When only love remains

Five

FIVE

AVANTI

It was supposed to be a long weekend, the weekend she should have ideally spent in nervous jitters about her new job but instead she keeps reading Devrat's status over and over again. He has announced, 'I am back. See you soon! J', and that can only mean more videos, more gigs, and maybe in a city that she's in! She has just sent twenty mails to Devrat from her twenty fake accounts to boost his morale and to egg him to do more shows. She knows of Devrat's limited reach and she thinks she's doing her bit to encourage him. Who would disappoint twenty enthusiastic fans after all?

And Devrat did reply to some of her mails. She has maintained an account for quite some time now. She has often mailed him and asked him to come to Dehradun for a performance, at least once from each of those twenty accounts, but hasn't yet got an answer to that.

Her train of thought is broken when her phone beeps.

Have a good first day at work. Papa

She texts back saying thank you. As she dresses up in crisp formals, looking the best she thinks she possibly can, she is suddenly thinking about her father.

The more time she spends in the house, the more she finds herself thinking about the sequence of events that must have happened fifteen years ago. Over a period of a few years, her father would have slowly started slipping down the slope of fixating with a mathematical problem he would never solve, her mother would have fought him and his preoccupation, there would be fights and silence and a crying child, and one day she would have just left. Their conversations are yet to move out from virtual space. She has given her father the benefit of the doubt. After all, he must still feel guilty about what happened to Avanti's mother, who died in a freak accident while returning from work. It was a year after she ran from his house with their three-year-old daughter in tow. All this wouldn't have happened if her father had a normal job. Like if he was an engineer. Or a bank manager. She wonders if her father had a stammer since childhood or if he developed it later.

She locks the door behind her as she leaves and makes sure the keys go under the mat and not in her handbag. She is not a big keys person and loses them at an astonishing rate. The road outside her apartment is like an F1 track with cars whizzing past her, leaving behind billowing smoke. There goes my make-up, she thinks. After much haggling she gets into an auto which will take her to the headquarters of the building of Indiago Airlines.

The auto ride is long and tiring. There are a million cars travelling in the same direction and none of them has more than a single passenger. 'People should be forced to car pool or this city will burst pretty soon!' she mutters.

'Bas yahin-here,'she says to the auto driver as she gets off at Nehru Place, where in the huge glass building adjacent to the sprawling five star hotel, Vasant Intercontinental, is the office of Indiago Airlines. The only airlines that flies to New York. Twice a day. Also Dubai. And Phuket. And Rio.

Then she takes a deep breath and a smile breaks out on her face. 'It's going to be good. You're pretty and you're smart. You don't have to be tense,'she tells herself. But just to spoil it all, it's Shekhar calling on her cell phone. She takes the battery out of the cell and keeps it in the bag. She closes her eyes and hums a song by Devrat, her drug, and pastes a smile on her face.

An hour later, she is sitting in a huge hall filling up an employment form with around a hundred other new flight attendants, all pretty and young. Everyone around her is decked up like they are in a club with a James Bond theme. No one has a hair out of place. Avanti, even though she was dead sure she looked gorgeous in the morning, is not so sure anymore. Even the guys have clear, flawless skin and bright pink lips. 'Kill them,' Avanti thinks. She's all for metrosexuality but this is just gay. She looks at a boy with a charming smile and slippery smooth skin. SO GAY. Not even legal now. Section 377 or something.

The hall was the target segment for fairness creams, body lotion, bleaching agents and every cosmetic aimed to help people become fairer and more Caucasian. From the brief conversations she has had with a few girls, she gets to know that the majority of them were aspiring models and soap opera actors but couldn't manage the struggle it entailed. Names of big television personas, fashion choreographers and photographers are dropped like they are old friends and soon, they are showing each other their portfolio pictures in shimmery dresses and dark lipsticks.

Flight attendants don't really need to be attractive but it helps if they are. When you're caged in a steel box thirty-five thousand feet above the ground with no escape routes, a pretty face can be the only calming factor.

Landing this job wasn't easy by any means. For the hundred-odd seats open for fresh applicants, there were a hundred thousand applications, making it tougher than getting into the IITs or the IIMs! Go figure.

'Hi, do you have an extra pen?' the guy sitting in the front row asks. She had noticed him stealing glances at her ever since they took their places. Or maybe he was just looking at everyone.

'Yes,' she says and hands over a ball pen. He turns around and faces her, throwing her a little off balance.

'It's a tough form to fill, isn't it?' he says and thrusts his hand forward. 'Ashutosh. Are you from Delhi?'

'Dehradun, 'she answers and adds after a pause, 'Avanti' and shakes his hand. His grip is firm and strong as if trying to grind her bones to dust.

'Oh. So where do you stay here? Alone?'

That's a shady question to ask a girl. Alone? Why? She is already put off by his intrusive eye contact and how he leans into her while he speaks. The excessive gel in his hair, the perfect smile with gleaming teeth and pink lips, and the bulging muscles inside the white shirt are a put off. He's not real. He's a walking advertisement. He reminds her of Shekhar. Sweet early on, but abusive later.

'No, my father lives here. He's very protective about me. He's the worst. He doesn't even let me talk to guys. The last boyfriend I had, was punched in the face by my father, 'she says as a means to ward off the gay boy.

'Oh. Are you liking Delhi then? Do you like to party?' he says as if he didn't just listen to what she said. 'Delhi has quite a few sick places. I can take you to some. My friends are party organizers here and I can get you in easily. Even your friends can come if they want to.'

That's it. That's so DELHI. Over-indulgent, curious, a shady approach. A boy you just met asks where you live, asks if you want to party, then casually drops a few names and plans out an evening even without asking you.

'No, thank you, 'she says and gets back to filling her form. 'As I said, my father is real protective. He's the honour killing types.'

The guy returns to his form.

Soon after, their forms are collected and there are three-hour-long lectures on teamwork and its importance, the airline industry, expected HR practices and so on. As soon as the last session gets over, the room suddenly gets noisy and there are certain pockets busy with activity. She sees people exchanging numbers and BlackBerry PINs and making plans to come to the office together. A few guys ask her too, but she brushes them off.

She leaves the hall and the building and starts looking for an auto.

It takes her fifteen minutes to find an auto and soon Avanti drifts off. Despite the corpse-fair boys and the discomfort of being in a sea of beautiful women, she didn't mind the day at all and she knew the next six weeks would pass in a heartbeat too.

She can't wait to start flying and see the world. Midway through the auto ride she gets up to check if Devrat has replied to any of the twenty mails, but he hasn't, so she goes back to sleep.