The Boy Who Loved Read online

  DURJOY DATTA

  the boy who loved

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  Contents

  1 January 1999

  12 January 1999

  28 January 1999

  29 January 1999

  30 January 1999

  31 January 1999

  1 February 1999

  7 March 1999

  11 March 1999

  13 March 1999

  15 March 1999

  18 March 1999

  25 March 1999

  29 March 1999

  6 April 1999

  17 April 1999

  26 April 1999

  1 May 1999

  3 May 1999

  7 May 1999

  15 May 1999

  21 May 1999

  22 May 1999

  25 May 1999

  27 May 1999

  28 May 1999

  1 June 1999

  2 June 1999

  4 June 1999

  6 June 1999

  14 June 1999

  12 July 1999

  16 July 1999

  17 July 1999

  19 July 1999

  20 July 1999

  24 July 1999

  25 July 1999

  27 July 1999

  28 July 1999

  29 July 1999

  2 August 1999

  7 August 1999

  12 August 1999

  14 August 1999

  15 August 1999

  22 August 1999

  5 September 1999

  12 September 1999

  18 September 1999

  25 September 1999

  1 October 1999

  3 October 1999

  7 October 1999

  11 October 1999

  17 November 1999

  19 November 1999

  23 November 1999

  30 November 1999

  3 December 1999

  11 December 1999

  13 December 1999

  17 December 1999

  21 December 1999

  24 December 1999

  25 December 1999

  26 December 1999

  1 January 2000

  3 January 2000

  6 January 2000

  9 January 2000

  11 January 2000

  17 January 2000

  22 January 2000

  29 January 2000

  30 January 2000

  14 February 2000

  21 February 2000

  29 February 2000

  5 March 2000

  7 March 2000

  10 March 2000

  13 March 2000

  17 March 2000

  20 March 2000

  21 March 2000

  23 March 2000

  24 March 2000

  Follow Penguin

  Copyright

  PENGUIN METRO READS

  THE BOY WHO LOVED

  Durjoy Datta was born in New Delhi, and completed a degree in engineering and business management before embarking on a writing career. His first book—Of Course I Love You . . .—was published when he was twenty-one years old and was an instant bestseller. His successive novels—Now That You’re Rich . . .; She Broke Up, I Didn’t! . . .; Oh Yes, I’m Single! . . .; You Were My Crush . . .; If It’s Not Forever . . .; Till the Last Breath . . .; Someone Like You; Hold My Hand; When Only Love Remains; World’s Best Boyfriend; Our Impossible Love; and The Girl of My Dreams—have also found prominence on various bestseller lists, making him one of the highest-selling authors in India.

  Durjoy also has to his credit nine television shows and has written over a thousand episodes for television.

  Durjoy lives in Mumbai. For more updates, you can follow him on Facebook(www.facebook.com/durjoydatta1) or Twitter (@durjoydatta) or mail him at [email protected].

  To Avantika

  1 January 1999

  Hey Raghu Ganguly (that’s me),

  I am finally putting pen to paper. The scrunch of the sheets against the fanged nib, the slow absorption of the ink, seeing these unusually curved letters, is definitely satisfying; I’m not sure if writing journal entries to myself like a schizophrenic is the answer I’m looking for. But I have got to try.

  My head’s dizzy from riding on the sinusoidal wave that has been my life for the last two years. On most days I look for ways to die—the highest building around my house, the sharpest knife in the kitchen, the nearest railway station, a chemist shop that would unquestioningly sell twenty or more sleeping pills to a sixteen-year-old, a packet of rat poison—and on some days I just want to be scolded by Maa–Baba for not acing the mathematics exam, tell Dada how I will beat his IIT score by a mile, or be laughed at for forgetting to take the change from the bania’s shop.

  I’m Raghu and I have been lying to myself and everyone around me for precisely two years now. Two years since my best friend of four years died, one whose friendship I thought would outlive the two of us, engraved forever in the space–time continuum. But, as I have realized, nothing lasts forever.

