26. Danish Roy

'Thank you for doing this. This is going to be awesome!' my brother said as he drove his Mercedes through the choc-a-bloc traffic in Central Delhi like only he can. I suspected he was a trained spy on the side.

  I had told my brother I was back on the market and I wanted a shot at Smriti's cousin, Kanika. He said he would take care of it without making me sound like a complete loser in front of Smriti. This date had nothing to do with Aisha going on her date with Vibhor today. Absolutely nothing.

  'You picked this? Of all the places, you picked this?'

  He flicked the keys towards the valet outside the most expensive club in Delhi. It had only been weeks since Verve opened and only rich kids and Bollywood stars and businessmen in gleaming Bentleys visited the jaunt. Well, my brother was one of them now but I was still a lowly school teacher of sorts. And as if he was listening to the monologue in my head, he slipped his black American Express card into my back pocket. He smiled, and shameless as I was, I didn't protest.

  About half an hour later, Smriti walked in with Kanika, and I have to say it took all my restraint to not drool. If Smriti was a strong seven, Kanika was a ten and a half, and I'm saying it despite being vehemently against marking women.

  'Hi,' said Ankit, and greeted both of them by hugging them.

  I smiled at Smriti and did what could be called an awkward cross between a handshake and a hug. Same with Kanika who smelt of fresh roses. Why do women smell so nice all the time?

  'Nice place,' she said to me.

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sp; 'He's paying. He comes here often so they usually have a table for him,' Ankit butted in and nudged me. Kanika flashed a shameless smile at me.

  A quick scan through the alcohol and the food menu was enough to know that our bill would be upwards of fifteen thousand. I felt my back pocket to check if I still had my brother's card. Four beers later Smriti and Ankit were snogging shamelessly. Kanika and I were yet to exchange a single word other than guessing the next song by the opening music piece.

  It was time I made my opening move. I had to have something to share when Aisha would narrate to me how her date went in the next counselling session.

  'So I heard you were a lecturer? How's that? It's fun? You always wanted to be that?'

  'Yes, it is fun,' she said and didn't say anything for a while. She sat there, swaying her head to the music, scrutinizing every girl on the dance floor, silently judging them.

  'Do you like it?'

  'It's a job,' she said. 'You like yours? Talking teenagers out of drugs and sex?'

  I could sense the condescension in her voice. 'I like it. They need guidance.'

  'Teenagers are teenagers. They won't listen to you.' I shrugged and said otherwise.

  'So you plan to do this your entire life?' she asked half-heartedly while she tweeted 'Having a good time at Verve' with six hashtags dedicated to the good life.

  'I can't think of anything better. So what do you like to do? Other than teaching?'

  'Nothing. Just go out. Eat. Party once in a while.'

  Silence again. She looked into her phone and liked a bunch of Instagram pictures of curtain patterns, baby animals, and watched a couple of vines. So I started the conversation again. 'So, you just broke up, right? Dealing with it well?'

  'Yes.'

  'Any recent books you might have read?'

  'No.'

  'Movies?'

  'Yeah, watched one. Don't remember the name though.'

  She refreshed her Twitter account and tweeted 'drunkkkkk, biatches, Sachurday Nite!'

  'Did you win a spelling bee contest when you were young?'

  'No.'

  'You couldn't have.'

  'What?'

  'Nothing,' I said. 'So what do your folks do? Do you have siblings? I love the dress you're wearing. Where did you get it from? What kind of music are you into?' I wanted to see if anything mattered to her at all.

  'Huh? What were you saying? I just saw this on Facebook. It's a slow motion window of a cat yawning!' she said and thrust the phone in my face.

  'That's probably the most enlightening thing I have seen this month.'

  She got back to her phone. She wasn't even listening to what I was saying.

  'You're a slut!' I shouted.

  'What?'

  'Not for you. I was just saying the lyrics of the song aloud.'

  'Oh, okay.'

  I chugged another beer to make this conversation more bearable. This was the reason why I had hardly ever dated. I don't have the requisite charm to make anyone talk. She was looking into her phone again, this time laughing at GIFs of cute pandas falling asleep.

  She would take breaks from looking into her phone to deride a random girl making out on the dance floor, or tell me about a dress she wanted to buy, or how she really liked a new club that opened in GK, or how much she hated people from East Delhi, or how a friend of hers is a total slut, and how a guy friend got a terrible haircut. I still knew nothing about her. She wasn't talking to me. She was talking at me. Like you shout at the television. They were just bits and pieces of information about other people. How was I supposed to know her better? By which new store had opened in a new mall? Or by listening to her story of how her friend was dating an ugly guy? Or how desperately she needed to change her car? It was boring. She was like a tabloid newspaper. Maybe I was expecting more out of this dating thing.

  A little later, my brother and Smriti dragged us to the dance floor. And suddenly, it was as if Kanika had been pumped with an adrenaline shot. She danced, and sang, and gyrated, and updated her phone thrice, clicked fifteen pictures, visited the washroom thrice to fix her hair, and danced a little more. She asked me to charge her phone, and then had five shots. I wondered how Aisha was faring in her date.

  The night almost over, all four of us went back to our table, and the cheque arrived. It was for 18,000 rupees. Ankit passed on the cheque to me and I took out my own card instead of his. I wanted to pay because I wanted this to be a reminder to myself about spending time with women who couldn't do me the simple courtesy of answering my questions. Now, I might not be smart, or funny, or charming, or even worth talking to, but I do expect the person in front of me to answer my questions or at least state their disinterest in talking to me in clear words. If this was what dating meant, then I was glad I wasn't dating anyone.

  We left the place at three in the morning. Later that morning, Kanika texted me that she had fun and we should do it again. Yeah, right. Next time I feel like dating, I will make sure that I go out with my phone.