Cheaters ✓

Envy

12 November 2020

We checked into Hotel Conrad. This time, the room number was 1032. The moment I closed the door, he hugged me tightly. I felt at peace. As if I was a puzzle who had been looking for its lost piece till I met him. I felt complete while he was around. But once he left, I felt lost all day, all night. I felt like the wind which knew that its destiny was to blow but didn't know in which direction. And when we met again, I felt the same calmness. Have you ever tried bungee jumping? My life was the impatient wait just before you are pushed, and Yoongi was my jump.

Hotel Conrad was his idea this time. Not that I hadn't thought of it. But I had been sceptical suggesting it. A hotel room is synonymous with illicit relationships. The moment we hear that two people have booked a hotel room together, our first reaction is to judge them. We believe that nothing beautiful or meaningful can happen between two adults inside a hotel room. But I beg to differ. Apart from sex, two adults can have other business in a hotel room.

The business of emotions: unabashed, unfiltered, uninhibited and deeply personal emotions. Sometimes, in his presence, I felt like we were each other's personal diaries and every meeting of ours was like a private confession we were penning. Ask anyone, and I am sure they too would love to have a personal human diary. Yoongi and I just got lucky.

'I've a gift for you,' he said holding on to me. I didn't know how to react.

He held my hand and led me to the bed and kept down the bag he was carrying. From it he took out a couple of boxes and gave them to me. I opened the boxes to find an iPhone and a pair of AirPods.

'I have a good phone already,' I complained. It was too costly a gift for me to accept.

'You have an Android phone and I am an Apple person,' he said. I'd noticed that too. He was an Apple person. While I just bought whatever worked best. I never understood what difference it made. But being an entrepreneur, I did understand the power of subliminal advertising and how it could alter a consumer's perception towards a product and its positioning in society.

'And I want us to have similar things. What do teens call it these days, ah, twinning,' Yoongi said and took the phone from my hand. I protested, saying I couldn't possibly accept such an expensive gift, but he didn't listen. He removed the SIM card from my old phone and inserted it in the new one, switched it on and handed it to me.

'What will I tell Jungkook?' I asked. This was the first time I had mentioned his name in front of Yoongi. Till then we referred to our spouses as 'your husband'. He didn't say anything immediately. He turned and went to the bed, collapsing down on it and saying, 'Tell him someone who loves you gifted you this. Why, doesn't anyone love you?' There was a tinge of naughtiness in his voice.

I looked at him and said, winking, 'I guess someone does.' He was hungry. We ordered food. We ate and talked between mouthfuls. Our conversations had no structure. We discussed all sorts of things-from the impending elections to a recent news article on a WhatsApp group where teenage boys had objectified the girls of their class, to pseudo feminism, toxic masculinity, how favouritism was a bigger disease than nepotism, to the power of social media and fake news. We kept steering our conversation in different directions, jumping from one topic to another till he asked me something totally different.

Have you ever felt like this is it? Like from now on life will always remain the same? Like we are stuck in a time warp? I understood what he meant, but to be sure, I requested him to elaborate a little.

'You know, when you are sixteen or twenty years old, you know there's time to alter the narrative that life throws at you. But as you cross twenty-five, you suddenly realize no alteration is possible now. You have to stick to the narrative you have built for yourself, based on your own choices or experiences, or whatever destiny has pushed you into.'

I frowned, so he launched into another explanation, complete with a few examples.

Like, till I was twenty years old, I wanted to do so many things, and mistakes never deterred me, experiments allured me and I thought anything was possible anytime. But now mistakes scare me because I have a lot to lose. I avoid experiments because I know they will change me, change the person I am now. And that might be a problem for a lot of people who are used to how I am. I live for my loved ones. I lose myself every day, bit by bit, so that I can hold on to the person they want me to be. I call it the this-is-it syndrome. Have you ever experienced it?'

I was lost in thought. Different phases of my life flashed through my mind. How I wanted to undo some, erase a few, and relive others. He was right, we didn't have the right to alter our own narrative after a certain point of time. a

'I have experienced this. I just could never articulate it the way you did.'

'I have actually never asked you this. How do you manage alone?

"Thankfully, I don't belong to that privileged breed of mumma's boys who don't know anything about domesticity,' I said with a tinge of sarcasm.

He came to me, held me tightly and said, 'Don't laugh if I say I sometimes envy your husband, Jeon Jungkook.'

I burst out laughing. Then I stopped after hearing what he said next, as he tightened his embrace. 'Will we be able to alter our narratives to fit our story?' I found myself caressing his head. And saying nothing.

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