Chinnar: a woman who snatches a man who belongs to another woman, in order to satisfy her thirst, her ego or her conviction.
A cell phone is a great invention. It serves many purposes of communication, including petrification.
Her phone beeped.
It could have been a telemarketing message, so it didn't appeal to her much. Besides, she already had a date tonight.
She was getting into her attire. A revealing outfit would do. Some lipstick along with it, and her date would go perfectly, perhaps with the promise of another date.
She was a smart girl.
Her phone beeped again.
This time it caught her freaked-out attention.
The text: Why am I an egotistic bastard?
It was the least expected message from the least expected person.
The reply: Because you are an egotistic bastard.
The text: What are your plans tonight?
The reply: Nothing much.
The text: Wanna go to TC? I am in Delhi. Just landed back from Helsinki today
She stared at the screen.
The reply: Where is your girlfriend?
There was a pause.
The text: She left for home on Wednesday. And anyways she is not my girlfriend. You don't have to pass that jibe at me regularly
And there it was.
Alice had left Wonderland.
The reply: Okay... pick me up at 9 from Hauz Khas Metro
The text: ok
Jill looked at herself in the mirror.
Then she messaged her pre-existing date.
Got some trouble in hostel... can't see you tonight... will catch you next weekend.
Another man disappeared from the evening.
Just like that.
The History
Once upon a time, there was a guy who was her friend with benefits. Or to be honest, she used to madly love him but always knew that he would never be hers. But she hoped and kept him warm and would answer him on a whim whenever he needed her. He left India and would call her whenever he would come back and she would go running to him. She didn't know what she was getting out of this but they were 'friends'
Close and caring friends, indeed.
The guy was Jack and she was Jill.
They played quite often until one day Jill called Jack and Jack told her that he was in a live-in relationship with Alice.
So Jill said:
“Congrats and best of luck.”
The next day she bought a dagger.
She decided that someday she would gift it to Alice.
Jack went back and he went bad
He forgot Jill.
Jill hated Jack for forgetting her.
She found Jack online every day on Gtalk, but Jack never pinged.
Never cared for Jill.
The green dot remained there.
Green.
Green.
Green.
The fucking green dot.
So one day she explored the idea of expressing her anger.
you are an egotistic bastard
Jack didn't reply.
Jill could see the green dot constantly, proof that Jack was online, but an hour passed and he still didn't reply.
Jill signed off.
She opened the cupboard and took out the dagger.
Dust had begun covering its sharpness.
She cleaned it carefully.
Because one day she had to gift it to Alice.
TONIGHT
Jack texted her almost 1 month after that message
She avoided the skimpily clad outfit.
Instead, she wore a top with a netted back and trousers that were tight both to wear and to take off.
She wandered through the shades of lipstick she owned and finally concluded:
No lipstick at all.
She took out the dagger again.
Polished it.
And, almost playfully, tested its sharpness against her hand.
A thin line appeared.
Blood.
And she remembered the ironic words of one of her favourite songs:
And you bleed just to know you're alive.
Jack had once sung that song to her.
Right into her ears.
She had heard his voice with his heartbeat underneath it, the two sounds somehow finding the same rhythm.
She could still feel it in her nerves.
Today she knew Jack would never sing it to her again.
She put the dagger away.
Then she took the Metro to Hauz Khas.
Jack was late.
Like always.
When he finally arrived, Jill was standing on the other side of the street.
Jack saw Jill.
Jill saw Jack.
For one ridiculous second she wanted to run away.
But today was the day she was supposed to deliver the dagger.
So she stood there.
Indifferent.
Or performing indifference.
Jack helped her cross the wide street, and then they got into the car.
She didn't feel like looking at Jack.
Instead she discovered Humpty and Dumpty sitting in front.
“Jill... this is Humpty and Dumpty. My friends.”
The mandatory nice-meeting-you conversation followed.
Then Jack took out his BlackBerry.
Alice.
Alice was on the screen. She had dropped a text.
White.
Slim.
Definitely somewhere in Wonderland.
Jack didn't respond
Jill knew that one day Jack would become a permanent part of that Wonderland too.
And then he would baffle her completely.
But before one day there was today.
And today Jack was in not in love.
Humpty and Dumpty sat happily in front while Jill tried to break the ice by talking about stupid serious affairs in which she had neither interest nor empathy.
“So... you and Alice are serious?”
Jack roared with all the confidence of a lion:
“Stop fucking around. You know me and her have gone down the drain so many times. I wish it was not like this but it is.”
“Outstanding.”
A Jillian smile.
How fake can a smile be?
Dumpty was a nice guy.
A decent one.
