A Long Way Home Read online

  I took a seat. ‘It won’t affect my work though.’

  A tiny smile tugged at the corner of her red lips. ‘I trust it won’t. I have something that might make you feel more energized.’ She reached into her drawer and handed me an envelope. I eyed it, then pulled the letter out and skimmed through it. I had joined the magazine six months ago. My probation wasn’t up until the end of this month—four days from now—but this was a confirmation letter.

  ‘Congratulations,’ she said when I glanced up at her, confused. ‘I hope you accept the offer.’

  There was no hike in the salary, but there were perks of being a confirmed employee. Getting leaves would be one of them. ‘Thanks,’ I said and tucked the letter back into the envelope. ‘I appreciate it.’

  She picked up her phone, pressed a button and requested two coffees. Apparently, this was not all I had been called for. ‘Are you liking it here, so far?’ she asked.

  I didn’t know anyone who would answer in negation to that question with your own boss asking you that. My answer, however, was genuine. Partially, anyway. ‘Most definitely.’

  ‘What do you like the most about working here?’

  ‘The people, the location and the work,’ I said. Here, people left you alone if you weren’t in a chatty mood. Location wise, this was the closest place to my apartment and they were paying me enough to cover my rent, food and other minor expenses. Of course, it was half as much as my engineering folks were getting paid. But you rarely get a chance to interact with published authors on a daily basis and get to read their words before they are printed. What was there not to like? ‘It is a combination of all of it,’ I added at last.

  ‘I see.’ Jasmine leaned back. ‘You like working with writers, then?’

  ‘That’s the highlight.’ I could ignore the tedious part of the job for this alone.

  She smiled, nodding. ‘I’m glad to hear that. How would you like to be on the other side then?’

  I waited for her to elaborate.

  ‘Now, the majority of our content is outsourced, but I would like to slowly change that,’ she explained. ‘Apart from being an editorial coordinator, I was thinking maybe you could contribute to the content of the magazine too.’

  I didn’t let myself get too excited. That would set me up for disappointment. ‘You mean, the in-house writing?’

  ‘No, I mean more than that. Your current contribution goes to the team. No individual person gets credit for it. You can try and branch out a little bit, if you think you can do it.’

  I let that sink in. ‘Meaning, write articles under my own name.’

  She nodded once. ‘If you want to, starting with covering the events in the city. If you are able to impress the readers, you can bring in your own suggestions and we’ll consider them. No guarantees that we’ll print them, of course, but I’m sure you can work your way up.’

  ‘I … uh,’ was at a loss for words. And being a writer, nothing was more embarrassing than that. We were interrupted by Sunny, the office boy, who brought in two coffee mugs and placed them each in front of us. I took a sip, the first thing I had since I woke up. As the warmth of the drink travelled down, I felt my body liven up. The offer meant I would get to travel around the city, using the firm’s bike that usually Sunny drove to run errands. It was funny they felt the need to even ask.

  ‘I will do it.’

  The smile on her face broadened. ‘Good,’ she said. ‘Now, on to some more developments. We are hiring interns this summer—one editorial coordinator, who will work under you and Manish, one graphic designer and one photographer for the creative team, and two marketing interns.’ She stopped, looked behind me and nodded. The door opened and Sunny passed a file to her. When the door shut close, she continued, ‘Manish will explain the rest of the details to you. Just know that now with the confirmation, your responsibilities are also going to increase. You’ll be answerable not just for yourself, but also for someone else. I hope you take it up as a challenge.’

  I nodded, the conversation wrapping up. ‘I’ll do my best.’

  She smiled and I got up to leave, taking my coffee mug and the letter with me. Out in the main office, Manish was at his desk talking on the phone. I waited patiently until he was done. When he hung up, he asked me, ‘Jasmine told you about the interns?’

  ‘Yes.’

  He ruffled through the bundle of papers on his desk, which was messy enough for one to get lost in. Finally, he produced a few stapled pages. ‘I have designed a new test for them. It’s not the one we gave you. So just go through the questions to understand the standard we have set and the standard you need to look for when you sift through the entries.’

