When Only Love Remains Read online

  It’s her first flight and she’s still stuck in traffic.

  Even at seven in the morning, the circuitous roads of Gurgaon are choking with bumper to bumper traffic. The newer, wider roads have helped but every second seven more kids are born in India. One of them dies instantly, three of them never see a school in their lives and ply rickshaws, two of them end up in the lower rungs of the society and drive scooters, and the rest buy cars. Big cars. Sometimes SUVs. The traffic grows every day. Unless people find a way to teleport, this city is going to burst.

  She’s flipping through her roster for the month while in the car. It has a Kolkata flight later this month and she’s most kicked about it. Devrat had replied to all the twenty mails a few days back. What she really liked about those replies was that they weren’t standard. He wasn’t copying and pasting the same answers. He was typing the answers out, and even though he was answering to people who didn’t exist, it felt like he was talking to her, the way it has always been. That reminds her that she hasn’t checked Devrat’s profile in over two weeks; her training had been really strenuous.

  The car stops at a red light. She has just logged into her account with her head on the glass window of the car when she hears a loud honking. She takes notice. And the other flight attendants who are in the car with her wake up with a start.

  Avanti looks to her side and it’s Shekhar in a two-door car shouting at the cab driver. The red light turns to green and Shekhar’s car screeches to a halt in front of their cab. The driver of the cab walks out to confront Shekhar, but Shekhar pushes him to the ground. ‘Neeche rahiyo, bhenchod (Stay down, sisterfucker).’

  Scared, Avanti walks out. ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘Where the fuck were you? Why isn’t your number working?’ He’s shouting at Avanti as he snatches her handbag. Avanti’s trying to stop him, her eyes have welled up. It feels like she’s still in a relationship with him. Back in those days, the minute Shekhar used to start shouting, she used to think she must have done something wrong. Even now, she’s wondering what she might have done wrong.

  She’s looking at the flight attendants who were sitting in the car but are now out as well and ready to stand by Avanti. And then she’s looking at Shekhar, who’s rummaging through her handbag to find the phone. He finds it and dials his number. ‘Oh! So now you have taken a new phone. Who gave you this number? WHO? YOUR NEW BOYFRIEND?’

  ‘Shekhar! Stop it! I’m getting late.’ She’s hitting Shekhar on his arm but he’s not budging. He’s into the recent calls list and luckily, he finds nothing. ‘Stop it!’ She has almost broken down into tears but Shekhar doesn’t even give her a second look.

  ‘Who are you?’ the two other flight attendants are shouting at Shekhar. They are about to call for help, but Avanti waves them down.

  Shekhar throws the bag and the phone on the ground. ‘You better pick up my calls. And if I get to know that you’re dating anyone, I swear I will kill you. I know you have deleted his number now, but I will catch you soon enough.’

  He gets in his car and whizzes off.

  ‘I’m sorry about that,’ Avanti apologizes, a little ashamed, still shaking from the ordeal.

  The two flight attendants behave like they didn’t just see what happened. Avanti sits in the car, wipes her tears and does her make-up again. The flight attendant sitting next to her whispers in her ear, ‘Never take shit from boyfriends.’ Avanti nods. She doesn’t know why she takes it from him. She never really even loved him. And right now, even though she’s crying a little, she’s furious and she can kill someone.

  She puts the battery in the cell phone again and checks if it’s working. She stuffs her earphones in and increases the volume on her favourite playlist. She opens her roster again. There are three layovers, at Kochi, Mumbai and Kolkata. A brief smile comes on her face when she reads ‘Kolkata’. Layovers are when you fly to the destination city and come back after a day or two. All she wants is to see Devrat play and sing in front of her eyes, maybe shake his hand, and hug him endlessly. The very thought of it makes her so happy. She’s finally going to meet her little puppy, her saviour. And just like that, what happened minutes ago is history. ‘Thank you,’ she mutters.

  ‘Are you okay?’ asks the flight attendant sitting next to her, seeing the sudden change of mood in Avanti, who’s smiling widely now. ‘Weren’t you just crying a moment ago?’

