Begin Again

“So what’s the point?” Sakhi asks.

“Huh?” she replies with a question mark written over her face. She sits on her bed with her phone in her hands, and seems irritated. Of course she is irritated. She was busy having an IM conversation with Shardul when Sakhi disturbed her with a senseless question.

She and Shardul are already having problems. She obviously doesn’t need another misunderstanding and that too, over leaving him at Seen on Whatsapp. Sakhi on the other hand, sits facing Raahi on her bed, and is staring at her the entire time, completely oblivious to her predicament.

“So what’s the point of it all? Why do we do what we do? Why do you go to college and why does Dad work a job he absolutely hates and why does Matarani do what she does?” Sakhi elaborates.

“What does Mom do?” she asks, not getting the point.

“You know, same old. Her thoughts— that acing household chores is a prerequisite, and getting married is the ultimate achievement for existing on this planet as a girl.” After saying all that, Sakhi stretches her arms and lies on her back. She looks at the ceiling as Raahi looks at her, like all the times she has looked at her, trying to look through her, and like all the times before, in vain.

*

Two days later, when Raahi is having lunch with her college friends, Sakhi sits at the next table and keeps stealing glances at her. Raahi tries not to look back as everyone else is animatedly talking over each other’s sentences about something. When she finally pays attention, she hears someone say vacay and a paper plane hits her the exact same moment. When she looks up, Sakhi is fervently shaking her head. Raahi tries to ignore her and listen to the details.

Apparently, they are planning to go to Alibaug over the weekend. Ambani, whose real name is Shreya, but no one ever calls her that, has her family’s farmhouse there. They would leave on Friday night and be back by Sunday night. Of course Shardul will be there, and of course he is looking at her with a raised eyebrow. But so is Sakhi. And there’s pain in her eyes. She’s pleading, almost in tears. And of course, of course Raahi does what she has been doing all her life.

* 

A long and uninteresting and grammatically horrible text message on the group informs Raahi that the unofficial senior farewell is due this Saturday night and it will be at the Q Lounge. Raahi, who is sitting on the outer staircase of the college, looks up to find Rihaan and Ambani already staring at her from either sides.

“I don’t want a rerun of what happened two months ago,” Rihaan warns her. “You’re coming this time. Period—”

“—oh that’s not due until the 23^rd of this month,” Shrutika interrupts.

“What?” Rihaan almost spits the word.

“What?” Shrutika answers with a shrug and a smug look on her face and goes back to scrolling through her favourite subreddit again.

“Yaar Shreya,” he says and Shreya’s eyes light up on the sound of her name. “Why does this person with the most fuckall jokes on the face of this earth happen to be my best friend?”

“I don’t know that, but I could totally kiss you right now just for not calling me Ambani,” she says and Rihaan leaves shaking his head followed by an audible sigh.

But Raahi is oblivious to all these things being said around her. She is looking straight ahead where she spots Sakhi sitting on a bench on the other side of the campus road. She is totally lost, trying to find an answer she needs on Sakhi’s face, which is why she visibly jolts ahead when Shardul pats her back.

“Um, hi!” he says, clearly surprised at that reaction. “I thought we were dating like adults and not middle schoolers with crushes?”

“Shut up,” Raahi replies as she tries to gain back her composure. “You aren’t good enough to be my crush, okay? This relationship is just because I couldn’t see you so miserable.”

“So you’re pity-dating me? Wow, that’s a first. Anyway,” he says, then spots Shreya and waves at her. 

“What was I saying? Oh, yeah, did you get that text about the party from Mr Abhay Merchant, PhD?”

“Are you sure he doesn’t have a post-doctoral degree too?” Raahi says trying hard to make Shardul laugh but failing miserably. He’s looking at her and she gets too uncomfortable to stare back. “You’re going to cancel, aren’t you?”

“No,” Shreya replies even before he had finished.

“Oh. I just thought you don’t like such events so I was going to propose that I tell everyone we can’t make it coz I have a family function to attend and I’m taking you along. And then we would go on a date. But anyway, party works just fine. And of course, it’s the fucking farewell. We should obviously—”

“—Lets do the date thing,” Raahi cuts him off. Shardul’s eyes twinkle as he takes in that sentence.

“Wow, look at you. You almost seem like a normal human being,” he says, the corner of his lips curling upward.

“Normal?” she asks.

“Human being,” he replies.

