Sharing the first chapter of Half Girlfriend.

Prologue
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‘They are your journals, you read them,’ I said to him.

He shook his head.

‘Listen, I don’t have the time or patience for this,’ I said, getting irritated. Being a writer on a book tour doesn’t allow for much sleep—I had not slept more than four hours a night for a week. I checked my watch. ‘It’s midnight. I gave you my view. It’s time for me to sleep now.’

‘I want you to read them,’ he said.

We were in my room at the Chanakya Hotel, Patna. This morning, he had tried to stop me on my way out. Then he had waited for me all day; I had returned late at night to find him sitting in the hotel lobby.

‘Just give me five minutes, sir,’ he had said, following me into the lift. And now here we were in my room as he pulled out three tattered notebooks from his backpack.

The spine of the books came apart as he plonked them on the table. The yellowing pages fanned out between us. The pages had handwritten text, mostly illegible, as the ink had smudged. Many pages had holes in them, rats having snacked on them.

An aspiring writer, I thought.

‘If this is a manuscript, please submit it to a publisher. However, do not send it in this state,’ I said.

‘I am not a writer. This is not a book.’
‘It’s not?’ I said, lightly touching a crumbling page. I looked up at him. Even seated, he was tall. Over six feet, he had a sunburnt, outdoor ruggedness about him. Black hair, black eyes and a particularly intense gaze. He wore a shirt two sizes too big for his lean frame. He had large hands. He reassembled the notebooks, gentle with his fingers, almost caressing the pages.
‘What are these books?’ I said.

‘I had a friend. These are her journals,’ he said.

‘Her journals. Ah! A girlfriend?’

‘Half-girlfriend.’

‘What?’

He shrugged.

‘Listen, have you eaten anything all day?’ I