On the small table were three glasses, a bottle of whisky, cola, ice, packets of chips, roasted peanuts and enough fried food to shorten all their lives.
Sanjay dropped his backpack beside the bed.
Nobody spoke for a few seconds.
Ten years of memories stood invisibly between them.
Then Vivek smiled.
“Feels weird.”
Sanjay nodded.
“Very.”
The last time all three had slept in the same room had probably been during college holidays.
Before jobs.
Before transfers.
Before relationships.
Before the three of them discovered, independently, that heartbreak could make an otherwise intelligent man behave like a complete fool.
Raja poured him a drink.
“To reunion.”
Vivek raised his glass.
“To surviving.”
Sanjay added, “Barely.”
The glasses clicked.
By the second drink, conversation had become easy.
By the third, dangerous.
They began with work.
Vivek complained about his manager.
Raja complained about his landlord.
Sanjay complained about meetings whose only purpose seemed to be scheduling other meetings.
Then came money.
Then politics.
Then marriage.
That subject arrived accidentally.
It always did.
“My mother has started sending biodatas,” Raja said.
Sanjay nearly choked.
“Already?”
“Already? I’m twenty-six.”
“You say that like you’re forty.”
“My mother behaves like I’m forty-six.”
Raja’s mother, Pallavi, had been worrying about him professionally since the day he was born. His father Ajit worked a government job and approached family matters with the seriousness of departmental paperwork.
Raja had a younger sister, Sonam, now twenty-four, who apparently found the entire arranged-marriage campaign extremely entertaining.
“Sonam sends me screenshots,” Raja continued. “‘Bhaiya, this one looks nice.’ ‘Bhaiya, this one works in Bangalore.’ ‘Bhaiya, this one likes travelling.'”
Vivek laughed.
“She’s running HR for your marriage.”
“Exactly.”
Sanjay looked at Vivek.
“And your house?”
Vivek groaned.
“My father is a lawyer. He cross-examines me every time I visit.”
His father, Anandmohan, could turn breakfast into a courtroom.
Salary? Promotion? Savings? Future plans? Marriage plans?
His mother Archana usually attempted diplomacy.
His younger sister Akariti usually made everything worse by laughing.
“What about you?” Vivek asked Sanjay.
Sanjay stared into his glass.
He knew which question came next.
Raja asked it.
“Still think about Naina?”
The room became quieter.
Sanjay smiled without amusement.
“No.”
Both friends stared at him.
Sanjay sighed.
“Sometimes.”
“That’s yes,” Vivek said.
“It ended two years ago.”
“So?”
“So nothing.”
But they knew better.
They had known him when he had first learned how painful wanting somebody could be.
Long before Naina.
Long before college.
Long before any of them understood what love was.
2006
There were twenty-eight students in Class 10.
Sanjay remembered exactly one of them walking into the classroom that July morning.
Ritika Sharma.
She wore two braids and carried too many books.
That was all.
Nothing dramatic happened.
No music.
No slow motion.
No divine revelation.
She simply asked the teacher where she should sit.
