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Welcome back, dear reader!
This is chapter 4 of my series – ‘Forgetting Trisha in Bangalore’. The story picks up right from where chapter 3 left off. So, if you’re starting the series here, well, you can do that. But it might be easier to follow the plot if you start from chapter 1.
Here’s a recap anyhow – our main character, Arun, is trying to forget his ex, Trisha. Arun and Trisha had been in a long-term relationship for four years until Trisha left him to fulfil her parents’ wishes.
So, how does our guy overcome his loneliness and regrets? Well, for starters, being unable to afford a vacation to Bangkok, he goes ahead and gets his cock banged by a mysterious prostitute in a shady hotel in Bangalore. He also develops some sort of feelings for her, despite telling himself constantly that ‘Pretty Woman’ was just a propaganda film by big sex-work.
At work, Arun has to also contend with the attitude of his co-worker, Twinkle, who seems to regard him with only slightly more disfavour than Lex Luthor did with Superman. It seemed like the two of them were going to get into an ugly spat at some point, when Arun stumbled across a secret that Twinkle had been keeping from her family. But before he could tell her that her secret was out, Twinkle catches him with his pants down (literally), having read and deleted the chats exchanged between Arun and the mysterious hooker.
Now, for reasons unknown, Twinkle has asked Arun to take her to his apartment till the hubbub dies over. Will Arun be willing to give her a hand despite his annoyance towards her for deleting his conversation with the hooker? Will he be able to figure out his feelings towards the hooker and the larger issue of his loneliness?
Read on and find out!
———————————————————————————————————————————————
After returning from the men’s washroom, Arun did a flyby of Ishita’s and Raj’s offices. Observing a definite lack of Twinkle in the vicinity, he had made his way to their workstation, feeling a considerable sense of relief. It seemed that she really had changed her mind about reporting him to Ishita.
He was safe. For now.
But if she had taken screenshots of the conversation with the hooker – well, then he was fucked, and not in the nice way where his cock would wind up inside someone.
‘I guess I’ll just have to find out what the situation is,” He thought grimly.
Twinkle wasn’t a tall woman, so he didn’t spot her until he neared their shared workstation. She was bent over her keyboard, working on their queries. Her straight, slightly brownish hair was a little windswept from the effort she was giving to her work.
Arun would have found it cute on any other day on a different girl.
Today though, was a different matter. The sight of his supposed protege filled Arun with a sense of frustration. ‘Was she really engrossed in her work?’ He wondered. ‘Or was she faking it to blindside him with the blackmail?’
A twinge of annoyance pulsed through him. He hadn’t forgotten that she had deleted his entire conversation with the hooker, meaning that he’d never be able to find out what the prostitute had wanted to tell him.
‘What if it had been something important?’ He wondered, as he dropped into his seat. His mind went back to the last part of her final message before the chat was deleted.
‘I’ve been thinking a lot lately, and I just wanted to let you know that -‘
Again, he wondered – what had she wanted to tell him? Had he fucked her so hard she wanted to give him a refund? Or, she could be letting him know that she was free to go at it again this weekend? (perhaps finally in a saree?) Or, was it her way of telling him that she was tired of the sex work life, and was now ready to join him in on the edge of poverty at an IT office?
Whatever it was, he wasn’t about to find out anytime soon.
Sure, he could type out a message to her right away, asking her to resend those messages. But something told him that she wouldn’t be entirely truthful this time. The wording had suggested that she wanted to tell him something delicate.
Asking for her to write to him again would probably get a nicely scripted, curated reply.
He scratched his chin ruefully, and shot a glance at Twinkle.
‘Damn you,’ He thought. It was true that her life had gone haywire as well, now that her parents knew the true extent of her job and the actual pay that was given to them. But blackmailing him after deleting his private conversations… that was fucked up.
Something surprised him about her behaviour though. After she had threatened to report him, he had been expecting a ‘Hell hath no fury’ kind of welcome upon his return, not a ‘Oh, you’re back. Nice.’
Maybe she was playing it cool? For a few minutes, he waited, just in case Twinkle felt like giving an evil villainess speech.
But she didn’t even bother to look away from her screen.