  Balancing the papers in one hand, I flipped a page. There was a long passage to be edited, followed by a few grammar questions and a write-up on three topics.

  Before I got to the next page, Manish added, ‘These are interns, so their resumés won’t be very impressive. Their selection majorly depends on the test. Look for no grammatical errors whatsoever. Vocabulary won’t be the emphasis, but the person should be articulate. So look at the flow of language and usage of words when you read through their answers. We’re going to pass most of the resumés, except the ones that are too messed up to deserve a second glance. You’re in charge of letting them through the first round. Don’t send me crap or you’ll get crap from me. Got it?’

  I nodded.

  ‘Good.’ The phone on his desk rang and without looking at it, he raised his arm to wave towards Jasmine’s cabin. The phone stopped ringing. ‘For now, proofread this test paper, solve it and let me know if you have any suggestions.’

  ‘Okay,’ I said and walked back to my desk, wishing ‘good morning’ to a few people on the way, while Manish hopped to Jasmine’s cabin where the other department heads had clustered. Mornings were packed with work.

  During lunch hour, I called Mom to check if things were fine at home. By what she told me, Ishaan had lost his temper on her, telling her never to wait for him to have her food. As a compensation for the failed celebration, he’d accepted Saloni’s gift in the morning and cut whatever remained of the cake. I decided she could use some good news right about that time and told her about my confirmation letter.

  CHAPTER 4

  Post 102

  Writing with music I don’t like, sleeping with a ghost and other such calamities

  I share my apartment with three entities: two humans and a ghost. The two humans share a room that vibrates with death metal and heavy rock music I never understood, but it is a perfect backdrop for my writing. I initially got annoyed at the blasting speakers, double bolted the door of my room, plugged in the noise-cancelling headphones that I stole from my elder brother (he never really found out where he lost it). But nothing worked, until I embraced it.

  A couple of months ago, one of the two guys had a heartbreak and all he played the entire day was sad old Hindi songs. The lyrics and the melody distracted me to a point that I couldn’t write a word. When he was back in his form and the crap began playing again, I wrote more than I’d ever done before. That was when I figured I needed undecipherable music to get the writing done.

  The house mostly stinks of beer and they are overly protective of their stock. Not that I mind. I just can’t afford a can with the student loan hanging over my head, threatening to collapse over us and crush my dad and me beneath it if I didn’t save up. So I pretend I don’t drink, until the two of them are drunk enough, overflowing with brotherly love and offer me one, asking me to join in, share the ecstasy. They do have individual names; I just never bother to learn who is who.

  The ghost lives with me in the twelve-by-twelve room, its bunk over mine. It floats into the room late at night, usually when the city is dead asleep. I never can tell when it comes in. I only see it in the morning, covered head to toe in a thin white bedsheet that is now beginning to turn a shade of light grey.

  At times, it doesn’t even return. It rarely talks with any of us. I
ts cupboard is always empty. It doesn’t have any friends over or any items more than the bare minimum stashed in its drawer. By bare minimum, I mean one pair of jeans and a couple of T-shirts I see hanging on the wire outside our window.

  It is the kind of ghost that epitomized the phrase ‘live and let live’, but all in all, I prefer having the ghost as my room-mate than the other two. Sometimes, when you want to create an exceptional masterpiece of an artwork, you just have to work with what you’ve got and embrace the conditions—or the presence of a ghost—if you have to.

  ‘Ignoring me?’

  I received that text at nine in the night when I woke up earlier than I had intended to from my mandatory post-office, pre-dinner power nap. Music exploded from the living room, voices chattered away. There were more people in the house than I lived with. It wasn’t the noise that woke me up though—I was immune to it—it was the barely audible ding of the message tone. Stirring on the bed, I reached for my phone.

  No, I typed back, rubbing my eyes awake, and felt the tingling in my fingers as I hit ‘Send’. It helped that I was still drowsy from lack of sleep to not over-think my reply.

