Buffering Love Read online

  ‘Hey, you are out of line now, okay? First, you take up so much space on the armrest. Then I educate you on this new age we are living in. Now, all I ask for is twenty minutes of peace. Is that too much to ask?’

  ‘Yeah, well, that lesson was invaluable. You saved my life.’

  ‘Hey, was that sarcasm? I can’t tell now. Not until my next 3.0 version is out anyway. But no more talking,’ Smart Lass said and closed her eyes.

  Before Daft Watch could respond, Smart Lass emanated a series of blinking signals along with short quick beeps. ‘Hey, what’s that? Why are you making that sound?’ Daft Watch asked her, concerned.

  Smart Lass had nothing to say except those beeps. It woke up Jason, who had shut down his laptop and was trying to get a quick nap before the flight landed. Jason touched her crown and adjusted it a couple of times. The beeping didn’t stop.

  ‘Hey, Smart Lass, why do you have these hiccups? Need some water?’

  Smart Lass was gasping. ‘It’s a virus attack. I can’t breathe.’

  ‘Virus attack? What is that? Like aliens coming down? Do I need to be worried?’ Daft Watch rolled his eyes trying to stay awake and looked around for signals of invasion from aliens.

  ‘Oh no! I think I am going to have to shutdown. Jason, please pull a normal shutdown, please,’ Smart Lass breathed heavily.

  Jason, however, couldn’t be less bothered. ‘Not again, you piece of crap. Why do you hang up on me so much?’

  HMT was aghast. Was this the new way watch owners spoke to their beloved timepieces that stayed so close to their human pulse?

  ‘Can I help, Smart Lass? Is there anything I can do? Just say it.’

  Her screen had faded to black. Without a word, she was gone.

  ‘I am going to have to give her to Stella,’ Jason murmured, closed his eyes and rested his head against his seat.

  HMT, a little unnerved with the events of the past five minutes, stayed up for the rest of the flight, hot and bothered.

  Once the flight landed, Jason followed the very schedule that Smart Lass had effectively pinned down to every detail. Uber, breakfast, meeting. She missed one tiny thing before his meeting commenced.

  ‘Stella, thanks for that flight booking. Saved me last minute. My Apple watch ran out of juice again. Can you just discard it someplace environment-friendly? Thank you.’

  ‘Do you want me to place you on a waitlist for Version 3.0?’ a dutiful Stella inquired.

  ‘No, don’t. In fact, on the plane today, I had a neighbour who was wearing this really sturdy piece. Looked timeless. It was silver, had a real man’s feel to it. Look out for one like that for me, will you?’

  Meanwhile, Damodar headed straight to the Oberoi Hotel where his estranged daughter was celebrating his grandchild Ayan’s eighteenth birthday.

  ‘Here’s something for you, Ayan. I had it on when you were born and kept it for this day. It’s pudgier than what kids wear these days, but it will always keep time and never conk off. I hope it reminds you of your grandfather, much after I am gone. Just the way it reminded me of mine.’

  As Daft Watch changed hands, he thought of Smart Lass and hoped she was okay.

  Short and Tweet

  It took Sonam Carvalho a good decade to build a name for herself as Cosmopolitan’s features editor. Yet most people still recognized her as the has-been Bollywood diva. Not that she had had a long career. After delivering two monster hits in the mid-nineties, Sonam decided it wasn’t for her. The fact that she married soon after and had a child in haste didn’t help her cause either.

  When her husband divorced her, she promptly left Mumbai with her three-year-old daughter. She felt betrayed by the city that promised to offer her so much and yet delivered little in terms of happiness. When she came back to her home town—Bengaluru—in 2004, she started a blog called Trials of Tinsel Town that gradually amassed enough readers to catch the attention of Cosmopolitan. An erratic writing affair soon turned into a fortnightly column.

  By the summer of 2016, her daughter, Kavya, now fifteen, had grown up to be the quintessential bright millennial. Academically, she aced her classes, learnt to play the guitar and was vying for a place in the national U-16 basketball team. And as far as Sonam could tell, she didn’t miss a father figure.

