But Ira Said

by Shreya Mathur

  In fact, if we were in a teen movie, I would be the wannabe sidekick who repeats each sentence the evil mean girl (Rika) snottily says to the sweet innocent heroine. And I would be wearing unflattering imitations of Rika’s outfits and accompanied by another equally deranged, badly dressed wannabe.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Rika says grumpily, folding her arms across her chest.

  I purse my lips and pretend to still be annoyed. I had mulled over matters while Shikha ma’am was droning on and on, quite unapologetic about her devious plot to use me. And I’d finally decided that there was no way that I would agree to do this whole ‘thing’ any more. My parents had shelled out money for them to coach me, not for me to help my friends cheat!

  Rika’s eyes are boring through me. She looks apologetic but there’s a hint of stubbornness and defiance that’s been there since the beginning of my outburst.

  My brain is working overtime trying to decide the best possible way to accept her apology without appearing like a despo doormat.

  ‘I know you didn’t mean to hurt me and so it’s okay,’ I say in a martyred sort of way.

  Rika had almost twigged my phony reaction. Her eyes are narrowed and she seems ready to hit back but she gives a sigh of relief instead. Slowly, a sheepish smile creeps onto her face.

  ‘So your paper was correct, wasn’t it?’ Lavisha comes up to us and asks cautiously.

  Rika turns to glare at her while I say wryly, ‘Yeah, so?’

  ‘So?’ Nim is looking at me, incredulous. ‘Ira, you’re asking so? Ira, you don’t get it, do you?’ Her eyes have a manic gleam and her voice is shaky. ‘Dude, you can tell us what’s coming in the boards! ’

  ‘Holy shit, Ira! And Shikha told us you also predicted some law paper for your neighbour. You can even do stuff for Hina! Ira, you should so open Ira Says! You’ll be rolling in money! And you won’t have to study for life!’ Nihar is looking positively crazed. Not to mention that he doesn’t seem to think of me as a bitch now.

  My head starts reeling from all their fantasies. What if I do this? Ira Says would be bigger than even Amroli’s. Which, for a tuition class, is fairly phenomenal.

  It is all so surreal. Scoring high marks in exams is the beall end-all. Students are committing suicides every single day. I read an article about a guy who failed his twelfth standard twice and in his third attempt hired a college student to give the paper. In Kanpur, students used to run in hordes to get into Asyut’s grandfather’s tuitions because after half a century of giving tuitions to students from DPS, Kanpur he could guess Adhyaru sir’s papers.

  I’m barely sixteen and I can do the same for anyone in any school for any subject.

  ‘What did she tell you in there?’ Shantanu asks, trying hard to contain the excitement in his voice.

  I blush when I see him. His hands are folded across his chest, unlike the others who are jumping up and down looking fairly delirious. I can’t help cringe when I remember our conversation the other day. I hadn’t even messaged to say sorry. Like a complete lid, I had immediately logged off.

  Giving myself a few seconds to regain my composure and normal skin colour and pull my feet firmly back to earth, I say in a haughty and deliberately casual voice, ‘Nothing. She wants me to meet Ashok Amroliwallah …’

  Iruuu, what are you wearing to meet Him?

  What is wrong with Lavisha?

  Lav! U dhakkan! Am going for practice.

  The car pulls up at the school gate. I’m thoroughly confused, thanks to Lavisha. Does she think I am going to dress up for Harsh ‘Vice-head Boy’ Asnani? I’m put off by the very thought of meeting him.

  I get out of the car and head towards the sports centre, feeling a little guilty. I have already decided not to go along with their stupid scheme. So why am I even going to meet Amroliwallah? It is shady business.

  Eewww dirty gurl. Wat practice???? ;p

  Squash! Duh.

  I walk down the empty corridor waiting for Lavisha’s reply when I suddenly see 1 New Message Rika.

  Lsten Ira u HAVE 2 gt Ashok A’s pic 4 us. Will put it on fb.

  ‘Finally.’ I look up to see the other sports vice-captain, Sameer, watching me expectantly. I put my racquet case down and ask, stumped, ‘What are you doing here?’

  It is his turn to be baffled. ‘Didn’t Driver tell you that the DSO participants list has to be finalized? The seniors are busy with their exams.’

  ‘Yeah, but Harsh is supposed to be here too!’

  ‘He’s over there,’ Sameer says, annoyed. I turn to see Harsh sauntering in. His tee has a very cute Calvin telling Hobbes, ‘People think it must be fun to be a super genius, but they don’t realize how hard it is to put up with all the idiots in the world.’

  My phone buzzes again, and I look down to see a new message from Lavisha.

  Ok, aren’t u w/AA?

  No! will go there later.

  ‘Actually I’m not really needed, but Subhash sir thought that since your last game was so … err … dismal and both of us are the only squash players in the school, you needed some practice. And I am happy to help.’ I bristle at Harsh’s extraordinarily arrogant and patronizing speech.

