Mating Habits of the Bonobo Monkey

I

Love comes to the University in the spring of 2012. Lust has been there for the past sixty-odd years, making the beds a little warmer and the nights a little colder, but love can lay claim to enough seedy places of ill-repute without needing another gathering of hormonal nitwits in its repertoire.

Love comes to the University anyway. There is a grand parade in its perpetual dishonour, and the incumbent students' union sends in a fleet of white Innovas to attract a crowd.
Everybody sees the shining white cars roaring up University Avenue and decides to stay at home.
You end up going nevertheless because you have long believed love to be a socio-political construct invented for the sole purpose of acting as a deterrent to the overburdened cause of Feminism.
I go because I am currently the wrong degree of coolness to do drugs and there is nothing good on TV.

Would you look at that, you declaim without inflection. Such a gross display of chauvinism and testosterone.
A carload of unionists skid past on a bike and a half.
You remark that you've never seen anybody grosser and in more urgent need of emasculation.
I introduce myself to you.
You ignore my existence.

We are passed by the motorcade proper. The first two cars contain random dignitaries and one-fourths of a momo stand. The third car contains love for real.
It's got a heady odour, you observe.
I was expecting someone taller, I confess.

The big car is followed by half a dozen smaller ones and a man leading a fulmination of marmots on leashes.
Then there is a bunch of wattle-necked ladies chasing inexpensive fur coats.
Then the road is empty.

There's that, I say.
What a cheap and degenerative display of Capitalist pedagogy, you say.
You wanna grab a bite, I say.
Only if you don't expect me to pay for you.

II

Things go great for the first three months. They also go to hell in two weeks flat.
There is too much milk in this coffee, you say as I pour out espresso shots from our stolen coffeemaker. There isn't enough milk in this paneer kulcha. I learn that cottage cheese is a dairy product.
Three-fourths of a momo stand opens in our locality. There are dumplings but no steam. The boiler plates have been requisitioned by the Students' Union.

We take a long walk spread over dozens of evenings. We bicker incessantly over the splitting of cafe bills. We watch poorly-hidden wrinkles spread over poorly-interpreted scripts playing out on poorly-observed silver screens. I write about our burgeoning romance in a poorly-thought out idiom.
We make out every chance we get but there is nothing poor about that.

We measure rainfall in hours rather than centimeters. We cross a road together.
There are bad bits too, of course.

I complain that you do not give me enough time. You blame me of sabotaging your bi-weekly assessment preparations, your political career, India's chances in the T20 World Cup (though I contend it is all that damn Tendulkar's fault for making us complacent), and your plans for breakfast with an ever-growing roster of attractive male underwear models.

I call you beautiful on a morning when you're at your ugliest. You read a story by me and fail to make the appropriate sort of noise (which, in case you are wondering, is halfway between an indignant oink and the post-coital clicking of a dolphin).

Things come to a head when a perfectly-serviceable joke is allowed to accelerate constantly at a rate of nine-point-eight-meters-per-second-squared until it reaches the floor.
We watch the joke falling and know it represents both the general quality of writing currently produced by our generation (read: me) and the arc of our relationship.

We decide to move in together.

III

The end begins at the midway point of our first night in the new flat.
There is something about the moonlight that inspires-
Did you remember to get the vegetables for breakfast, you ask.
Yes. But there is something about the moonlight-
Because one of us will have to get some milk for the tea and I'm not a morning person, you insist.
I'll do it. There's just something-
You should get your own sheets by the end of the week, you add.
Screw it, I concede, and spend the rest of the night trying to cut off the oxygen supply to my brain with a borrowed loop of blanket.

The tenant before last drops by the following morning to ask after his coffeemaker. We serve him tepid tea and make regretful noises in time with his story. We also crack him over the head with an inside joke and try not to laugh as it runs down his face.

After he leaves we make our penultimate set of espresso shots and chuckle a lot. There is some sloppy kissing in the kitchen that leaves two Tupperware boxes bruised but is still deeply satisfying. Halfway through our third quarter of tonsil hockey you stop and ask me when we'd last been this happy together.

I try to signal the end of your time-out but the Tupperware boxes seem to be squinting reproachfully up at me. Your uncanny knack for being correct continues to infuriate.

This isn't working out, you say.
Don't say that, I say.
I'm bad at sugarcoating stuff, you say.
The secret is to preheat the oven at one-five-oh degrees for thirty minutes, I say.
You don't necessarily have to make this harder, you say.
I love you, I say.
You shake your head and say nothing at all. Your eyes follow my rapid strides and clumsy fumble with the doorknob, but you still say nothing.
Silence begins to leak out of the windows and the neighbours come around to complain that they cannot hear their televisions.

By the time I return with three packets of skimmed milk you've locked yourself into the balcony and refuse to leave while I'm still in the flat.

IV

Love departs the University at the beginning of the monsoon. There isn't enough of it to go around at the House of Commons and the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting feels it would be deliciously ironic on their part to recommend love being a mandatory presence in Parliament.
The demand for camera-phones amongst senior party officials quadruples overnight. So does the viewcount of racy 'party' videos on YouTube.

There is a grand farewell followed by a horrible squall of rain. People who'd earlier been looking forward to the meeting of separate glances see no interesting strangers in the street.

There are a lot of Dear John emails written, sent, and then discarded from Inboxes without being read.

Here we are, I say.
Here we are, you say.
The last car in the procession passes us again.
I suppose we gave it our best, you say.
It's all that damned Tendulkar's fault for making us complacent, I say.
I suppose I could laugh at that, you say.
Don't leave me, I say.
Thank God we're handling this like mature and sensible individuals, you say.
I'll make it all up to you, I say.
It goes without saying that we'll still be friends, you say.
I'll write something terrific about you, I say.
Don't do that, you say. Write about something interesting instead. Like the mating habits of the Bonobo monkey, which seldom forms permanent monogamous relationships with an individual partner.
I don't know anything about your monkeys, I say.
Something people would want to read, you know?
I mutter something about wikipedia while you get yourself a rickshaw.
You have a good thing going. Don't fuck it up, you say.

That's all the goodbye I am going to get.
I contemplate my slightly-tragic moment as I stand in the last of the summer sunshine. I am still standing there when the rains proper hit the sidewalk.

This is the lowest point of my existence, I say.

Then a freak meteor strike decimates humanity in December.