6

‘What the fuck is wrong with you? What you are doing is insane. She cheated on you, she slept with another man—just forget her now,’ Hari was barking madly at me. He was trying to explain, perhaps the hundredth time. But I had already made up my mind.

We were at McDonald’s, waiting for Tara.

After crying like a whore for two days, skipping all the meals and spending sleepless nights, I had finally decided to meet Tara and have a talk with her.

It was a fact that she cheated on me—but I still loved her.

And I wanted her back in my life.

Love. It kills your sense of judgement and makes you do utterly stupid things. I was ready to forget everything that had happened and start over again.

‘She is hardly seventeen, too young to discriminate between good and bad,’ I defended her.

‘And how old are you, sir—forty?’ Hari said in a sarcastic tone.

‘You won’t understand.’

‘Really!’ he spoke again. ‘She had sex with another guy. Sex! That too while she was still in a relationship with you. Even a ten-year-old can say it was wrong. And if she can have sex at seventeen, she can also understand that she is cheating on you. Are you mentally challenged? Fuck, man.’

Before I could think of some good philosophical words to convince Hari—and convincing him was important—my eyes fell on Tara as she walked in through the glass doors.

I was surprised to see her. The chubbiness I loved was gone, her beautiful curls were impeccably straight, and she was not wearing the nose pin I adored. She had changed drastically—just like the city.

‘Hey Kunal,’ she said and took a seat. She was accompanied by another girl, whom I did not notice earlier.

‘Hi . . .’ I replied softly, masking my emotions with a fake smile. I did not wish to give her any hints regarding my knowledge of her affair. I did not want her to feel guilty or bad.

She quickly introduced us to her new friend, whose name I forgot immediately after she spoke.

Few awkward seconds later, Hari and that girl walked out, giving me and Tara some privacy. Now we sat alone, sharing a strange smile. I knew what I wanted to say, but I did not know how to start. ‘Why was your phone switched off?’ I started.

‘I am happy that you came to Indore.’ She ignored my question.

‘Are you?’ I felt a wave of relief pass through me.

She did not reply.

‘Your friend—Ronit—he is spreading non-sense about you,’ I said anxiously, thinking of better words. ‘You are innocent, Tara—but the world is not. You should not be friends with such people.’ I waited for her reaction to it, but she maintained her silence. The quiet made me restless and the next words came out as an impulse reaction. ‘I am moving back to Indore. I will take admission in your college. I can’t stay away from you.’

‘No. You can’t come back,’ she literally shouted. I was bewildered with those words. I guess she realized that she had been too loud—and blunt—and she lowered her pitch. ‘I mean, what about Merchant Navy if you shift back here?’

‘That is not important.’ I held her hand. She sat stone faced. My touch did nothing to her. ‘I realized that going away from you to another city was the biggest mistake I ever made. We were so happy together. I should not have gone away.’ Fuck! Tears trickled down my face.

I immediately wiped my face with bare hands and tried to smile. ‘We will be together, Tara—forever. I am never going to go away after this. I will do Engineering from your college. I will be with you, because nothing . . .’ I paused as another stream of tears poured out my eyes. ‘Because nothing is more important than you.’

I did not realize when those silent tears changed into heavy sobs. ‘It was my mistake, Tara. A big mistake,’ I cried. ‘I love you and I can’t live without you. I just . . . can’t.’

I began wailing like a little girl and that was the end of it.

A few days later, Hari told me that he never imagined that I could cry like that. I, from the days of school, had a manly image. I was everything opposite to the boys they call cute . But that day, sitting in front of Tara, I cried like a teenage girl.

Hari told me that even the cruellest stone-hearted woman in the world would have melted seeing a man crying for her like that. But Tara . . . she did not.

‘I am sorry, Kunal. We can’t be together anymore. I am happy that you came to Indore, because I wanted to tell you the truth. I realized it now that I never loved you. You were my infatuation, and now it is over for me,’ was her reply—hard, brutal and flat.