Be My Perfect Ending

About the author

Arpit Vageria is a bestselling author of three romance novels -You Are My Reason To Smile, I Still Think About You and Chocolate Sauce-Smooth.Dark.Sinful. Arpit also writes for Indian television industry and has written over 500 episodes for many fiction and non-fiction shows for the five leading Indian television channels. Having once worked for companies like The Times of India and HDFC Bank, to name a few, Arpit now also writes digital web episodes.

As someone who loves life’s every moment, he enjoys road trips, singing, playing pranks and adventure sports.

You can send him your feedback and love at [email protected]. You can also follow him on Twitter @arpitvageria27, or contact him on his WhatsApp number 8451829595.

ARPIT VAGERIA

SriShti

PubliSherS & DiStributorS

SriShti PubliSherS & DiStributorS

Registered Office: N-16, C.R. Park

New Delhi – 110 019

Corporate Office: 212A, Peacock Lane

Shahpur Jat, New Delhi – 110 049

[email protected]

First published by

Srishti Publishers & Distributors in 2018

Copyright © Arpit Vageria, 2018

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

This is a work of fiction. The characters, places, organisations and events described in this book are either a work of the author’s imagination or have been used fictitiously. Any resemblance to people, living or dead, places, events, communities or organisations is purely coincidental.

The author asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the Publishers.

Printed and bound in India

To each and everyone

who believes in perfect endings.

Acknowledgements

It’s always difficult to write an acknowledgement. And a lot has changed in the past one year, but I am glad that there are certain relationships and people that haven’t changed even a bit.

I will begin by thanking my grandfather, Mr. Sohan Lal Vageria for his unconditional love and blessings; my granny, Mrs. Vibhuti Bandi for always being so caring and cute. My parents, Mr. Dilip Vageria and Mrs. Vandana Vageria for being the loveliest couple and also for their faith, undying support and encouragement. My elder brother Ankit Vageria, for consistently believing in me and helping me with every possible thing. You’re a mastermind I always wished to be. More than anything, for being the most important part of this story. This book would have been impossible without you, brother! My sister-in-law Donika Vageria for her unwavering faith in me, and to the world’s cutest kid ever, my niece, Maahi Vageria for still believing that her Chachu is a superman and he can bring stars for her whenever she wants. She has grown only cuter in the last one year. I can go on and on talking about her; she’ll be more than proud to read this when she grows up to be a beautiful young woman.

No thank you is big enough for Swapnil Kothari sir, for he not only constantly motivated me, but also guided me by taking away the sting from his words intelligently, and for being with me through every phase of my life and guiding me on what’s right and wrong both personally and professionally. Even if I become 1% of what he is, my life will be made, and I’ll have no regrets from this world. I have never ever in my life met as humble a person as him and as amazing a thinker.

A big thank you is due to ‘Renaissance and Indore Indira college’ family for always loving me.

Some of the names without whom I consider my life incomplete and bland are Aditi Solanki, for being the first ever person to praise my writing by making me believe that I can write and that people will read and like it; Rohan, Piyush, Rohit, Saloni, Ayushi, Novoneel and Romil for being my best ever buddies, being there with me in the ups and downs of life, and supporting me in best possible way.

Riddhi and Vankush, for being the most amazing buddies.

I am amazingly fortunate to have some lovely people in my life – Manoj, Himanshu, Vinay, Pramod, Pratik, Prateek, Ulhas and Deep – who make my world better and more interesting.

I’m deeply grateful to Shikha, Ashish bhai, Namita, Rishi, Sarvesh, Rashmi, Priyesh and Meet.

Heartfelt thanks to some special people who had been a fun company always – Saurabh sir, Vinay and his super cute kid Vidhaan who lets me pull his cheeks, Naveen, Sharanya, Mayank, Manisha, Kushal, Sumit and Karan.

