Under The Mango Trees

Chapter Twenty Nine : In Between Dreams And Reality

I tried it all- texting her, texting her friends (including Anthony who didn't know either), calling her, creating an account on Instagram and texting her there. Every time I did one of those things, I couldn't do anything for the next few hours as if I had committed a crime and was anticipating the police at my door. I paced in agony around the house till Pavitra yelled at me, I switched between trying to sleep and watching television till Pavitra yelled at me and I arranged the neatly folded clothes in my wardrobe and books on the bookshelves for the tenth time till Pavitra yelled at me. I had grown ill-tempered myself, so when Pavitra clicked her tongue at the sound of the pages of my book fluttering, I flung it at her without a second thought or worry about the imminent doom. A big, fat copy of A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth was launched across the room and it flatly smacked her forehead.

Things didn't go awry for a part of me knew what was to come- pure, unadulterated damnation on earth. Pages were scratched and torn, bits and pieces flew everywhere like snowflakes (if I tried to find any humour in it). Pavitra could put psychopaths to shame with her level of violence and torture. She pulled hard at my hair and no, like those Garnier shampoo ads, my hair wasn't strong enough to pull a truck. Instead, my scalp burned and I could feel some of my hair being plucked out like the strings of a guitar. She had to stop when I returned the favour by yanking the round collar of her comfort t-shirt and tore it from the back, the ripping sound shocking her so much that her eyes went wide with indignation.

It was ultimately our mother who wrenched us apart and expressed deep embarrassment at having given birth to children who fought like they were raised in the slums. That bruised both our egos so we kept quiet. I fought back the uncontrolled tears of frustration that welled in my eyes. Why couldn't my sister be tolerable if not supportive when I was so desperately searching for Lila?

But the quietness prolonged to days and it helped. Both of us knew that if we continued wrestling any more, one of us would go bald and the other naked. So after that mini WWE, Pavitra refused to even look at me and I revelled in being left alone. We all ate our meals separately in our rooms and if one family member was occupying the living room, nobody dared to join. Pavitra and my refuge was our single beds and although we slept opposite to each other, we dared to not enter each other's territory as if there was an unseen border drawn between two hostile nations.

I needed someone to tell me that my Lila was okay and would come back. It was past 3 am as I scrolled through her public Instagram feed, stopping again at the picture of me that she had clicked in Tarkarli and uploaded. There were few hundred likes, no comments and the caption was a simple red heart, so unlike Lila whose other captions read her entire life story of what she did on the day the picture was taken with at least a dozen yellow emojis (mostly of the emoji wearing sunglasses or the quirky emoji tilted with its tongue out).

In my picture, I was sitting on what seemed like endless sand with the sun bleeding behind me, colouring the sky orange, red and pink. My eyes were downcast, half of my face submerged in darkness while the other half surfaced above the darkness, soft and luminous. The beginnings of a dull ache squirmed its way up, gripping my heart and leaving a trail of uneasiness in my stomach. Those days had been beautiful, but like all beautiful things, they ended.

I opened the dms again, but she hadn't seen my messages. It had been four days since I sent them to her. All this while I kept reassuring myself that she would text or call back, but suddenly, I wasn't so sure. If her parents had sent her packing to the US, what was preventing her from responding to me? Only one conclusion seemed plausible- the reason for her untimely departure was me. Was she angry with me? Had she not loved me enough? Immediately, her small face crying like a child, crying without rules appeared in my mind. She did love me, I knew it for I remembered us loving each other under the mango trees like it was a minute ago. Lila couldn't pretend, I could see right through her, her dark eyes were as clear as glass and her reckless heart jumping out of her to show everyone what she held inside.

I fell into sleep in the early hours of the morning at the sound of the tweeting of little birds hopping on the boughs of a nearby tree that I could see from the window. But, I groggily woke up in two hours as Lila wiggled her way in my dreams too, laughing, pulling, kissing me, then pulling away, laughing, pulling, kissing me again. Always in movement like the foamy waves of the sea where we stood. However, suddenly, she started running ahead of me and leapt from a giant rock into the depths of the ocean without as much as a goodbye. One moment my fingers were intertwined with hers with her hot lips pressed against my cheek and the next moment there was no one in front of me, just her lingering warm breath and the strong scent of her dad's cologne.

Little droplets of sweat trickled down the curve of my back as I tried to console myself that it was only a dream. And then I feebly remembered that I hadn't seen Lila for over a week. What was a dream? What was real? When would I wake up? And why did they all feel the fucking same?

I stayed in the bed till afternoon, at the borders of reality and dreams, oscillating in between. I couldn't prevent myself from checking my phone every five minutes, my body involuntarily jolting upright at the sound of a notification. I would slump back again after finding it was Vodafone alerting me about deals on SMS and call packages. If only the company knew that nobody contacted me, nobody who was important to me. Nobody who was Lila.

The deeper I ventured into the thicket of my memories, the more I questioned every single one of them, rustling each moment with my pondering. Memories were such fickle creatures, blurring the lines between what were dreams and what were real. Did Lila even love me the way that I wanted her to? Had I imagined her love to be something more? More than how she loved other people . . . Something less spontaneous? Something more genuine? Something lasting forever?

Under the mango trees, I had promised to trust her, to believe in her. Her face . . . Her trembling body. . . Her heartfelt words . . . Even if that was a dream, for a second, if I believed in it. If I believed in it, maybe, she didn't want to leave me. Maybe, she was searching for me, the way that I was searching for her. I had to search for her too, but first, I had to search for answers. I had been relentlessly suppressing my urge all this while, not letting my desperation take me to places that I would regret later.

"Where are you going without a bath?" I heard my mother cry out as I thoughtlessly shut the door behind me.

"Raul, that son of a---" I found myself swearing under my breath, stomping down the stairs and catching a rickshaw to his bungalow.

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