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state.”
    “I didn’t abandon it. I had parked it there yesterday,” I snapped back. “Fuss is their fuel, they can’t live without it.”
    “How did you get a rickshaw at night?”
    “I didn’t.” I tried to avoid giving rest of the details.
    “Then?”
    “I walked”
    “You walked eleven kilometres?” She began to laugh.

    “I think I should start growing these at home,” she said smiling naughtily as she licked the Rizla to tape the joint. I lit my joint and pulled in a long drag and shrugged as a reply to her. She pulled in a long drag as she caved in on the couch beside me.
    “Do you think she ever loved me?” I asked but she didn’t say anything. I got up from the chair and came to the edge of the open air gallery overlooking the Eastern express highway.
    “Do you think I’ll land up on the highway if I jump from here?” Then calculating the distance I said, “If I take a run up all the way from the living room?”
    “I think you should open the main door. You’ll get another five feet for your run up,” she said trying to control her giggles.
    She rose from the chair and walked to me. She gently clutched my hand, “Don’t worry, you will be loved,” she said and kissed it.
    I put my arm around her waist and rested my forehead on her shoulder. Thank God for Devika! The hurt and the pain had been pacified for a while. But how would I forget her? What was I going to do?
    The door bell rang.
    “It’s past twelve, who the hell can it be?” I said, flinging the joint out of the balcony. It hit the compound wall. Ouch!
    “Your Dad. I called him,” she said as she went to open the door. “You have to go back home some day. We are not married, you know.”
    She opened the door.

    The ‘ abandoning the bike and disappearing act’ pushed my parents to ground their twenty-seven-year-old son for a month. In a way it worked for me because all the calls from work or friends would be filtered by mom, so I didn’t have to explain my ‘deserting life’ act to anyone. I stayed locked up in my room all day. I would eat my dinner in my room too. After Radhika got married, I was the one my mom would hound with her questions, calls and restrictions. “You’ll know when you have kids,” she silenced all my protests.
    One day, late in the afternoon, I heard my mom speaking to someone. From her tone and excessive cordiality, I could tell it was a girl. She screamed my name to call me.
    “It’s Devika...” she said, then covering the mouth piece of the phone she threatened me “...you better behave yourself or next time I’ll chain you.” No matter how old you are, you’ll always be sacred of your mother’s angry eyes and god had given extra scary touches to my mother’s eyes. “Hello,” I said.
    “Be ready by eight. Kartik and I will pick you up,” she ordered.
    “Where are we going?”
    “Raghu’s arranged a party for Shashank.”
    “For what? Oh shit!” It was 19 December. Shashank’s birthday.
    “You didn’t wish him, did you?
    “Hang up,” I said.
    “Bye, be ready...” She said “... and the party is a surprise, so don’t blow it up.”
    I dialled Shashank’s number but it was out of coverage area. Birthdays weren’t a big deal for us, but since the time Shashank went to the US for his MBA, there had not been one decent party we had attended. Now when he was back we decided to throw him a party. It had been in planning for months, but after the break up my brains had been too fried to remember anything.

    Kartik picked me up at quarter to eight. Devika wasn’t in the car. He told me she wasn’t ready so he picked me first. His car was a cherry red 1994 Ford Crown Victoria. It looked like one of those cars used in New York as cabs. I wondered where he’d gotten it in India from. He told me he had worked on it in his father’s garage and fitted it with some random sports car engine which he bought as scrap. The doors made queering noises and seats were damp. Its