  Now lying to others is fine, everyone does that and it’s healthy and advisable—how else are you going to survive the suffering in this cruel, cruel world? But lying to yourself? That shit’s hard, that will change you, and that’s why I made the resolution to start writing a journal on the first of this month, what with the start of a new year and all, the last of this century. I must admit I have been dilly-dallying for a while now and not without reason. It’s hard to hide things in this house with Maa’s sensitive nose never failing to sniff out anything Dada, Baba or I have tried to keep from her. If I were one of those kids who live in palatial houses with staircases and driveways I would have plenty of places to hide this journal, but since I am not, it will have to rest in the loft behind the broken toaster, the defunct Singer sewing machine and the empty suitcases.

  So Raghu, let’s not lie to ourselves any longer, shall we?

  Let’s say the truth, the cold, hard truth and nothing else, and see if that helps us to survive the darkness. If this doesn’t work and I lose, checking out of this life is not hard. It’s just a seven-storey drop from the roof top, a quick slice of the wrist, a slip on the railway track, a playful ingestion of pills or the accidental consumption of rat poison away. But let’s try and focus on the good.

  Durga. Durga.

  12 January 1999

  Today was my first day at the new school, just two months before the start of the tenth-standard board exams. Why Maa–Baba chose to change my school in what’s said to be one of the most crucial year in anyone’s academic life is amusing to say the least—my friendlessness.

  ‘If you don’t make friends now, then when will you?’ Maa said.

  They thought the lack of friends in my life was my school’s problem and had nothing to do with the fact that my friend had been mysteriously found dead, his body floating in the still waters of the school swimming pool. He was last seen with me. At least that’s what my classmates believe and say.

  Only I know the truth.

  When Dada woke me up this morning, hair parted and sculpted to perfection with Brylcreem, teeth sparkling, talcum splotches on his neck, he was grinning from ear to ear. Unlike me he doesn’t have to pretend to be happy. Isn’t smiling too much a sign of madness? He had shown the first symptoms when he picked a private-sector software job over a government position in a Public Sector Undertaking which would have guaranteed a lifetime of unaccountability. Dada may be an IITian but he’s not the smarter one of us.

  ‘Are you excited about the new school, Raghu? New uniform, new people, new everything? Of course you’re excited! I never quite liked your old school. You will make new friends here,’ said Dada with a sense of happiness I didn’t feel.

  ‘Sure. If they don’t smell the stench
of death on me.’

  ‘Oh, stop it. It’s been what? Over two years? You know how upset Maa–Baba get,’ said Dada. ‘Trust me, you will love your new school! And don’t talk about Sami at the breakfast table.’

  ‘I was joking, Dada. Of course I am excited!’ I said, mimicking his happiness.

  Dada falls for these lies easily because he wants to believe them. Like I believed Maa–Baba when they once told me, ‘We really liked Sami. He’s a nice boy.’

  Sami, the dead boy, was never liked by Maa–Baba. For Baba it was enough that his parents had chosen to give the boy a Muslim name. Maa had more valid concerns like his poor academic performance, him getting caught with cigarettes in his bag, and Sami’s brother being a school dropout. Despite all the love they showered on me in the first few months after Sami’s death, I thought I saw what could only be described as relief that Sami, the bad influence, was no longer around. Now they use his name to their advantage. ‘Sami would want you to make new friends,’ they would say.

  I let Maa feed me in the morning. It started a few days after Sami’s death and has stuck ever since.

  Maa’s love for me on any given day is easily discernible from the size of the morsels she shoves into my mouth. Today the rice balls and mashed potatoes were humungous. She watched me chew like I was living art.

  And I ate because I believe the easiest way to fool anyone into not looking inside and finding that throbbing mass of sadness is to ingest food. A person who eats well is not truly sad.

