When a Lawyer Falls in Love

by Amrita Suresh

  ‘Pavan!’ she called out as Pavan made a super quick appearance. ‘Will you be my partner for the salsa dance tomorrow?’ Sonali asked. Ankur’s gaze lowered and Pavan’s eyebrows shot up. Salsa dancing and Sonali Shah? Pavan Nair was already on the dance floor!

  Clasping his hand around the slim waist of Jaishree, Souvik was convinced that he was in heaven—slow music, cherubic instructor dancing about, et al. If only Souvik looked around, he would actually find a harp. After all his heart was already singing.

  The dance workshop was a combination of salsa, jazz and tango, each being taught for half an hour. Watching Souvik and Jaishree together, Sonali remembered the time when the shy Jaishree had refused to take part in the dance workshop saying that she would only dance with ‘one man’ in her life. She had finally found her man in life.

  Sonali herself didn’t hold any such overtly romantic notions. When it came to dancing, any man would do. Except that Sonali wasn’t sure if Pavan even justified being called a man! The clumsy, but happy Pavan frisked about on the dance floor like a piglet let loose from its pen. Sonali felt like a sow as Pavan enthusiastically frolicked around her in poor imitation of some dance steps.

  Ankur, meanwhile, was struggling just as much with Bhoomika. He tried not to add to the music each time Bhoomika stepped on his feet with her multipurpose high heeled shoes. The instructor made the whole group form a huge circle, each had to change partners with the change in music. So soon, Pavan’s monkey moves were being admonished by Bhoomika’s high heels and Ankur finally found himself dancing with Sonali.

  ‘So how was your dance?’ Sonali asked, as they tried to keep pace with the music. ‘Great!’ Ankur declared, almost ramming into a burly fellow who was all muscle and gelled hair.

  ‘How was your dance with Pavan?’ Ankur asked more out of formality. He knew that Pavan was as good at dancing as Ankur himself was at singing.

  ‘He dances like a dream,’ Sonali declared. ‘The kind of dream where you feel you are being chased and wake up sweating,’ Sonali finished and Ankur grinned.

  For once he was glad that Pavan had two left feet. After all, Ankur wasn’t sure if he would have liked to hear Sonali praise another male.

  Thirty-Seven

  ‘Those were the best days of my life…’ Bryan Adams’s Summer of ’69 blared, suddenly switching to Dandiya beats. That is Indian fusion music for you, thought Ankur. The speakers from which the ear splitting music boomed made Ankur want to remove his ear drums and parcel them back home. Just the previous day, there had been a rock concert with vigorous head banging. Ankur had also wanted to bang his head, but for a different reason. The music sounded more like a train getting derailed, and the long haired singer looked as if he was getting electrocuted by his guitar.

  There was always a stringent security check at the college rock shows. After all sex, booze and rock ‘n’ roll are known to go together.

  The stadium was an impressive oval shaped structure equipped with flood lights. There was something called the ‘choreo-night’ which was a dance competition with more than two dozen colleges taking part. Ankur remembered being part of the college dance troupe during his first year. And his most vivid memory was of artificial smoke filling his nostrils and getting into his eyes. This, while he was on stage making giggle-inducing movements in front of a packed stadium.

  A well coordinated dance needs hours of practice, Ankur had learnt. And though he did not have particularly fond memories of the dance rehearsals, he had a vague feeling that practising dance and practising law had more things in common than one would give them credit for.

  Ankur also learnt that female engineers possessed a far greater degree of intellect than the male lawyers would credit them with. Ankur, Bhoomika and Pavan were sitting in one of the promotional stalls when a bulb suddenly fused. The brightly coloured tent they had been sitting in had been put up by a telecom company whose cell phones didn’t sell much.

  Pavan, with a tube light of a brain volunteered to fix the bulb, more in an attempt to impress the girl he was with. Never mind if the girl happened to be an electrical engineer. He rotated the glass bulb in a bid to ‘o-pen’ and examine it. If only the same could be done to his head. Bhoomika offered to help but was neatly brushed aside. Bhoomika and Ankur looked on, amused as Pavan foolishly fiddled with the bulb till he gave up and left. With Pavan gone, Bhoomika had a good look at the now cooled bulb. Noticing the intact filament, she simply tried the bulb on a different plug point and sure enough, it lit up!

