by Durjoy Datta
‘You’re ragging me. That’s like a criminal offence. Why do you think none of your friends here are backing you up? Because they know I’m just the kind of person who will report it and they are right.’
‘I . . . I . . . was just asking for an introduction.’
How sweet. So here’s one for you. I’m Aranya Gupta. Triple scholar gown holder in school. NTSE and JSTSE silver medallist. AIEEE rank 13, with the highest in mathematics and physics. I’m a national-level debater with a 53–1 career record, and I can recite the periodic table backwards while beating your ass in table tennis.’
‘ . . .’
‘Now come again? You were saying that none of the seniors would help me? What makes you think I would need their help?’ asked Aranya.
Having been smacked in the face by Aranya’s thick CV, the senior stuttered insults which no one took seriously. Victorious, she walked away.
I Love u Rachu
13
Dhruv had been in a little fight last night. The seniors had come knocking at his door and he had asked them to fuck off. They hadn’t taken the affront lightly and barged into his room. The matter was settled when they roughed up Dhruv, who in turn smashed a table lamp on one of the senior’s heads. They had to rush the senior to the hospital.
Groggily and with one eye barely open he looked at the timetable on his phone. He was already late for the first class—advanced physics. It took him another twenty minutes to get out of bed, brush, and find the motivation to reach his first class at DTU, the college he had always thought of as giving him the metaphorical freedom from the house he had grown up in.
Still in his shorts and flip-flops, his right palm bandaged, and with a deep gash on his forehead from last night which had needed medical attention, he walked through the corridors looking for his class.
Mr Tripathi, fifty-three, dressed in brown trousers, a faded white shirt and chappals, was teaching the first-year electrical engineering students. In a desperate bid to leave a good first impression, their eyes were glued to the old man, nodding furiously like bobbleheads, pens whirling on paper, writing every word like it was holy.
Dhruv knocked at the door. The class turned to look at him. It was a class full of hopeful and hopeless, virgin young men, and predominantly average-looking women, who would drag themselves unquestioningly through four years of engineering to get one of those million little enviable cubicles where their life energies will be slowly sucked out of them.
‘May I come in?’ he asked.
‘Should we allow latecomers?’ Prof. Tripathi asked the class. The students shook their heads.
‘What is wrong with you?’ said Dhruv to the class who pretended they hadn’t heard him.
‘You’re late,’ said the professor.
‘I hope I haven’t missed much.’
‘You’re not dressed appropriately for class.’
‘Sir, I was hoping the first class would be a sort of informal introductory session where we would get to know each other better. So I thought it was better I dressed up for the occasion. I picked these shorts carefully. And hi! I’m Dhruv.’
The professor looked at him, unimpressed.
‘Do you think it’s a joke?’ asked the professor.
‘I’m hoping it is.’
The professor looked at him, blank-faced. ‘Get in,’ he grumbled.
The professor started to teach them about fusion. Dhruv sat there, looking at the five girls in the class, calculating the number of beers he would need to find the urge to sleep with them.
The first three were identical. Skinny, dark, spectacled, flat hair tied tightly into a pony, four beer stuff. One of them was fair and being the racist bastard he was, he pegged her at two beers and sufficiently dim lighting.
The last one was a little hard to place in the heirarchy. She had her back towards him. She was furiously scribbling notes, unmindful of boys nearby, or him, or even the professor. From where he was sitting he could see her head strictly followed the chalk like she was controlling it, telekinesis-type strange shit. If she turned out to be fair he would forgive her plumpness and give her a good beer rating.
But then she turned.
Dhruv’s mouth went dry. The girl had patchy skin, white and brown at places, and she immediately reminded him of someone . . .
She had seen him too. For the rest of the period, she kept stealing glances at him, and he played his little game of catching her mid-glance, holding the stare . . .
And then it struck him. It was her. The girl who’d lied and broken his heart into a million little pieces . . .
