‘I have heard engineering boys can be insufferable.’

  ‘They knew I had a crush on her, so they got her number and texted her. Much to everyone’s surprise, she replied. She asked me to meet her. No one could believe it. The text was sent to embarrass me. This was going the opposite way,’ said Arvind.

  ‘You must have thought of yourself as a stud, no?’ I asked, nudging him.

  ‘Everyone knew she had a guy. Gautam, from civil engineering, good-looking guy. My classmates kept pumping me, kept telling me she’s looking for someone new and what not. It was college, after all,’ he said shaking his head.

  ‘So what happened when you met her?’ I asked.

  ‘She wasn’t there, Gautam was.’

  ‘You serious?’ I asked.

  ‘Have you noticed that Gautam has the look of a fighter? Like, I don’t—I don’t look like someone who would fight at all,’ he said and then stared at me for a bit. ‘You do. You look like you’re okay with a fist fight. You look like you could be carrying a knife.’

  I took it as a compliment and let him continue.

  ‘I thought he would have a go at me. I contemplated telling him to not go for my face. Instead, he sat me down, offered me a cigarette. I had never smoked before but I felt the pressure. Without mincing words he told me he was with Karishma and that he knew that I hadn’t sent the messages on my own.’

  ‘That was it?’ I asked.

  ‘Nope. He made me meet Karishma,’ said Arvind.

  ‘You’re joking!’ I said.

  ‘I thought he would ask me to apologize but he introduced me as a friend. We went to McDonald’s that evening. We ate burgers Karishma paid for. He clicked pictures of us. It was awkward, him pointing the big camera at us.’

  I remembered a picture of Karishma and Arvind in that McDonald’s. I always thought Arvind looked a bit scared in the picture.

  Arvind said, ‘I never quite believed till the very end that he was taking it this kindly. I kept thinking, this is the moment, this is the moment, when he punches me in the face. It never came and we started to hang out together. He told me later he found me to be a decent chap.’

  ‘I used to joke that Gautam likes me more than he liked her,’ continued Arvind. ‘He gave us plenty of reasons to think so. He would do anything for me.’

  ‘And why do you fathom he liked you so much?’ I asked Arvind.

  ‘I guess I was at the right place at the right time. He had to reinvest all his love and time somewhere,’ said Arvind. ‘Karishma and he were drifting apart and I was there and I liked him.’

  Arvind took out his phone and swiped to Google photos. He typed ‘laptop pictures’ and it threw up pictures with laptops in it from his gallery.

  ‘What am I looking at?’ I asked.

  ‘I was quite good at Counter-Strike. That laptop you see there? Gautam scoured every second-hand laptop shop in Nehru Place for that. Karishma and he pooled in money for it. I earned it back through college bets in a year. They knew that I would, but still. A lot of people talked about it for a long time.’

  ‘I have seen pictures of you playing on that laptop,’ I said.

  ‘He loved photographing me like that. He said I looked like I had just fallen in love,’ said Arvind. ‘After he changed for the worse it was easy to forget all the good things he did for us, for me. I mean . . . it was . . . he wasn’t there to defend himself . . .’ He lost his train of thought for a bit. ‘I don’t know how all this will help you,’ he said.

  It probably wouldn’t.

  ‘You have been making fictional changes to his story anyway,’ said Arvind.

  ‘I have,’ I answered.

  ‘So why do you want to know more? You could write anything you fancied,’ he said.

  ‘I want to know more about him. He interests me,’ I said. ‘As a character.’

  He nodded; although he did not voice it, he must have thought my behaviour was strange. He didn’t speak for a bit and then said, ‘I still can’t forgive him for the things he said.’

  ‘I have been thinking about that,’ I said. ‘I find it very acceptable. Everything, no matter, how nasty.’

  He shook his head dismissively.

  ‘You’re going to say it was the disease and not him. The same nonsense Karishma keeps talking about,’ he said.

  ‘Hear me out, Arvind,’ I said.

  He was still shaking his head.

