Everyone cancelled him. He was done with.

  And then his girlfriend started calling him. And then his parents.

  It took Twitter and Instagram twelve hours to destroy Amit Modi’s entire life.

  Ananth Khatri

  Sarita and Saraansh had spent a nervous couple of weeks. They hadn’t taken her mother’s refusal well. Saraansh kept pestering me to try again which I did. He inundated my phone with texts, landed up at my house, chatted up my parents and even waited outside Mohini’s house for me. He was like an annoying woodpecker who kept at it. Bro, bro, bro, bro, bro, bro, bro, bro. I could hear his ‘bros’ in my sleep.

  It bore fruit when Aunty relented a little. I called Saraansh to the office and he asked, ‘What did she say, bro?’ even before he entered the conference room.

  ‘She told me we could make the movie but on a condition,’ I said.

  ‘And that is?’

  ‘I’m paraphrasing but this is the gist of what she told me. She told me I was a parasite, and that I wouldn’t be anywhere if it weren’t for the video Mohini had made for me.’

  ‘You’re not a parasite, bro. You’re my loverboy, the chocolate hero,’ said Saraansh.

  ‘She said she would like the movie to be just about Mohini. Not me, not our love story, just her. And everything goes through Aunty first. It’s either that or nothing at all,’ I said.

  ‘Are you sure, bro?’ asked Saraansh.

  ‘It’s either that or nothing,’ I said.

  ‘Mohini is anyway the centrepiece of the entire thing,’ said Sarita when she heard of it. ‘Let’s take this forward. We don’t tell his story.’

  ‘Thank you for the confidence,’ I answered.

  Sarita gave Saraansh the go-ahead to start the scripting of the movie. Soon after, Saraansh sent me a questionnaire which was extremely intrusive, but also detailed. The subject of the mail said, WE WILL KILL IT, BRO.

  It took me a week to revisit the memories the questions unearthed and answer them. Aunty wanted to see the answers first. She reverted with red underlines pointing out grammatical mistakes and timeline anachronisms in the answers. I corrected them. She insisted to recheck them.

  I couldn’t get myself to send the answers to Saraansh. He was sincere but he was still a stranger and that didn’t sit right with me. It was making me uncomfortable, and a bit angry, to share Mohini with him, and eventually everyone. Either Saraansh gets more hours in a day than everyone else or he’s the best at multitasking because even though his timeline is full with Instagram stories, he’s constantly sending me mails about rough ideas, scenes, story devices and references.

  When I shared my concern with him, he said, ‘I get it, I get it, but we got to start sitting on the story and make a move on, bro. I’m exploding with ideas so you got to help me out here, dude,’ and then said nothing. He has been asking for the document every day since.

  I’m meeting him tonight to thrash this out. He’s coming with me to a home premier of a movie WeDonate has help produce. We got a mail to wear suits to the screening.

  The suit I’m wearing is the only pair the family has seen through many weddings, right from my oldest Chachu’s to my oldest Chachu’s oldest son’s. Countless makhani stains have been dry-cleaned off this suit, there’s discoloration around the seams where it has been altered repeatedly. The laminated receipt is in a better shape than the suit is.

  ‘You look great,’ says Maa.

  Papa takes a picture of me with their phone.

  ‘This is why I can’t trust both of you,’ I say.

  I take the phone, put it on self-timer and click a picture of all us together.

  ‘We need to take a print of that,’ says Papa.

  ‘I will do it tomorrow,’ I answer.

  I don’t look good at all. But I see this look as a subtle protest against the movie. Not only was the trailer dull and unentertaining, the director was a connected, rich girl. And that’s my second grouse against Saraansh. His background is at odds with what we do at WeDonate; he’s our donor profile not our beneficiary profile. Can’t we find a director with no means? No connections? No real money or opportunity? Why him?

  The more I see him on Instagram drinking expensive coffee and buying hardback copies of books that are available in paperback the more it grates me.

