by Durjoy Datta
17
Traditionally, Freshers’ Day at Delhi Technological University was more of an awkward ice-breaker between overenthusiastic senior boys and naive junior girls.
‘Fuck this, this isn’t the Freshers’ our college is known for,’ said Sanchit, horrified.
‘And what is it known for?’ asked Dhruv, his eyes fixed on Aranya.
‘Freshers’ Day is supposed to be a comedy of errors, not this. It’s when everything is fuck-all. The juniors come together and prepare horribly synchronized dance routines, someone sings woefully out of tune, an unfunny fat person mimics professors, a boy in a gunjee does a solo dance performance ripped off from a Step Up movie without the dexterity or the awesomeness, etc. A few girls would vomit all over themselves, a junior would be bashed up by seniors, an odd senior would get a lucky blowjob behind the flex posters, and a handful of students would be expelled,’ said an exasperated Sanchit. ‘They are breaking the tradition, damn it!’
At the helm of operations of this year’s party was that psychotic bitch, Aranya. She had cruised her way into the cultural fest organizing team, the IEEE, the debating team, and had turned out to be a professional ass-licker. Aranya was running the machinery with military-like discipline.
‘This is so fucking corporate!’ complained Sanchit. They were sitting outside the single-storey structure where the first-year students were organizing the Freshers’ Day with a seriousness you associate with finding a cure for cancer. Things were clearly tense.
‘The girls had to go through rigorous auditions before they could make it to the dance routine. The group has only five girls now. Imagine! Last year there were fifteen, most of them with big titties,’ continued Sanchit.
‘Is there any time you don’t objectify women?’
‘I objectify men, too. Don’t think I have not noticed your bulge.’
‘You’re fucking incorrigible.’
‘Don’t you want to say something? This is our heritage. Fucked-up Freshers’ parties is our forte! Our college’s rich history is embellished with screwed-up dance routines, lights falling on people’s heads, girls tripping over heels, comics being booed off stage, music performances going awry, professors losing their shit! Who likes perfect people? We shouldn’t stand for this. This is not IIT. We are the fucking upholders of average!’ exhorted Sanchit.
‘As much as I would like to help you to run this institution to the ground, Sanchit, I have no reason to.’
‘You have no reason to? It’s that girl, Aranya, who’s running this place like fucking Fort Knox. I thought you hated that girl. Grow some balls and help me screw this up!’
‘I hate you too. So what do I do about it?’
‘You love me, man. You man-love me,’ said Sanchit and wrapped his arm around Dhruv’s shoulder.
‘Take your arms away before I rip them off and shove them up your ass. That’s the only man-love you will get from me.’
At a distance, Dhruv saw Aranya with her little black transponder hanging from her back pocket, a headset wrapped around her dopey little face, going about business like she was born for it; a little too self-assured for Dhruv’s liking. As if that incident which scarred him for life had no bearing on hers.
She had grown up to be just the kind of girl who would ignore calls when she’s working or out with her own heterosexual group, the girl who puts her happiness before her boyfriend’s, who would harp on and on about feminism, the kind of girl who would lie without blinking, the girl who would break your heart and be absolutely alright eight years later while the boy’s heart still trembles with the thought of holding her hand.
Dhruv had every reason to see her crumble to ash.
They were now sitting at the windowsill, looking inside.
‘For heaven’s sake! They have hired a choreographer this time. Just imagine everyone in sync. Disgusting,’ exclaimed Sanchit.
The choreographer, along with his girl partner, pirouetted effortlessly on the dance floor and expected the students to follow suit. Aranya wasn’t a part of the dance troupe but she stood in a corner with a writing board and spat instructions to the dancers. No one was spared from her caustic tongue.
‘Stop acting like you have elephantiasis! Move those feet! Do it like he does!’
‘Namita? Are you pregnant? Then why are you so scared in the lift? The boy will not drop you and kill your unborn child!’
‘Anamika? Are you trying to get pregnant? I have no problems with you fucking every boy in the college but you can’t do it on the dance floor. Dance, don’t grind. I don’t want professors to think we are vulgar. Be sensuous, not vulgar.