  ‘Keep an open mind. Look at that guy, red shirt, near the signal. Look at him. Now what is the first or the second or the third thing that comes to your mind. Some opinion about him. Something that you shouldn’t think, something that you’re trained not to think,’ I said.

  He looked at me and then at the seemingly lower-middle-class

  person. He said, ‘He’s ugly.’

  ‘No, dig deeper. You’re covering up a few things, you’re still trying to be nice. Okay, let me help you along. You do the next one, I will do this but don’t judge me. So yes, he’s ugly. That shirt is horrible. But let’s dig deeper, be meaner, be Blair Waldorf but worse. Now I’m thinking if he’s married. And if he’s married, is his wife attracted to him? Now I’m thinking maybe she’s ugly too.’

  I dug deeper and let myself go. What if we could say out the first things that came to our head? If it felt right to say anything. If our frontal lobes didn’t stop us from being assholes.

  ‘Now I’m thinking whether his wife will stray if she comes across a good-looking man. Or do ugly and/or poor people not get attracted to the rich knowing that that world is unachievable for them? Or do they live their lives in discontent having lacklustre, ugly sex with each other? If two ugly people look at themselves having sex in the mirror, do they realize how ugly they look? Do they have the awareness of how better-looking people are much more watchable? Now I’m thinking who would watch their sex scandal. No one, not even as a punishment. Pretty sure, ugly people spend their lives thinking about other people while having sex with their ugly partners. How can they not?’

  I stopped. Arvind looked at me, horrified.

  ‘I know that’s hard,’ I said.

  ‘Brutal,’ said Arvind.

  ‘This is what Gautam’s mind was like. He had no checks and balances. His tumour made him lose his sense of right and wrong. Or he would have stopped where you said that man was ugly. He would have reasoned and questioned that statement. He would have asked himself—why am I saying this? Is he worse-looking because he works in hard labour? Because I have set notions of what is good-looking? Is that shirt that’s making him look worse the only one he can afford? I’m sure he feels love in the deepest of ways and can’t think of even touching anyone other than his wife, and his wife feels the same way. Maybe they are content in the lives they lead? That’s what we all do. We ask ourselves to empathize with the other, put ourselves in their shoes, rummage around in their stories and know them,’ I said.

  He didn’t seem to totally buy into it so I put him through another one.

  ‘That one. That uncle,’ I said pointing to a man coming out of the shop. He got into his Mercedes and drove off.

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Arvind.

  ‘Don’t tell me you don’t hate him a little bit?’ I asked.

  ‘A little yes,’ he said.

  ‘So tell me what you think? Without any checks and balances? Let yourself go.’

  ‘He’s fat. I would never get that fat. That paunch, nope. That’s unacceptable. I’m now thinking what will happen if I get that fat? That stomach hanging over a belt? There’s no way I could be happy. How does one be that fat . . . and you know . . . not think about it all the time. How does that not consume you? I would be sad. That’s just horrible. And it looks horrible. He’s just horrible to look at,’ he said.

  I could see he was pushing himself. He already felt sorry for the man so I encouraged him.

  ‘That’s true, exactly what I thought,’ I said. ‘Go on.’

  ‘Now I’m thinking of all the overweight . . .’

  ‘Honestly, is the word in your head overweight or fat?’ I asked.

  ‘Fat, all the fat men and women on Instagram who talk about loving their bodies. How can they love their bodies? They can lie, they can try but there’s no way they love their bodies, no way they don’t want thinner bodies. How can they not? Those rolls of fat, that freckled, dimpled ugly skin . . . no. They are all lying about it. They feel disgusted with their bodies and they don’t want to work hard enough to change that. So they sit there taking offence at anyone calling them fat. But they . . . are fat.’

  He stopped. He looked at me.

  ‘We are all Gautam. We are all his tweets without our sense of empathy.’

  ‘We are all unkind, loveless animals?’ he asked.

