sonu kumar
Posted On: 09-04-2019
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Half Girlfriend

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Prologue

'They are your journals, you read them,’ I said to him.
He shook his head.
‘Listen, I don’t have the time or patience for this,’ I said, getting
irritated. Being a writer on a book tour doesn’t allow for much sleep—
I had not slept more than four hours a night for a week. I checked my
watch. ‘It’s midnight. I gave you my view. It’s time for me to sleep
now.’
‘I want yon to read them,’ he said.
We were in my room at the Chanakya Hotel,Patna.This morning,
he had tried to stop me on my way out.Then he had waited for me all
day; I had returned late at night to find him sitting in the hotel lobby.
‘Just give me five minutes, sir,’ he had said, following me into the
lift. And now here we were in my room as he pulled out three tattered
notebooks from his backpack.
The spines of the notebooks came apart as he plonked them on the
table.The yellowing pages fanned out between us.The pages had
handwritten text, mostly illegible as the ink had smudged. Many pages
had holes, rats having snacked on them.
An aspiring writer, I thought.
‘If this is a manuscript, please submit it to a publisher. However,
do not send it in this state,’ I said.
‘I am not a writer.This is not a book.’
‘It’s not?’ I said, lightly touching a crumbling page. I looked up at
him. Even seated, he was tall. Over six feet in height, he had a
sunburnt, outdoor ruggedness about him. Black hair, black eyes and a
particularly intense gaze. He wore a shirt two sizes too big for his lean
frame. He had large hands. He reassembled the notebooks, gentle with
bis fingers, almost caressing the pages.
‘What are these?’ I said.
‘I had a friend.These are her journals,’ he said.
‘Her journals. Ah. A girlfriend?’‘Half-girlfriend,’
‘What?’
He shrugged.
‘Listen, have you eaten anything all day?’ I said.
He shook Iris head. I looked around. A bowl of fruit and some
chocolates sat next to my bed. He took a piece of, dark chocolate when
I offered it.
‘So what do you want from me?’ I said.
‘I want you to read these journals, whatever is readable...because I
can’t.’
I looked at him, surprised.
‘You can’t read? As in, you can’t read in general? Or you can’t read
these?
‘These.’
‘Why not?’ I said, reaching for a chocolate myself.
‘Because Riya’s dead.’
My hand froze in mid-air.You cannot pick up a chocolate when
someone has just mentioned a death.
‘Did you just say the girl who wrote these journals is dead?’
He nodded. I took a few deep breaths and wondered what to say
next.
‘Why are they in such terrible shape?’ I said after a pause.
‘They are old. Her ex-landlord found them after years.’
‘Sorry, Mr Whats-your-name. Can I order some food first?’ I
picked up the phone in the room and ordered two club sandwiches
from the limited midnight menu.
'I'm Madhav. Madhav Jha. I live in Dumraon, eighty kilometres
from here.’
‘What do you do?’
‘I run a school there,’
‘Oh, that’s...’ I paused, searching for the right word.
'...noble? Not really. It’s my mother’s school.’
‘I was going to say that’s unusual.You speak English. Not typical ofsomeone who runs a school in the back of beyond.’
‘My English is still bad. I have a Bihari accent,’ he said, without a
trace of self-consciousness,
'French people have a French accent when they speak English,'
'My English wasn’t even English until..,' he trailed off and fell silent. I
saw him swallow to keep his composure.
‘Until?’
He absently stroked the notebooks on the desk.
‘Nothing. Actually, I went to St. Stephen’s.’
‘In Delhi?’
‘Yes. English types call it “Steven’s”.’
I smiled. ‘And you are not one of the English types?’
‘Not at all.’
The doorbell startled us.The waiter shifted the journals to put the
sandwich tray on the table. A few sheets fell to the floor.
‘Careful!’ Madhav shouted, as if the waiter had broken some
antique crystal.
The waiter apologized and scooted out of the room.
I offered Madhav the club sandwich, which had a tomato, cheese
and lettuce filling. He ignored me and rearranged the loose sheets of
paper.
‘Are you okay? Please eat.’
He nodded, His eyes still on the pages of the journal. I decided to
eat, since my imposed guest didn’t seem to care for my hospitality.
‘These journals obviously mean a lot to you. But why have you