Humpty wasn't that decent.
So Jill used him.
The four idiots finally reached TC.
TC was a sexy place because it gathered a sexy crowd. It allowed people to smoke wherever they liked, and it played rock music—psychedelic, punk, classic, rock and roll, blues.
It did not play Justin Bieber or Taylor Swift.
Therefore, it was a sexy place.
Between the parking lot and the pub, Jill asked Jack:
“How do I look?”
Jack was a friend.
Jack answered honestly.
“Your look bigger.”
Another smile.
So many fucking smiles tonight.
Inside the pub, between glasses and beer bottles, through noise and a smoke-drenched floor, Jack and Jill stood amidst awkward sensibilities and a lost friendship.
And whatever else had once been attached to that friendship.
Jill used Humpty.
Humpty went crazy and horny.
She could glimpse his hope of getting laid tonight.
So she stopped using him.
Then she used a German.
The German asked for her number.
She gave it to him.
And immediately thought of Jack.
Jack was patrolling the pub.
She couldn't dance with him like old times.
Every sentence she uttered—to Jack or anybody else—had the same epigraph and the same epilogue.
Alice and the BlackBerry
Whenever Jack was around, she could see a throatless magician.
The magician drank mercury from a beer bottle.
Every time Jack touched her, a little mercury spilled onto her skin.
And every time it touched her, her skin became transparent.
She wondered whether Jack could see through it.
Whether he could see everything she was desperately trying to hide.
After midnight, the four idiots found somewhere to crash.
They sat with cigarettes.
Jill kept staring at Jack's legs.
Ugly legs.
Legs made for playing football and walking away from women.
Then she felt heat against her knee.
For once, there was no metaphor.
Ash.
Burning her.
Jack brushed it away.
Carefully.
Like Captain America arriving several movies too late.
This time she saw the Red Queen.
Snow fell over her skin.
Humpty and Dumpty eventually disappeared somewhere.
And Jack and Jill were alone.
Not entirely alone.
Alice was there.
She existed inside the BlackBerry.
Inside Jack's sentences.
Inside Jill's head.
Perhaps Alice was the third person in every room Jack and Jill entered that night.
Jack looked at her.
Jill looked at Jack.
Neither spoke.
They had become extraordinarily good at these uncomfortable silences.
They shared a cigarette.
Nothing else.
Not yet.
Then Jill said:
“Come with me.”
“Where?”
“My hostel.”
He looked at her.
She knew exactly what he was thinking.
“A girls’ hostel?”
“No, Jack. A maximum-security prison.”
He laughed.
“Can I even enter?”
“That is your problem.”
And perhaps it was.
Or perhaps Jill had decided that tonight all problems belonged to somebody else.
By the time they reached the hostel, the night had acquired that peculiar quality Delhi sometimes gets after midnight.
The city was still awake, but it seemed to be awake illegally.
Jack followed her.
Jill could sense his disbelief even without looking at him.
This was not supposed to happen.
Men like Jack were supposed to imagine girls' hostels as mysterious places full of perfume, satin sheets and women walking around in various stages of undress.
Jill almost wanted to warn him.
Reality was considerably less erotic.
She opened the door.
The room smelled of new paint.
The shades were turquoise.
The air was thick with the cheap stench of marijuana mixed with Classic Milds.
But there was electricity too.
A sexual tension that had travelled all the way from TC and entered the room before either of them.
Jill poured herself a drink.
Her usual monstrosity.
Vodka.
Rum.
Then Coke.
Jack stared at the glass.
“What the fuck is that?”
“A drink.”
“You've mixed vodka and rum.”
“Yes.”
“And Coke.”
“Excellent observational skills.”
“That is disgusting.”
She took a sip.
“So am I.”
He stopped smiling.
For half a second, she regretted saying it.
Then Jim Morrison rescued her.
His poster stared down from the wall, looking completely out of place.
Jim had spent decades being dead and still somehow looked more alive than either of them.
Jill looked around her room as though seeing it through Jack's eyes for the first time.
The newly painted walls were whitewashed with a tint of blue.
A plywood cupboard.
A bed.
One chair.
Lipsticks.
Hair clips.
Clothes.
Underwear.
Tampons.
Unwashed laundry.
The room resembled a cheap Midwestern motel that had somehow been transported to Delhi and populated by a woman.
Jack looked around.
Jill watched him looking.
She suddenly became conscious of everything.
The clothes.
The smell.
The bed.
Her body.
Alice.
Especially Alice.
“You imagined something else?” she asked.
“What?”
“A girls' hostel.”
“No.”
“Liar.”
He smiled.
She lit a Classic Mild.