  Saraansh calls me when he’s downstairs. His suit is made of fabric that’s glowing, probably plucked out of a unicorn’s mane. He’s wearing Onitsuka Tiger sneakers to go with it. They look new. That’s how the rich look rich. He’s at least worth Rs 50,000 right now not counting his watch and the thin bracelet he wears. He hugs me like we are old friends. His driver is driving a seven series BMW today.

  ‘Did you like the trailer?’ Saraansh asks.

  ‘Did you like it?’ I ask back.

  ‘It sucked balls, fuckall trailer, bro,’ he says.

  That’s exactly what I wanted to hear, maybe not in those exact words. He seems a bit angry that a movie like that got funded. At least here, we are on the same page.

  ‘True.’

  ‘Do you want to talk about the questionnaire, bro?’ asks Saraansh.

  ‘We will talk about it later,’ I say.

  ‘You have completed it, right?’ he asks.

  ‘I’m almost through with it. There are a few hitches,’ I say.

  ‘What—’

  ‘I said I’m working on it,’ I cut him.

  The Delhi traffic is relentless and doesn’t care for Saraansh’s BMW 7 series. His driver curses the drivers of lesser cars, tells them he has a gun in the glove box. They shrug the threats off.

  Sarita’s house is in Alaknanda, she must come from the first cadre of upper-middle class people of Delhi. Dressed sharply in a saree that demands an occasion of its own she greets us cheerfully at the door. It’s a small and tastefully done house, straight out of a Fabindia catalogue, minimal and exotic, reds and blues and deep browns mixing together, but not too much. There’s still plenty of space to move around. The background score of a movie is playing on the music system.

  ‘How’s your project going?’ Sarita asks us.

  ‘I’m awaiting a mail from Ananth, once he sends that we can get cracking,’ Saraansh says.

  Sarita looks at me for an answer.

  ‘We can sell Saraansh’s car for the initial funding. That could be a good starting point. We can give him producers’ credit for it,’ I say.

  Sarita laughs. Saraansh is not amused.

  ‘You will make a great team,’ she says and then marches away from us, greeting others in the same vein she greeted us.

  ‘Is there something you want to say to me?’ says Saraansh.

  ‘I just think your car is expensive, that’s all,’ I say.

  ‘And nothing else, bro? Because I can feel that—’

  ‘Not that I can think of at the moment. Let the screening get over. We will talk about the questionnaire,’ I tell him.

  I walk away from him and towards where everyone has gathered for the screening. The screening is about to start on Sarita’s TV. The girl who directed the movie is telling us why she just had to tell the story which throbbed inside her, how it was a story that needed to be told, and that she was just a medium of how this story is being transmitted. It’s all pretentious nonsense.

  ‘Fiction is important. It’s how we repackage truth and tell it in a way that changes people,’ Saraansh says to me when he sees that I am displeased.

  The movie starts. Dharti is the biggest budget any short film has garnered on the website so everyone is excited about it. The movie is in Hindi and Tamil but everyone’s whispering about it in English. My bias notwithstanding, the movie is terrible.

  Most of them think the movie is brilliant because they don’t understand it. I look at Saraansh to know what he thinks of it when it ends.

  ‘Don’t worry, it’s going to be better than this,’ he says.

  The director is the daughter of a famous painter-writer-Jor-bagh-staple parents. What she thinks are praises from the audience are grovelling attempts at networking. The others are too scared to come across as stupid. They aren’t products of convent schools, haven’t studied abroad, don’t live in Jorbagh, hold a rolled-tongue accent or a champagne flute correctly, and hence they can’t say what they truly feel about it. The director is hugged and told that it was a difficult subject to make a movie on, and that she did a wonderful job of it. Does she know she is a sham? How can she not know? It’s obvious that all art’s a sham. A circle of people hating each other’s work privately but lauding it publicly.

