Something I Never Told You Read online

  SHRAVYA BHINDER

  Something I Never Told You

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  CONTENTS

  Prologue

  THE PRESENT

  NIRMAN VIHAR METRO STATION, NEW DELHI

  EAST OF KAILASH, NEW DELHI

  NIRMAN VIHAR METRO STATION

  TAMANNA

  RAJIV CHOWK METRO STATION

  14 DECEMBER 2015

  MEETING ROOM NO. 5

  CAFE COFFEE DAY

  A WEEK LATER, AT WORK

  INDIRA GANDHI INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT, NEW DELHI

  THE TINY TRANSIT

  TULLAMARINE AIRPORT, MELBOURNE

  NEW DELHI, INDIA

  MELBOURNE CBD

  MY ALMOST MEETING WITH A GODMAN NEW DELHI, INDIA

  CONFESSIONS OF A BROKEN HEART

  WHEN I WAS LEARNING TO LOVE

  WHEN I FELL IN LOVE WITH HER—ALL OVER AGAIN

  ALONE TIME . . . THAT WAS ALL I NEEDED

  THINGS THAT HAD TO BE SAID

  THE LAST NAIL IN THE COFFIN

  MY HOME, NEW DELHI

  NEXT DAY AT WORK

  ONE MONTH LATER

  13 FEBRUARY 2017

  14 FEBRUARY 2017

  LOOKING BACK IN TIME

  18 MARCH 2017

  30 MARCH 2017

  31 MARCH 2017

  THE BLISSFUL SUMMER

  21 JULY 2017

  22 JULY 2017

  31 JULY 2017

  NEXT THREE WEEKS—THAT WENT BY IN A HEARTBEAT . . .

  26 AUGUST 2017

  27 AUGUST 2017

  ARTEMIS HOSPITAL, GURGAON

  PRESENT TIME

  Acknowledgements

  Follow Penguin

  Copyright

  PENGUIN METRO READS

  SOMETHING I NEVER TOLD YOU

  Shravya loves to find hidden stories around her and write novels about them. Formerly a corporate employee, she managed to flee the madness after a few years of boredom to become a full-time writer. She is a sucker for romance and strives to pen down exciting stories. When she is not reading and writing, she is out enjoying nature, playing with her dogs or cooking for her family.

  She lives in Melbourne with her family, in a house with a barren backyard and a lifetime’s collection of books.

  To life, love and everything magical!

  Prologue

  It is 3 a.m. I am wide awake, staring at my computer screen with my palms resting on the keyboard. Earlier that evening, I had finally made a resolution and decided to act on it the very next day. But after tossing and turning in my lonely bed for a couple of hours, I chose to start writing this book right away.

  Now I am sitting at my desk next to my bed, and I am trying hard to think of the point where it all began. When I was not thinking of writing the book, this story was all that I could think of, all that I could imagine and dream about. And now it is all gone as if those memories never existed, as if all of it had never happened. With a blank mind, I hear the only noise in the room: the sound of stillness.

  My first task is to try and put my finger on the starting point of our story. After spending more than a few hours and struggling to determine the beginning—the time when it all started—it struck me. There never was a starting point after all!

  Slowly, I begin to type, and gradually my speed picks up. I have only one purpose; that is, to be able to do justice to our love story which, like most love stories, is woven beautifully with delicate threads of love, desire, intimacy, fear, possessiveness, assurance, longing and unexpected events.

  So I begin . . .

  THE PRESENT

  Sometimes I still find the odd strand of your hair in my room, but more often clinging to my clothes as a reminder of our time together. The earring that you had lost one rainy night after it was entangled in the button of my shirt, I found it yesterday under my bed, a little twisted because of all the force you had put in trying to get away from me, in vain. The pair of white teddy bears that you had got for me after our last fight still sits on my study table, blaming me for what I had done. Almost every day I find these memories of yours, lost in my room, scattered around me like a web that won’t let me come out of the past. Not that I want to, I am happier living caved under these beautiful memories than face the ugly present.