  ‘Why didn’t you remind that idiot that you are an electrical engineer?’ asked Ankur. Bhoomika gave a serene smile and then said something that shook him up.

  ‘A bulb is easy to fix,’ the young female engineer replied, ‘a male ego isn’t.’

  Thirty-Eight

  A warm bonfire blazed and crowds had gathered around it. It was late in the evening and the cool breeze made the fire wood crackle, as an enthusiastic crowd sang and danced around the fire. The surging crowds that haunted the row of stalls were now dispersed and randomly scattered in little groups all over the campus.

  Sleepy students huddled around their own private bonfires; among them were Ankur and Sonali, on opposite sides of the crackling firewood. As Ankur sat hugging himself for warmth, he made a rather pertinent observation. When seen over the warm blaze of a fire, the same person can look very different. Ankur was now finally prepared to admit to himself that his feelings for Sonali went far beyond those occasional bouts of sulking. Sonali had hurt him, annoyed him, and drove him mad, yet strangely, he still loved her.

  In fact as sappy as it seemed, Ankur could fight like crazy with Sonali yet he loved her to death. For all that Sonali may have mastered in astrology, there was one prediction that Ankur could make accurately. He was destined to be with her. But even as Ankur thought of setting up home with Sonali, his lawyer brain thought of her conservative Gujarati family. Sonali’s ten-year-old brother’s perfectly round face reminded Ankur of something. A crystal ball. In fact, Sonali’s sour-faced grandmother seemed more like a gypsy woman. Ankur could almost see Sonali being married off and her tiny brother playing errand boy on her wedding day. Ankur shuddered at the thought. Perhaps that’s the reason he suddenly found himself sitting next to Sonali. Ankur had a lot of catching up to do. He couldn’t lose Sonali now. She simply was too precious.

  The dark green trees formed a dim outline against the night sky as they swayed encouragingly in the breeze. Souvik and Jaishree had decided to go on a long after-dinner stroll. They had decided to walk to the lake at the far end of the campus, and for Jaishree, it was almost a milestone. For a young pair to be seen at the lake after sunset was the ultimate proof of their couple status. An illuminated cycle stand in the far distance and the sophisticatedly lit Star Hotel facing the lake stood at opposite ends. The blackness of the night is a great leveller, thought Souvik. In the brightness of the afternoon sun during a college festival, Jaishree, though a little tanned, was still fair and lovely. Souvik meanwhile was dark and ugly. But here under the scattered stars of the black night sky, everyone was equal.

  The chill in the air had the young pair walking rather close together without succumbing to the temptation of holding hands. After all, they had already crossed many a couple snuggled together in discreet corners beneath trees. Jaishree looked a little uncertain as Souvik and she left the concrete campus road and began walking towards the wooded and now sleepy path to the lake. But she seemed to be getting more at ease the longer they walked.

  The pair finally reached the quiet oval lake. Souvik was pleasantly surprised to find that they were perhaps the only people there. Jaishree felt both comforted and awkward as she looked around. Agood part of the junta was at the Lone Wolf’s Quiz, an all night event, where the questions and answers were interspersed with yawns. One of the biggest draws for the all night event was not so much the quiz as it was the warmth of the heated auditorium.

  As Jaishree sat daintily by the lake, Souvik thr
ew pebbles aimlessly into the placid waters. The lake shimmered in the moonlight as ripples danced across the surface each time a pebble landed in the water. Jaishree silently mulled over the day. Though it was sundown, Souvik and Jaishree had walked and spoken about everything under the sun.

  ‘Jaishree, you know…,’ Souvik suddenly said as he turned to look at the pretty girl sitting close to the water. ‘I come from a family of freedom fighters…an uncle from my mother’s side was actually sent to Kala Pani in the Nicobar islands….’