  Arvi: Clearly u r. U always instantly replied to my ‘hi’s be4.

  I couldn’t resist slapping her with a snide comment. You’re right. I used to reply instantly. Note the tense?

  I could almost hear her sigh at the other end, her lower lip pushed forward slightly, the pout seemingly brightening her face. I had to kick myself out of the bed to shake her image from my mind. I dumped the phone on the bed, splashed some water over my eyes and returned to two successive messages waiting for me.

  Arvi: I don’t mean to bother u. I was just thinking about the time we went to that Goa trip. Remember?

  Anyway. I am in Goa right now, with my family and I thought of u and just felt like talking to u. It’s been long.

  Damn right. Exactly eleven months and three weeks. I was tempted to ask her why now and what exactly it was that reminded her of me. Loneliness? Break up with the current dude she hung out with? No one else to talk to?

  But I didn’t. I couldn’t. Instead, I wrote ‘hmm’ and pulled out my diary.

  How r u?

  Do you really care? I typed, then deleted it. Fine, I sent instead.

  I’m too. Or at least, tryin to be.

  The fact that she gave me extra information suggested she was consumed by guilt and sadness. I waited till she typed something else and when I saw her message, I was hit with a weird feeling of déjà vu. It read, Things haven’t been great around here lately.

  I knew where we were headed from here. I could see the entire path stretched ahead of us, going downhill and finally meeting at a dead end. The first time she returned, I was less aloof than I am now. But it always began the same way.

  Who could I blame though? Love is a road to hell and we’re all addicted to the journey. Somewhere, I still lived with a misplaced hope that she’d never find what we had, and each time she came back after she’d been hurt, she proved me right.

  I asked her anyway, What happened?

  Then, instead of indulging in her messages that dropped in like continuous pattering of rain against my window, asking to be let in, I flipped to a blank page of my diary and wrote down what I wanted to say to her but could never find the guts to send.

  By the time I was done, her messages had stopped and I rested my head back on the wall, closed my eyes, mildly frustrated at my state. A couple of random texts from the person I had steered clear of and it inspired a write-up when I was supposed to be working on my novel.

  Don’t make a human your muse, I made a note at the bottom of the page, or you’ll be waiting for it for the rest of your life.

  ‘Hey, you up yet?’ I started at the question. One of my flatmates had poked his head in and when he saw me on the bed, furiously scribbling in the book, he barged in, leaving the door ajar. With him came a louder wave of noises, mostly a jumble of words and karaoke singing. ‘What the hell are you doing here when there is a kick-ass party in the hall?’

  I figured it was a rhetorical question, but I answered anyway. ‘Just working on my book.’

  ‘Oh, come on! Don’t be pathetic.’

  ‘It’ll only take some—’

  ‘Bullshit.’ He walked over, smelling strongly of beer and slapped a can on the desk beside me, the tiny condensed droplets of cold water flying on the back of my hand. ‘Either you work like there’s no tomorrow, or you party like there’s no tomorrow, you’re going to die anyway. So give yourself a break and enjoy for a bit.’

  Of course, they had told me there was going to be a house party today, with their college friends or something. But I had taken it as an info dump, not an invitation. ‘Come on, it’s on us,’ he urged when I eyed the can but didn’t move.

  My phone dinged one last time, as if she’d put a full stop at the end of a long paragraph and then it truly stopped. The temptation to read the message was far stronger than the alcohol. But I decided I was better off with the drink than getting sucked into her sob story.

  I closed the diary, dumped it in my drawer and grabbed the can, more with frustration than anything else, and my flatmate grunted, slapping my shoulder with pride. I would read her messages later. Might as well make her realize what waiting feels like.

  There were about fifteen people scattered around the house. A girl in jeans and tank top at the karaoke station was crooning to Avril’s ‘Innocence’, swaying in place. My flatmate introduced me to a couple of people standing by the kitchen door, outside my bedroom. Seconds later, he was gone and the group continued on with whatever they were talking about. I was on my own.