‘Okay. Whatever game izmir otele gelen escort this is, I’m ready to play’ He decided, before turning to his own keyboard. A lump formed in his throat as he realised for the first time that the sexy picture sent by the hooker was gone as well.
Gone forever, most likely.
———————————————————————————————————————————————
For the next hour, the two of them had gone about their usual work. They pretended as if Twinkle’s parents weren’t about to upend her life, and that Arun’s job didn’t lie on a fine balance. They rectified bits of code, Twinkle filled in comments to their development team, and they performed the usual theatrics when the chaiwalla (Tea server, but I guess if you’d seen Slumdog Millionaire, you’d remember the way Anil Kapoor proclaimed ‘A Chaiwalla!’ to the audience) served the tea with just a little too much sugar.
Emails were typed, clients were pacified, new passwords were set for all of Arun’s accounts (he looked at Twinkle out of the corner of his eye as he changed them to gauge her reaction; she didn’t even bother to look over). A normal routine appeared to be prevailing.
To Arun, it seemed that they were going to pretend, like an Indian couple whose bedroom was deader than a doornail, that nothing had happened. That the events of the past hour were just one big ‘Gotcha!’.
He was about to convince himself of this, when Twinkle’s phone finally rang. Arun could have likened it to the sound of the hangman’s toll, except that somewhat inconveniently, Twinkle had set one of AR Rahman’s livelier songs as her ringtone.
Still, he didn’t need to look at the caller ID to know that it was her parents who were calling. He thought with a sudden chill, ‘What if they were coming to fetch her?’
The mere knowledge that Twinkle’s father, thousands of miles away as he was, could potentially show up at their office via the next train was enough to make Arun consider purchasing a bunker for the whole office.
But Twinkle was unperturbed. Glancing at the screen, she allowed the phone to play out its ringtone. The sound of AR Rahman’s ‘Tu Hi Re’ floated around them, oddly lending a sense of calm to Arun’s burdened soul. Twinkle also gently hummed along with the tune while typing out a comment on their code with a flourish. The song slowly wound down, bringing the attempted phone call to an end along with it. When everything was silent again, Twinkle stretched and finally turned to give him her full attention.
“My parents have told me to leave the office immediately,” She said simply. “They had already called a while back, so I figured I’d let them try a little harder to speak to me again” She took a deep breath, keeping her tone very matter-of-fact.
“Apparently, I don’t even have to bother with informing Ishita or asking for the back pay I’m owed.” She shrugged.
“Oh,” Was all that Arun could say. This was expected, of course. About an hour had elapsed since he had spoken to Twinkle’s parents and that was not nearly enough time for them to read ‘A Room of One’s Own’ so as to radically change their views in support of their daughter.
But what was he supposed to do, exactly? He felt bad, of course. It had been a fuck up on his part, revealing information that Twinkle’s parents were not supposed to do. But she couldn’t blame him for that, surely? How was he supposed to know? This wasn’t the sort of thing you hid from your family and hoped would go away, like their last CEO’s affair baby. You hid normal things from your parents, like your gf/bf, your grades, and your feelings.
Besides, a tiny part of Arun was telling him that she was getting what she deserved for snooping into his conversations.
Twinkle regarded him carefully. Perhaps she had intended to look serious, but the smaller size of her body meant that it came off as catlike more than anything. She leaned forward, trying to talk to him in a more confidential manner. But, rather than having the desired effect, it gave Arun a direct glimpse of her cleavage. His eyes widened as he caught sight of her firm, milky white peaks and the valley in between.
‘Short girl but well-endowed boobs’ Noted the caveman part of his mind and filed away next to the folder containing the PS1 Lara Croft.
A look of consternation passed over his face as he wrestled with suddenly being horny and concerned. The spasmic effect it had on his features must have passed scrutiny. Because, after a moment, Twinkle appeared satisfied at his reaction and continued.
“As you would have probably guessed, I’m not going to do any of that. I don’t-” She shuddered. “I don’t want to marry someone who just wants a free maid and a fucktoy.”
‘Ah’ Arun thought. But then, was the nub of the whole Arranged Marriage deal. It was a business transaction, essentially. For the guy, it was all about his salary and as mentioned earlier, the izmir rus escort ability to shout ‘whoopie!’ when Virat Kohli hit a six.
