Foreign Affairs - Chapter 3

 

Chapter -3

Having a girl as a roommate was not all glam and fancy as it is thought to be. Indeed, it was a lot more awkward and uncomfortable than having a roommate of the same sex as yours. I was very conscious about the way I behaved, talked, dressed or even existed inside the house when she was around.

Also, I was a bit apprehensive, after my con-call with my friends Kapil and Mahender, who had warned that staying with a girl might not be a good idea as it is easy to get romantic feelings for the other.

I was not worried that I would fall in love. Because, falling in love was never an option for me. From my early days it has been clearly instilled in my mind by my parents that a love marriage is never acceptable in our family. I have been told many stories about the repercussions of a love marriage and how it is embarrassing for the parents to face the society when their kids make their own choice to marry someone. I had been conditioned to such an extent where I had wholly and happily accepted that my future wife will be chosen by my parents and all I had to do was to marry her and lead a happy life.

Love, maybe, is an impulsive feeling and anyone might fall for anyone, anytime.  But in my case, the moment I would picture my parents in my mind, any such feeling, even if it cropped up, would just run a mile away. I was in this clear headspace where I knew that I can do anything in life and my parents would forgive me for that but I would be dead meat if I would say that I had found a girl of my choice to marry. As I said, falling in love wasn’t an option for me.

So, cautiously, I tried to avoid interacting much with Arura and stayed only inside my room. Every morning, I would wake up early and go to the office even before she woke up and also returned back late, just to sleep.

In the office, we both were in separate teams. My team dealt with financial sector projects while Arura was put in a team that worked with the clients from the infrastructure segments. We were seated on separate floors and so we hardly got to meet there either. Our only interaction everyday was when she would come to wish me ‘Good night’ at around 10 pm, before I slept.

It was Friday night around 9 o'clock when there was a knock on my room’s door.

“Isn’t it too early for a good night? Maybe she had a hectic week and was hitting the bed early,” I thought and opened the door to find her all dressed up.

“Are you ready to go?” she asked.

“Where?”

“To The Bing Bang Pub. Don’t tell me that you are going to sleep early tonight too,” she said.

“Huh…”. I did not know what to say.

“You did see the whatsapp I had sent you about going out tonight, right?” she asked.

“Honestly I had not checked whatsapp,” I said.

“Man! What do you do all the time locking yourself inside these doors?” she asked and casually walked into my room.

I went into panic mode instantly. This was the first time she was inside my room. I was suddenly conscious of so many things like, if my room looked clean and tidy, no underwear or anything inappropriate was lying around or if my room smelled funny or anything weird, etc.

She sat on my bed and asked, “We are sharing rent for this entire house. You are not paying just for this room. You can sometimes sit in the hall, watch some TV or even come to my room,” she said.

I just gave her a forced smile.

“Sit down,” she said.

I pulled the chair near my study table and sat there. All I was thinking was when would she leave.

“I think we need to discuss our situation and what are we going to do about it,” she said in a serious tone.

“What is the situation?”

“It is about us,” she said.

“About us?” I asked. Maybe she found it awkward to live with me too.

“Yes, and the way we are living,” she said.

“What’s about it? Do you have any issues?” I asked with all seriousness.

“Yes. It’s been a week already and we don’t even have a maid yet.”

“Oh”, I said.

“Did you even see how dirty the house is? Of course not! You don’t even come out of your room,” she said and looked around my room and continued, “but I must say, your room is pretty neat. Do you clean it yourself?”

I nodded yes.

“Great! But I can’t manage cleaning. And I can’t load all the job on you. So, let’s hire a maid so that she will take care of the cleaning and dusting of the house. What do you say?”

“Ok,” I nodded.

“That’s great. And what about cooking?”

“What’s about that?” I asked.

“Do we hire a cook or shall we do our own cooking? We can’t continue to eat outside every day, right? It is not good for our health,” she said, looking worried.

“Yeah. We will think about it,” I said.

“And what about getting vegetables and groceries? Should we go shopping or shall we order it online?” she asked.

That’s when I realised, being roommates, with anyone, be it a girl or boy, maybe it is fun or maybe awkward, but to make it keep going, efforts were required from both the end. And me trying to act aloof was not going to help the situation in any way.

So, I asked her, “Shall we go out?”

“Where?”

“To the pub you were saying?”

“Oh, you want to come? I thought you were not interested,” she said.

“If we have to discuss all these things, it would be better to do it in a pub than sitting here. At least the ambience would be better, I guess,” I said with a slight smile.

“Ha ha,” she chuckled and said, “that’s cool. Let’s discuss all this roommate stuff while sipping on some beer.”

“Sure. Give me 5 minutes, I will be ready,” I said as I stood up.

So promptly after 5 minutes I met her at our hall and we walked out to get a cab to reach the Big Bang Pub.

 

So, it was my first visit to a night club and though I tried not to show it, I was pretty excited. After getting stamped I walked inside. It was just pitch dark inside with deafening music being played.

“That’s some pretty loud noise,” I said, rather shouted to Arura.

But she did not seem to hear it. Of course, how would she, with all the noise!?

It took me a few seconds for my eyes to adjust to the darkness. Glad that Arura was holding my hands and leading me to the seats, otherwise I would have not known how many people I would have bumped into.

It was 10 o'clock in the night and according to my standards it was pretty late but there was half of Bengaluru at that pub, partying.

Finally, we sat at our tables and Arura asked me, “What would you like to have?”

“I already had my dinner. You can order anything you want,” I said.

“Ok. You would like to drink something?” she asked.

I just looked at her without knowing what to say.