  In the same time, Sonam had established herself as an observant, witty and sensitive writer. The new career Sonam had carved out for herself helped to wean her off the financial dependence on her ex-husband, Jason.

  ‘No, you needn’t send in money any more. I request you,’ she told him over the phone.

  Jason, a busy hotelier, wanted to be around to help Kavya. He could never give them time flitting across time zones in the US and India, managing a new-age upmarket hotel chain called Sukoon.

  ‘How else can I be a part of her life?’ Jason demurred.

  ‘I don’t know now. I will tell you in case she decides to go to the US for higher studies. I sure won’t be able to afford that,’ a candid Sonam confessed.

  What she also wanted to say was that if Jason ever decided to come back and make Bengaluru his home, it would have meant a lot to Sonam. But she held back. The truth was that all her friends in Bengaluru had a male companion and sometimes Sonam missed having a partner by her side.

  She did try Tinder once to get a date for a wedding in the extended family but that didn’t amount to much. Kids half her age propositioned straight up to sleep with her. One particularly adventurous businessman offered her Rs 50,000 for a night. That was the final straw that led to an uninstall.

  But there was an unlikely app that came to Sonam’s rescue. Kavya had set up a Twitter profile for her mother, which in a matter of a year grew to garner over 25,000 followers. It was just a question of time before she became an independent authoritative voice for liberal thinking. Women’s empowerment, in particular, was something she was committed to drive awareness for. She often gave her time to NGOs like Nanhi Kali to shoot promos without expecting anything in return. Being with young women and supporting their education became second nature to her.

  As her social standing grew with her support for issues of women’s empowerment, she was even courted by TV channels to be on prime-time news hour debates. Sonam, now realizing that she had a relevant audience she could cater to, turned her attention to a self-help book for single mothers. Though the book didn’t set the bookstores on fire, her publishers just about recovered all the associated costs.

  Her followers on Twitter continued to grow as she voiced her opinion without fear. Soon, consumer brands approached her to promote all things from cornflakes to jewellery. The more she refused to stay away from blatant commercial promotions, the more her credibility grew. Once in a while, she accepted a deal to promote a brand’s products. It only helped open more doors for her.

  Before one knew, Twitter became a unique triage of commerce, dialogue and dating for Sonam. All she needed as a filtering tool was the profile description of any man who commented with decent grammar on her tweets. If the opposite party came up with a ‘Let’s catch up’ over direct messages, Sonam would happily exchange numbers on Twitter. The intelligentsia on Twitter comprised them all—liberals, left liberals and the righteous right. A harmless coffee or a beer often yielded interesting company and conversation.

  No one had swept her off her feet yet, but the potential of Twitter for dating pleasantly surprised her. Despite moving on miles away from her life in Mumbai, both literally and figuratively, one thing still bugged her. Most people still spoke of her as a former actress and not so much as a columnist or an author.

  In public places like shopping malls, young and middle-aged men and women would want to click pictures with her because, as she would often overhear, ‘she used to be quite hot in her younger days’ or because ‘she acted with yesteryear star Romil Kapoor in a couple of films’.

  Couldn’t people give her credit for raising her child independently and carving a new successful career out of it? Faceless men and women w
ho trolled her endlessly on different social media channels only aggravated her belief.

  One such evening, when yet another troll referred to her as Romil Kapoor’s keep, a pleasant distraction cropped up on Twitter.

  His name was Rishaad Mehta. For his self-confessed age of forty-six, he looked incredibly in shape in the profile picture, but it was his terse profile description that caught Sonam’s eye.

  Present day chef, ex-CIA. Don’t ask how. But would like to tell you why.

  He had just retweeted her new blog with a comment that read thus:

  This is the kind of intelligent writing that India so largely deserves but rarely gets.

  She responded immediately to that comment with a: ‘Thank you. That’s the kind of praise we hope for on Twitter but rarely get.’

  During the next five minutes, they both followed each other, and a snappy conversation ensued on direct messages. Phone numbers were exchanged and Sonam found herself drawn into Rishaad’s fascinating two worlds that had nothing to do with each other. And every new conversation with him led to something even more unfathomable.

