Everything happens for a reason. That’s what they say, don’t they? A bird shits on you before an important presentation because that shirt you were wearing was actually so see-through and you only realised it when you went back home and changed. Or you miss your flight because there was going to be a drunk man who pees on passengers and you were going to be seated right next to him. And, so, fate intervenes and sprinkles something bad in your life to prevent something much worse from happening – and when you look back, you have to be grateful for the bad stuff, too.

That’s how I have always explained away the disasters of my life. But there is no way to explain something like this happening without it seeming like the gods are doing it for some mirch-masala, for TRP, or for some cheap entertainment.

“So, how have you been?” Vatsal asks as I stare at him, mouth flung open, the opposite of the Cool Girl energy I should be channelling right now. “Clearly your preference in chips hasn’t improved,” he says, pointing to the basket in my hand topped with yellow Lays.

I scratch my head, willing my brain to form a sentence. Something, I plead. Anything will do.

“It is the best flavour,” I reply, flatly. “I’m doing good, busy with work. What about you?” I say, the palm of my right hand stretching out towards him, accidentally poking him in the stomach. I move back an inch to introduce a safe distance between us. “Still in London? I mean, not at the moment, obviously,” I ask, masking my nervous stutter with a forced giggle. Internally, all vocabulary across my two spoken languages has been wiped clean out of my system; the only thing that remains is a single phrase. What the fuck.

Here’s the thing people don’t tell you about unexpected run-ins: your mind instantly activates autopilot. You think you’re fully there, more alive than ever before, so fully present with your faculties intact. But that is bullshit – I have no idea what I’m doing, what I’m saying. My brain has left processing this to a later time, while my mouth makes up sentences that can half-pass as coherent. Because …

Because he is not supposed to be here, or in my city, or in India. He’s especially not supposed to be at my 24Seven, within ten feet of me, close enough to see the new pimple that has sprouted up on my head just this morning. And yet, here he is: live, in flesh, as striking as I remember him, with a few white hairs. Probably too stressed. Possibly not sleeping well. His face, too, is fuller – his once-scrawny jaw has some meat on it, like life has primed him with soft fat to keep him warm. Dresses the same, stands with his left knee bent, his hand on his hip just the same. Beautiful, all the same. Still head-turning enough to make me pause if I ran into him at the mall. Still compelling enough to be an instant right swipe. Still breathtaking enough to make it all seem worth it – even though the cut still bleeds every time I so much as run a finger over it.

Stop it, Naina, snap out of it, I scold myself.

“It’s been a while, but no, London’s in the past. Back to India for good now,” he replies. “Oh, wow, how come?” I ask, like it’s a totally casual fact to me, that he’s back for good. He shrugs like it’s no big deal – like he hasn’t spent the last two years walking by King’s Cross, Instagram-storying his morning coffee in the foreground on occasion. (Thank god for fake accounts.)

“Same old story, I watched Swades on Independence Day and instantly put in my papers. You know, mitti ki khushboo and all.” Classic Vatsal. “No, I’m kidding, of course. It was actually Lakshya.”

Another click in the puzzle – his favourite movie – and he’s clearer in my mind. I’d forgotten this piece, but there it is: this fact presented to me again, the picture forming right back up in my head. And with it comes the barrage of related and unrelated strokes of remembrance – how he once asked me to guess what movie he was watching and I guessed Lakshya, how shocked he’d been when I was correct (“Oh my god, do you have cameras in my room?”), how he’d once sung “Agar Main Kahoon” for me but changed mohabbat to naffrat and then pinched my cheeks when I’d scrunched up my nose in defence. How we’d almost kissed then. How many times we’d almost kissed until we actually did.

“But it was about time,” he says. “I think I’ve reached my saturation of how many fancy coffees I can have that would justify living in a four-by-four and working with white men who won’t learn how to pronounce your name even if they see you every single day.”

I nod like I get it. “So what now?”

“Wow, you sound just like my dad,’ he chuckles as he sifts through my basket, rummaging through the stuff I’d stacked in. Overfamiliar, as always. His friendship hinged on inserting his way in; he never asked. His hands move in wonderment – grabbing the frozen yoghurt I’d picked for a portable choice of breakfast, reading its nutrition contents half-heartedly, cringing at the ten packets of chips I’d added in. “Nothing, really, I have a few offers from firms in India and honestly some really good ones from London, too. I’ll take whichever feels the least soul-sucking. But I want to stay here, mostly. Until then, I don’t know, freelancing for some tech bros to draft up contracts you can find templates for on Google,” he says, shrugging. “Doing god’s work, basically.”

‘Is there such a thing as a law firm that doesn’t suck your soul?’

He laughs – the same way he used to before, slightly delayed, like his brain is working through the joke and then suddenly, all at once, with his entire head, his upper body, and not just his mouth, in a way that I can see all of his perfectly white teeth – and says, “Unfortunately for me, you are right. But not everyone can do marketing for super cool start-ups, you know?”

He remembers.

“Yeah, I’m the lucky one,” I say, smiling meekly, when all I want to do is ask: What else do you remember?

“Fuck, Naina, I can’t believe I’m bumping into you at a 24Seven of all places,” he says, after a short pause.

Another piece of the puzzle, retrieved from years ago: “When you become a hotshot marketer with your own agency and when I am Chief Justice and we’ve not talked in years and years and years,” he said, high as a kite on my cheapest bottle of gin, resting his back against my bed with his legs sprawled out on the floor, “I’ll bump into you at a grocery store.”

I scoffed at him. “You think the Chief Justice does his own grocery shopping?”

He was too drunk to compute my response. “I’ll bump into you at a 24Seven and I’ll say HI NAINA OH MY GOD I CAN’T BELIEVE IT’S YOU and we’ll become friends again.”

“Of course. Hotshot marketing agency owner and Chief Justice of India. We’d obviously have so much to talk about.” That made him laugh. Oh how I loved making him laugh. “And why won’t we always be friends, exactly?” I asked, mildly offended at his suggestion that there’d be a time where he would have nothing to do with my life. Absurd – that’s what it sounded like. Even though he’d just arrived into my life, he didn’t feel new. We didn’t feel new.

“Because.”

“Because?”

“Because you’ll become too cool and forget about me,” he said, turning his lips down into a puppyish frown. “You’ll become rich and famous and forget me.”

“What if you become a hotshot criminal lawyer and forget me?”

He took a moment to think – long enough that I thought he was about to throw up. Then he said, “I could never forget you,” before suddenly passing out. His saliva dripped on my shoulder as he instantly started snoring against it.

I could never forget you. He had said those words once.

Then proceeded to show me all the ways he could.

Excerpted with permission from Call it Coincidence, Nona Uppal, Penguin India.

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