“They do have mocktails,” she said, handing the menu to me.

“Do I look like a guy who could only drink mocktails?” I asked.

“Well…,” she stammered, not knowing what to say.

“Just kidding. For once, I wanted to see if I could make you get lost for words,” I said with a wink.

“Oh! I never knew that you can be cheeky,” she said with a laugh.

“There are many things you do not know about me,” I said.

“Oh, then let me start to get to know you,” she said and asked, “So you are a teetotaller?” she asked.

“Hmmm. Till now,” I said.

“So, you would like to have a drink?” she asked.

“Maybe not today. But some other day,” I said.

“Oh! So, you do want to start someday,” she said.

“Why not? I would just like to know what the fuss is all about,” I said.

“Everyone starts that way,” she said with a smile.

“That’s true,” I said.

So, she called the waiter and ordered a glass of wine for her.

 “Maybe I will try the hookah you were saying about the other day?” I said, just before the waiter was about to leave.

“Okay. Which flavour?” she asked.

“Anything with tobacco,” I said.

“Oh! Really?”

“Yes, let’s start with one sin at a time,” I said with a coy smile.

“Okay, if that’s what you want,” she said and ordered one for me.

Soon I tried the hookah. And sooner, the same night I tried some wine and beer too.

I was not sure if I enjoyed it, but the feeling that I was free to try all these things without any fear or having to answer anyone, gave me a high and I liked that.

Arura was continuing her line of questioning in between our sips and smoke.

"So, you have a girlfriend?" she asked. 

I shook my head no. 

There were few moments of silence. 

Then I realised, the pause was actually a wait from her end so that I could ask her the same question. 

So, I asked, "You have a boyfriend?"

"Nope. I had one in college. But we broke up. He had gone to pursue his higher studies from the US and we both thought that long distance relationship was not going to work. So, we called it quits,” she replied.

“Oh. I am sorry,” I said.

“Nah. There is absolutely nothing to be sorry about. We both knew for a long time that it was not going to work out. It was just a casual relationship from the start.”

“Oh. Okay,” I said.

“Besides it is boring to be in a committed relationship. You always have this question lingering in your mind about where the relationship is heading or if we both want similar things, what’s the future for the relationship, etc. That’s a lot of stress,” she said.

I nodded.

“Getting into a relationship is so old school nowadays. Having just a special buddy to chill with is all I want,” she said.

I smiled at her and said, “I can be that buddy for you.”

I liked the way booze made me talk about things that otherwise I would have hesitated to say.

After our drinks we both joined the dance floor. I was not a great dancer but I followed Arura’s lead and somehow managed to dance. And amidst all the darkness, I was sure that no one could actually see how good or bad the other person was dancing and so I too was not bothered about it and danced my heart out. It was definitely a night full of fun, more fun than I had had in my entire life, so far.

After partying hard, we took a cab back home and reached around 2 am. At around 3am, there was a knock at my room door and it was Arura.

“What do you want Arura?” I asked. I was indeed a bit startled to see her at that time of the night.

She stood there silent for a moment and finally said, “I am not feeling well,” and vomited right there at the entrance of my room.

I held her and slowly walked her to her room. That was the first time I went to her room and I was shocked to see how messy it was. I helped her to clean herself in her washroom and made her lie down on her bed. She complained of a headache and so I boiled some hot water and gave her some medicine which she had. I was there sitting beside her bed for some time and left only after I made sure that she was okay and slept well.

The next morning, I went into her room to find her still asleep. I went to the kitchen to make some coffee. And that was actually the first time I had gone to the kitchen. I opened the fridge to find it completely empty. As I closed the fridge, I could see Arura standing at the entrance of the kitchen looking all weak. “This is what I was saying. We need to buy some groceries, milk and vegetables to start with,” she said.

“Hey, so you are up?” I asked.

“Yeah,” she said weakly, “sorry for the mess I made yesterday night,” she said.

“Oh, stop it. That was not a mess. The real mess is your room,” I said.

“Oh God! You did see my room right!? That’s why I was saying that we need a maid soon,” she said.

“Okay. Don’t worry. We will arrange for a maid,” I said.

“Yeah. And a cook too,” she said.

“Don’t worry. I am good at cooking. I will cook, if you promise to cut the vegetables.”

“Deal,” she said.

 

And that’s how we went from being just roommates to friends. And my awkward days with Arura went on to become amazing from then on.

Staying with Arura was so much fun, except for the part where I had to constantly lie to my parents that I was still staying in the PG and parents were not allowed to visit.

Me and Arura had this perfect roommate only relationship. We were available for each other all the time. We did not have to call ourselves as brother and sister for the purpose of sanctity. We both knew that we did not have any romantic feelings for each other and that was enough for us. Though, there were many people who assumed that we were dating and we did not even bother to explain to them about our relationship status.

Life was going great. We worked hard in the weekdays and partied harder in the weekend. The whole year moved on swiftly. We had completed our probation period in our company, which meant that soon we would get the opportunity to go onsite to our client offices. Everyone was excited about it except me, because of the promise I made to my mom that I would not go onsite before getting married.

All good things had to end. And soon, my days with Arura also reached an end when she got her onsite assignment to visit Paris. She was so very thrilled about it. I was very happy for her too but at one corner of my heart I wished she stayed. After all, she was the best roommate I could ever ask for.

And now I can’t even say that out loud because, after Arura, Mia became my roommate for a short while in Bengaluru and from there, she has now become my roommate for life.

How did that happen? Well, that’s what this whole story is about. The story I say to Inla, every day.

(to be continued...)