  ‘Listen, there were a lot of things on my mind, OK?’ I am stung by the fact that he chose to bring up the nitty-gritties of my last match. I had played truly awfully and, according to Harsh, by the end of the match I resembled a monkey jumping around the court with a racquet in its hand.

  ‘Right, so you both can go and practise.’ Sameer turns to me and continues in an irritatingly pompous voice, ‘I think I’ll prepare this list alone. Ira, no offence but I do things best when there’s no disturbance around.’

  Excuse me, am I being referred to as a ‘disturbance’?

  Before I can defend myself, Harsh says, ‘Come, Ira, let’s go.’

  And I follow meekly, my racquet hanging limp in my hand.

  I am such a loser.

  ‘Last lap, right?’ I am panting. Harsh, Mr Goody-two-shoes that he is, insists on doing a proper warm up before we start playing. Sameer came to check on us a few minutes ago and left, unimpressed by the fact that we were still warming up, after informing me that the girls’ list was my responsibility.

  ‘So, you can predict papers, right?’ Harsh asks.

  Taken aback by the unexpected question, I say, ‘Yeah, why?’

  ‘Oh, nothing, I heard what they did to you in your stupid tuitions,’ he says loftily.

  I glare at him. Hello, Amroli’s has the highest success rate in the country! It isn’t just any tuition class.

  He is biased. Praising tuitions is obviously against the Children of Teachers’ Rulebook. For him attending tuitions is like publicly dissing his father.

  ‘You can’t really predict papers, you know.’ His voice turns serious. ‘You’re just fooling everyone.’

  I ignore him and walk away from the ground, having completed my laps. I take my racquet and stand facing him. ‘Ready?’

  We spin the racquet to decide who will serve first. I win.

  Happy with a starting victory, I stand in the left box and begin the rally. The ball hits the wall with a loud smack and Harsh runs to hit back.

  ‘Ira, did you know those people set you up?’

  I ignore him and run across the court. The ball bounces off my racquet with a delightful thud and hits the front wall straight. It’s getting annoying to have everyone trying to tell me what to do. ‘Harsh, what’s your problem? I can do whatever I want.’

  ‘It’s just that it’s kind of cheating,’ he says. I duck when I see the ball coming in my direction. ‘And not fair to others,’ he adds emphatically, swinging his racquet carefully so that he doesn’t hit me.

  He misses the ball. Giving him a take-that grin, I pick up the ball from behind him and strut past smugly.

  ‘Oh, so you do believe that I am not bullshitting others?’ I deliver a perfect serve. ‘And that I stand true to my claim?’

  ‘Ira, I have studied with these people si
nce KG,’ he explains wearily. He steadies himself against my attack and volleys the shot. ‘I know them. They’re just using you.’

  I put forth a good length shot in response. He remains quiet for some time and we continue leaping around the court.

  ‘That’s what I wanted to tell you that night,’ he says after a while. Having just lost the rally, I am trudging to the right court resentfully as he takes position to serve from the left one.

  I stop, confused by his statement.

  ‘You realize they are going to make you prepare that paper just so …’ His voice trails off and I deliberately miss the ball.

  ‘You know too?’ I say disbelievingly. I sit down heavily, feeling tired. Practising is proving to be futile. Our nasty repartee has made each rally last at least a minute.

  ‘Does everyone in the goddamn school know besides me?’ I feel for my bottle of water in my sports kit. I feel like crying. But obviously I can’t do that.

  ‘I suppose so,’ he answers and sits down on the opposite side of the floor, looking straight at me. His eyes are boring through me and he throws the ball to me. His navy blue-clad figure is a sharp contrast to the whitewashed court walls.

  I catch the ball with one hand and give him a complacent grin. He rolls his eyes and grins back, giving me a delightful glimpse of his dimples.

  ‘Are your dimples natural?’ I bite my tongue the moment I ask that. But it really is an honest query.

  ‘What?’ he asks incredulously. ‘Are you suggesting I’ve had plastic surgery done to get them?’

  I blush. Actually, that’s not what I meant at all. Though I have to say I am considerably well-versed on the creation of dimples through plastic surgery. Not that I’ve ever wanted to do it myself.

  It’s just that one weekend when I was visiting Rika and Nihar at their father’s house, Nihar was sitting and scratching in their home theatre, deeply engrossed in Catwoman, and Rika and I were getting horribly bored so we decided to just, umm, visit her father’s and stepmother’s bedroom. Not that we snooped around and opened drawers. We just happened to glance at a brochure from a major ‘cosmetic wellness’ centre in Lonavla. On reading we discovered a tiny tick next to the ‘Double Dhamaka’ offer which offered six Botox sessions and a rhinoplasty operation with a dimple creation surgery thrown in completely free.

  It was no surprise that Sangeeta Jaiswal had got artificial enhancements done. The memory makes me snicker.

  ‘Of course, I was born with them,’ Harsh says grinning. I feel vaguely happy that he hadn’t got his dimples from a surgeon’s knife.

