Chapter 6: Playing Along

Falling for a girl isn’t the smartest thing one can do. Especially when she’s in a relationship with someone else. And especially more so, when one is already in a relationship with one’s own girl.

That being the established flow of thought, Ayesha and I, quite conversely, thought we were smart enough to swim against the current.

The circumstances in which we were brought together were completely ingenuous.

I had been asked to score the music for a Nouveau Recital in college, in which Ayesha was to play a character whose soliloquy role was to be the basis of my instrumental music.

Our individual parts were scripted so as to extract the best from each other’s performances.

(And it’s a wayward mind that would interpret that last sentence in a wayward manner.)

As things turned out, the show was a raving success and the entire cast drank the night away.

Strangely enough, ‘strange’ by the measure of my past inebriated exploits, nothing happened between Ayesha and me that night. Or the night after that, which was flushed down our gullets and dismissed in the same manner as the previous night.

Instead, we toasted each other’s talent and returned back to the way things were before the play.

Curiouser and curiouser cried Alice.

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Of course, we didn’t stay with the way things were for too long.

Fate and her pet dog Timing had felt compelled to make their little onscreen burlesque appearance.

Both the people Ayesha and I were involved with had to leave town on account of their personal pursuits. One had to take part in a debate competition and the other was off to participate in a campaign against genetically modified crops.

And quite like Alice with her bad grammar, Ayesha and I were curious about each other.

So we decided to act like we were dating each other.

This was tricky, considering that Ayesha and her boyfriend were doted over by many in college and shielded as an exhibit of unblemished love.

But all the bizarre attempts at subtle eye-popping glances that our hand-in-hand-walk-around-the-basketball-court charade attracted made the two of us laugh the happiest laughs that we had laughed in a long time.

To celebrate what was turning out to be our second successful play, we went out drinking again. Just the small cast of two of us this time.

She bought me a doll. And I double checked my profile later in the mirror to find out what the friggin’ hell was doll-loving in my getup. I silently cursed my big nose.

And then it happened. Just when I was settling the bill.

She mumbled that she loved me.

I kissed her a fatherly kiss on her forehead, which really wasn’t my way of saying, who’s your daddy.

It had all happened both suddenly and in super slow motion, her quiet admission and my fumbled response.

I grasped that I was staring at Fate and that her pet dog had just bitten me.

We ran out of that pub, Ayesha and I.

No, I did pay the tab. It was on a different occasion at a different pub with a different person that I ran out without paying up. But then, that’s a different story.

We jumped into an autorickshaw to get us back to campus. I kissed her hurriedly. And I realized that I had kissed her teeth.

Dammit. This was going bad.

First, a part in a pretentious play; then, a kiss on her forehead; and now, a rapid-fire kiss on her upper teeth.

That made me a gay old guy without any experience.

Dammit.

And that’s when she kissed me. Fairylike.


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But we were living in a crowded house, Ayesha and I.

We were both really good company for each other, but having Fate and Timing as flat mates was aggravating for both of us. Especially Timing. I wanted to hit that smelly dog with a T-rod.

Ayesha and I soon conceded that the two of us had had a whole lot more fun swimming with each other in flirtatious undercurrents rather than in the predictable open sea. Also, all those eye-popping glances that we were getting, were getting to us.

And so, we decided to script, act and direct our third and final play. We were to behave like we were not interested in each other.

Somehow, getting into character wasn’t all that easy this time around. I hated her and I hated myself for doing this to us.

But Fate laughed and Timing barked.

Days later, Ayesha’s boyfriend and my girlfriend returned.

Our interlude was over. And there was no mention of us in the credits.