  ‘Technically umm . . . we were made to be just wild animals, roam about hunting and eating, so yeah,’ I said. ‘But we invented humanity and defined what it means to be human, and we constantly update the definition. Killing babies, impaling them on spears was okay six centuries ago but is unimaginable now. Was Gautam—even with his disease and his tweets—worse than those brutal soldiers? Debatable, no? We learn and we strive to be better. That’s what makes us humans now. The disease robbed him of that learning. If he were conscious and well today, he would hate himself as much as you hated him. Or as much as you’re hating yourself for saying those things you just did. You didn’t mean any of that,’ I said.

  He nodded.

  ‘But had I said those things to those men on the street or a fat person on Instagram, would they have got over it? It’s about them, not Gautam. It’s about me, I can’t get over it,’ said Arvind.

  It was a fair point.

  He looked at his watch.

  ‘Karishma will be here in a bit,’ he said. ‘What did you need to talk to her about?’

  ‘His sister,’ I said.

  ‘Yes, she’s the best person to talk about it.’

  He shook my hand and took my leave. I entered a coffee shop and checked on Gautam’s campaign. A donation of Rs 4 lakh had just been made to Gautam’s campaign.

  There would be no ring.

  Saraansh Gupta

  It’s now that Saraansh realizes that he had been overconfident with the subject matter. He had thought he would waltz in, dazzle people with his portrayal of their story and walk out with one of the best short movies ever made. That’s what he had always done. Back in college, he was leagues ahead of the others in class. How could this be any different?

  He had been wrong on two counts. He hadn’t taken into the account the richness of the story, and his meagre understanding of the people in it. Second, he hadn’t anticipated that he would come to think of these people as people. They weren’t characters but real human beings.

  But also, he hadn’t expected Ananth to be the incredible raconteur he turned out to be.

  Ananth, when he woke up and recovered after the DBS surgery that WeDonate paid for, and found out about the girl who saved his life, scourged for every scrap of detail he could find about her. He met everyone she knew, talked to them for hours, till they exhausted their stories about her and then some. Mohini had made it a smidge easier for Ananth by shedding friends like autumn leaves after her father left her. Ananth relayed everything to him in explicit detail. Saraansh knows now that Ananth—given his history and his newfound obsession to help save as many people as he can—keeps away from anything that’s creative, thinking of it as a waste of time, but his talent for picturing things is unmissable when he paints a scenario, a history of something. Saraansh has been to Ananth’s house a bunch of times, he has seen what Ananth can do with a camera, and it seeps into how Ananth narrates a certain incident. He describes the entire milieu in painstaking detail.

  Ananth took him to see everyone who played a role in her life, and he had heard the stories again but none could tell it like Ananth did. But there was one glaring but obvious omission—Mohini’s father.

  He was off-limits.

  It wasn’t the only thing that had completely occupied Saraansh’s mind.

  The entire project seemed disingenuous to him now. It had already taken a big hit right at the start when he was forbidden from telling Ananth’s story and only asked to stick to Mohini’s. The story was incomplete but at least it was honest. It ended with the right, true assumption of the girl finding love and recovering from the damage her father had caused her.

  The story of the movie was simple as well:

  A girl who believed in love and all things fair, is heartbroken when she discovers that her father has an additional family. The girl turns into a judgmental, insufferable asshole who sees the worst in people. But contradictory to her then behaviour, she joins WeDonate and is offered to work on helping people and is put on Ananth’s case.

  It ended here. The credits scene would show the YouTube video that saved Ananth’s life. People would assume that the girl changed after meeting Ananth, that she fell in love.

  THE END.

  But, as it turned out, the video was a lie. Mohini wasn’t in love with Ananth; the assumption they were ending the story with was untrue. Mohini hadn’t changed. She had remained the same—both before and after Ananth. Every story has to have a character graph, this one had none.

  It shouldn’t have mattered to Saraansh, whose job was to tell stories and this was just another one—but it deeply rankled him.

  ‘I need to not think about it,’ said Saraansh to his boyfriend.

  He tried his best to brush the discomfort away—there was nothing to be done—and concentrated on the first part of his problem.