  ‘I’m okay, now.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Yes. I’m sorry for that. That guy is slightly deranged.’

  ‘Go the police, then,’ says the girl.

  ‘Some day,’ says Avanti.

  ‘Was he your boyfriend?’ asks the girl.

  ‘No, he was an ex-boyfriend. My boyfriend is in Kolkata,’ chuckles Avanti. ‘His name is Devrat.’ Avanti realizes anyone would think that she, not Shekhar, is deranged, but that’s okay. She rightly compares Devrat to a little puppy. No matter how angry or depressed or suicidal you are, you look at a picture of cute puppies and everything is fine and fuzzy. Devrat’s Avanti’s puppy.

  Still stuck in the jam, she logs into her accounts. What? She immediately starts to curse herself over and over again. Damn. Damn. Damn. This is not happening! There are seven updates, tens of new pictures, and new videos on his page. There are people, girls, who claim to be the biggest fans of his music. There are over a hundred likes on some of his pictures, girls gushing over his music and how gorgeous he looks, and she can’t help but feel envious.

  There are a few sound clips uploaded on Soundcloud and she downloads them on her phone. She doesn’t enjoy the music; she is too angry to think about anything else. Devrat was her discovery. She was the one who was amongst the first ten people to like his page, to like his music, to share his lyrics and the grainy videos of his performance on her Facebook profile. How can other girls claim him as theirs? She decides not to share or like anything. The two new songs, Ridiculous Smoke and Perfect Futures, play on a never-ending loop on her phone. She likes all his pictures. ‘I hate this! Why is this guy getting popular! Not fair!’

  The taxi parks close to the airport and she jumps out. Focus, Avanti tells herself, and tries not to think of Devrat’s new-found popularity.

  The other two amble out, still nonchalant, their faces expressionless, their chins held up high, sunglasses perched on their foreheads, as if they do this every day. As they walk in to the newly constructed Terminal 3 of the Delhi Indira Gandhi Airport, she notices uncountable pairs of eyes on them and she shrugs her shoulders and walks in.

  ‘Papers.’ She is broken out of her reverie by the moustachioed guard, who is standing upright with his right hand outstretched in front of him.

  The other two show him their IDs and stride in, their chins still facing the ceiling. She fumbles, looks for her ID in pockets in her handbag, and finally finds it hanging around her neck. The guard smiles and lets her in. She smiles back.

  ‘Pehla din hai? First day?’ the guard asks.

  ‘Yes,’ she says, ‘Aapka? Yours?’ And they both laugh. ‘I will see a lot of your moustache from now on . . .’ Avanti looks at the guard’s badge and the guard answers, ‘Kareem.’

  ‘Okay, Kareem bhai. Wish me luck.’ The guard smiles widely and wishes Avanti luck.

  With the trolley wheeling behind her, she tries to catch up pace with the other two who are still walking with unmatched confidence and look like they know where they have to go. Their IDs are checked again and then their small suitcases. Her luggage has lipstick, a manual and a spare set of uniform just in case. She upholds the image of a quintessential flight attendant: a twenty-something girl in a well-fitted uniform, walking in high heels with a colour-coordinated trolley behind her.

  They are ushered into the lounge where all the flight attendants, flying all across the breadth and length of the country and beyond, are waiting for their call outs. The room is uncharacteristica
lly silent and most of the girls are sleeping. Some of them are tapping on their BlackBerries and flicking on their iPads or doing their hair. She lies down on a couch, surprisingly soft and inviting, and listens to the songs again and they are awesome, notwithstanding her hatred for other girls who have started liking Devrat as well. So unfair!

  Girls keep exiting the room and are replaced by more girls. There is no conversation.

  ‘Is it your first time?’ asks Avanti to a girl who’s clearly a veteran.

  The girl frowns for she, too, was trying to sleep. ‘No.’

  ‘It’s my first time.’

  ‘Hmmm.’

  ‘Any tips?’

  ‘Be disciplined.’

  ‘Anything more? Oh, by the way I love your hair,’ says Avanti and it’s a genuine compliment.

