How A Chetan Bhagat Bestseller Fixed My Love Life

There might be many lessons you learn from a Chetan Bhagat bestseller, but none more necessary than this.

by Gaurav Deka

That evening when S called up to tell me that he’d like to come down to Guwahati to meet my parents, I threw myself into a fit of panic and hysteria (better defined as grade2 chrono-phobia). I didn’t know how I would face the future now. How would I break the news to my parents? Three months after my break-up, I was already headlong into another tempestuous affair (not just an affair, S had proposed to me by then)! At least that was the most probable impression they could gather, I thought. How could I let them know that I was never into a ‘relationship’ but only chasing it for the last two years? I didn’t know how to explain, should I tell them about S’s proposal? I didn’t know which parts to disclose and which to keep, until I found myself in a book shop, the same evening, surrounded by rows and pillars of Chetan Bhagat’s latest bestseller. Columns of copies rising up like a pantheon in the middle of nowhere — pastel green faces with fiery orange tongues screaming out loud, una-nomen in chorus: Half girlfriend. As if challenging me for a duel. Or, the only one word clue to the secret code that could save me.

I had called up A and broke into him all my nervousness and anxiety. Nothing but retail therapy would work best at the moment, he said. For I was immune to all other kinds of therapies, being a therapist myself! We’d gone to Sohum Shoppe and in a fit of buying chocolates and books, had picked up CB’s Half Girlfriend. A had bought one common copy for both of us and giggled all the while on our way back, mocking the passages, flipping through the pages as we walked under the yellow streetlights. Later I had joined him company and trying to sound extra-snobbish, had told A how good-literature never sells and that he too must start writing Campus Love stories now. When I dropped him at his place, A finally stopped giggling and expressed his disappointment about the whole situation: how disgustingly shameful it was for writers like him who’d spent years studying the art of fiction writing. I, however, was neither interested in the book nor the figures. Neither the movie that would follow nor the fate of new Indian writing. What kept me hooked was the title — Half girlfriend and if there could be a nomenclatural modification of the same I could use.

It’s almost a feat, he’d exclaim, that he’d been able to ‘be’ with me for as long as a year. I had then found it a completely sane idea. There was nothing to argue or to ask more. I was ready to be his — I did not know the name then — Half-boyfriend.

Last year, on the 31st of January I was single. Or in Bhagat’s words, Half-Single (if that can be an extrapolation to his brand-etymology). I was deeply in love with someone who had a clinical aversion to physical intimacy when it came to his partner. He’d rather sleep with unknown men he’d meet on dating sites and not see their faces again. Yes, it was bizarre. But then I’d say I was one of those Toni Morisson’s Jazz lovers who’d do almost anything just to keep the feeling going (other than killing the object of your love!). It was one of those pseudo-platonic relationships where we’d sort out, calculate and jot down the dates of the month we could meet. We’d go out for movies, talk about the world, our ambitions, rate boys on the road, do the groceries, hold hands around empty streets, peck each other in times of desperate need (on my request and asking), go back home, watch The Golden Girls or any random episode from a popular sitcom online and go off to sleep with careful, precisely measured distance separating our limbs and faces. One of those Saturdays I’d come to his place to find the door latched from inside; the sound of breaths and moans seeping in through the gap below. I’d sit patiently and try not to imagine. Later the door would open and the stranger would walk out. I’d wait till he got dressed and we too would walk out silently, maybe for a weekend dinner without uttering a word of what I’d seen or how I must have felt. It was supposed to be absolutely normal. While coming back we’d again hold hands and exchange romantic confessions — how important I am to him ‘emotionally’ (that would be specified) and that this way he’d never grow bored of me, which he usually does, that too very easily. It’s almost a feat, he’d exclaim, that he’d been able to ‘be’ with me for as long as a year. I had then found it a completely sane idea. There was nothing to argue or to ask more. I was ready to be his — I did not know the name then — Half-boyfriend.

In October when S and I met for the first time in Green Park, I couldn’t tell him about the kind of half-singlehood state I had once lived through. I only let him assume that I was absolutely single, broken off with my previous partner on mutual (dis)agreements, apparently because our ideologies didn’t match — that was more of a convenient as well as conventional way of explaining a split. I was afraid if I told him the entire story on our first date he’d take me as a weirdo. By the next date (at a restaurant in Hauz Khas) S was already in love with me and unable to confess directly, had texted A: I’m kind of smitten by your friend. A had giggled over the phone endlessly and had told me that I’m quite a seducer. The next evening we met again at a restaurant in Defence Colony and S had told me how he was totally in love with me the moment he saw me the other day at Hauz Khas. I wanted to ask him if ‘totally’ covered both body and mind. Only now that I understand how it had grown into a psychological conditioning borrowed from my ex-half-boyfriend.

Hours into the night, from Defence Colony we took a cab to his place and celebrated with a bottle of port champagne. I didn’t know when I drifted off to sleep later in his bed. In the morning I found his arms around me. His body pressed to my back, his lips pressed to the back of my neck. I smiled at the fulfilment of fate, with all my heart — the thing I was dreading the most had finally come to an end. Oh, how relieved I felt that moment! The next few days, while roaming around Delhi, whenever with A, he’d keep teasing me how I’d grown a pair of wings like one of those Red Bull cartoons since I’d met S. And how my feet failed to touch the ground. On the other hand S would keep whatsapping, how the other side of bed still smelled of me and that he couldn’t bear to sleep alone anymore. Every text message a moment of relief — he wants me full!

So, that evening, after buying CB’s book and cribbing about the fate of literary fiction writers in India, when I returned home I ultimately found the code to set the ball in motion in front of my parents. I told them about my ex-half-boyfriend and how such concepts did exist. I could show them Chetan Bhagat’s book as a well researched, valid model turned into fiction. So many other writers were doing the same: exploring alternate lifestyle ideas and narratives. Well researched books on topics like polyamory, partner swapping and open relationships were already doing the rounds: The Ethical Slut by Dossie Easton, The Price of Dick by Dan Skinner, The Ultimate Guide to Kink by Tristan Taormino, to name a few. My parents had never heard of these writers or of their books, but who doesn’t know Chetan Bhagat? This is how at last I not only convinced my parents about S being my one and only full-boyfriend, but also found the perfect profound explanation to the disastrous, almost self-sabotaging relationship I was living with my ex-half-boyfriend. Later, I called up A and told him how grateful I should be to Chetan Bhagat.

Gaurav Deka studied medicine at Gauhati Medical College and Hospital. When not writing, he is a practicing psychotherapist. His fictions, poetry and reviews have been published in The Open Road Review, The Tenement Block Review, Café Dissensus, The Four Quarter Magazine, DNA-Out of Print, Northeast Review, and The Solstice Initiative, among others. His fiction To Whom He Wrote From Berlin won The Open Road Review Short Fiction Contest, 2014. He lives in Delhi, India.