18. Danish Roy

I had decimated that one!

  The metro had reached the last station and I had missed my station by a margin of fifteen minutes because I was still stupidly smiling, replaying in my head the wise words that had escaped my mouth involuntarily. It was nothing like driving a Mercedes SLK. But it was something and it had filled my heart with so much joy that I wanted to celebrate it with Ankit.

  'Hey, when are you coming home?' I asked him over the phone.

  'Got back early today. Already home!' he said. He sounded a little buzzed. Good. That was good. Getting high is exactly how I was going to celebrate my first personal victory.

  I barged into Ankit's room and found him under a bedsheet grunting and laughing with the girl from that party the other day. I could only see the girl's face, which exuded a joy associated with enlightenment.

  'Fuck,' he said, pulled out and rolled over.

  'Get out!' the girl shouted. I ran out, embarrassed.

  When outside, I heard my brother laugh wildly while the girl cursed and shouted and called me names. My brother kept saying between laughs, he didn't know, he didn't know, he didn't see anything.

  'What's up, bhai!' Ankit came out, still inebriated. My unannounced arrival hadn't startled him at all, and why would anything startle my brother?

  'I just thought . . . we should celebrate,' I said.

  Suddenly celebrating my workplace victory with him seemed so small. He dealt with hundreds of thousands of dollars in investments every day. Telling him about a little conversation with two troubled teenage girls felt silly.

  'Celebrate what 

?'

  'Your car! Your new car, Ankit. What else?' I said and he broke out into a huge smile.

  The girl came out and Ankit put an arm around her. 'You two know each other, right? She's the girl from the party, remember? Yeah, we have made up again. She apologized.'

  The girl rolled her eyes. 'I didn't.'

  'Of course, you did. You said okay when I asked you to come over and get drunk with me. That's like an apology only, right?'

  'Whatever,' said the girl.

  'C'mon now, you two, shake hands and be friends. C'mon now, shake hands.' And like a parent, he pushed the girl towards me and made us shake hands.

  'Danish.'

  'Smriti.'

  'I know. I Googled you.'

  'Why?'

  'I didn't.'

  Smriti rolled her eyes. But I had Googled her. I Googled everyone. I checked two things about them: 1) what they were doing when they were my age (if they are older) and 2) how much they earned every month. As you know by now, none of these searches ever yielded any happy results. The girl was a young corporate shark.

  A little later, all of us were drinking rum and coke and deciding whether drinking and driving the Mercedes was a good idea. Our seventy years of combined experience notwithstanding, we decided a short drive wouldn't hurt anyone. But luckily, we couldn't find the keys and so we deposited ourselves on the sofa and let the alcohol take its due course.

  Smriti had become much kinder to me once drunk. 'So, Danish, what exactly do you do as a student counsellor?'

  'I counsel.'

  'That's like saying I entreprenuerate as an entrepreneur! What exactly do you do?'

  'I help students be themselves.'

  'Now what does that mean?'

  While my brain grew frenzied looking for an answer, my hormones raged seeing Ankit neck Smriti right in front of my eyes. I had never kissed anyone and of late, even insect sex turned me on. There should be a government facility holding perverts like me. I looked away.

  'I solve their problems,' I said.

  'Like how to get rid of their zits, whether pubic hair is okay, how to wax, etc.?' Smriti laughed.

  Ha. Ha. Alcohol makes everyone into the next big stand-up comic. She looked at Ankit who had no interest in her jokes and was busy burrowing a hole into her neck, using his tongue.

  'Yes, that. That's exactly what I do. Wow. You're so intelligent,' I said.

  There was no point fighting with her. I flicked through the TV channels while Ankit and Smriti made out on the couch, necking, grabbing each other, turning my celebration into theirs.

  'Hey!' Ankit said suddenly, pushing Smriti away. 'Smriti! Don't you have that cousin who just broke up? What's her name? Kanika, right? Why don't you make her meet Danish? I'm sure they will hit it off! She's a lecturer or something, right? They are both in the same field!'

  Smriti, offended at the sudden break in the lovemaking, sat up straight, adjusted her shirt and said, 'She's not over the guy yet. He really used to pamper her.'

  'So will Danish!'

  'But—' I protested though it didn't register.

  'She's not into men from the same field. That guy ran a business,' argued Smriti.

  'So what, Danish is charming, he will sweep her off her feet! What say, Danish?' Ankit said.

  'By saying what? He handles teenage problems? I don't think that's going to cut it. All her exes have been really successful people. She's into that,' said Smriti.

  'So what—'

  I interrupted Ankit. 'I have to leave. You two can continue this conversation about whether I'm successful enough to date your cousin or not. But I wanted to tell you that I'm already dating and the girl doesn't care whether I'm more successful than her or not.'

  'What!' Ankit jumped up from the couch. 'You never told me! Fuck. Congratulations, man. What's her name?'

  'Aisha,' I said and stormed out.