  ‘It’s the same as everyone else’s,’ says the girl and closes her eyes. Avanti shuts up.

  After an hour, names are called out for her flight and a big smile bursts out on her face. Four girls get up and head for the exit. Two of them use the mirror briefly to reign in their stray strands of hair into the buns and join the others.

  ‘First flight?’ the most senior-looking of the flight attendants asks Avanti as she nervously follows the lead of the other three flight attendants. They enter the flight and go through the preliminary checks they are supposed to carry out regardless of how stupid or superfluous they might seem. A little later, the first batch of passengers walks past them. The next half an hour passes by in greetings. ‘Good morning.’ ‘Welcome.’ ‘Indiago Airlines welcomes you.’ ‘Thank you for flying with us.’

  Avanti’s in the alley waiting for passengers and although she’s just supposed to smile at them and welcome them, she finds herself in long conversations with a lot of them. She’s flitting between Hindi, English, Bengali and the bits of Punjabi she had learnt from her friends back at school.

  Avanti’s jaws hurt by the time the last few of the business class passengers pass her by, but she’s so glad she finally has someone (actually three hundred people) to talk to. That one hour in the lounge staying shut was just annoying.

  Avanti is in the economy class and she would eventually, if she sticks around, graduate to working in the business class, but she’s not looking forward to dealing with business and first class passengers. They have the most calm and relaxed faces of them all as they walk past, smelling as if fresh out of a scented shower. Rich housewives, upper-rung business executives on company money, spoilt kids, and TV models. Good-looking people. The business class cabin reeks of money and she doesn’t like the way they look at her. It’s with the face of a customer, someone who’s bought something. Or someone.

  She moves on. The economy class is bustling with activity as passengers try to fit their hand baggage, clearly twice the size allowed, into the overhead bins. Had it been a train, expletives would have been exchanged and bags would have tumbled out and hands would have risen. Here, grumbles would have to do. She reaches out and helps a few people manage their hand baggage and find their seats. The bags are heavy, Avanti realizes. And why are big, burly men taking her help in stuffing bags in overhead bins? It’s not as if flight attendants are diploma holders on ‘How to Stuff Luggage in Overhead Bins.’ But she helps them anyway and incorrigibly, finds herself in a conversation about which schools their children go to. ‘Shut up, Avanti,’ she tells herself.

  The seat belt sign is on and the captain makes the announcement over the grainy PA system in his monotonous voice:

  ‘This is flight 6EG 787 and we are flying from Delhi to Chennai today. In the cockpit are Captain Saurabh Mittal and Co-captain Tarun Dalal. The cabin crew comprises Bhavya Dabas, Guneet Kaur, Avanti Bannerjee and Taruna Seth. The flight will take two hours and thirty minutes to reach Chennai. We hope you will enjoy flying with us. Thank you.’

  Soon after, the seniormost attendant asks the passengers to watch and listen to the instructions on the screens attached at the back of every seat. Avanti thanks God for the screens (this is one of the new aircraft) as she is not expected to stand in the galley and explain to people how to put on their seat belts and what to do during emergencies or lack of oxygen. It’s not that it’s embarrassing but often while practising it in the training college, Avanti felt like breaking out in a little dance while doing it. Or at least wiggle her waist a little and do a little belly dance. Then, she thinks, people will look. It should be actually a pre-flight dance. It’s no joke, it could actually save lives.

  Click. Click. Click. Seat belts snap all around her as walks up and down the aisle and makes sure people fasten their seat belts. The young boys blush while she tells them how to buckle it. The men leer. The women curse under their breath and they clutch on to their husbands tighter. ‘God! We’re not here to snatch your husbands! It’s not as if they are any desirable,’ she thinks.

  The aircraft is lined on the tarmac and it’s the second in line to take off. This is the part Avanti loves the most. She is sure she will be bored of it after a few flights but right now, she looks forward to it.

  ‘What were you doing there?’ one of the flight attendants remarked.

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘Why were you talking to everyone, Avanti?’