  ‘That’s real patriotism,’ Jaishree said softly. She seemed unusually tranquil this evening. Jaishree had a soft spot for anyone who could do something selflessly. Casting his eyes towards the lake once more, Souvik asked, ‘Jaishree, can you swim?’ Jaishree was about to recount her swimming lessons during her summer holidays with an over friendly coach when Souvik turned to look at her and rather casually asked, ‘Will you swim with me?’

  If Jaishree was shocked at the bluntness of the suggestion, nothing quite prepared her for Souvik’s next blatant question. Attempting to adjust his pants in an effort to kneel down, Souvik quietly asked the most beautiful girl in his world, ‘Will you marry me?’

  Thirty-Nine

  It was the last day of the college festival. Bhoomika had won two music CDs, Souvik had won Jaishree’s hand and Vyas had regained his brain. Finally. Each time he was low, Vyas would solve tough maths puzzles to de-stress. Vyas had dumped his logic for Caroline, she had dumped him for someone else and the only thing needed to be dumped was his depression.

  Emerging from the library after three whole days, Vyas seemed wiser. And quiet. His break up with Caroline had made him learn things that no book could possibly have taught him. But one of the best things that had come of the whole affair was his single status all over again. It was a happy realisation, though he was keen on keeping more than a safe distance from women.

  Pavan, however, was operating with a different philosophy. Sitting in a semicircle with a contingent of girls from outstation colleges, Pavan was holding court with the ladies! ‘I have devised a fool proof technique for girls to chase me all over the place,’ Pavan boasted.

  ‘That we anyway want to do…for reasons that are not entirely romantic,’ a female voice piped up. There was a collective laugh. Unfazed, Pavan continued while grinning.

  ‘So like I was saying, my fool proof technique is, when you see a pretty girl…you should simply turn and run…in the opposite direction.’ There was a dubious silence.

  ‘See, I told you my technique was different,’ said a smug Pavan, sounding suspiciously like a wannabe star trying to promote his soon to be released film.

  ‘So where was I? Yes, you should wait till the girl notices you, and when she does, you should simply turn and take to your heels,’ said Pavan his conversation getting animated.

  ‘See, any normal person’s interest is piqued and girls, I’m assuming, are normal, so they just might start runningafter you,’ Pavan completed and there were exasperated giggles and groans. The idea was amazingly foolish. Pavan was incorrigible! Bhoomika sat watching, amused. Pavan intrigued her. He had offered her a curl control shampoo he had won as a prize in one of the stall events, so that she could tame her rebellious locks. If only there was a tonic that could do the same to Pavan’s unruly grey cells! After all, Pavan had the cute habit of scratching his head as if to think, each time he was asked a question.And those around Pavan would always be full of questions!

  While Pavan kept everyone amused, Ankur was busy buying tickets for a fusion concert that evening. It was the last time the gang would attend the college concert together. Ankur was determined that they all went as a group.

  Ankur had begun using the word gang often during the last year of college—a term laced with nostalgia for these final year students.

  Sonali and Jaishree were also feeling nostalgic, doing things in their final year that they didn’t do in their first year, perhaps making up for lost time. Jaishree used to keep away from hard core rock ‘n’ roll, but on Souvik’s insistence, she found herself in a wooden cage right in the centre of the stadium. It was the AIU College authorities’ idea to protect the girls by allotting an enclosed space for them during rock concerts. The girls were placed right in the centre of a stadium full of testosterone driven males. The cat calls quite naturally doubled adding to the sound effects of the already deafening rock show. Two skimpily clad girls invited the maximum number of whistles. But when Jaishree followed soon after, there was a hushed silence. Jaishree Subramaniam had come dressed in a well fitting baby pink salwar kameez! The rock ‘n’ roll crowd seemed a little embarrassed on Jaishree’s behalf. But Jaishree didn’t particularly notice, and even if she did, she couldn’t care less. The one guy who truly cared for her was convinced that he must have done some good in an earlier birth to deserve someone as sweet and decent as Jaishree. She had agreed to be his wife, after all!