  I strolled over to the living room and took a spot in a corner. One big sip of cold beer cleared my mind. It wasn’t until I was on the fifth one that I began levitating, feeling the lightness lead me on.

  ‘She texted me after eleven months,’ I said to a guy inhaling a cigarette on the sofa next to me, a thin layer of smoke blurring him. We had been sitting there for about half an hour. The music was slower now, with another girl singing some Lana Del Rey song. She was good, at least bearable after a series of frogs croaking one after the other. ‘I don’t know why she thinks she can just walk in and out of my life like it’s her maternal home or something.’ I sighed, blinking at the ceiling, my body sagged on the sofa. ‘And the worst part is I can never say that she’s no more welcome in here.’ I tapped my chest.

  ‘I understand, bro,’ my nameless friend consoled, giving a jerk to his neck to push back a strand of his hair that kept poking his eye.

  ‘I am sure she’ll say we should get back together,’ I scoffed. ‘Maybe I want her to. I know I’ll take her back as if nothing had happened, then beat myself up when I wouldn’t hear from her a month from now.’

  ‘Some people are just shit.’ He nodded, then breathed out the smoke through his nostrils, shooting out a sharp steam like his lungs were on fire.

  I took a swig of my drink and realized it was nearly empty. ‘But she’s different,’ I said, tossing it aside, a slideshow of images flashing in my mind—her curves accentuated in a saree, her cute little nose scrunching at the mention of a crawling insect, her short jeans that she kept pulling up when she snapped her belt and the way her head fit perfectly under my arm. ‘I don’t know how to describe her. It’s difficult and it’s ironic because I’m a writer and describing things is sort of my job. I should be able to do it. But I can’t. Her love is … is like every traveller’s dream; she will lead you astray but you won’t be lost.’

  ‘Wah,’ the guy said and I began to thank him but realized he wasn’t talking to me. He was cheering the girl who had hit a high note in the song, completely off key. She was hot though. He hooted once and the girl turned to give him a flirtatious wink, then called him over to join her. He glanced around, trying to find a place to dump his cig, then noticed me seemingly for the first time. ‘Hold on to this for me, will you?’ he said and I watched him hop away to her, then
lean over to sing into the mic. He was no better than her.

  I had never tried one of these before, thanks to my father’s passionate aversion to it and my mother’s endless lectures on how I’ll be hurting the gods if I tried it. But I was hurting now. That counted for something, didn’t it?

  Today was anyway a night of mistakes. A night of doing everything that was unhealthy for me—from smoking to responding to the girl I knew would only drive me crazy. I apologized to Mom, took a deep puff, coughed, tried again. I got it right in the third attempt and quite liked the kick it sent through me.

  I stayed on the sofa for a few more minutes, longer than I thought I did, sucking the stick dry, but my nameless friend didn’t seem to mind. He barely even noticed. When I was done, my feet and mind steadier, I got to the kitchen to grab another can of beer stored in the small iced tub, but on the way, I heard my phone ringing in my room.

  I pushed the door open and found a couple making out on my bed. I stood there, somewhat looking horrified as if I was the one caught in the act. ‘What the hell? Get out, man,’ the dude snapped mid-kiss and I raised my palms up in the air, trailing my eyes to the floor as I picked up my phone from the study table and left. It was Mom.

  Panic cleared my head of any dizziness I felt and I dashed out of the house. How do mothers know when you’re doing something you shouldn’t?

  Our building, still under construction, was pretty void of residents. No other house was occupied on this floor. A young couple staying on the floor above us were cool with my flatmates; they had helped them while moving and were a phone call away whenever the pregnant wife needed help. So the couple usually let these loud decibels pass them by, as long as we didn’t ruin their sleep. I got to their floor and the noise almost instantly died down.

  I called my mother. She didn’t even let the phone ring once before she picked up. ‘Where are you, Ari? I called you three times!’

  ‘I was sleeping, Ma,’ I said, thankfully sounding more tired than drunk. ‘Long day at work.’