  The medical team, unimpressed and busy, are the first ones to leave. I could hear them shift restlessly in there. Thrice in an hour, Rachita got up to take phone calls. Since the time I joined she has run three successful campaigns and collected over Rs 70 lakh. Rachita, who has made quite a name by saving lives and for clocking most number of hours in the office, informally heads the medical department. But it’s a nominal position. Anyone who stays in medical wants to contribute. I try to find out about the girl who wants to swap entertainment with medical but Rachita refuses to talk.

  ‘You’re leaving?’ I ask her when I see her booking a cab for herself.

  ‘I watched the movie. This could be good for us,’ she says.

  ‘Are you serious?’ I ask.

  ‘Sonam Kapoor is set to retweet the link to this movie. Other movie stars will follow. It’s an advertisement for us,’ she says dryly. ‘Sarita told me about you doing Mohini’s story. Concentrate on that. You can help more people like that.’

  ‘That’s what everyone says.’

  ‘My cab’s here,’ she says and turns away from me.

  A little later, I tap on Saraansh’s shoulder and ask him if he’s ready to leave. He is. We meet Sarita and the director before leaving. The director asks us if we liked the movie. Saraansh tells her we reached late but will catch it once it’s uploaded on YouTube. On the way back home, we stop at the tea stall near the Kashmere Gate ISBT.

  ‘The questionnaire is done, Saraansh. I have got it checked and ratified from Mohini’s mother,’ I say.

  ‘And there’s something I have done to offend you that’s keeping you from sending it to me,’ he says and sips his tea.

  ‘It’s not one thing, Saraansh. First there was the ambush where you and Sarita had already decided what you had to do with our story and—’

  ‘We’re sorry about that, bro,’ Saraansh interrupts me.

  ‘Hear me out, Saraansh. I’m not foolish to hold that against you,’ I say. ‘But you do ride in a seven series, you have a thriving business, you have money and privilege. We are not here to help people like you and that woman whose movie we just watched get more visibility. People like you have way too much going for you to turn to us for help. It seems morally corrupt that you wouldn’t slug it out like others do and use our platform.’

  Saraansh listens intently and then says, ‘Bro, I gave Sarita twenty scripts of possible advertisements for WeDonate. She convinced me, and she’s right, that this is the best way, your story was the best way. I was selected because she liked my work, man. I didn’t come grovelling for money, or trying to leverage your story to further my career.’

  I didn’t know that but it still doesn’t negate my points.

  ‘Even if I forget all of that, I don’t know you enough to know you will do justice to our story. There’s just one shot at this and I can’t bear to disappoint Mohini or Aunty. There’s too much at stake here, do you get it?’ I say.

  Saraansh says nothing.

  ‘So?’ I ask.

  ‘What, bro? I’m not going to tell you a sob story for you to support me. I’m supposed to write and direct this thing and I know I will do a crazy job of it. If you don’t think I’m up to it after you see my work, you can get me replaced. Nothing will change. I’m the most replaceable part of the jigsaw. You’re free to choose,’ he says.

  I nod.

  We sit there in silence for a while. He takes out the phone. From the corner of the eye I see him go to the YouTube app. He goes to the video of Mohini and thrusts his phone towards me.

  ‘What am I looking at?’ I ask.

  It’s a comment from his profile. He points at the timestamp.

  ‘Check the date,’ he says.

  It was one of the first five comments on the video.

  Saraansh Gupta: If this isn’t love, I don’t know what is. Why does this video have only 120 views? Are people blind? We need more of these stories.

  I take out my phone.

  ‘Are these the answers, bro?’ he asks, his eyes light up.

  I shake my head.

  ‘Saraansh, here are forty-one questions,’ I say. ‘I want your answers for them, I need to know more about you. Let’s see how well you tell your story before we start with Mohini.’

  He takes the phone from me.

  Anusha Sardana

  Gautam! You’re back in my notes. :)

  Gautam, your parents were surprised to receive my call. They told me that no one from WeDonate had ever wanted to visit you. They had their reasons, and I had mine. I had taken a liking to what people hated about you. I had spent so much time reading your tweets, and thinking about them that it almost felt you were a friend, that we used to sit together and shit on the world. I now feel what I have heard other writers say in interviews—the characters I wrote about became my friends.