For a girl, it was about her cooking or opinion on families (aka how soon can you pop out kids). Being employed was okay, but sometimes also a negative. (I mean, would you really be able to stand it if the neighbour aunty simpered about how they were so rich that their DIL didn’t have to work?)
It was better these days, of course. Lots of folks were cool with their kids dating provided that they picked the guy/girl and that any ongoing girlfriends/boyfriends were safely dumped and blocked.
Arun ought to know. He had been one of those boyfriends after all.
‘Maybe Trisha never had a choice at all,’ He thought. Just like in Twinkle’s case, Trisha’s parents might have just up and told her one day that this was how it was going to be. That she’d have to marry the guy they had picked for her.
Perhaps she really had meant what she had written in her final letter to him.
“I need you to help me, Arun.”
“Huh?” Arun snapped back to reality. What had Twinkle been saying?
“The guy they’ll find for me,” She said, looking at him anxiously. “He’s going to be terrible. I just know it.” She shook her head. “You’ve spoken to my dad, right? You would have seen what he’s like.”
Arun knew exactly what she meant. Twinkle’s father left that sort of impression on the people he spoke to, even if it was just once.
“Now imagine a guy exactly like that but a lot younger. That’s the kind of person he’ll want for me.”
“That’s a problem, alright,” Arun admitted. A lifetime with someone who believed that if God didn’t intend to allow man to shout at the top of his voice, he wouldn’t have given them speech at all. Well, that would be traumatic.
“So, will you help me?” She asked him. She opened her eyes wider than she normally did. Was it- was she trying to give him the “Bambi look”? It looked more to Arun like she had a speck of dirt in her eye.
‘Ah’ Arun thought. So that was why she was giving him the whole backstory. But why him? Surely, she could ask Ishita? Even Raj would be a better option – he at least had a couple of influential friends. (Arun refused to believe otherwise given how often HR kept ‘forgetting’ to give him a talk over his behaviour).
“Well. Seeing as I don’t have a choice, I guess I have to?” He asked her quizzically. “If I refuse, then you’ll probably send screenshots of my WhatsApp conversations to Ishita, right?” Then, he was struck by an idea.
“You know, if you don’t mind, one of the messages sent by that person is kinda important. So, I’d like it if you could share that screenshot with me.”
Twinkle’s eyes widened.
“You want me to share the screenshots of your conversation with that call girl?” She asked him dumbly.
“Yeah, I think it could be important,” Arun replied, feeling a little embarrassed at asking his blackmailer for a copy of his blackmail.
“Well.” She said, hesitantly. She looked taken aback. “I would, if I could. But the thing is – I didn’t take any screenshots. I just opened the conversation by accident, and what I saw shocked me so much that I just-” She wrung her hands a little
“I deleted all of it. That was when I wrote those angry messages to you.”
“Wait.” Arun said, slowly. “So, you saw my messages and you read all of them.”
“And once you had read them, you felt so upset that you just deleted them?”
“Um…”
“Why would you do that??” Arun asked in exasperation.
Twinkle shrank back a little, looking wounded. “Because I couldn’t believe it!” She exclaimed. A couple of people from the nearby workstations turned their heads.
Ducking down, Twinkle continued in a low voice. “I couldn’t believe that someone like you would be chatting up some slut. And that you’d keep those conversations on your work computer for me to see.”
Well. When she put it like that, Arun did seem to be a terrible person. Who would have thought that the act of directly paying for sex in one go – as opposed to paying for it over time via a tinder subscription and multiple dates – could be so triggering.
Arun said, defensively. “Nobody asked you to snoop around in my chats.”
Twinkle opened her mouth to respond, then abruptly changed her mind. She said “Okay. I’m sorry.” She raised her hands in a gesture of surrender.
“I know it’s messed up. Seriously. But you’re the only one I can trust in this place. That’s why I’m asking you for help.”
She looked at him, captivating him with her pretty eyes. Arun noticed for the first time that they were actually a light shade of brown. Combined with her lighter skin, it gave her an exotic appearance.
“You’re the only one who understands what I’m going through. You have spoken to my parents. If I can, I’ll try to recover those messages for you. But what I want to know is-“
“Will you help me? I’ll do anything for you. Just please, think about it.” She izmit escort looked at him pleadingly.
