Fiction: There’s a song at the heart of every short story in this book

“There are too many potholes in this city. I can’t wait to move,” a woman of about twenty-three said as she pulled a strand of hair away from her face. She looked beautiful in her black round-framed glasses.

“The place you’re moving to has potholes too,” said the twenty-five-year-old man seated across her at a run-down cafe. He lifted his empty glass slightly and signalled to a waiter, silently requesting a refill.

“But it’s so much more than that,” she grimaced at the plate in front of her, “All the cafes here are dull and their food’s so bland.”

“You used to love this cafe! You claimed that everything on the menu here was a delight to be discovered.”

“But there’s a greater delight to be discovered away from here. If I stay here anymore, I’ll lose my wits. I feel like I’m becoming an old woman. I need to move out, just to be myself again. This time it’ll be perfect.”

“That’s what you said the last four times. Yet here we are again. It’s a pattern that keeps repeating itself.” He took a sip of his water and put the glass down a little too hard, spilling some of it.

“No one gets things right on their first try. Anyone who claims to is a liar trying to sabotage other people’s lives.” She dabbed her mouth with a tissue and crumpled it into the palm of her hand.

“Haven’t you had more than one attempt? How much longer do you intend to pursue this?”

“I promise it’s the last time. I can tell.” They sat in silence for a while. She tapped her index finger on the table in varying rhythms, then stopped. “Will you be following me again this time?” she winked at him.

“It was by pure chance that I found work in all of these cities you’ve dragged me to. The thing about chance, however, is that it runs out. You might have to be on your own this time. That’s why you shouldn’t go.” He clasped both hands tightly around his glass.

“I’ll have to be on my own someday. I’ll miss your company though.” She popped her lighter and lit up a cigarette. “You know I’ve tried thirty-one different types now. I still don’t know which one I prefer the most.”

“What about your boyfriend? How is he taking it?” He passed her the ashtray from a nearby table.

“We’re through. He didn’t want to deal with the distance. I’m happy it’s over. He only ever wore blue shirts and listened to the same goddamn music over and over.”

“Think you’ll still keep in touch with him?” he asked in a straight manner.

“I mean, we broke up.”

‘You still talk to me though.’

“That’s different. We’re different. Oh, I almost forgot, I brought you a parting gift.” She produced a copy of The Catcher in the Rye by JD Salinger. “I tried reading it but couldn’t understand a damn thing that was happening. You’re smart, so please read it for me. I’ve written my new address on the back. You’ll write me a letter, won’t you?”

He accepted the book and nodded in silence. They split the cheque and hugged as they parted. She was leaving by a bus late that night.

“Don’t go, Ruhi,” his voice revealed a desperation that had managed to find a way out of his cold exterior.

“I wish I could stay, but the natural process of things will always take me away from anything that tries to become permanent. Nothing’s permanent.” She let go of their embrace and mustered her best smile that formed a permanent imprint on his memory.

Maybe she was right in labelling the concept of permanence a lie of the highest order. I could’ve sworn I would never forget her smile on that day, yet all these years later I am struggling to remember.

Her family came from a long line of intellectual excellence, with generations achieving acclaim as poets, authors, musicians, lawyers and journalists. All of them had lived in the same city all their lives. While she carried her family’s intellectual heirloom, her profession itself was a novelty. She was a teacher, starting out her career at twenty-one, right around the time I started dating her. She worked at the same school the last four generations of her family had attended, including her and her younger brother.

Agh, her brother! I met the little devil only a couple of times. He was the brightest kid of his age. Heck, he was smarter than people two years older. There was something about the way he used to speak that got on my nerves. It was as if he was always trying not to look down upon me out of sympathy. Bastard. He was, after all, destined to be the pinnacle of the family’s years of achievement and he seemed to know that better than anyone else.

A peculiar thing about her family was that they were crazy about routines. They had the most bizarre ones aimed at “maximising productivity”, and they followed them better than anyone else could hope to. It was all quite intimidating but also incredibly intriguing. Every aspect of their day was precisely planned. However, it all fell apart one day when her brother went missing.

He had been out cycling on his regular route, as he did every Tuesday. I remember the rain was really pouring down that evening, but he wasn’t one to mess up his schedule for anything. He only knew one thoroughly calculated way of living life; anything else was unacceptable. A harsh resolve for someone who was only fourteen at the time.

When he failed to return home on time, his family informed the police that he had gone missing. The officer taking down their report must have been bemused by how sure they were about it. After all, a kid can always be late coming back home. But not him. He had disappeared without a trace. In the end, no one ever found him.

She met me a few days after his disappearance when, to my surprise, she was fifteen minutes late. We broke up that day. She quit her job too. Suddenly, she went from brilliance to being ordinary, but it seemed more like a conscious choice. Then came all the moving to different cities. I had no reason to follow her, yet I did. There was something beautiful about the idea of it that I could never resist. Each time, I tried to convince her and myself that it was only a coincidence, but she knew my bluff better than me. It was strange that my life should plot itself completely around her. Strange and somewhat bizarre. Even though I had told her at that cafe I wouldn’t follow her again, I was always going to. But Ruhi never gave me that chance.

Excerpted with permission from ‘Candy Shop’ in Song of the Day: Stories, Preet Modi, Westland.