  Sonali, meanwhile, was far from being decent. In the conventional, conservative Gujarati sense that is. She had taken part and won a pot breaking competition, much to the horror of the male contenders. Pot breaking was a game that usually only guys took part in. But that was before Sonali Shah came along. She wielded the wooden stick with such gusto that the males were a little wary around her!

  Bhoomika on the other hand was feminine enough to have her snap clicked and used for promoting ‘IT’S LEGAL’. Of course her snap was one of the many put up on the main bulletin board. Yet it was an honour that not many got. Pavan knew that for a fact. After all he had clicked the snap. Besides there were other things that kept the Malayali rather busy. Like observing the various shades of nail polish as he made girls sign his autograph book for him, and trying old tricks to meet as many as possible. But he was most keen on Bhoomika, the Diva around whom most guys went boom!

  ‘You’re a Sagittarian, right?’ asked Pavan grinning as Bhoomika wrote down her e-mail id in his diary. Bhoomika smiled and nodded.

  ‘You are a Sagittarian, I’m a Gemini…had Sonali been here, she would have said we make a great pair,’ said Pavan beaming as he looked at Bhoomika.

  Bhoomika smiled again. Both exasperated and embarrassed. ‘In that case I should ask my boyfriend what his views on polyandry are,’ Bhoomika said, giggling, adding. ‘Sister. I’d like it if you consider me a sister,’ she said. Then she ruffled his hair and walked off. For all the romantic notions he was harbouring a minute ago, Pavan suddenly felt like a three-year-old around his pre-school teacher.

  Forty

  ‘If truth be your God, you need no religion,’ Karma, the pop group, was singing. Being the last day, everyone was living it up, including Ankur who was jiving away in the front row. The band then switched to a soft romantic number and the stadium lights were turned off.

  One by one almost everybody switched on their cell phones and the soft light from what seemed to be a carpet of glowing lights illuminated the stadium. The crowds that ran into thousands swayed in tandem to the slow beat of the music. The stars from the night sky seemed to join them and to witness the event. It was pure magic!

  Suddenly the acoustics were turned off. The crowds thought it was part of the event and waited in anticipation. Someone came up to the mike and said there was an announcement to be made. A very urgent one.

  ‘Souvik Bose of final year AIU College, this announcement is for you. Your mother is critical. Please report at the Help Desk immediately.’

  A ripple of shock and sympathy swept through the crowds. Ankur was stunned. Souvik was not in the stadium. Ankur was sure since he had wriggled free at the last moment. He had said he wanted to spend time with Jaishree. If onlyhe had known of his mother’s condition.

  Standing near the phone booth-cum-cigarette shop just outside college, Souvik desperately tried to flag down a taxi. Pavan’s family had gone out for the evening, so their Ambassador was not available.

  Souvik’s mother had been visiting a relative’s house when her condition took a turn for the w
orse. As the taxi they boarded snaked through the frenzied traffic, Souvik tried to keep calm. Jaishree sat next to him. Vyas and Ankur sat in front along with the cab driver.

  Hope City Hospital was a good distance from the campus and the taxi ride seemed tedious. Souvik shifted about uneasily. His palms were cold and clammy. Jaishree placed her reassuring hand in his.

  Staring at the disinfectant-swabbed white-tiled flooring, Souvik prepared for the longest night of his life. Mrs Savitri Bose was in the intensive care unit battling for her life as her son sat outside battling tears. The prognosis was that since the dialysis was failing her only hope lay in an organ transplant. Souvik had offered a million times to donate his own kidney, but his mother wouldn’t hear of it. As he sat on the cold rigid plastic chair, his breath getting shorter, Souvik wanted to donate his life to save his mother. Only, if he could.

  As Souvik got ready to spend the night in the waiting room, his mind sped to his childhood days. Souvik thought of Kolkata, the Howrah Bridge and the monsoon rain. Then he thought of the chubby lady with a kind face and white and red bangles in her hands who could identify her children by their sneeze. Souvik thought of his maternal grandparents and the sprawling Das mansion. His mother was happiest there. Souvik remembered spending almost every vacation in the ancestral home his mother grew up in.