When Only Love Remains Read Online Free PDF

Hindi isn’t one of his strong points. To date, he messes his gender a few times. He knows he won’t succeed and he can only handle so much rejection. Arundhati used to tell him that he’s scared to step out of his comfort zone, that he’s insecure, and damn right he is (though he never told her that) and why shouldn’t he be? He’s not as good as everyone around him makes him out to be. He doesn’t want to have a dream in his eyes that will be abruptly snuffed out. It hurts and he knows this from experience.
    ‘Get me another gig,’ he says to Sumit.
    ‘Fine. Keep your phone on. If only you would have contacted me earlier I would have got you something for fifteen thousand. I will still try,’ Sumit says and disconnects the line.
    He lights a cigarette and absent-mindedly hums a tune. It’s his version of a Bengali song his father loves. It reminds him of the last conversation he had with his father when he had come down to Kolkata unannounced. Luckily, he was lost looking for Devrat’s flat and had to call Devrat. Devrat threw him off for a good twenty minutes and cleared the flat of empty beer bottles, cigarette butts and the like.
    ‘Is it going anywhere?’ his father had asked Devrat.
    Devrat told him that everything was under control and his career was going in the right direction. His father had nodded and told him, ‘I talked to your dean at Durgapur Engineering College. They are keeping your admission on hold until next year. If you ever want to go back you can, you know.’
    Devrat had nodded. His father had continued. ‘It will be okay with us.’
    ‘Let’s wait for a year.’
    And since then the time has started to tick.
    It helps that he hasn’t asked them for money in the past one year. They still call him and ask if he is okay or if he needs money and he assures them that he is fine and he will go back to the college if nothing becomes of him. Deep inside, he has already given up a little. He’s miserable at times just thinking that he would have lost two years and a girl, and would have to go back to a college he left, doing something he loathes, having left something he loves.
    The worst part is that he never even tried hard enough.
    But for now, Devrat is wondering how those twenty people in Dehradun would react when they see his update. Would they mail him back? A part of him wants to go and check his mail box to see if they are still interested in his music.
    A part of him says they must be.

Five
avanti
    It was supposed to be a long weekend, the weekend she should have ideally spent in nervous jitters about her new job but instead she keeps reading Devrat’s status over and over again. He has announced, ‘I am back. See you soon! J ’, and that can only mean more videos, more gigs, and maybe in a city that she’s in! She has just sent twenty mails to Devrat from her twenty fake accounts to boost his morale and to egg him to do more shows. She knows of Devrat’s limited reach and she thinks she’s doing her bit to encourage him. Who would disappoint twenty enthusiastic fans after all?
    And Devrat did reply to some of her mails. She has maintained an account for quite some time now. She has often mailed him and asked him to come to Dehradun for a performance, at least once from each of those twenty accounts, but hasn’t yet got an answer to that.
    Her train of thought is broken when her phone beeps.
    Have a good first day at work. Papa
    She texts back saying thank you. As she dresses up in crisp formals, looking the best she thinks she possibly can, she is suddenly thinking about her father.
    The more time she spends in the house, the more she finds herself thinking about the sequence of events that must have happened fifteen years ago. Over a period of a few years, her father would have slowly started slipping down the slope of fixating with a mathematical problem he would never solve, her mother would have fought him and his preoccupation, there would be fights and silence and a