*

Raahi shuts off the alarm at seven o clock in the evening, and finally gets off her bed. She checks her phone and finds selfies on the group from her friends, all dressed up. Poo is sending her voice notes and boomerangs and Raahi low-key wishes she were going. Then she shakes her head and checks Shardul’s text informing her that he’ll meet her at the Dunder Muffin, her favourite place.

She keeps her phone away and starts choosing an outfit from her wardrobe. Sakhi who has been watching her the entire time finally clears her throat.

“Arent you scared?” she asks, when she finally has Raahi’s attention.

“Scared of what?” Raahi freezes but doesn’t turn around. She pretends to continue with her work and takes a long breath.

“You know. So many things. His bike could skid. You both could get your skulls broken. A truck might run over you. Or a car might crash into you.” Sakhi says all of this while nonchalantly going through a cinematography magazine.

“But these are things that could happen on any other day as well, right?” Raahi says, steadying herself by holding the wardrobe’s partition as firmly as she can.

“Yeah, but I don’t feel so good today,” Sakhi answers.

“Don’t you always?” Raahi says, but then shakes her head. As expected, Sakhi doesn’t say anything after that. She just keeps on looking at Raahi with her eyes devoid of any feeling. Raahi puts off the lights, switches off her phone and crashes in her bed. She tries to sleep with a pillow covering her face but all she can see is Sakhi’s eyes staring at her. And lately, sleep has been but a distant dream.

*

“Just tell me what should I do?” Shardul says, frustration dripping off his words.

“I’m sorry. I—”

“I do everything possible to make this work for us. But you just keep on making it difficult for the both of us. If you didn’t want to come, you should’ve told me so.”

“Shardul—”

“It’s not like I forced you. You’re always running away, always hiding. You know, you should’ve just said no in the beginning if you didn’t like me in the first place.”

“It’s not like that, okay? I liked you then and I like you now.” Raahi tries to hold his hand but Shardul keeps on shrugging it away. She notices her mother watching them from the window, so she drags him away from her house towards the pavement.

“Okay. I have told you about my sister, right? You have to understand Shardul. I can’t just leave her,” Raahi says with a little aggression this time.

“Everyone has sisters, Raahi. Don’t bullshit me.”

“She has special needs,” she says her voice down by an octave now.

“Don’t use your sister as an excuse for your irrational behaviour okay? Just grow up.”

Raahi starts telling him about Sakhi, but he is already leaving.

“We are twins—Sakhi and I. We were born sixteen minutes apart.”

She finally wants to speak. After so many years. And in that moment, she doesn’t feel scared or unsure. She calls Divya—her best friend she had fallen out with, because Sakhi didn’t like her.

“She is younger. Apart from the initial sixteen minutes, I guess she has always been there. For me. With me. And no one believes she is difficult. That she can be difficult.”

Divya takes her along to meet a mystic called The Great Ear. He asks her to sit and offers her water, asks her if she’s okay, if she can talk, if she wants to talk. He asks her where she came from, and where she wants to go. Why she does what she does and doesn’t what she doesn’t.

“When I was in school, Sakhi used to stop me from playing, from making new friends, getting new experiences. It’s not like she did it on purpose, or she hates me. But she does make me miserable. I want to do things, live like everyone else. But she always had a way to stop me. No one believed me when I told them all of this, to a point that it was futile telling everyone the truth. If my father doesn’t believe me, why would anyone else. Right?”

“So I stopped telling people about Sakhi. I guess I should have continued with that rule, and not told Shardul as well,” Raahi says, gulping down her coffee as she sits with Divya in Dunder Muffin, now, six months later.

“I think you underestimated me,” Divya says, not looking up from her cold chocolate.

“I guess I did,” Raahi says. “I should say sorry and thanks, for everything you’ve done for me, but I love you.”

Divya smiles and Raahi turns around in her seat to look out from the glass panel at the setting sun and the sky with its orange and purple shades. She looks down and spots Sakhi standing near the pavement looking at her. Her eyes are still empty, and they will probably always be.

But Raahi doesn’t freeze this time. She has a soft smile on her face as she holds her gaze and turns around to look at Divya. She knows that there will be a time when she will have to face Sakhi again. They were born together and they will probably die together.

But right now, Raahi isn’t worried about that. Right now, she looks at Divya, who is busy licking the last droplets of her drink from her mug. Right now, she can smell the powdered sugar and cocoa in the air, and bury her teeth into melted cheese and freshly baked bread. She can enjoy the sunset in the company of a person who accepts her as she is, and she wonders if this is what happiness looks like: friendship and food and all things beautiful.