Your Dreams Are Mine Now

by Ravinder Singh

  Rupali warmly hugged Arjun’s mother, who continued to pat her head.

  When Arjun started the engine of his jeep, the two ladies separated. Rupali waved at Arjun’s mother and sat next to Arjun. He reversed the jeep and they left the house.

  ‘So how was it?’ Arjun asked once they were on their way back.

  ‘The food?’ Rupali asked, deliberately trying to tease him.

  ‘Huh? Food? No! Meeting my mom!’

  ‘Hmm . . . thik tha!’ (It was okay!) Rupali said without enthusiasm.

  Arjun immediately applied the brakes of his jeep and looked angrily at Rupali.

  ‘Okay, okay, baba. Relax. I was kidding!’ Rupali replied. ‘It was great to meet your mom. She’s a lovely person—so simple, so loving. I thoroughly enjoyed her company and being in your house today!’

  ‘You are telling the truth this time. Right?’ Arjun asked. His face was shining due to the praise.

  Rupali nodded.

  A little smile replaced the temporary fake anger on Arjun’s face. He resumed driving. For quite some time, Rupali talked about her discussion with his mom with a lot of joy. Arjun felt nice. It was a good idea to invite Rupali to meet his mother.

  By the time they were close to the campus, the course of the discussion drifted to campus politics and the party’s campaign that they were going to kick-start. It happened when Rupali asked Arjun whether he had been able to accomplish the work for which he had gone out before lunch. Arjun said that it would take some time before they got the banners.

  ‘There is something I want to talk about, Arjun,’ Rupali said. ‘We won’t win the election,’ she said bluntly.

  It bothered him when Rupali said that.

  ‘What! What are you saying?’

  ‘See, I don’t have any experience in campus politics. But from what I see, you and your group have differences with other student bodies on campus. I have been thinking about this . . .’

  ‘What differences? With whom?’ Arjun interrupted. He was a little worked up by what he considered as Rupali’s negative thoughts, even before she had spent a week working in the party.

  Rupali put her hand on Arjun’s and asked him to calm down. She politely explained her point to Arjun. Rupali pointed out how on the one hand they wanted to campaign and win the trust of the students, but on the other, they were disconnected from various student bodies.

  When Arjun asked if she was talking about other political outfits in the university, she said no.

  ‘Then?’ asked Arjun.

  ‘Your differences with the music club. Your stand against students who got admission through the reservation and quota system,’ Rupali answered.

  ‘There is no way we are going to shake hands with them to win the elections!’

  ‘But Arjun aap meri baat ko samajh hi nahi rahe ho!’ she said, trying to explain her point. ‘I am an active member of the music club. None of our members hates you or your party. I mean our party.’ She immediately corrected herself. ‘Rather, a majority of them hate the party in power right now, for they ditched the music club last year and played opportunistic politics by telling the students in DU that the club supported them.

  ‘Trust me on this, Arjun. The music club would still want to remain apolitical. However, the club wants to contribute to a change in the university. I realized that it too has common goals like that of our party. The music club is the most important wing of DU’s entire cultural club that also includes theatre groups. If we work with them, there is a lot we can achieve!

  ‘Am I making any sense? Are you still angry?’ Rupali quickly checked before explaining further.

  ‘Hmm . . . go on,’ Arjun nodded.

  ‘Great. So, I was saying that there is a lot that is common between the cultural club and DU. The music club wants to undo the image that they secretly supported the current student union. Tenzing, who leads our club, also represents our college at the DU level. He is fighting a battle on behalf of the entire North-east student community which DU still doesn’t consider as an inclusive part. They are looked upon as if they are not one among us. It is an important issue and if we, as a political outfit, make DU a level playing field for students from every ethnicity, and include this issue in our agenda, we will be able to grab the support of the entire student body from the North-east. The theatre groups have always taken up these burning issues in their street plays and dramas. Abolishing the reservation system and awarding seats only on merit has been the message of various members of this group. This is exactly what you have been fighting for. This is why you joined student politics in the first place. Demanding that reservation be abolished means inviting the wrath of those who got admitted only on the basis of the quota system and they certainly won’t vote for you. They will resist and endorse other political outfits which are in favour of reservation.’