  Though Ananth had told him strictly that there would be no meeting her father, he knew he had to find him. He told himself it was the ethical thing to do. After all, he was a character in the movie. It was their responsibility to tell him what they were doing.

  Saraansh is waiting in the car. He had called up Mohini’s father to tell him he has a construction project for him. Plus he had called from the office landline to give himself credibility.

  Mohini’s father walks towards the car with big, purposeful strides. He’s wearing a starched blue kurta and a jeans underneath. He looks like an aged student union president. Unlike the behaviour Saraansh and the people in his family business are used to from small vendors, Mohini’s father is not meek and there’s no attempt to grovel. He introduces himself. His voice is self-assured, and Saraansh can see why someone can believe everything he says so readily. The man has aged well. Indian men seldom do.

  Saraansh drives to a nearby food stall and parks the car. He orders chai for both when Mohini’s father asks about the construction project. Without mincing words, Saraansh tells him why he’s really there. Mohini’s father is quiet for a bit and then nods.

  ‘A lot of people are going to watch this?’ he asks.

  Saraansh had expected anger. He had imagined her father walking away. But he sat there, listening, absorbing.

  ‘That’s why we are making it. Everyone’s going to know,’ says Saraansh.

  Despite everything, Saraansh feels warmly towards the man. What’s with the human tendency to glorify pain. Why? He corrects course, reminds himself of what this man had done. How hollow, how cowardly he had been.

  ‘I don’t have to tell you what I know by now. It’s corroborated by multiple accounts. What I want to know is if there’s something you want to add? Something you might think they would have missed out? Your justification?’ asks Saraansh.

  ‘There’s no justification,’ he says and sips his tea. ‘How’s Anusha?’

  ‘She’s hanging in there,’ says Saraansh.

  How to hate this man? Are humans so debased that just a little honesty makes them likeable? Hate, hate, hate, Saraansh reminds himself.

  ‘Did you ever think of going back to them? Did you ever think you should have stayed on?’ asks Saraansh.

  The man shook his head. ‘How can you not, beta? But staying required courage, the ability to apologize every day, to overreach, to fix, to be better every moment. I couldn’t—mujhse nahi ho pata. Going away, being with my son, my wife, was easier. They were thankful I was there. They are still thankful. Isn’t that pitiful?’ he says.

  ‘It is cowardly,’ says Saraansh. Does he not see the horribleness in calling the other woman his wife? But, of course, the fault lies in him. He should have been no one’s husband.

  Mohini’s father nods.

  ‘You never went back? To see her?’

  ‘I have,’ he says. ‘I have seen her around the house too.’

  ‘Did you ever talk? If yes, when?’ asks Saraansh who wants to know if it comes under the timeline of the story.

  ‘Yes, we did. Once, I went to the house. It was when she was working at WeDonate,’ he says. He then adds, ‘I needed to sell that house.’

  ‘You what?’

  At this point, Saraansh can’t tell if this man is just a good actor. You have to be, right? To have two families, to lie every day?

  ‘Bohut udhaar tha. I needed money for a project, was under debt, so . . .’ His voice trailed off. ‘Anusha’s mother threatened to go to the police if I ever tried to contact them. You have met her, so you know she’s capable of that.’

  ‘What did Anusha say?’

  ‘She drove me out of the house,’ says Mohini’s father.

  ‘Seems like the right thing to do,’ says Saraansh.

  Saraansh thinks he has got what he needed from this man. A superstar prototype with an inflated sense of self but lacking a spine; an awareness of his own cowardice, his vulnerability which he exploits to get people, mostly women on his side.

  ‘But some days later, Anusha visited us. She came to our house,’ says Mohini’s father. ‘She clicked a few pictures of us. When we asked what was it for, she asked us to keep our mouths shut. A few days later, she put up a story on her website, WeDonate.’

  ‘What story? What picture?’

  ‘It was my . . . wife’s picture. She was holding my son’s hand and crying.’

  Mohini’s father shows him the screenshots of the campaign. How did no one know about this? Sarita? Rachita?