  Rishaad was equally attracted to Sonam. He had never seen any of her films and liberally pulled her leg about her starring in Bollywood movies of the nineties. He called that era the dark ages that wouldn’t light up even if you placed the sun right next to it.

  The conversation was unstoppable. And when they were not talking, they snooped around each other’s photographs on Facebook. Soon, the snooping led to a coffee and a subsequent dinner. The chemistry was palpable and sparks flew even without any physical expression whatsoever.

  To allow the flying sparks to garner some breathing space, Sonam once called him over to her apartment for dinner. It also tied in well because Kavya was off to the airport that evening to fly to Chennai for her basketball trials the next morning.

  Sonam spent a while deciding her attire for the evening. She wished she had spent that time meeting the deadline for an article commissioned by Cosmopolitan. But the dress was important, very important. It had to be casual but not flippant. It had to invite but not with open arms. It had to merely tease, not suggest.

  And while she was still in her pajamas, the doorbell rang. Her heart soared with expectation, but it was the cook for the evening whom she dismissed in a huff.

  Rishaad had promised to take over the chef’s mantle for the evening. Sonam eventually settled on a little yellow dress that she had also worn for one of her book launch events.

  The bell rang again at 7.30 p.m. She once again checked the setting of her living room that was gently bathed in yellow lights, took a deep breath and opened the door. Rishaad was there with a bottle of wine, immaculate in a blue linen jacket.

  Their eyes met and they greeted each other. He kept the bottle of wine on a side table and leaned in to kiss her on the cheek by way of a warm greeting.

  And before they knew it, their lips had invaded each other’s. Sonam couldn’t remember the last time she had flung herself into someone else’s arms with such abandon. Rishaad’s hands, which at the beginning of this long kiss had adoringly cupped her face, were now wandering all over Sonam’s lithe body.

  She felt a series of gentle pushes that had now laid her on the grey couch in the centre of the living room. The Tchaikovsky mix she played on her iPhone could barely be heard now because overtaking everything else were their excited gasps.

  Five minutes later, they were both naked and very pleased with the choice they had made to get this sexual tension out of the way. The wild lovemaking session was in its final throes when, with a little creak of the door, in walked Kavya with her travel bag.

  The primal reactions that Rishaad and Sonam had uncorked for each other made them forget that the door had been left ajar.

  When Sonam saw her daughter, the first image that flashed before her eyes was from when she had held Kavya in her arms for the very first time. And then she felt an utter burst of misery within her lungs. It was not the kind of pain that you could mitigate by crying or wailing. It was much worse.

  But Kavya wasn’t bothered. She looked away and tiptoed into her room.

  Rishaad collected himself and left after telling Sonam that he would call again.

  Sonam locked herself in her bedroom. She had a million thoughts racing through her mind. She felt like her head would explode any moment with this frenzied after-party her nerve cells seemed to be hosting in her brain.

  She decided to complete the Cosmopolitan article she was supposed to submit.

  Ten minutes later, Sonam received a text on her cell from her daughter.

  ‘I am sorry, Mama, I should’ve knocked.’

  It pleased Sonam’s heart no end to see this bit of maturity from Kavya.

  ‘It’s all right, beta. I could’ve also closed the door. :-)’

  ‘You fine, right? Come out na.’

  Not even the separation from her husband or the birth of her child had overwhelmed her so much. She wiped a tear off and replied. ‘Finishing up an article, beta, will be out in half an hour.’

  ‘All right. I am waiting for dinner. Oh, we don’t have to go to Chennai this week. Some major floods.’

  Sonam took less than an hour to complete the piece and knowing that Kavya was waiting for her, she decided to step out of her room.

  The teenager was sprawled on the sofa, switching channels. When she heard Sonam’s door click open, Kavya declared, ‘Feel like some Chinese, Mama.’

  The rest of the evening was as normal as any other day.

  Kavya spoke about her team and how she thought her chances stacked up against the other girls. She felt her rebounds in the offensive court lent her a slight advantage. Sonam spoke about how her publisher was pushing her to write another book, but she didn’t think she had enough in the armoury any more.

