CHAPTER 2

Jina, Simran and I have been friends since college commenced. We’re all from different states trying to survive on the outskirts of Pune. Jina and Simran live together, they’re looking for a third roommate after all that drama with Riya. Although my entire class knows about my orientation but these two are among the few people, I confide in about my dating life, which is kinda miserable honestly.

Simran and I have clinical postings together. “So?” she says.

“Yours truly is now single, but maybe not so ready to mingle” I chuckle.

“Oh? aren’t you going to have breakup sex? with your oh-so-hot now ex boyfriend?”

“No thank you, I’m not that desperate.”

“Speaking of desperate, are we having Chhole Bhature for lunch since neither of us cooked?”.

I nod.

“OK, I’ll text Jina”

We’re sitting across a small table for four, eating a plate of chhole bhature and paneer tikka at the only place in these outskirts that sells authentic Delhi style dishes.

“I don’t know how people eat all that fake shit from the neighboring shop”

“Well, not everyone wants to eat your comfort food in their own city. Ofcourse the localites are gonna have it their own way, not everyone is going to behave like how you want them to.”

“Chill Jina, He just broke up”, Sims covers for me, “Although he should be used to it by now”, she adds her sarcasm.

“Haha very funny… It was bound to happen; you know I can’t do long distance relationships.”

“Among other things you can’t do, is commit, Vivan. You guys were happy, I could see how much Ayush liked you every time we people hung out. You just had to go and trash it all. I hope you at least told him the truth and didn’t make some shit again like you have someone else now.”

“Jina, of course I told him the truth, I’m not going to make the same mistake as I did with Riya”

Jina has been in a long-term relationship with her boyfriend. They’re high school sweethearts who have been dating for more than six years now. She’s the oldest among the three of us. She and Riya were good friends before all that stuff happened. She is from Maharashtra-Karnataka border, so she often goes to see him on weekends. They almost look like a married couple when she posts on her Instagram stories. Both of their families know and silently approves of them dating. For all we know they might get married soon! I often ask her how she handles this long distance thing so effortlessly and she just says that when you really like someone and genuinely want to be with them, you end up making the time and energy to be with them, albeit once in a while, but you make sure of it; It doesn’t feel like you’re making an effort to do it, it just happens, naturally.

I get her POV, I do. But that’s if you see a future together. Relationships with a closeted guy can never be like that. If someday, anyone from his family would’ve come to know about us, it’d been the end of it then and there. In a way that is a long-distance relationship itself if time was measured in meters. This expiration date is often what wears me out, a bud that would grow shortly after the sapling was planted but it would wilt before even blooming. Jina says I can’t commit, but what I am to even commit to? Momentary joy? A relationship that has no future? I can’t get married like her, neither with the colonial laws in this country nor with the laws of our very-Asian households where your worth is decided by the society of your parents’ generation.

“Do you wanna have half of my lassi? I don’t think I’ll stay awake in the next lecture if I have this entire glass.”

“Sure, although it’s not like I have any intention of staying awake” we both chuckle."