  These random things that I find everywhere transport me back into our once beautiful and perfect world—the world before we started fighting, the world before I started ignoring you, the world before I stopped saying, ‘I love you’, the world before ego crawled between us, and our world before last August.

  Now that you are gone, on lonely nights I play your favourite songs—old Bollywood numbers. These songs remind me of your glowing face, and that pure, playful and infectious smile of yours that I miss the most. I sit all night and listen to those songs, staring at the empty walls in my bedroom which were once filled with your pictures. Sometimes, I walk up to the window to witness the busy lives of people who are lucky to be with people they love. The winds which once played with your beautiful hair, turn their back on me in disappointment every time they find me standing alone at the window, preoccupied with gloom.

  Ever since I have come back to Delhi, I wake up in the middle of the night bathed in my sweat, curled up on the bed, alone and shivering. The bed still smells of you, of the time when you were with me, and I feel safe, enveloped in your fragrance. It reminds me of the dreams we shared together and numerous plans we wove under the stars; the warmth of nights we spent sleeping intertwined in one another, and the nights that we didn’t sleep a wink. Memories of you calm me down and comfort me, but not for long. As soon as I shut my eyes, an unknown force drags me mercilessly into the same nightmares. I relive the horrors again multiple times every single night. I am not complaining about the dreams, for I am the reason why things happened the way they did. I do not mind the suffering, but I cannot bear to see your hollow, empty eyes that look through me. People have been telling me that I do not exist for you any more, but I am not ready to let go; not yet. Because you are still the pivot of my world, and I cannot bear the thought that I do not even exist in yours.

  Since you left, I have learnt a lot about life and love. Nothing is permanent; time changes, and it changes everything around us—sometimes for the better and sometimes for the worse—and no one can do anything about it. No matter how much we think we control our own lives and those of others around us, the fact is that we are not at all in control of anything. Without you, nothing is the same. Reminiscing hurts me but I need to hold on to these little echoes from the past, or I will go mad with your sudden absence. I never imagined my life without you, and I cannot go back into that reality just yet.

  I have learnt only one thing in my life—that we should not stop expressing our love, ever!

  After some time together, we usually stop telling our beloveds how much they mean to us. We stop saying, ‘I love you’, and start taking each other for granted. The comfort of company creeps in. In our last few days together, I had entirely stopped putting in an effort into our relationship. I took you for granted, I took what was between us for granted as I never knew that all could be lost in the blink of an eye. The few times when I did tell you how much I loved you, I failed to stand by it. I should have told you more often how much you mean to me; I should have not hesitated in saying the three most significant yet sparingly used words in most modern relationships. I never thought that you could go anywhere, that I could lose you. Destiny tricked me and shook my world. When in love, we should tell our beloved how we feel about them; every day, every hour if we can, every minute if we must. Sadly, I realize that you are not there with me so I can rectify my mistakes. I acted like a fool.

 
; Life is moving forward for everybody around me, but I am exactly where you left me, for I do not want to move on without you. Days are passing at their usual pace, but I have no recollection of any instances now, for it feels as if I am stuck in a time machine. Every time I think of you, I close my eyes and go back in time to the last time I held your delicate hands in mine and tried to search through your eyes to find a way to your soul. All I remember is you—us—and my mistakes. I should have stopped you; I should have let you talk, I should have listened to you. Yesterday, in your eyes I saw nothing. There was nothing in them for me, neither love nor hatred, neither ridicule nor anger.

  The image of your face haunts every waking moment of my life. When I look into the mirror each morning, I hate the person who stares back at me. Not for what he did but for what he didn’t do when he had the chance. I think just like you, I too am damaged beyond repair.