  Your father told me to reach an hour later than I had planned to. I could hear your mother whisper in the background that the house was too dirty and there was nothing to feed me.

  I told them I would come an hour later than planned.

  The auto driver didn’t want to go deep into the lane that led to your DDA flats knowing he ran the risk of brushing against the tightly packed cars. The cluster of modestly built apartments were disfigured by illegal extensions, mismatched paints and general neglect. Women in their nighties stood in their balconies looking for an excuse for a fracas with their neighbours. A strong smell of bhindi hung in the air. TV sets were on in every second house, women were transforming into lizards in the soaps that were on them, salt was being added swadanusar on cookery shows, and the doors were open.

  Your house was on the ground floor. Your father opened the door. I folded my hands in namaste and he clasped his hands tightly over mine and nodded gently.

  ‘Thank you, beta, for doing this,’ he said.

  I could smell the Lifebuoy on him, the kurta had a sharp crease in the middle from where it was ironed. Your mother came from behind him.

  ‘Come, come. Come inside,’ she said.

  She now had the confidence in her house of a homemaker whose refrigerator has a 2 lt Pepsi bottle, and whose kitchen has steaming hot samosas and paneer pakodas with a packet of imli chutney.

  She wiped the sweat off her brow, held my hand and led me inside. She made me sit on the sofa like a proper guest. There were chai and pakodas, just for me. They smelled great but I waited for them to insist on me having some.

  I had some and then also had the samosa that had followed and realized how odd they must think that I hadn’t asked about you. I looked at them.

  ‘You want to see him?’ your mother asked.

  ‘That’s what I’m here for, Aunty,’ I said.

  Your mother led me by my hand towards your room. Your room smelled hospital-like. If the room ever had your smell it had been obliterated by disinfectants. At the door itself, I heard the beeps of the machines that were monitoring you. The little beeps, their own Morse code, your body trying to talk through the pumps of the heart, the churning of fluids in your stomach.

  ‘Gautam,’ said your mother to introduce us.

  You lay there sleeping, powerless, unmindful that you were going to be the first character I was to convincingly write about. Despite seeing your pictures, I was expecting a crooked face, pock-marked, uneven teeth, drooling, scarred. But you . . . you looked normal.

  Your mother sat by your side, radiating sadness. She was holding your hand. The first thing I noticed about you was your hair. For someone who had had brain surgery they were long, healthy and shiny. In sharp contrast to your mother’s hair—thin, strandy, most of which had fallen out.

  We needed new pictures for your story on WeDonate, and you looked too handsome to look sick.

  I took my laptop out. I needed to know more about you. I had spent the last week bingeing on your tweets, each more fascinating than the last. When people are assholes, and they know they are, they still try to defend their behaviour in a way. As if they know what they are saying is not acceptable, but it needs to be said according to them. You didn’t give a fuck. You judged everyone without any qualms, and I loved how easily you could rile people up, make them angry enough to threaten to hack you.

  Today, I was most interested in the bunch of tweets you typed before being wheeled into surgery. I wanted to know what was going on in your mind right before your possible death.

  @gautam_gabbar: @ranmeeksingh behen, your father is performing a brain surgery on me. If he had done one on you in time, he wouldn’t have to buy a management quota for you. (1/n)

  |

  Your father has a rolex. He’s charging me for a full pair of gloves even though he uses one. Does he take one home to shag with? Does your mother know? Curious. (2/n)

  |

  How’s your parent’s sex life? Your father is rather fat and when he bends over to check me, he reeks of rotten eggs. Heard you’re an only child. I think your mother had had enough. (3/n)

  ‘Can you tell me a little bit about him? We need to tell our donors why they need to pay for his condition,’ I said.

  ‘Is it okay to let him die?’ asked your father.

  Your mother looks away from me, shaking her head in anger. She said, ‘I have seen on your website. Many boys his age are saved every day. Why not my son?’