Jim Morrison continued staring at them.
Maybe Jim knew.
This is the end, beautiful friend.
She almost laughed.
Of course it was.
There could not have been a more appropriate fucking soundtrack.
They talked.
Or pretended to.
Music was safer.
Jim Morrison.
Pink Floyd.
Guns N' Roses.
Radiohead.
The bands people use when saying what they actually feel would be too embarrassing.
Jack picked through her collection.
Jill watched his fingers.
She remembered those fingers.
That was the problem with friends with benefits.
The body has memory.
It is considerably less disciplined than the brain.
Alice remained somewhere between them.
Invisible.
Omnipresent.
Jill hated her.
Jill didn't know her.
Perhaps that made hating her easier.
She wondered whether Alice knew what Jack was doing tonight.
Probably not.
Then Jill wondered whether that made her the villain.
The dagger suddenly felt very heavy despite being hidden away.
Jack sat beside her.
Their shoulders touched.
Neither moved.
The room seemed smaller.
The marijuana.
Classic Milds.
Vodka.
Rum.
Coke.
Jim Morrison.
Jack.
Jill.
Alice.
Everybody was in the room now.
“Why did you message me?” Jill asked.
Jack shrugged.
“Felt like it.”
That hurt more than it should have.
She wanted something dramatic.
I missed you.
I couldn't stop thinking about you.
Alice isn't you.
Instead:
Felt like it.
That was Jack.
And perhaps that was why she loved him.
Because Jack never promised her the story she kept writing for him.
She wrote it anyway.
The light went off.
Darkness was easier.
Faces became less important.
So did relationships.
Jack touched her.
Jill closed her eyes.
There it was again.
Pearls flew out of her womanhood
Only this time she allowed it to spill. Spill all over herself. All over Jack
She kissed him.
The kiss melted whatever remained of the distance between them.
There was desperation in it, but Jill knew that the desperation belonged mostly to her.
For Jack this was desire.
For Jill it was evidence.
That was the tragedy.
She wanted every touch to prove something it had never promised to prove.
They disappeared into each other for a while, into the darkness, into an old familiarity neither had really forgotten.
And Jill allowed herself the luxury of pretending.
Pretending Alice didn't exist.
Pretending tomorrow didn't exist.
Pretending Jack had come because somewhere underneath everything he had missed her exactly as much as she had missed him.
For a little while, the lie was beautiful.
Afterwards she curled herself against him.
Jack's breathing became slower.
Jill remained awake.
She could feel his heartbeat.
And suddenly she remembered the song again.
And you bleed just to know you're alive.
Once he had sung it into her ear.
Tonight there was no song.
Only the heartbeat.
It belonged to him.
That was perhaps the cruelest thing about bodies.
You could hold one against yourself and still own absolutely none of it.
Jill looked towards the BlackBerry.
Alice.
Wonderland.
The Red Queen had returned.
Chinnar.
A woman who snatches a man belonging to another woman to satisfy her thirst, her ego or her conviction.
Jill looked at Jack sleeping beside her.
Had she snatched him?
No.
That was the funny part.
Jack was going back.
Alice would wake up somewhere in Wonderland and Jack would still belong to her.
Jill had stolen nothing.
Except a night.
Perhaps a few hours.
Maybe that was all a chinnar ever really stole.
Time.
She reached towards the cupboard.
The dagger was there.
Still waiting for Alice.
Jill took it out and looked at it.
Then at Jack.
Then at the BlackBerry.
For the first time she wondered whether Alice deserved the dagger at all.
Alice hadn't done anything.
Alice hadn't made Jack come here.
Alice hadn't invited him into this bed.
Alice hadn't forced Jill to cancel another date.
Alice wasn't responsible for the green dot on Gtalk.
Or the unanswered messages.
Or the songs Jill remembered.
Or the fact that Jack could touch her without loving her and Jill could love him without being able to stop him touching her.
Perhaps she had spent too long sharpening the dagger for the wrong person.
She placed it underneath Jack's pillow anyway.
Not because she wanted him to give it to Alice anymore.
It had become symbolic.
A gift from Jill to herself.
A reminder that every beautiful thing tonight had an edge.
She curled back into Jack's arm.
For a few seconds she travelled backwards into her childhood.
The crying woman.
The husband.
The unknown mistress.
Chinnar.
Jill smiled.
Then she looked at the BlackBerry.
Alice smiled back from Wonderland.
Jill smiled again.
Jim Morrison watched from the wall.
Jack slept.
And Jill finally understood the joke.
She had spent the entire night trying to steal a man who had never belonged to her.
And the only thing she had actually managed to steal—
was herself.
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