  I pray to God for mercy and wish there was a way to turn back the clock and go back in time. I pray for another chance to relive that fateful night. I want to go back in time and tell you how much you mean to me, how ardently I have loved you all my life and always will. How I wish the walls of my ego had crumbled that night and been buried under the immense love I have always felt for you. How I wish I had disobeyed the devil in me, when I planned to make you suffer remorse for one more night. How I wish I had let you finish what you wanted to say and sealed my lips with yours. I want to go back in time and embrace you, and never let you go. I should have brought you back home with me. I wish that night would come back and give me another chance to make it all right, to hold you tight and to change our destiny.

  When I come home from work, I miss hearing you humming as you unlock the door for me. I miss the coy smile which was reserved only for me. Instead of your beautiful presence, I am now welcomed home by emptiness and a house full of memories of you. Your mother took away all your pictures. I begged her not to, but she thought it was for good for both of us. My room is nothing but blank white walls now, and these empty walls start closing in on me as soon as they find me drifting back in memories and thinking about you. My loneliness engulfs me, and the demons take me with them into nightmares. I wish you could come back to me, talk to me, tell me how your day has been and ask me about mine. I want to hear you tell me how much you missed me all day; I wish to kiss your forehead once again. I would do anything to listen to you laugh once again.

  I want life to give me another chance to know more about you, your dreams, your aspirations and ambitions, your opinion on things that matter to you and also on the ones that don’t. I know I have made many mistakes, hurt you many times, broken your heart and been mean, but I beg for your forgiveness like I never have. I want you to tell me once that you still love me and do not think that I am the monster I think I am.

  As I write this, I know that nothing that I wish for can come true, but I will wait for a miracle to happen. I will wait for you to come back to me, and for us to start our lives from where we left off. I will wait for you to love me back again, even if it means waiting till eternity.

  NIRMAN VIHAR METRO STATION, NEW DELHI

  AUGUST 2017

  ‘Why thirty? We agreed on twenty-five before I sat in your auto. I pay only Rs 20 every day. I can pay Rs 5 extra, that too because I am running late for work. That is all I have,’ I almost screamed at the auto wallah who was in no mood to leave the golden opportunity of further spoiling my already spoilt morning. He seemed to have sensed that I was late for something. He asked me for Rs 25 instead of the usual twenty, and when I paid him the same at the end of my ride, he asked for more.

  ‘There was so much traffic, bhaiya ji,’ his response was quick and well-rehearsed. He smiled at me, putting all his teeth and part of his gums on display. I assumed that the motive behind this act was to earn some extra bucks early in the morning. If he cared for my opinion, I would have advised him not to open his mouth in a way that showed his tobacco-stained teeth, in public places or he could be jailed for terrorizing people with his fangs. His teeth were definitely more than the required number, packed and clustered in his regular-size jaw, overlapping each other. I quickly took my eyes off his mouth to stop the uncalled-for scrutiny and started searching my pockets to see if I had any more cash on me.

  I was running very late for work that day, which was also my first day of working with my new manager. I wondered if I was going to be able to retain my job after creating such a bad impression with my delayed entry at the office. It was an open secret that my new manager was a strict guy. He loved taking disciplinary actions so much that they could even be described as his work hobby. I feared that I would be kicked out of my job, without much discussion, only a few days before I had a chance to use my newly delivered debit card for the first time. Surviving in a consulting firm was tough for a fresher, tougher if you knew nothing and were always late. I belonged to the second category of course. My name is Ronnie D., and I am not a musician; though I wished to be one when I was five years old.

  Well, actually, my name is Raunak Dhodi. After years of being teased because of my traditional-sounding name, I changed it to Ronnie during college because I wanted to make friends and appear cool. Honestly, neither of the two happened. In fact, most of my life I have had only two very good friends. Both of them are the people I have spent most of my life with—my cousins. But I shall talk about them later.

