you’re mad and I’m bored, and we have an awful time and come back home and fight.
The fight veers into dangerous territory. Something kids, something future. How did we get here? Just like we always do.
‘I don’t know if I want any,’ I admit, sitting on the edge of our bed, terrified.
‘You don’t want children?’
‘I don’t think so,’ I reply. ‘Do you?’
‘Yeah,’ you mutter. ‘But does it matter?’
You’re angry that I always want things my way; I’m mad that you think that, when everything I do is to make you happy. Neither of us is right, enough evidence abounds in our relationship to prove that, but it doesn’t matter. We go to bed furious. We don’t cuddle. I fall asleep, fearing this is the end. It feels like the same fight, every time.
On nights like these, I barely get any sleep; sometimes I wake up at 3 a.m. with a shortness in my chest, this inescapable worry that I would wake up to find that you are gone. But my eyes crack open and you’re always there, right there, your hand on my stomach, under my T-shirt, clutching my skin tight. In the middle of the night, in our unconscious states, your body searches for mine, mine relents, unflinchingly. At daybreak, we wake up intertwined—just like we did this morning.
‘What did you say we had to do today?’ I ask you while you’re hyperfocused on this one news clipping you keep going back to. You don’t respond.
I have this joke I make around friends—you tend to leave me ‘on read’. You laugh along, but deep inside it bothers you that I make this joke. I don’t always understand why, but then I realize that you’re always fixing old mistakes; you’re never not worried about making them again. You think I’m wounded, sometimes, and I think you’re wounded, too, and we try to dress these invisible wounds with words and touch to make them more bearable. But other times, I want to tell you: you don’t have to worry so much about me. I’m good. Me and my heart, we’re good now.
‘Huh?’ you ask, because you weren’t listening. ‘Sorry, what did you just say?’
‘You were saying something right as I woke up? What did you want us to do today?’
‘Oh, haan.’ You fold your newspaper and put it away, fix Bittoo’s position in your lap as you turn to look at me. ‘I was wondering if you want to change the curtains.’ They’re old; a faded white bought off Amazon, back when Sarina and my budget was really tight. We thought we’d change them once we saved enough money—eventually, we just stopped noticing they were around.
‘You really hate those, don’t you?’
‘They’re just so . . . blah.’
‘How dare you.’
‘I mean, if dirty white is your choice of interior decor, I’m not judging you, but I am saying that we should then have a veto system and I would absolutely use my veto on that one.’
‘Fine. What colour do you want to get?’ I ask, when it hits me: I don’t think I know your favourite colour.
That’s how we get to know each other. Bit by bit. On accident. Because I knew the second that I saw you, I never needed to know more. That you existed was all I ever needed. Everything else, I could spend the rest of my life learning.
‘Incorrect, you barely gave me a thought the first time you saw me,’ you chide me in my head, and then I say, for argument’s sake, ‘Okay, fine, the second time I saw you, I knew you were all I needed.’
Sometimes I learn things about you that would have made me run if it were anyone else. Like how you don’t like ketchup with anything but an aloo parantha. Or that you think pav bhaaji is superior to gol gappe. Or that you despise the look of white sneakers. And how you listen to music, yes, but only exclusively old Hindi songs.
‘Even love songs?’ I ask, and you nod. ‘Especially love songs.’
‘That’s slightly cringe, no?’
‘Get out of your colonial hangover high horse, Naina. Hindi mai pyaar karne ka mazza hi kuch aur hai [There’s a different sort of fun in falling in love in Hindi].’
‘Pyar Diwana Hota hai’ plays in the background on a set of speakers we bought together as our first big collective purchase once I retired Sarina’s hand-me-downs. A parrot we named Hari chirps at our windowsill. The bell rings once, twice, and we take turns to answer the door. In the gaps in the middle, we sip our coffees silently. I forget some days how long it’s been, but I could swear I’ve known you my entire life.
Sometimes this is how love happens; unbeknownst to you, a shooting star traces the night sky just as you’re making a wish. And then it appears—everything you never even knew you needed, bundled up alongside all that you’ve ever wanted. Love, by chance, by fate, by accident.
A coincidence.
God, it was humming in the background the very first night, wasn’t it?
Aa hi jaata hai jispe dil aana hota hai,
Harr khushi se harr gham se begaana hota hai.
Acknowledgements
Writing my second book was nothing like the first one.
The first one popped out of me easily. This one, on the other hand, was an all-nighter; kicking, screaming, crying in labour, begging for it to be over. Basically, in my mother’s words, the second one came into existence exactly how I came into the word. In writing this, I celebrate its birth the way my mother did mine—with a huge sigh of relief.
And so, first and foremost, thank you to my parents for the simplest joy of giving me life. And then for scolding this novel’s submission out of me. If it weren’t for your relentless follow ups and occasional chiding, this book would probably not hit the stores on time. Thank you to my sister for taking your metaphorical red pen to all my words and striking off anything you thought was beneath the quality you expect from me. Thank you to my grandfather for letting me live his literary dreams—and guiding me so passionately along the way. And to Saharsh, my brother-in-law, for adding humour and banter to my life—some of which has hopefully bled into this book. My grandparents who have passed and my dog I so desperately miss everyday, thank you for teaching me love after life, how it lingers, how it stays buried deep in the cracks of your heart long after every physical trace of it is gone.
To all my friends—the old, the new, but mostly, the ones who have stuck around—the friendships in this novel are a patchwork quilt of all of the love you have shown me every single day. Lord knows what I’ve done to deserve it.
To Arjun: if I start thanking you for things, I’d run out of ink and paper. You know though, don’t you?
Thank you to Gurveen for commissioning this book—the belief you showed in me has quietly changed my entire life. Thank you to Oorja for making sure it was error-free. Thank you to Shadab for an expectedly breathtaking cover design. Thank you, so much, to everyone at Penguin who has repped Fool Me Twice everywhere—Chaitanya, Saumya, Mishti, Naina, Khushi—free of charge and full of a lot of love. You have made my first year of being an author an experience I will never forget.
Thank you to the lovely folks at Omo Cafe for letting me linger around for a year, at the same table every weekend, to finish this book.
This book was written in a state of turmoil, heartbreak, exhaustion and shame. It packs—in nooks and crannies and jokes and text messages and oddly specific references—moments of my life and people that I wish I could forget, yet have chosen to immortalize. That’s a writer’s curse, unfortunately; you can’t say no to good material, no matter the probable cost. Relatedly, if there’s anyone reading this book wondering if I wrote it about them, the answer is in my words. If you have to ask, you weren’t reading closely enough.
And finally, Dear Reader, thank you, again, for choosing to enter a new world with me—for letting me write, for being there to read the words that make it past the first draft, for being kind, generous, accepting. If the first one was youthful and naive, this one is older and wiser. If the first one was grief and rebirth, this one is heartbreak and healing.