Dhruv laughed at this and the voice carried to the inside of the dance room and everyone looked in his direction.
‘What’s so funny?’
‘You, teaching people on how to be sensuous,’ said Dhruv. ‘Aren’t you made of stone?’
‘You should have said diamond or cubic boron nitride or carbon nitride, the top three hardest materials. But wait! Oh yes, you’re not smart enough. I remember you being thrown out of the school because of it. And before you go into reminding me about that childish story of when we were eight. GET OVER IT!’ snapped Aranya.
‘I wasn’t thrown out—’
Aranya shot back, ‘Fuck off, Dhruv, don’t make me throw you out of here as well. Don’t make me call Prof. Mitra.’ She turned towards her troupe who looked confused. ‘What are you looking at? Can we do it again from the top, please? Music?’ continued Aranya without batting an eyelid. ‘And this time we will do it without thinking there are chimps peering inside to observe human behaviour.’
Sanchit goaded him to answer back, but Dhruv walked away from the hall, his eyes narrowed in anger.
After Dhruv had been expelled from his mother’s school, he had been made to drudge through hours of therapy and counselling sessions from huge-bosomed women with soft, fake voices. ‘Get over the girl,’ the counsellors would say. Sometimes he would understand. But usually he would say never and ask the counsellor to piss off.
But the girl he had refused to move on from had moved on.
Dhruv walked around in circles, looking for something.
‘What are you looking for?’ asked Sanchit.
He found the perfect rock, picked it up and aimed it at the glass window. He imagined throwing it, the glass shattering, the students stepping on it and bleeding, little pieces of glass jutting out of their feet, and the Freshers’ dance being cancelled.
The bitch deserved it.
He swung his arm and aimed, but Sanchit stopped him midway.
‘Dude. I should do it. The authorities can’t do shit even if they catch me. You’re a lowly junior, and moreover, I deserve this. I need to be the hero here and destroy the fucking perfect Freshers’ Day. Let me have. This is my moment and I’m hard just thinking about it.’
Dhruv handed over the rock to him and walked away from the building. Sanchit threw the rock and it went over, missing the target by a mile.
The dance practice went on as planned.
I Love u Rachu
18
Today was another gem in Aranya’s growing repertoire of achievements—the Freshers’ Day at DTU.
The professors were nodding appreciatively at the fine balance of fun and sensibility, the precision of the start and end times of the events, and the smell of the fresh bouquets in their hands.
The dance routine was in two parts, the first part was on the stage, pretty average mundane stuff, perfectly timed to bore people into a lull before the second group sprang up from the audience, a bit like a flash mob, and danced like their life depended on it. The collective gasps of the audience warmed Aranya’s heart, her brilliance taking even her by surprise.
‘I hope you’re enjoying it,’ Aranya asked Prof. Mitra, the dean, who told her that he was proud of her.
‘Where’s Prof. Raghuvir?’
‘How would I know? Check the staffroom,’ Prof. Mitra shrugged as if not wanting to answer.
Aranya hadn’t seen him anywhere in college yet. He was like the yeti or the Loch Ness monster—a legend. Before she had joined DTU, she had thought he would be all over the place—lecturing, researching ground-breaking ideas, patenting stuff, being handsome—but he was turning out to be quite a recluse. Truth be told, ever since Aranya cleared the entrance, she had been waiting to meet Prof. Raghuvir. She even had cut-outs of him in a physics book back in her hostel. She was a fan of his long flowing hair, the roundish spectacles he sported in all those newspaper clippings and his strikingly boyish looks.
‘Hope you enjoy the evening,’ Aranya said and went backstage to see if everything was in order.
Aranya saw Sanchit’s swearing and booing in the crowd as he attempted unsuccessfully to rile up the crowd. She had hired three professional bouncers to tackle anyone who misbehaved but she waved them down when they asked her if she wanted them to remove Sanchit. ‘Let him be and soak in the perfection,’ Aranya said.
After the events were over, it was time to choose the Mister and Miss Fresher of the day. The forms had been pored over by Prof. Mitra, a couple of unimportant professors and one fourth-year student. Aranya had initially wanted Prof. Raghuvir to be on the panel but he was unavailable.