  So, I searched frantically and found not a single penny in the back pockets of my trousers, and it turned out that the front pockets were not a penny richer than their counterparts either. However, I did manage to scoop out two Rs 2 coins from the secret pocket in my wallet, the pocket which was really a hole between the lining and the outside flap. This made it Rs 4. One more was needed. Hoping to find at least a lone rupee coin hiding somewhere in my bag, I unzipped it to put my poverty on display right outside the metro station. Other than my laptop and metro card, there was little else I could find.

  ‘I do not have more money,’ I told the auto driver one last time, straightening my shoulders.

  He looked at my palm with the two shiny coins in it. ‘Then I will take Rs 4 more,’ he declared shamelessly. With no other option in sight, I handed over my only assets to him to get him off my back.

  ‘This day is the worst day in the history of all the bad days I have had in my life,’ I mumbled to myself, climbing up the deserted stairs. No, the metro station was not deserted, it was full of commuters just like any other day, but most commuters preferred the escalators over the stairs. Hence, I was amongst the few climbing up the stairs. I reached the automated doors at the entry, and put my hand in my pocket to pull out my metro card. Nothing. Where is it? I wondered, and panicking I frantically searched in my bag, then my back pockets, front pockets, and even the shirt pocket where I never put anything. It was not on me. Where was it? I remembered seeing it a little while ago and thought hard to remember where it could be.

  ‘Shit!’ I exclaimed, trying to recall the last time I’d seen it. Then I remembered that I had seen it outside the station when I’d opened my bag for the wretched auto wallah. ‘It must have fallen out of my bag then. I will never find it now,’ I despaired, and dashed down the stairs. Dropping something in Delhi and hoping to find it seconds later is too much wishful thinking. I’d lost the card loaded with Rs 130.75. If I ever caught even a glimpse of it in my lifetime, it would be a miracle.

  Worried and scared, I frantically searched for the card on the stairs and then on the footpath. It was nowhere to be seen.

  ‘Shit, shit, shit!’ I knew saying it thrice made nothing right, yet three times the usual shit was the only way to describe my situation at that point—stuck outside a metro station, penniless and late for work.

  I turned around, contemplating a walk back home. It was going to be a very time-consuming and tiring affair, but as they say—desperate times need desperate measures. I live close to 3 km away from the metro station, and I am not an athlete, nor was I back then. But a poor man shou
ld walk, I told myself, and looked back at the stairs with a small ray of hope still flickering in my heart.

  The deserted stairs were not deserted any more; a girl sat on the second step with her head bowed down. She was talking to someone over the phone. Her lovely long hair fell over her delicate shoulders, and I was unable to see her face which was buried under her lustrous hair. I was standing only four or five steps away from her, and I noticed that she had rings on almost all her fingers and I recognized one of them—the gold ring on her index finger with a green sapphire in it. Her fair, delicate hands were busy untangling imaginary knots in her shiny hair. Dressed in a white kurta and salwar, she was lost in her conversation, unaware and unfazed that her blue dupatta, beautifully spread on the last stair, was sweeping the dusty path to the stairs. I was going to be late for work and was most definitely going to lose my job, but I froze when I saw her. Her hair, her posture, the way her hands moved, made me skip more than a few heartbeats. I knew her. Unintentionally, my eyes wandered over her sheer dupatta through which her feet in golden juttis (footwear) were visible.

  In my head, a Shahrukh Khan song was about to be played in the background, and I was inches away from drifting into a dream song and bursting into a dance sequence when suddenly I spotted it, under her dupatta—my metro card! Well, it was a metro card and could have been mine or someone else’s. But as long as it had enough money on it to take me to my destination, I did not care whose card it was. ‘Excuse me,’ I said, walking towards the girl who sat there like she owned the station. She raised her head. Her dark-brown hair half covered her face. She transferred her mobile phone to her left hand and gently swept away her mane from her face with her fingers. Our eyes met, and within a flash of a moment it was 2015 again.

  ‘Adira?’ her name fell out of my mouth abruptly, and she looked at me as if I were a psychopathic stalker.