Page 118 of 12 Years
‘Yeah. Marketing, branding, business development. We need a head for all that.’
‘I’ll do it.’
‘What about the club?’
‘I have people here. There’s a manager who can handle things. I’ll keep kicking his ass virtually from Dubai.’
‘Cool. When can you join?’
‘When is the next flight out?’
I laughed.
‘I’ve missed you,’ I said.
‘I’ve missed you too, bro. And it’s nice to hear you laugh.’
‘You come here. Maybe I’ll smile more after all. It does get lonely here.’
‘Still no girlfriend?’
‘Nope.’
‘It’s been, what, four or five years, bro? Start dating. You’re not still hung up on that girl in Mumbai, right?’
Yes, I still was. And he’d just reminded me of her.
‘Leave all that. Let’s talk about your move. We need to start your immigration paperwork,’ I said.
How could I tell Mudit about the PTs, or the Payal Triggers, that I still lived with? Under normal circumstances, four to five years is more than enough time for people to recover from a break-up. But here I was, thirty-nine years old now, a fully grown, mature man with grey hair. How could I still get so affected by anything even remotely related to her?
I walked out of my office and went up to Alok, the CTO of the company. ‘I’m leaving,’ I told him. ‘I’ll just work from home for the rest of the day.’
Alok looked at me in surprise. It was only one in the afternoon. I rarely left the office before midnight.
‘Everything okay, Saket?’
‘A bit unwell. I’ll be fine.’
In Dubai, I lived in a one-bedroom flat in a building called Princess Towers, around four kilometres away from the office. Despite the brutal summer weather, I decided to walk back home. I hoped the heat and the sweat would wash away all thoughts of Payal.
‘She probably has a kid by now. Maybe two,’ I mumbled to myself.
It was forty-five degrees centigrade outside, which meant that nobody was foolish enough to be walking on the pavement—except for me, of course. I felt I deserved this punishment for being unable to fix my brain even after so much time had passed. I could move countries, create a companyfrom the ground up and raise funding. I could not, however, figure out a way to stop thinking about Payal. Anything could trigger them—the damn PTs were everywhere. I see a girl in a corporate suit—boom, I’m back in Express Towers.Is Payal still going to office there? What would she be doing all day? Stop it, Saket, she’s married. She’s gone.I’d bring myself back to reality, only to be hit by another PT a few hours later.
‘Any dietary restrictions, sir?’ a server would ask me at a random restaurant. That’s a PT. Guess who has dietary restrictions? Jains. And who’s the Jain who continues to haunt me? Bingo. A glass of white wine was a PT. As was the word ‘chartered accountant’. Wedding scenes in a random movie, couples holding hands, songs Payal and I had heard together … the world was a minefield of PTs, and there was no way I could avoid them.
I pulled out my phone. It was hard to see the screen under the scorching sun. I increased the brightness and opened WhatsApp. I sent a message to Neha: ‘Hi. Sorry for the late reply. Let’s catch up soon?’
‘Hey, no problem,’ Neha replied immediately.
Neha and I had met at Alok’s birthday party at the Barasti Beach club some two weeks ago. She was working in Dubai, and her brother was Alok’s best friend. That’s how she’d landed up at the birthday celebrations. We spoke briefly at the party. She worked in a consulting company and wanted to open her own online bakery business.
Maybe I’m an idiot when it comes to reading signals from women. I really thought she wanted my business advice. I gave her tips about making a business plan. She listened intently, smiling frequently as I spoke.
‘See, a business plan’s like a recipe. Or a movie script. If you have a good plan, a solid script, your dish, or the movie, will turn out well.’
‘I love how you explain things. Thank you,’ she said.