Arun exhaled. ‘This was going to hurt her’.
———————————————————————————————————————————————
For the rest of that afternoon, Twinkle had been away from her desk and on her phone with her family. Normally, the team leaders get involved if you’re away from your desk for too long. They would search you out and then stand nearby to place well-timed comments on the economy and the withering job prospects of slackers.
Corporate was really charming.
And if your team leader didn’t show up, then the ladies who mopped the floor would come around to inform you of the foundations of civilization would yet go on unshaken if one were to take their calls at their desk without scuffing the floors.
But, strangely enough, nobody approached Twinkle as she paced up and down the corridor near the fire exit. Maybe it was the expression on her face or something about her demeanour, but people sensed that she wanted to be alone.
Arun sat in front of his computer. After having told Twinkle that the sun would collapse upon itself into a deep, deep black hole before he considered helping her, he was feeling a mix of emotions.
There was the part of him that had been exhilarated at being able to ‘hit back’ at Twinkle for what she had done to him. But there was also the more empathetic part, the one which had compared what had happened to his ex, Trisha, and Twinkle.
That part of him was currently acting like an exceptionally disgruntled Ghost of Christmas Past.
“You should help her. She’s just a victim,” The voice in his head was telling him. ‘Maybe’ Arun thought. But he didn’t want to. There was too much bad blood between the two of them. Besides, he was just a random guy. He didn’t sign up to fight off an entire family whose members sounded like Mortal Kombat villains.
As he wrestled with his new passwords (two of which he had promptly forgotten and had to reset a second time), he thought about the plan outlined by Twinkle, in her efforts to sway him.
Her plan was simple. In a couple of days, her parents would send some minor relative to come and pick her up from Bangalore. Once she was with this relative, it would be difficult for her to wriggle her way out without causing a scene. So, to avoid the whole issue, she planned to be somewhere else for a while till this relative gave up and went home.
That’s where he would have come in.
Basically, the idea she had was that she could stay at one of Arun’s friend’s places or at a hotel near Arun’s apartment. That way, she would be out of sight for this relative, while being close enough to someone she knew so that she could call for help if needed.
Once a week or so had passed, Twinkle’s relative would tire of showing up at her apartment every day only to be disappointed by her absence. And since there really wasn’t much to actually take in, within Bangalore, (unless you wanted to see people roleplaying the voyeur & exhibition section of at Cubbon park) he’d return home, sad, unhappy and Twinkle-less forever after.
Arun wasn’t sure what she had planned to do to handle her parents after that, but he had stopped listening around the moment she mentioned ‘staying near Arun’s apartment’. As he had outlined, he wanted to be as far away from Twinkle as possible.
Although he couldn’t avoid her at work, he was prepared to test the limits of mathematical probability of meeting her outside their office building.
He watched as she crossed his line of sight again, walking down the corridor, phone in hand. Her short stature combined with the height of the wall-partitions between different sections of the office meant that he could only see the top of her head bobbing up and down as she walked.
Despite everything, he had to admit that was feeling a begrudging sense of respect for her. After he had refused to help, he had expected her to throw a fit or to threaten to go to Ishita anyway, evidence be damned. But she had merely sat back in her chair and stared numbly at their code. With an absent-minded tap of the mouse to fix an error, she had dived back into work without another word.
‘She’s a strong one,’ He thought. Stronger than he was, recalling the way he’d fallen apart after Trisha had left him.
At around 5.30PM, working hours finally come to an end. You wouldn’t think so, if you saw the number of people who had stayed back to relax, play games or to catch up on work. Free air conditioning, internet and water made a huge difference, Arun supposed. Not to mention that they’d ordered in so often that the kids of restaurant owners nearby often had better phones than them.
Twinkle finally returned from an extended interview with her folks. Arun thought about whether it would be appropriate to tell her to inform her parents that she was going to get a retail job (middle-class families would sooner bankrupt themselves than see their kids get paid for folding clothes. That sort of thing was to kept for free labour inside the house). But then, she didn’t even give him a chance to acknowledge her return. She had laid her head on her desk the instant she sat down, and closed her eyes.