  Listening to Rupali’s thoughts, Arjun didn’t realize when he had slowed the pace of his jeep. Rupali’s points were important. The way Rupali had connected the dots made a lot of sense. He could see that Rupali’s idea was to get the support of smaller independent bodies that were apolitical in nature and, therefore, could become mouthpieces of their party’s ideas. In an academic environment creative groups play an important role in spreading the message. That’s exactly what Rupali had pointed at.

  ‘And just because they are not affiliated to any particular party, people would be more open to understanding a neutral point of view and then synthesize their decision about whom to vote for,’ she said in the end.

  By the time the two of them arrived at the hostel, Arjun was game to discuss Rupali’s point of view with the others in the party. He had already begun analysing the pros and cons of the discussed approach. Working on removing differences was definitely not going to be an overnight task. It needed mutual trust and respect. Rupali was his biggest hope in bridging the gap between his party and her music club. That day, Arjun again felt grateful that he had Rupali in his life and now in his mission.

  Just when Rupali was about to get off the jeep, Arjun asked her for Tenzing’s number. Rupali smiled and searched for it in her phonebook. Arjun pulled his phone out of his pocket to take the number when he saw an unread message. It was from his mother—a rare thing, for she always preferred calling Arjun rather than texting him. To add to his thrill, it was in English, a language she wasn’t quite comfortable in.

  He blushed on reading it and told Rupali that there was something his mom had texted him. ‘You hit the bullseye in the first meeting,’ he said and couldn’t stop smiling.

  ‘What is it?’ Rupali asked excitedly.

  Arjun read the message his mother had sent: ‘I like your this friend. What about you?’

  Twenty-Two

  ‘Did the sun rise from the west today?’

  They were pulling his leg.

  Arjun’s new avatar had instantly become the talking point the moment he drove into the north campus in the morning. They had all gathered at their daily spot at Shafi’s teashop to wish Arjun on his birthday. Raheema too was a part of the gathering. She hadn’t forgotten Arjun’s birthday and knew where to find him. So on her way to the campus in the morning she stopped at Shafi’s teashop and was amused to find a brand-new version of Arjun, though she had taken a few seconds to identify him.

  When the people surrounding Arjun asked Raheema her opinion on Arjun’s new look she was at first in two minds. She said that he certainly looked different.

  Someone in the crowd shouted, ‘Raheema didi, don’t be diplomatic. Tell the truth!’

  ‘Kya na banu, bhaiya?’ Raheema inquired, wondering what she should not ‘be’, unable to understand the meaning of ‘diplomatic’.

  ‘He is certainly looking different today. That we all know. But tell us whether he is looking good or bad!’

  Raheema understood this time and spent one full minute analysing Arjun’s new look. Then she finally started shaking her head and a smile came on her face. She said, ‘Clean shave karke is T-shir
t mein zabardast lag rahe hain. Ekdum hero maafik.’ (Clean shaven and in a T-shirt! He is looking as dashing as a hero!)

  Everyone laughed, clapped and cheered at that.

  But the show was not over. In the next ten minutes the group had asked almost every passer-by they knew to vote on Arjun’s changed looks. Being the birthday boy, Arjun could not do much about becoming the object of their fun. This was the standard practice on campus and the rumour that he had sacrificed his beard and kurta for the sake of his girlfriend added fuel to the fire.

  As per their little survey, six out of nine people had voted in favour of Arjun’s new look. The survey included Raheema, Shafi, two of Shafi’s helpers, a rickshaw-puller, two lecturers and two girls from the college basketball team who were there after playing a morning game.

  Shafi was one among the three who believed his clean-shaven look took away the macho factor he possessed. The rickshaw-puller who was a regular at the teashop, agreed. One reason to approve of the bearded look was that they both had beards themselves and they felt cheated, as if Arjun had left their clan. One of Shafi’s helpers followed his employers’ opinion.