I Love u Rachu
14
Aranya wrote furiously in her register, the nib of her pen making an angry noise against the paper, to avoid looking at the gorgeous boy. She had noticed his roving, sleepy eyes over the occupants of the first two benches, evaluating them, and then turning towards her. She found herself thinking why the face looked so familiar and, more importantly, why did she feel an inherent hatred towards it. She reminded herself of the task at hand—be a pet student of every professor, secure the scholarships, get a project under the famed Dr Raghuvir, get a plush, overpaying job abroad, and have a great fucking life. Possibly a liposuction as well.
‘Sir? It should be three neutrons, shouldn’t it? Or is it four?’ asked Aranya, acting confused, chewing her pen.
She had noticed the mistake right when Mr Tripathi made it. But she waited for a perfectly timed moment to point it out, her voice modulated to make her sound like a curious, dedicated, unsure student.
Prof. Tripathi noticed the mistake. ‘Oh yes, thanks for pointing that out! At least someone is paying attention.’ Tripathi smiled and Aranya smiled back. Mutual admiration was the first step towards a healthy and fruitful relationship.
The professor continued to teach nuclear physics to a bored class till the clock struck nine-thirty. Tripathi dictated the names of a few reference books and the serial numbers of the questions they had to finish before the next class.
‘I need someone to volunteer as a class representative,’ Tripathi said, wrapping up the class. Many hands went up.
Sir, I’m willing to be the volunteer. I’m your best choice. I will be a good student and will always be by your side. You can trust me. In moments of despair when you feel like your best days as a college professor are over, I will stand up and tell you how you changed my life as a professor.
Aranya could have said this but she gingerly raised her hand and kept her mouth shut.
‘What’s your name?’
‘Sir, Aranya,’ she mumbled softly.
‘Aranya is your class representative. All of you will report to her from now on,’ said Prof. Tripathi. Aranya offered to help the professor carry his books back to the staffroom. He turned her down nicely. ‘Take care. You’re a nice, quiet girl. Have a voice and don’t be afraid to talk back. The seniors can be quite a handful.’
Aranya barely kept from laughing.
Prof. Tripathi left and Aranya revelled in her newfound power over the other students. Seeing someone else in a superior position had never been Aranya’s idea of fun. She hadn’t had much say in what nature doled out to her—the dead melanin cells, the low metabolic rate, her vile parents, a devil for a brother—so she had decided to control the outcome of everything else.
The students had started filtering out. Awkward first conversations had grown into fulsome banters and groups of students made their way to the canteen, forging new friendships and enmities. Aranya did not move out. Instead, she corrected her notes, underlining important equations, dog-earing pages in her books before she forgot. The boy was still in the class, picking at the wound in his palm, looking in her direction. Why wouldn’t he go? Why was he looking? Was he mocking her? Was he disgusted?
By the time she finished colour coding her notes, the class was empty. The boy was still there, feet propped up on the desk, playing on his phone, little beeps filling the space around him, a murderous smirk on his fac
e. Just as she passed him, he said, ‘Nice move.’
‘Excuse me?’ said Aranya, her guard up.
He looked up from his game. He was playing Temple Run with his phone held sideways. She was a pro at the game but she could see that he was at a stage Aranya hadn’t reached yet.
‘You lied.’
‘I don’t quite follow you.’
‘You spotted that mistake as soon as he wrote it. You were sure about the error but you acted like you weren’t. You lied to get that position. Or maybe the professor just pitied you for the way you look.’
‘You have a problem with me being the class representative? Why didn’t you raise your hand?’ asked Aranya, steeling herself.
‘Not really. I just wanted to point it out. Also, I heard about the little incident you had with the senior last evening. Hurled quite a few insults, didn’t you?’
‘What is it to you?’
‘Why did you do that? Were you making up for this?’ asked Dhruv and pointed at the pink part of the skin on her hand. His eyes felt like spiders on her skin. Her ears burned. The bastard was smiling.