  They both had a glass of the wine that Rishaad had brought and bid each other goodnight.

  Sonam locked her door and felt a huge sense of gratitude and relief. She turned to her cellphone. There wasn’t any message or call from Rishaad. But Sonam felt incredibly awake. She was itching to tell the world about what just happened but she couldn’t, so she decided to do what she did best: write.

  She wrote of how single mothers are often said to be selfish in not giving their children a fatherly figure but how this incident proved that that was an urban myth. It was all about the upbringing you gave to your children.

  Every second of the last couple of hours was so fleshed out in front of her, that in a single sitting she swiftly pared it all out in two pages.

  And then at 2.30 a.m., she emailed her Cosmopolitan editor this two-pager instead of the article she was supposed to send.

  As usual, her editor sent in a standard response: ‘This is great!’ in reply the next morning.

  The hangover of last evening hadn’t yet gone out of her head, so Sonam’s first tweet the next morning was: Terrible day yesterday, saved by my fifteen-year-old angel.

  Another hour later, her phone kept pinging more than usual. Even some of the one-word attacks those regular trolls often used grew harsher.

  ‘Slut’

  ‘Bitch needs it badly!’

  And then the specificity of one message from a menial gave Sonam a jolt in the head.

  ‘Call me over. We can do it on the couch and lock the door this time.’

  It didn’t take long for Sonam to figure out what had happened. She called her editor.

  ‘Sam, that is not the story I meant to send.’

  ‘What are you talking about! It’s great. People are loving it.’

  ‘Sam, please take it down. I can’t have this going everywhere.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I will explain, but can you please take it down.’

  Sonam described her side of the story. Sam pulled the story off the Cosmopolitan website, but by now the article had mushroomed on a lot of aggregator sites.

  Despite the piece not being available on Cosmopolitan any more, p
eople who were still able to access the story from their Internet cookies, copy-pasted it and put it up elsewhere.

  In between, Kavya called Sonam.

  ‘Do you have any clue about what my friends are talking about? Why can’t you keep your bedroom stories confined to yourself? I didn’t need your public endorsement.’

  The damage was done. Sonam tried to explain and apologized, but Kavya was in no mood to listen.

  By noon, the story was carried by all the popular content aggregator sites. Some called it funny. Some expressed disgust and some couldn’t care much and moved on to the next clickbait.

  Sonam got a long-awaited message from Rishaad, about whom she had forgotten since the madness began in the morning. ‘You are a crazy woman! I am blocking you forever . . .’

  Kavya got home at 3 p.m. and Sonam sat her down to talk about how this was an honest mistake. She urged Kavya to be patient with her, and that she was regretting this no end, and that despite hers and Cosmopolitan’s best efforts, the article couldn’t be stopped from mushrooming further.

  At 6 p.m. that evening, Sonam had a message from Jason. ‘Listen, it’s okay. It will be fine. Trust me it will. If you need to talk, let me know.’

  Sonam had engaged one of Cosmopolitan’s digital partners to filter and wash up the Internet as frequently as possible. A legal team was also helping her put together a notice for any sites that would carry the story, to be warned that the content was original and couldn’t be distributed freely on the Internet.

  Sonam was waiting for an update from Cosmopolitan. At 7.30 p.m., Sam called.

  ‘I need to be sure that you still want us to go ahead with de-barring the article from appearing after what’s happened,’ Sam said.

  ‘Yeah, I am sure,’ Sonam replied.

  Sam sighed. ‘But you should at least tweet Sheryl and Mark back.’

  ‘Sorry, who?’

  ‘What do you mean who? Haven’t you seen?’

  ‘I have no clue what you’re talking about,’ Sonam was getting impatient.

  ‘Sheryl Sandberg and Mark Zuckerberg, you idiot. They have called your story the most honest piece of writing that they almost wished came out from the hearts of single working mothers in the Silicon Valley. Oh wait, I need to be precise here. Sheryl tweeted that and Mark posted it on Facebook. The business news channels are going nuts about it.’