I would now like to thank my publisher for the extraordinary kindness and believing in me once again after the huge success of You Are My Reason To Smile. Thanks for being ever so supportive, team Srishti Publishers. This is the best team I’ve ever worked with. Arup, Jayanta Da and Stuti, all of you are inarguably brilliant.

Thanks to all my readers for believing in me. I love all those comments, reviews, e-mails and messages that you send me on daily basis and I try my best to reply to each one of you. Thanks for making me work hard. You guys have a big hand in making me what I am today. Keep the love growing and I shall keep writing many more stories.

And the most special thank you goes to the girl who’s my forever love, Pooja. More than anything else, she keeps me close to my dreams.

And lastly to myself, for being able to complete this wonderful new book…

Be My Perfect Ending.

29th September 2017

7:00 p.m.

In life, we often think that it shouldn’t end like this. We expect the sun to shine bright, flowers to bloom, but sometimes the day turns dark and leaves us disappointed. Not because there’s no daylight, but because we all want a perfect ending. We forget that in real life, reality is mostly far different from our imagination. Here, verses of life don’t always rhyme, and beats of the heart move quicker than the beats of life. Life doesn’t begin with a ‘happy’ new year, nor does it end with the same spirit. What’s more, it doesn’t even stop when you lose someone you couldn’t once live without. Life simply doesn’t begin or end. Life goes on. You still breathe, you still care, and you still live.

That night, Armaan looked at the glass of wine, which, though one of the many that he had, charmed him the most. He sighed and looked out of the window again. Armaan and Sara had seen the dawn of their love shining up, and the dusk of their hopes go down from this window. The memories of Sara and him talking, fighting and making out were still fresh. Their meeting was a coincidence, but the mutual liking that sparked after that was not. They had kick-started their relationship almost instantly after meeting, it was so special.

They both were television professionals, and like many other television professionals, they too struggled financially and had shifted in together to share expenses. Armaan was prudent in a way that Sara had never been, thanks to his middle class upbringing. Sara had lost her parents early in life, and Armaan’s concern for her made her feel significant. They’d made their vows and promised to love each other forever.

Armaan got up from the couch, not wanting to believe his life’s reality… something that had shattered their lives forever. Although his heart refused to believe it, but something deep inside his mind told him that it was real. Till when would he ignore it! There would be people who would offer to help them move on, move on for good, for the future. They all would say how one is lucky to have had love in life. He knew that people would keep giving ‘Loving doesn’t mean to have the person next to you always, it’s much deeper’ kind of bullshit. Friends would always try to get your life back on track and make you meet hot strangers at clubs and parties, also telling you how their own life sucks with their loved ones. But every one of those clichés was no more than an annoyance, because Armaan knew that no matter what, he would never be together with Sara now.

He had lost her some days back, not to anything of this world, but to destiny. No matter how much he wanted to believe that there’d be a way out, deep within he already knew that there was nothing that he could say or do to ever get back together.

Had they been together today, they’d be celebrating his birthday at some of the finest beachside restaurants. It wasn’t particularly hard for them to plan a special evening together. Both of them just wanted to get away from the chaos of the city. With the kind of busy schedules they had, they preferred planning things together over cancelling a surprise because of last minute work commitments.

As memories started flooding back, so did the tears. Armaan didn’t want to cry anymore, but his dreams had died. He saw the wine glass toppling down to the floor, shattering instantly. But the sound of the glass shattering was way more calm than the storm in his life. He let out a breath he had been holding and fisted his hand to punch the wall – something he was used to doing whenever he was in a tough situation. He just held his hands tight and regretted having met Sara that day.

During the past few months, his thoughts had alternated between his first and last meeting with Sara. He knew that in a situation like this, it’s difficult to move on in life. But from the last couple of times, he had seen some friends or colleagues recommending therapists. Armaan knew that it would take some time to get back to normal and hoped that people did more than offering concerned and pitiful glances. Everyone asked what happened that night, but only a few of them actually tried living the pain. And for the rest of them, it was just another story and perhaps subject for gossip.

