Bombay Romance ♡ COMPLETED

[ 49 ] Inside Amarnath's Heart ■

Gauri grabs the phone no later than the first ring. She has been glued to the chair next to the phone stand since eight; it is half past ten in the night now.

'Hello, Gauri ma'am? It's Murali,' he says from the other side.

'Did you find it?' she asks.

Murali looks around Amarnath's living room. 'No.'

'Seriously?' she throws up her hand in exasperation. 'How hard is it to find a diary? I told you how it looks!'

'Ma'am one minute, listen. I have a better idea. He's chanting your name like a mantra for the last half an hour.'

'What?' her voice softens. 'Is he drunk?'

'A lot. I'll put the phone on speaker. Don't speak. Just listen.'

'Okay,' she says feverishly.

Murali presses the speaker button and puts the receiver down on the table and looks at his friend sprawling on the sofa haphazardly in a drunken state. 

'Stop saying her name!' he snaps at his friend. 'You said everything is over, right?'

'Everything ... is over ...' Amarnath echoes slowly, voice intoxicated with Whisky. 'Gauri ... no, everything is over ... ' he breathes. 'Gauri ... '

'Why do you even love her so much?' 

'Huh! How can I not love her? I have loved her since the first day I saw her. I love how she talks ... I love how she smiles ... I love how she scolds ... I love her so much ... she's taken up the entireeee space in my heart,' Amarnath throws his arms wide open to indicate the measurement. 'You know what, what you said was correct, I had forgotten to smile properly until I met her. I had forgotten how to be happy ... I had forgotten everything ... '

'If you're so happy with her, why don't you just be together? Why are you acting like this?' Murali asks, vexed.

'Haan, that's the problem,' he taps Murali's thigh, smiling distantly. 'I'll be happy if I'm with her, she will not be happy with me ... I'm not at all suitable for her.'

Murali frowns at this. 

'Even she feels like that. She has told me many times ... be like an IPS officer, be like an IPS officer ... ' Amarnath throws up his hands. 'If I was not in the IPS, I'm sure she wouldn't have even looked at me ... '

Murali flops down on the sofa,  looking at the phone and back at his friend. 

'Do you remember that hotel where we used to work in Delhi?' Amarnath asks drowsily. 'There was a similar one ... opposite Dharavi. Gauri was so irritated by just the look of that place ... she said I shouldn't go to such places; she said it is below my IPS standards. How would she react if I told her I worked as a waiter at such a place? She will look at me the same way ... '

Murali listens in silence, feeling a little outrageous at Gauri. He'd known she would hurt Amarnath somehow. 

Amarnath smiles sadly. 'They're all hi-fy people. I'm not like that. I can't speak English like them. I can't eat that bread with a fork and knife. I can't join their conversations easily. Nothing is common between us ... nothing ... Murali, we ate paani puri at our usual place that day and she was sick for two days after that ... where is she and where am I ... we are just not ... I should've thought about all this at the starting only ... ' he mops his forehead, clutching his hair as his heart coils up. 

'Amar, yo-'

'She'll be insulted in front of her friends because of me ... I heard her friend talking to her like that when we went to the Taj Hotel... she should not hear such things because of me. It's not correct ... not correct ... '