  While we ate, Baba lamented the pathetic fielding placement of the Indian team and India’s questionable foreign policy simultaneously, ‘These bloody Pakistanis! They shoot our soldiers at the border and have the gall to send their cricketers for a friendly cricket series. Terrorists should have bombed the hotel the cricketers were staying in. At least we wouldn’t lose cricket matches to these brutes,’ said Baba in anger and frustration.

  ‘It’s a step in the right direction, Baba. If you have a problem with them, might I remind you that our captain is a Muslim as well?’ said Dada.

  ‘That’s what I’m saying, Anirban. We were supposed to be a Hindu version of Pakistan, the holy land for all Hindus, and look what we are now! Secular! Bah! A nation of hypocrites. They might be . . .’ said Baba, his voice trailing, eating up the abuses that bubbled at the back of his throat. ‘. . . But they respect and preserve their religious identity unlike us who bow down to the whims of the minorities here. I’m sure they laugh at us!’

  ‘Not again, you two,’ Maa interrupted, stuffing Dada’s mouth with a comparatively smaller rice ball, cutting off the oft-repeated religiously charged conversation midway.

  Baba left to mutter prayers to our Hindu gods, for our floundering cricket team to be led by Saurav Ganguly, a Bengali Hindu brahmin.

  ‘Do well in school,’ said Dada before he left.

  Maa came to drop me to the bus stop and cried when the bus drove away with her favourite son. I waved to her till the bus turned the corner.

  It makes her happy. Maa’s obsession and deep love for me is now old news. Maa had no choice in the matter. Dada grew up too early. When I was twelve, Dada went off to the hostel and found friends and happiness outside our family and carved a son-shaped void in Maa’s heart. That’s when Maa turned to me for succour, the apple of her eye, and loved me with the power of a thousand suns. Even now, she clutches my old clothes and mourns that I’m no longer the child who used to need her for everything.

  When I sat back in my seat, the other students in the bus looked at me strangely for they had seen me looking at Maa like a puppy left behind at a shelter. I don’t blame them and neither do I care. I will be her best son till the time I can . . . but I also wonder how long that will be.

  As Dada told me, I tried to do well in school. Since my shift of school was sudden and unexplained for, a lot of schools had turned me down. My new school isn’t as good as the last one; it is lenient, the teachers are a little slow, and the students are rowdier.

  I didn’t talk to anyone, didn’t make any new friends. I picked the empty first bench, sat there alone, stared at the blackboard and waited for the day to end. Just 700-odd days in my new school, 1200 days in whichever college I go to and then some more days and then some more and then some more . . . and then I die. Finally.

  One day at a time. Unless I find the courage to . . .

  28 January 1999

  My plan to hide in plain sight at school lasted till two days ago.

  Our class teacher, Amarjeet Kaur, a round-faced, stout and beautiful woman, who had been on leave till then, introduced me to the whole class and asked everyone to say their names out loud. I was prepared to forget every name as soon as possible but one name stuck in my head, entangled in my thoughts like a chewing gum stuck so badly in long hair that it needs to be burnt off.

  That name is Brahmi Sharma, the class monitor.

  Besides being toweringly tall at 5'7" like every class monitor should be, she is also the march-past incharge and the teacher’s pet. From the number of times I have seen other boys throw furtive glances at her I’m fairly certain that she has a long line of secret admirers. I had prepared myself to not join that line the very first time I saw her. I have found an effective strategy to not like someone. All you do is find a flaw in that person and then concentrate all your energies on hating it, fix a magnifying glass to your eye and train it on that flaw. It could be a mole, or a crooked finger; it could be a gender or a religion or a social class too. Slowly, you only see the flaw and not the person. It has worked with everyone other than Maa–Baba and Dada whom I can’t hate, no matter how hard I try to focus on their flaws.