brought them here?’
‘For you to read. Maybe they will be useful to you.’
‘How will they be useful to me?’ I said, my voice firmer with the
food inside me. A part of me wanted him out of my room as soon aspossible.
‘She used to like your books. We used to read them together,’ he
said in a soft voice.‘For me to learn English.’
‘Madhav,’ I said, as calmly as possible, ‘this seems like a sensitive
matter. 1 don’t want to get involved. Okay?’
His gaze remained directed at the floor.‘I don’t want the journals
either,’ he said after a while.
‘That is for you to decide.'
‘It's too painful for me,’ he said.
'I can imagine.’
He stood up, presumably to leave, He had not touched his sandwich
—which was okay, because I could eat it after he left.
‘Thank you for your time. Sorry to have disturbed you.’
‘It’s okay,’ I said.
He scribbled his phone number on a piece of paper and kept it on
the table.‘If you are ever in Dumraon and need anything, let me know.
It’s unlikely you will ever come, but still...’ He stood up, instantly
dwarfing me, and walked to the door. *
‘Madhav,’ I called out after him, ‘you forgot the journals. Please
take them with you.’
‘I told you I don’t need them.’
‘So why are you leaving them here?’
‘Because I can’t throw them away. You can.'
Before I could answer, he stepped out, shut the door and left. It
took me a few Seconds to realize what had happened.
I picked up the journals and ran out of the room, but the soleworking lift had just gone down. I could have taken the stairs and
caught him in time but, after a long day, I didn’t have tjie energy to do
that.
I came back to my room, irritated by his audacity. Dumping the
notebooks and the slip with his phone number in the dustbin, I sat on
the bed, a little unsettled, I can’t let someone I just met get the better
of me, I thought, shaking my head. I switched off the lights and lay
down. I had to catch an early-morning flight to Mumbai the next day
and had a four-hour window of sleep. I couldn’t wait to reach home.
However, I couldn’t stop thinking about my encounter with the
mysterious Madhav, Who was this guy? The words ‘Dumraon’,
‘Stephen’s’ and ‘Delhi’ floated around in my head. Questions popped
up: What the hell is a half-girlfriend? And why do l have a dead girl’s
journals in my room?
Eyes wide open, l lay in bed, staring at the little flashing red light
from the smoke detector on the ceiling, The journals bothered me.
Sure, they lay in the dustbin. However, something about those torn
pages, the dead person and her half-boyfriend, or whoever he was,
intrigued me. Don’t go there, I thought, but my mind screamed down
its own suggestion: Read just one page.
‘Don’t even think about it,’ I said out loud. But thirty minutes later,
I switched on the lights in my room, fished out the journals from the
dustbin and opened the first volume. Most pages were too damaged to
read. I tried to make sense of what I could.
The first page dated back nine years to 1 November 2002. Riya had
written about her fifteenth birthday. One mere page, I kept thinking. I
flipped through the pages as I tried to find another readable one. 1
read one more section, and then another. Three hours later, I had read
whatever could be read in the entire set.
The room phone rang at 5 a.m., startling me.
‘Your wake-up call, sir,’ the hotel operator said.
‘I am awake, thank you,’ I said, as I’d never slept at all. I called Jet
Airways.‘I’d like to cancel a ticket on the Patna-Mumbai flight this
morning.’
Pulling out the slip of paper with Madhav s number from the
dustbin, I texted him: We need to talk. Important.
At 6.30 a.m., the tall, lanky man was in my room once more.
‘Make tea for both of us. The kettle is above the minibar.’
He followed my instructions.The early morning sun highlighted his
sharp features. He handed me a cup of tea and took a seat diagonally
opposite me on the double bed.
‘Should I speak first, or will you?’ I said.
‘About?’
‘Riya.’
He sighed.
‘Do you think you knew her well?’
‘Yes,’ he said.
‘You feel comfortable talking about her to me?’
He thought for a few seconds and nodded.
‘So tell me everything. Tell me the story of Madhav and Riya.’
‘A story that fate left incomplete,’ he said.
‘Fate can be strange indeed.’
‘Where do I start? When we first met?’
‘Always a good place,’ I said.

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