Armaan watched a guy from the movers and packers walking towards him. He looked around and saw that everything else had been loaded into the truck downstairs.

‘Excuse me,’ he said, coming towards the couch. ‘I have to take that couch.’

The couch where they had talked for hundreds of hours, made countless memories, lied down while watching the full moon in the night, and slept. The guys picked it up and went his way, not realising what that piece of furniture really meant to them.

There was something about this house that made Armaan feel that he was leaving behind a part of his life with it. He knew well why he felt that way, or why a vacant flat was calling out to him in the voice of his beloved. He was proud of the memories they both had created, but now the same memories were haunting him.

He looked at his flat one last time before the door was locked and keys passed to the owner. He told himself that some doors in life needed to be closed, for they would lead nowhere. He found himself thinking about how it all had started and how time had changed everything. It seemed unlikely, but at the same time, he had the strange feeling of coming back to this flat once again. Or at least he hoped so. He wasn’t sure why, but he tried to think about how his fears had turned into reality. He tried to dismiss his heavy breaths that had guilt, hopelessness and just one little ray of hope. He knew dark clouds had faded his life’s bright sunshine, but believed that winds of change had the power to take away the darkest thunderstorms to bring back the light.

You know, sometimes, the story starts where it actually ends.

Sometimes, not every story has a happy ending. But is a perfect ending all that matters?

29th April 2017

It was Saturday night, and Armaan’s flat was thronged with his flatmate Sandy’s friends. Sandy and Armaan were two extreme end of a pole. Armaan and his other flatmate Rohit always felt that Sandy was keeping something from them. That night, Sandy and his friends had asked these two to accompany them. They thought it might be fun to have a writer around when they’re completely drunk and sloshed, and it probably would’ve been fun if it hadn’t been for rewriting the entire episode of his show which was supposed to be shot the next day itself. It had been a last minute change, as the new supervising producer Sara from the channel had joined the show and she apparently had problems with the way the episode was written.

It was a cruel, sick joke on a weekend. He sometimes loved and sometimes hated his job. He thought it was easy for the channel to shoot e-mails over the weekend and spoil somebody’s personal life. And it was also easy to be pointing out loopholes in the script, although very few people who claimed to be so-called creative producers knew how to better it.

Armaan had taken three days to script it, and it took Sara three minutes to give him that feedback. That’s what happens when you’re new to the Indian television industry; you’ve to call non-creative people from the channel the creative ones and have to agree to the stupidest of their feedback. They’ll just use big words and if you’re not a great speaker of the language, they’d shut your logic with their vocabulary. If you try shutting them out with your creativity, you either have to be really experienced and snobbish or they would readily show you the way out of the channel. Then at the end of it all, for mere survival in the industry, you’d have to decide on staying rather than satisfying your creative soul.

Armaan had not always been this wise. He had also stood for his creativity, but then, the producers who had recommended Armaan to the channel in the first place thought he was being macho or brave in trying to question the channel’s head. Later, those very producers threw him out of the projects as it was risking their image as an ideal ‘suckhole’.

Putting his thoughts aside, he heard the music coming from the other room and felt the vibes. He wondered whether his unwanted flatmate Sandy had ever faced such kind of troubles. There were times when Armaan needed him as a buddy – a little care for a flatmate wouldn’t really hurt anyone – but Sandy wasn’t the type. Armaan didn’t have any great memories with him.

Sandy’s room was located just next to Armaan’s. It was larger than the other rooms in the house and had a bathroom that had been designed around a beautiful Jacuzzi and bath tub. As per Sandy, taking a bath relieved one the most. Sandy was a struggling actor, and that allowed him much free time. When Armaan moved into this flat, he hung out with Sandy quite a bit. He had thought it would be a good bonding experience, which turned out to be completely otherwise. Even when Armaan did not want to accompany him, which was most times, Sandy would cajole him into coming.

Right now, Armaan could hear really loud music, and that didn’t help in