Ten girls and ten boys were asked to step up on the stage and answer questions before they could show off any particular talent.
Dhruv was the seventh.
Her palms grew sweaty and she had half a mind to ask the bouncers to get him off the stage immediately, but she knew Dhruv—the drama queen, wouldn’t take it lying down.
This wasn’t the time to lose her bearings. One slip and he would break her. She had maintained the facade of being unaffected around him. She had to maintain that. He had destroyed her life once. It wasn’t going to happen again.
Dhruv was the next one up for the panellists’ question and Aranya was already breathing a little heavy, wishing he would drop dead, which was more probable than him behaving himself.
‘So, Dhruv?’ asked Prof. Mitra, mentally patting himself for his insightful questions. ‘What do you think is more important—looks or what’s deep within?’
Dhruv looked in the direction of Aranya. She felt her breath get stuck in her throat.
I Love u Rachu
19
Dhruv took a few seconds to collect his thoughts. Then he held the microphone close to his mouth and started to speak.
‘Respected Sir, and other professors in the audience, I am glad you asked this question because not only do I have very strong views about the same but also because it’s a pertinent one in this age. Objectification of both men and women is rampant, be it in television, movies or books. Beauty is defined by shades on a plastic strip, for both women and men, and by inches on a tape. Is that what we have become? Are we not the most conscious beings in the universe? Then why, I ask you, the boys and girls in the audience, then why, why would we always turn our heads when a gorgeous boy or a girl walks by, and not when a studious, ambitious, maybe average-looking girl does?’ Dhruv’s eye picked out Aranya from the crowd, and she flushed, not knowing whether to be impressed or be angry. She had been looking at the projector lights, wishing them to crash on his head, but now she was listening to him.
‘Should we not look around us and try to see behind what’s obvious?’ His gaze now caught hers and she couldn’t look away.
‘Should we not appreciate what’s in front of us? If we were blind, we would have been better off for we could have seen things more clearly, for what they are. The girls I see in the crowd,’ he pointed out to every girl in the crowd and smiled at them, ‘every one of them is beautiful to me.’ He flashed an honest smile. ‘Every one of them, and so much so, that if I had to fall in love with someone right now, standing here, I would fall in love with every one of them.’ He brought his arm to his heart and bowed; the girls sighed and so did Aranya and made a mental note to overdose on sleeping pills and die for doing so. ‘Every one of you is beautiful!’ He walked to the front of the stage, addressing the crowd now. ‘You’re beautiful. So are you. And so are you,’ he pointed to the bench of his professors and teachers. Suddenly he was Oprah. ‘And so are you, Miss Aranya!’
Aranya blushed, her body exploded with warmth. ‘Fuck you, Aranya, get it together,’ she told herself.
And with one last gesture of holding his arms wide open, he said, ‘ALL OF US ARE BEAUTIFUL!’
The crowd exploded in applause and Aranya swore she saw a couple of girls cry and mutter, ‘I’m beautiful.’ The girls lost it like it was a fucking Taylor Swift song.
Prof. Mitra clapped followed by the rest of the bench. Quite some time passed before the crowd settled down again, still filled up to the brim with an honest man’s moving words. Dhruv was still smiling at the crowd, and at the girls. Aranya stood there, confused, almost a little angry.
‘Is there anything else that you want to ask?’ asked Prof. Mitra to the panel, but the professors shook their heads. ‘Is there anything you want to say, Dhruv?’
‘I think we can directly go into the talent round. But before I do that, I would humbly like to thank Aranya for organizing this Freshers’ Day. She has worked really hard for it. Can we have a huge round of applause for her?’ said Dhruv. The auditorium erupted. Aranya looked on, confused. ‘I was hesitant of what I should do in the talent round and had it not been for Aranya I wouldn’t have been able to pick my performance. We slaved for hours together to perfect my routine. Thank you, Aranya. If I’m good in my talent round, then the entire credit should go to ARANYA!’ Dhruv shouted, blew a kiss towards her and smiled. A few boys in the crowd whistled, the professors nodded approvingly. But Aranya knew that smile. That fucking smile.