  I have been searching for something to hate in her. Her hair is long and shiny. It is usually tied into a scruffy, untidy pony, and absolutely un-hateable. Her face is amiable, with an odd pimple here and there. She has a lissome and athletic body, with perfect round mounds, bursting with puberty; she’s at the cusp of turning into a young woman. Her uniform is not as orderly as the good kids in class and hence not irritating at all. But then, today, something hit my eyes like a flashlight during load-shedding—her bony wrists. Like a child’s drawing, there are cut marks zig-zagging the entire length of her wrist. Then every time I saw her during the day, my eyes rested on her wrists. The little ridges are telltale signs of someone having taken a knife or a paper cutter to those hands. I know because I have pondered on that option, seen it in movies and in magazines. She has been close to death, flirted with it, danced on the razor edge of it, walked on the ledge of a high-rise, watched a train whizz by from inches away, and survived.

  Back home, the mood was sombre. Worked for me. I didn’t have to put on a smile; I could be sullen just as Baba was, pretending that the Indian cricket team’s fortune affected me.

  Recurring images of Pakistani men on news channels raising and fluttering their green-and-white flags in Chennai’s Chidambaram stadium seemed to cast a funereal gloom on our dinner table, as if the batsmen hadn’t lost their wickets but chunks of Kashmir. Baba, having had enough, changed the channel. On this one, the channel flashed a picture of a burnt car. I knew this piece of news. Over the last few days every news channel has been relaying the news of the gruesome murder of a Christian missionary and his two sons by a few Hindu extremists who burnt them alive.

  ‘The sons were just ten and six. I can’t even imagine,’ gasped Maa.

  Baba muttered, ‘These Christian missionaries shouldn’t be here in the first place. Why do they even come here? We Hindus don’t leave our country and distribute pamphlets in the USA or Iran saying our gods are the best, then why do they?’

  ‘They didn’t deserve to die,’ said Dada.

  ‘But mind you, the funds for all these are being generated abroad. Ultimately it will lead to the erasure of the identity of our country, of our culture.’

  ‘Our culture?’ Dada mocked.

  Baba, a reckless donor to the community temple and the head of the Durga Puja Commit
tee, slammed his fist on the table. ‘You know why you can mock your own religion? Because you’re a Hindu. Try mocking your own religion and culture in any other country and see how they pull out your tongue and lash you. Always critical of Hinduism Anirban, respect the religion that gives you this freedom to question it.’

  ‘So there’s nothing wrong with burning alive a grown man and two children? Is that what you’re saying, Baba? Is that what our religion teaches us?’

  While Dada and Baba fought bitterly, I kept squinting at the television to see if they would show the charred bodies of the little Christian children. Did they suffer? Did they scream like Sami had? Did they look at their father hoping he would save them like Sami looked at me that afternoon he drowned? Yes, he looked at me. He begged me to save him. There’s no point lying about it now.

  What a perfect thought to end the day with. Brilliant.

  P.S. Ashiana Apartments. It’s a six-storey building about a ten-minute walk from my house. There are no guards at the main gate. Pretty easy to reach the roof. The fall is clean and it will all be over in a matter of seconds. Around here there are hardly any buildings more than three storeys, stupid building laws. I have heard Mumbai is much better, every second building is over six storeys.

  Just saying.

  29 January 1999

  I have turned sixteen. It’s my birthday today. Yay. So exciting. Wow. Whatever. Congratulations and celebrations and blah blah blah blah. What’s so great about being born? You have no choice or control over the date or the birth. Life’s literally forced on you. Where’s the fun in celebrating that? At least with death, you have the option to choose, push the eject button when you feel like the cockpit’s getting too hot. And a birthday doesn’t change anything. Except probably my thirteenth birthday when my throat and my body exploded and, believe you me, it was no reason to celebrate. I grew taller and my voice broke, I was thrown out of the choir and relegated to the back of the line of the march-past.

  ‘You’re lucky. Look how tall you are!’ said Maa.