‘I have no idea what you’re talking about. I need to go,’ Aranya said and started to walk away from him.
‘I’m an astrologer too, you know,’ said the boy from behind. ‘And right now, you’re going to go into your room, fire up Temple Run and try to beat my record, which by the way is Level 123 with the phone held sideways. But you already saw that, didn’t you?’
‘I have never played Temple Run.’
I Love u Rachu
15
Half an hour had gone by and she was sitting on the toilet pot, jumping over derelict bridges, collecting gold coins, all while holding her phone sideways. It was tougher than she had imagined it would be and it was making her restless, even angry. How could she not be better than him? She took little breaks to wipe the sweat off her palms, the tears off her face, and then breathed slowly and calmed herself down, and tried again.
Two more hours passed by. Her fingers had started to hurt by now. For the first time in eight years she missed a class. She took out her timetable. It was organic chemistry by Prof. Mitra, the dean of the college. She put a reminder on her phone to meet him in his staffroom, apologize profusely and tell him how big a fan she was of his work on—whatever the hell he did his PhD in.
She stretched her fingers. Her eyes were burning. Another hour passed by in a flash. She was hungry now.
‘You can’t be beaten,’ she told herself, cracked her knuckles and started tapping again. It had started to sink in that she would probably not beat the boy’s record—her first defeat in years. Another half an hour and the battery of her phone died.
‘NO! NO! NO! NO! NO!’ she shouted at the phone and slapped it against her palm. She left the cubicle and washed her face. She whispered to herself, ‘You’re good. Let it go. It’s okay.’ She put her phone into the bag and walked out of the washroom.
‘So I’m presuming that you spent the last few hours trying to beat my record?’
She turned to see Dhruv sitting on the stairs, smiling his strange, creepy, lovely smile. ‘Look. I don’t care about your score, okay? I am good at a million things that you’re not good at. You’re probably just some Temple Run junkie whose fingers will fall off some day. I have better things to do. So just leave me alone.’
‘Why does defeat bother you so much?’ asked the guy, texting on his phone.
‘IT DOESN’T!’
‘Clearly.’
‘So what if I want to win everything? What’s wrong with it?’ She stepped closer to Dhruv.
Dhruv kept his phone in his pocket, stood up, and stepped closer to her. ‘With that kind of temper, I wonder how you won your debates. Calm down, Aranya.’
‘YOU DON’T TELL ME TO CALM DOWN. You called me ugly, and questioned my selection as the class representative. Why the hell shouldn’t I try to beat your score and make you feel second best and not good enough for anyone?’
‘Second best? Not being good enough for anyone? I think you’re talking about yourself here. But I feel I will get to know more of you as we spend more time together.’
‘Why would I do that?’ asked Aranya.
‘Because I’m Dhruv Roy. You might remember playing a hand in expelling me from school by lying in front of the committee. Remember me? The boy whose mom left him? The last desk? Lunches shared together? Your face tells me you do now. Good! It’s good to see you again. I didn’t expect you here either. I was as shocked as you are.’ He took her hand and shook it. ‘You’re still pretty ugly, Aranya. I’m glad you have spent the last eight years making up for it. Debating, studies, scholarships, projects? Even TT? I’m impressed! But what about your face? What will you do about that? That will always be the first thing people look at. That’s never going to change, Aranya.’
‘Why are you here?’
‘What can I say? It’s fate. But now that you are here too, I’m sure it will be fun.’
I Love u Rachu
16
Aranya had been cautious enough to stay out of Dhruv’s cross hairs. He had let her be for now but she knew, sooner or later, he would mess with her.
Some seniors had tried to induct Dhruv into their groups, most of them rogue seniors who assumed Dhruv would be like them—a weed-smoking, chronic-masturbating, porn-loving, counter-strike champion, but Dhruv was yet to be infected with the responsibilities of keeping a friendship going.