  ‘Umm . . . because they were talking to me?’

  The girl rolls her eyes. ‘You don’t do that. You just smile, help them and move on.’

  ‘But why?’

  ‘Why? Because it’s draining! And you talk to one, and then suddenly everyone wants to talk to you!’ complains the girl.

  ‘So what’s wrong in that?’

  ‘You get drained.’

  ‘I’m okay for now,’ says Avanti and smiles at her.

  ‘You are, but don’t make them feel like they can talk to anyone. I’m not going to do that,’ says the girl and makes a face as if the passengers are like cattle. Stay as far away from them as possible; just make sure they land alive.

  Five minutes later, the metal cage is up in the sky and people have already started unsnapping their seat belts and getting out of their seats to visit the washroom.

  ‘What do you do if a newly married couple tries to enter the washroom?’ asks Avanti, rubbing her hands in obvious delight.

  ‘We don’t allow them,’ comes the answer from one of them.

  ‘That’s boring,’ says Avanti. ‘I heard from somewhere that at Virgin Atlantic they used to give such couples champagne and cigarettes. That’s pretty cool, right?’

  ‘Where did you hear that?’

  ‘I don’t know. Somewhere?’ says Avanti, trying to dig her brain for that conversation where this might have come up. It’s a useless pursuit. She has had ten billion conversations just today.

  Lights are up on the main passenger panel, which means people have started pushing the buttons to call the flight attendants. The first half an hour passes in running around. The flight attendants are blamed for everything, and one of her colleagues is just short of telling them that she didn’t make the aircraft by hand and she really doesn’t know how to make the screen work! But not Avanti, who’s gliding from one seat to another, sometimes talking to a Sardarji about his petulant teenage daughters to solving the love life of a pesky thirteen-year-old.

  A couple of hours later, the flight lands and the scene inside the aircraft suddenly changes to a rickety Rajdhani where everyone is trying to get off the aircraft first. Avanti slumps into a seat, tired and a little thankful that the flight is over.

  Just then the senior attendant walks up and says, ‘Just halfway through, kid. Don’t screw up. Your service was slow and you need to know who you are talking to and who deserves being talked to. You can’t just go about talking to everyone. They are passengers, not your friends. Now, clean up the aisle. We have fifteen minutes to go.’

  She feels she would die. Her feet are hurting and so is her back. She is exhausted from running
up and down the aisle.

  The passengers are again waiting at the step ladder the minute the four of them are done running checks again. Another three hours of exhaustion. Avanti braces herself, her forearms strain, and her calves make their pain known. She reminds herself that she doesn’t necessarily need to talk to everyone on the flight but that invariably happens.

  Four hours later, she collapses on her bed after putting Devrat’s new songs on a loop on the speaker, hoping she would dream of him. She can’t wait for the new song to release. Shekhar calls her phone twice, but the calls go answered. She looks at the missed calls on her phone, half-sleepy, and mutters, ‘You’re an asshole.’

  Eight

  devrat

  Being successful doing music in India, especially Indian music, doesn’t compare to being successful in other careers. The cash flow is irregular and uncertain, the public is fickle, and the tastes in music change like the direction of the wind. Most independent musicians know this and try to do as many live shows as possible while they are still on top. People talk of musicians over-exposing themselves and eventually dying out because of it, but they are not naïve and know that people will move on eventually.

  Sumit has been trying to make Devrat understand this for a long time but hadn’t been able to crack through Devrat’s strong and stubborn skull. As a rule, poorer musicians are more uptight about ideals than the ones making money. So, do riches corrupt ideals? Or you have to be corrupt inherently to be rich?

  Devrat smokes a cigarette and watches while his friend Karishma cleans up his flat. Three months have passed since the last time he saw Karishma and Devrat is not sure whether he is happy to see her. Karishma was the root of all evil, his wingman for the night he met Arundhati.

  ‘When was the last time you talked to her?’ Devrat asks and Karishma doesn’t answer the question. She starts to separate the clothes she thinks are dirty from the clean ones and ends up with just one pile of dirty clothes.