  However, since it was Arjun’s birthday, and Shafi was a man with a big heart, he announced that the tea was on him that day. He also offered the group the new cookies that his distributor had supplied him the night before.

  Meanwhile, back in her room, Rupali had received the news of her boyfriend’s makeover. Saloni, who too was there along with the other basketball players, had secretly clicked Arjun’s picture and messaged it to her roommate. She had called him her lover in her message: ‘Tera majnu’.

  Rupali was overjoyed to see that Arjun had kept his promise. A day before, over the phone she had insisted that she would like to see Arjun clean shaven and in an attire that is anything but a kurta. She wanted the birthday boy to look different and special than his usual self. To her surprise, Arjun had agreed. But in return he had demanded that she too wear something of his choice. Rupali agreed, but her agreement was based on Arjun’s fulfilment of his promise first. She liked how he looked on her cellphone and was excited about seeing him with her own eyes. However, as she was yet to finish her pre-reads and complete her pending assignment, she had to contain her excitement.

  It was later in the day, during the break, that she finally got to see him. It was at the party meeting that had been called at the college rooftop to discuss the social media campaign they had talked about a few days back.

  Rupali was all smiles the moment she spotted Arjun among the party members. Her arrival made everyone turn around, including Arjun, who stopped in the middle of what he had been discussing. She could not help but blush as she walked towards him.

  ‘Ladies and gentlemen, meet the lady behind this man Arjun 2.0!’ Prosonjeet announced. Everyone laughed. Some clapped as well.

  Even though it was an awkward moment for him, Arjun was waiting for Rupali’s reaction, unaware that she had already seen his picture. Rupali laughed and joined in with the group. When she stopped right in front of Arjun, she complimented him, saying, ‘Aap achey lag rahey ho.’ (You are looking nice.) She knew people would tease her. But by then, the party members had become like family to her. She didn’t mind facing the whistles, the hooting and the cheers. She knew she had to be honest and appreciative of what her guy had done for her.

  ‘Guys, Arjun passed the test!’ Madhab shouted.

  ‘But Rupali, how did you get this out of him?’ Prosonjeet asked.

  ‘He asked me to fulfil one of his requests. I agreed on the condition that he first fulfil my request. His request was so dear to him, that he agreed to accept mine!’ Rupali answered.

  ‘And now YOU have to keep YOUR promise,’ Arjun reminded her.

  Rupali nodded.

  ‘That’s nice, Rupali. There are a couple of things I want Arjun to do. Maybe I will get in touch with you offline. You can put them as your next requests,’ Prosonjeet mocked.

  ‘Saaley kaminey,’ Arjun light-heartedly flung out his hand and gripped Prosonjeet’s neck.

  Trying to release himself out of Arjun’s grip, Prosonjeet shouted, ‘Guys let’s do it now or I’m going to die!’

  In no time, someone grabbed his legs and lifted Arjun up. Someone else grabbed his arms and some others lifted him from the back. It happened so quickly that Rupali and two other girls in that gathering barely got a chance to pull themselves out of the circle.

  For the next couple of minutes, Rupali watched Arjun’s body being tossed up in the air as he got his birthday bumps. They began counting. Arjun screamed, he yelled, he abused. But it all got drowned in the mad screams of his friends. His body swung up and down in the air, again and again and again till they counted to twenty-one. Rupali felt pity for Arjun, but could not do much about it. Only in the end, when the bumpy stretch of the birthday celebrations was over, did she inquire, ‘Are you all right?’

  The innocent concern was bound to be taken lightly as everyone laughed.