He motioned for the music to start. An orchestra with violins and pianos and cellos and saxophones started to blare out of the speakers. He threw the microphone on the side.
Dhruv took a deep breath and started to sway his hips to the music. The lights went out. A spotlight shone on Dhruv, it split into two, red and green and revolved around him, as Dhruv gyrated. Dhruv swayed his hips faster, his hands on his chest, slowly and seductively slipping down, and he tugged at his shirt and pulled it out. He came to the edge of the stage and winked at the crowd and slowly started to unbutton his shirt.
Now, he was looking at Aranya who stood frozen.
Three more buttons were unbuttoned and he ripped his shirt off. The music reached a crescendo. He was stripping. No doubt about it now. It was a goddamn striptease. People gasped. The professors were too stunned to react. Dhruv jumped into the crowd, shirtless, and started twerking and grinding like Beyonce on steroids. He grabbed his crotch and thrust his pelvis rhythmically towards the crowd.
‘Do we grab him!?’ the bouncer asked Aranya.
‘. . .’
‘Do we grab him, Aranya?’ they asked again.
‘. . .’
‘Say SOMETHING!’
‘. . .’
His jeans came off. Well, at least partly. Aranya felt bolted to the floor. She couldn’t move, her head spun, and the voices of the screaming Prof. Mitra, the laughing guys, the gasping girls, were one homogeneous mix in her ears, and while she was falling to the ground she saw him shirtless and laughing in his red printed boxers, the three bouncers tackling him and punching him in his face. Her eyes shut, thinking of his murderous smile, his bare torso and Prof. Mitra’s tragic face.
I Love u Rachu
20
Dhruv was still shirtless in the guys’ washroom having lost it in the scuffle with the bouncers. Sanchit had offered him a metaphorical blowjob whenever he was in need of one and a spare T-shirt.
‘THAT. WAS. EPIC.’ Sanchit gushed.
Dhruv inspected the bruises on his stomach. Any other day he would have taken them, but they came from behind, and he was distracted by the white-faced Aranya.
‘I should have done abs this morning.’
‘You’re ripped, dude. I think I heard women come in the crowd.’
&nb
sp; Dhruv played it cool like he didn’t give a fuck. ‘Whatever. Did you see that girl’s face?’ he asked.
‘Which girl? Oh her! I think she passed out or something,’ said Sanchit. ‘Serves her right for whatever she was trying to do. It’s karma and you were God-sent to kick her ass.’
‘She passed out?’ asked Dhruv, not sure whether to feel guilty or victorious so he did a mental toss and settled on victorious.
The thumps of bass from the speakers started to filter through to the washroom. The Freshers’ party had started. ‘Come. Get drunk today because tomorrow Mitra is going to screw your happiness,’ said Sanchit.
They left the washroom and walked towards the amphitheatre where the DJ was playing pirated CDs of bygone hits. Most of the students were sitting on the topmost stairs of the amphitheatre. As Dhruv trained his eyes he saw a handful of students dancing out of tune.
‘Dhruv, you will die a good, honest man for saving our college’s heritage. And to celebrate it, we have to get drunk,’ said Sanchit and dived into his little black polythene bag of clanging bottles.
They got drunk on a mix of Romanov, Royal Stag and Old Monk. Sanchit was a masterful bartender but a lousy drunk.
They walked back, their feet unsteady, Sanchit struggling to light his cigarette, the lights of the auditorium piercing their pupils.
‘They look like they are being tortured,’ Dhruv said, pointing towards the dance floor.
‘I would give my critique having learnt all Indian dance forms including Kuchipudi and the extremely demanding Chhau,’ said Sanchit, ‘but I’m kind of fucked up right now and all I can see are colours. I need to sit.’ He sat and got up immediately. ‘My head’s spinning. I need to walk. Hold my hand.’
‘I’m not holding your hand,’ snapped Dhruv.
‘It will not be gay. It will be like Sylvester Stallone and Arnold after a long drunk night.’
‘I’m sure they would chew on glass before they hold hands.’