Fairy Dust and Jazz

twenty

Chapter twenty

I’ll Follow You Into The Dark

‘The time for sleep is now.

It’s nothing to cry about.’

Dear Sama,

My boyfriend and I want to be together, but my parents don’t approve of us. It doesn’t help that I’m a man, I suppose. Should I care enough to stay? I’m 27 years old with a good job.

Pretty-and-witty

Some of these mails made me laugh so much because for half an hour, I had myself wondering where the hell the man came up with that kind of pen name. When in doubt, I just asked Rupa.

“You don’t know?”

“No.”

“I feel pretty and witty and gay!” Rupa sang for me over the phone as I put my feet up on the desk, suddenly very hot. Well, she couldn’t sing for gold, but it made the message clear.

“I’m going to answer this one.”

“Priya approves?”

“If she doesn’t, I know what article to write next to keep her happy.”

Dear pretty-and-witty,

I know a girl whose parents told her she had to be with a cheater for a husband rather than look for her own happiness. What advice would you give her?

Actually, what advice would you give anyone who already knows what the right thing to do is?

Give the advice and then take it for yourself. You deserve happiness. You and anyone else out there who really wants it, deserves it.

#gaylove #ftw

I changed my number between work and more work, telling myself to cut it all off once and for all. Now no one could reach me. Not Rajesh, not my parents, and not even Nathaniel.

I picked up Rupa from work now and then, but she didn’t really have a fixed place of office. One time we met at a dingy pub down Brigade road that she was photographing, on another day we met at a day care centre at Malleswaram.

“What the hell happened to your phone?” she screamed at me the day I was late picking her up at the restaurant down Koramangala. “I’ve been calling you for hours, I was done early.”

“Oh, I changed my number. Wait, I’ll—”

She looked fabulous all the time, but when she was yelling at me about something stupid, she was actually quite intimidating. “First of all, you have driving privileges because you’re not pregnant. Second of all, you have no privileges because you have to take care of me, I’m pregnant.” That didn’t make her sound snooty or spoilt at all. “Third of all, no. I finally learnt that number by heart. You are not changing it.”

I park the car as she gets in and shoves her equipment in the back. “It took you three years to do that. It’ll take you another three years to undo it.”

“No undos. Change your number back.” She shuts the door before looking over at me and making a face. “I hate sitting in front. I’m sitting in the back.”

I found it rudely bitchy that she wasn’t going to sit with me in the front, but I don’t complain. The last time she did something she didn’t want to do, I was the one who ended up cleaning puke. “I can’t change it back.”