  ‘All right folks, shall we now get down to the work for which we had all gathered here? I mean, apart from giving me birthday bumps,’ Arjun reminded everyone. The next fifteen minutes, in contrast to the previous ones, involved serious discussions that were packed with questions and answers. The party members brought in their findings and laid out a draft of an action plan. Rupali made bullet points of the important items and wrote them on the last pages of her notebook. Together they decided the name of the Facebook page that they were going to create and what the profile would look like. Someone had already created a Gmail ID in the name of their party. The plan was to use the same ID everywhere, including a YouTube video that they were supposed to create. They discussed the nature of the content and the frequency with which they were going to update posts. The technicalities of how they were going to expand and reach out to the entire DU, college by college, were also covered. For the day, the main agenda was a video that Madhab wanted to shoot in the evening. He had called everyone to meet outside the college on the campus lawns. ‘If everything goes right, we will upload this video by next Sunday,’ he had said.

  It was little over break time, when they all called off the meeting and dispersed to attend their respective classes. Just before leaving, Rupali reminded Arjun that they had planned to meet Tenzing as well. Arjun confirmed the time. He wanted to finish the conversation before Madhab’s video shoot. Rupali confirmed the venue. Music room it was.

  ‘What bothers me the most is this word—chinki. That day when your party members disrupted our set-up, this is what they called me. No matter what I do, as an individual I don’t have an identity. None of us from the North-east has an individual identity. We are just chinki. All of us,’ Tenzing said, his voice full of pain and despair.

  Arjun and Rupali who sat on a table in front of Tenzing, heard him as he continued to speak.

  ‘This is a serious mindset issue that stretches beyond the walls of DU. You know how much more difficult it is for one of us to find a house on rent in this city, just because of our appearance? Looking at our eyes and our hairstyle, some call us Chinese. This really hurts. We are as much Indian as you are!’ he said, pointing to both of them.

  After a moment’s silence, when Arjun had absorbed all that Tenzing had spoken, he said, ‘I understand what you are saying. And I agree that this is a mindset issue. Perhaps for a long time the rest of India was never bothered enough to even consider this as an issue, forget addressing it.’

  ‘Yeah . . .’ Rupali began. Both Arjun and Tenzing looked at her. ‘. . . And even if this issue extends beyond the walls of this university, it must be addressed at least in the university. Maybe then we can take the solution to the world beyond DU as well. At the least we must practise inclusivity of every ethnicity on our campuses,’ she said.

  ‘But you know what?’ she added, ‘Instead of finding a solution, I am wondering how it came into existence in the first place. I mean to say, why is it that we tend to sideline the North-east and detach the
people from this geography? As if they are not a part of us?’

  Tenzing shrugged, ‘Glad to see someone is at least bothering to think about it! You know, during the last semester break a good number of us had discussed this. A group of us were on the same train till Kolkata, after which we were supposed to change trains to our native states in the Northeast. Here’s what we felt. You see it all starts at the school level. While our history books cover everything that happened in this country from Jammu and Kashmir to Tamil Nadu, they rarely talk about a detailed history of the North-eastern states. People never get to know about us when they are introduced to the rest of India. Our history is simply missing in those books. Therein lies the neglect. The perception that we aren’t as important as the other states of this country.

  ‘The geographical knowledge of us Indians is so skewed that we will know the capital of Punjab, but won’t know the capital of Mizoram. Forget the capitals, a majority doesn’t even know the names of the North-eastern states. I don’t live in a hostel. Two years back, before I moved into my rented apartment, when I told my landlord that I am from the North-east, he asked me which country that was in! This is the reality; such a huge lack of awareness. There are seven sister states in the North-east, besides the Himalayan state of Sikkim. How many times have you seen a face from the North-east on the cover of a magazine representing a common Indian or, for that matter, doing a TV commercial? How many actresses are there in Bollywood from this part of the country? Hollywood has accepted Chinese actors, but in our own country Bollywood is yet to take people from the North-east into consideration. People believe that we are distinguished from the rest of the Indians because of our looks and our accent. But if you think deeper, that’s not true. Because had it been about looks, a Sikh with his turban and his beard, is far more distinguishable than me. In this country, where language and accent change every fifty kilometres, how does it matter what my accent is?