To All the Fuckbois I Have Loved Before

Rahul is a cheater fuckboi! 

He is a cheater fuckboi! 

Scene-Still from Saawariya (2007) by Sanjay Leela Bhansali starring Ranbir Kapoor and Sonam Kapoor 

Rahul came into my life when I was on the threshold of my teenage. Standing on the edge of my teendom cliff, I felt no less than Holden Caulfield except that here, I wanted to happily jump off, thus, falling into the hell that they refer to as adulthood. I killed my mockingbird for him.

I wanted to adult for Rahul. He with his Peter Kavinsky smile triggered my primal instincts; driving my animal out of the Sundarbans into the sophisticated jungles of concrete; causing a little catastrophe in my world. Rahul flipped my Universe upside down, easily becoming the centre of my being, and I began to associate myself with Simran, a complicated combination of Maya and Nisha, and Anjali.

Rahul was my only boo but I did not turn out to be his only bae. He carelessly broke my pretty, red heart in the pursuit of another skin, and I carefully saw him leave. It took a mild nervous breakdown, couple of movies, one week trip to the mountains, bunch of poetry, fortnight of sad songs, hundred chocolates, one thousand mood swings, and an endless kilometers worth of scrolling through the timelines on Social Media applications, in order to forget Rahul. I blamed it on my teenage whim, took it as the work of karma, found solace in Atwood and Plath, and quiet the heart beating in my head. And I made a personal vow to never let my true self open up to anybody else.

In time, I threw my concepts of old school romance out of the window as dramatically as Bradley Cooper threw Ernest Hemingway out in Silver Linings Playbook. Kuch Kuch Hota Hai, thus, became a cringe-worthy story of an irritating child desperately trying to get her father laid, an anti-feminist tale of a woman who undergoes personality make-over for the validation of a fuckboi, and one another heart-breaking saga where a ‘nice guy’ like Aman suffers at the end.

Cut to Scene Two: Siddharth Tribbiani

He was broad and a bit clumsy. When he smiled, his almost black eyes turned small, and three lines appeared by the side of each one of them. And when he smoked, which he mostly did on the terrace of our department’s building in the college, his nails retained the ash from the cigarette- he never pricked it. And Oh! Sid liked to talk. He preferred to run his hands through his hair frequently than keep them in his pockets when he went out for long walks before midnight.

Sid had his way easily with me. He was always interested in knowing everything about me, so that he could figure me out. As for him, he never believed in labels and tags, and always kept his replies vague. I was captivated by his charming face, terrific wordplay, and nervous self. Sid ignited my curiosity. Boy! I fell hard. I wanted to slit my tongue with his jaw line; I wanted to swallow his kids. I wanted to become his ghanti Big Ben di, and I wanted to open my pyar wali khidki for him.

The heart wanted what the heart wanted, and Oh! The heart beat for him. The butterflies fluttered their delicate wings, and the roses bloomed for him.

But this one too went down the drain. It was beautiful, but brief, and therefore, sad.

Sid never confessed to his adultery, calling me the crazy one. But every time he called me, “Baby,” I knew I wasn’t the only one.

Sid reduced me to an anxious woman-child whom nobody found agreeable enough. He used me like one of his cigarettes, and smoothly smoked his way out of my life. A spineless bloke, Sid ghosted me but took care to hurt me enough. He left my cities in shambles, my minarets reduced to dust. But these eyes remained the same- still curious-bright; rebellious, deep, starry, and dreamy; ready to question, and fight.

Scene 3:

As I grew up, I had understood the game- never to trust again. I treated my body like a temple, and made my career a priority, but out of nowhere came Daddy Akash, and swept me off my feet. He was significantly tall; his masculine frame bringing out its protective instincts that had me submitting without a prior notice.

By now, I had done a short-term course on Fifty Shades of Grey and Lolita, along with developing an inclination towards D. H. Lawrence, Ivan Turgenev, Haruki Murakami, and Henry Miller. And so, I started applying my Phoebe Buffay, Hannah Baker, and Cersei Lannister on Daddy Akash while he kept on caressing my Pretty Woman, cuddling my Anastasia Steele, teasing my Rihanna, and setting my Sharon Stone on fire.

He had the face of a traveler; his hair all salt and pepper. His eyes were a culmination of several countries covered by a comet straight from one end to the other. He made trails with his fingers and crushed sea shells with his toes. He looked at me and I knew he was already seeing the places I had not even dreamt of. He questioned my William Blake, ate my E B Browning, took a jibe at Hardy, and thrashed my Austen and Bronte out of the house with an extremity of passion found rarely in earthly beings. He held me by the hand and took me inside the cave. He desired to show me his purple skies and the azure ones; the golden pearls and ice cones that nobody has ever had the privilege to see. But the heart feared what the heart feared. Still, I let him be.

Daddy Akash became my Black Mirror, Narcos, and GoT. He shot unicorns out of his gun, and killed the victims with his fiery tongue. More than once, Daddy Akash revealed that he wanted to give me pain; a serious warning that I ignored in my naiveté self. He eventually did. Yes, it did pain.

Daddy Akash handled me like a plush toy and I let him blow my senses out. He smashed, hit, nailed, hammered, plumed, and ploughed and had me kneeling, pleading, requesting and finally, screaming out loud, “Daddy! Daddy! Daddy! You are a dark and brooding bastard.”

♡♡♡

My fuckbois rocked at fuckboism but never owned to it. They pointed their guilty fingers at me and blamed me in ways inexplicable by the end. Reducing my hopeless romanticism to nothing, famishing my castles to slums; my bois tricked, cheated, and played, and tacitly managed to take Alice out of the Wonderland. But such is life, what happens, maybe happens for the best. Romantic I might not still be, but certainly not hopeless.