That night he was sitting at the edge of the roof of the boy’s hostel, his legs dangling precariously from its edge. It was too calm. He hadn’t been in a fight in days and it was getting to him. The match in the parking lot of the hostel had ended with collar-grabbing and shouts of madarchod, madarchod.
All of a sudden Dhruv heard the door of the roof being banged open and a tall, lanky boy stumbled out of the staircase. From the corner of his eye, Dhruv saw him peeing off the roof, one hand raised over his head waving a peace sign.
The boy started to sing an old Hindi song, grossly out of tune. Dhruv heard the voice coming towards him and he rolled his eyes readying himself for another drawling conversation, another attempt at an induction into a circle of dull men.
The boy wobbled and sat next to Dhruv. He started to talk, his voice a low slur. ‘It’s hilarious.’
‘. . .’
‘Ask me what is hilarious.’
‘. . .’
‘To drench the world with your sperm and your piss and watch them walk by calmly with a sense of purpose.’ He laughed.
‘Why the fuck would you do that?’
‘Why the fuck would I do what?’
‘Piss and come on people?’ asked Dhruv for the boy who stank like a municipal dumpster was the first remotely interesting person he had met in this otherwise dull college.
‘It’s because the world is great and it’s disgusting at the same time. Imagine the beautiful Himalayas, c’mon imagine them, yes, that’s more like it, pine trees, white snow, that sort of shit, nature’s marvel, beautiful enough to make you jizz in your pants, and then there will be little kids spoiling it all by clicking selfies and giggling which would make you fucking mad and then you will pee all over those little annoying kids.’
‘That’s the most incoherent shit I have heard in a while.’
‘I should write this stuff down. It’s gold.’
Dhruv waved a middle finger in his face.
‘Oh wait! You’re the boy who got into that scuffle with the seniors, right?’ Dhruv nodded. ‘Respect. By the way, I’m Sanchit.’ He thrust his hand forward. Dhruv didn’t shake it. ‘Don’t worry, I use my left hand.’
‘Looks like you use your face.’
‘Aha. Sarcasm. A dying art I must say. Where did you learn it? Gossip Girl? Pretty little liars? 90210? You look the type.’ Sanchit chuckled, retracting his hand.
Dhruv looked away.
‘I like how you have got the whole angry young man thing going about. Very 80s but still very cool.’
>
‘You would know the 80s. Now fuck off.’
‘Your vocabulary is painfully limited. Your parents should have smacked you with a dictionary.’
Dhruv waved his middle finger again.
‘Dude, the anger, the brooding eyes, the mysterious aura around you, the veiny, big arms, the sarcasm, it’s like you’re trying to woo me. And if you had the boobies, I would totally go for you. In fact that’s one of my long-standing fantasies. I love a girl with muscles. Don’t raise your eyebrows like that.’
‘. . .’
‘That’s hypocritical and sexist. You can be ripped and a girl can’t you? I can loan you some FBB porn. It’s epic. You must try it. You will realize how dirty you’re in your head.’
‘FBB?’
‘Female Bodybuilding.’
‘Gross.’
‘What? Do you not like the female form? Or do you feel emasculated in front of a beautiful, muscular woman who has bigger traps than yours?’
‘I wouldn’t give a shit.’
‘Check it out,’ said Sanchit and fired up a video on his phone of a female bodybuilder stripping naked.
‘That’s the most disgusting thing I have ever seen in my entire life.’
‘And you’re still looking,’ pointed out Sanchit and Dhruv tore his eyes off the woman. ‘Female bodybuilding porn is a metaphor for the world we live in. It’s beautiful with all its imperfections, even though the imperfections are born out of its quest to be perfect.’
‘How drunk are you?’ asked Dhruv.
‘That’s not a question. The real question is, do you want to pee on the world?’
And just like that, they were peeing on the world, and they weren’t even high, and they weren’t even friends.
I Love u Rachu