Free When Only Love Remains by Durjoy Datta

back and acknowledge Sumit. Handshakes are exchanged.
    ‘Should we give it another try?’ the sound in the recording room booms.
    The technicians look in the direction of the glass window that separates the singer from them. It’s a girl, more like a woman. She’s looking at the lyrics sheet in front of her and mouthing the lyrics. She has wild, frizzy hair and is slightly on the plump side. She looks like a younger and a better-looking version of Usha Uthup with tattoos on her forearms.
    He knows her from earlier, having seen her on quite a few posters of cultural fests of colleges across India, and was at one point quite jealous of her, not only of her multiple gigs but also of her voice.
    ‘She charges a lakh and a half for a performance,’ whispers Sumit in Devrat’s ear. ‘Though you’re much better than her. She’s old now. She was awesome when she was young. People say a lot of things about her these days. That you know . . .’
    ‘Not interested.’
    ‘I was just saying that she sleeps around.’
    ‘Did I not say I wasn’t interested in knowing about her?’
    ‘Okay! Fine. Hey, listen. I need to go somewhere and wrap up some work. You’re sure you will manage?’ asks Sumit. Devrat nods and Sumit leaves the recording studio. Devrat sits on a small chair and listens to her sing. He mindlessly opens the application again on his phone. He swipes through the pictures as he listens to Karthika sing. The girl’s beautiful, the one on his phone. She’s from Dehradun as well. He wonders if the girl is one of those twenty people who mail him every few days. He tries remembering the name, Avanti, though he knows he will forget it again for he has always been bad with names and he still doesn’t know half of his cousins’ real names. He closes the application and finds himself daydreaming about a situation when Arundhati sees him with a girl, this girl from Facebook, who’s clearly hotter than she is. That would surely have her begging Devrat to take her back but Devrat would just smirk, move on, and write a song about it. He’s jerked out of his reverie by a high note that Karthika just hit.
    Karthika is a stickler for perfection and does some lines a dozen times over, and each time it’s better than the last time, quite different from what Devrat does—he sings it once and lets it go with the imperfections.
    The song is finally over. Karthika leaves the recording room, still grumbling over the few notes that she hit wrong. It’s Devrat’s turn next.
    The technicians get up, their backs aching, their ears sore. ‘Do you mind if we smoke and come back?’
    ‘Do you mind if I join you?’ asks Devrat and they walk to the balcony of the studio and light up. There is silence, a silence that only fellow smokers can enjoy, something that makes no sense to people who don’t smoke. And that silence is broken when Karthika walks in, with her creeper-like hair and her unabashed enthusiasm. ‘And that was a fuck-all song and a fuck-all recording session! There’s no way that’s going viral. People are going to shit all over the song and forget it. I will have to pull a Poonam Pandey to get views on that song,’ growls Karthika as she wrests a cigarette from one of the recording guys and takes a long drag. With the amount of cleavage that’s on display right now, she’s already pulling a half Poonam Pandey.
    ‘It can’t be that bad,’ says the guy. ‘At least better than the last time when you threw a chair through that window after singing a “fuck-all” song that got a hundred thousand views.’
    ‘Still doesn’t change the fact that today was just horrible. Horrible,’ says Karthika and takes a long drag. ‘And hi! You’re Devrat, I suppose. I have heard a little about you. The mysterious, non-available singer. Nice marketing technique to get the demand up. I don’t agree with it, but still, good effort.’
    Truth be told, Devrat’s a little intimidated now. He had never done well with