  ‘Actually, umm, I know someone who wasn’t born with one—dimple, I mean,’ I explain vaguely, ‘but then one day he got hit with a stone on his cheek and he got one!’

  I’ve just succeeded in making the situation more embarrassing (if that is even possible).

  ‘Are you serious?’

  I nod sincerely. I am not fibbing. That’s how Parth Kaushik, Ma’s sister’s husband’s nephew, got it! I decide against telling this to Harsh, because he won’t believe me. Even though the story is totally true.

  I throw the ball back to him, unsure of what to do or say. He catches it and says cautiously, ‘So, that Ashok whatsit wants to meet you, right?’

  I nod and reply, deeply offended by his ignorance, ‘It’s not Ashok whatsit. It’s Ashok Amroliwallah.’ I want to ask him how he knows, but remain quiet in Ashok Amroliwallah’s honour.

  ‘What does he want?’ Harsh asks.

  ‘God knows. But how do you know all this?’ I ask crossly. He just broke the one-minute-silence-after-his-name rule.

  ‘Oh, Yash told me,’ he says casually. ‘He said you are totally talented and coveted.’

  A smile creeps onto my face. As much as I can’t stand Yash and hate him even more for blabbing about me, I can’t help feeling pleased by the description.

  ‘Did they call your parents too?’ Harsh asks wide-eyed, interrupting my precious moment of glory.

  ‘Umm … yeah,’ I admit, ‘but I didn’t tell them. I mean, how silly would it look, coming to meet the owner of a tuition class just because he thinks their daughter is a … a freak.’ I smile in a self-deprecating manner, waiting for him to say indignantly, ‘But you’re not a freak!’

  Instead he just shrugs, ‘Yeah, that’s also there.’ Hmph.

  ‘But you’re not going, are you?’ he asks suddenly and urgently.

  ‘I am,’ I answer stubbornly.

  ‘You’re weird,’ Harsh declares. ‘And may I ask why?’

  I don’t answer. It had been so long since we talked like this.

  Eager to get me out of the house after the dreadful last months I spent in Kanpur, Ma had enrolled me in the sports camp conducted by Thoburn and Hurst during vacations. Once I realized that none of the students here cared where I was from, why I left that place or even where Kanpur is, I had enthusiastically campaigned for the school during my school election process, convincing my parents that I would bloom back to my normal self here.

  And of course, Thoburn and Hurst was the only school that had agreed to take me. More because of the hefty donation paid by Papa than my credentials.

  I am realizing the true extent of my ‘powers’. Tanu bai is right. I am the apple of goddess Saraswati’s eyes.

  But I can’t do it. What if one day everything I predict turns out to be wrong?

  ‘Do you want to play some more?’

  I shake my head. I first met Harsh during the sports camp. Our first meeting hadn’t been remotely friendly—he had introduced himself by saying, ‘Your way of serving is all wrong.’

  Harsh will never understand Rika’s and Shantanu’s disappointment if I do not go to see Ashok Amroliwallah. In fact, Harsh will never understand the opportunity I have. He will never see why it is so important to see him. Harsh, with his school teacher father, is steadfastly against coaching classes. And the dudes who invented them. He doesn’t realize that no student has ever seen Ashok Amroliwallah. For the first time in my life, I am getting to be the centre of attention for the right reasons. Why should I refuse?

  ‘I’m leaving,’ I announce suddenly and get up brushing dust off my skirt. I have to leave before Harsh convinces me otherwise. ‘I have to meet Ashok Amroliwallah.’

  ‘You aren’t really going to meet him, are you?’

  ‘I just said I am,’ I say and pick up my bag. Harsh stops playing and watches me go, an annoyed expression on his face.

  Git.

  ‘Ira Bhatt?’ a quintessential receptionist-type woman, complete with blank expression, dull exterior and monotonous voice, enunciates softly from behind her table. I nod bravely.

  I am not going to be scared.

  I mean, who gets to meet the Ashok Amroliwallah every day?

  And it’s not like the receptionist is a scary old bloodthirsty vamp baring her fangs at me. It’s just the way she is looking at me, almost like she’s pitying me.

  I square my shoulders and state my business. ‘I’ve come to meet Ashok Amroliwallah.’

  ‘I know that,’ she says immediately.

  Her voice is weary. It is my turn to look at her pityingly. Imagine having a baritone-voiced, stiff cotton shirt-wearing, beer-bellied, middle-aged miser ordering you to bring so-and-so file along with the baju-wala stall’s chai!

  Not that I’m hundred per cent confident about this possibility. But judging from her face, I have a feeling I am terribly correct.

  ‘Go.’ She pushes open the door for me and smiles ruefully.

  ‘Ah, Ira? Aeem I raaaiit?’ a deep baritone (Ha! I knew it) greets me as soon as I step into the office. There is a rustling sound, like one made by a plastic bag.

  I am facing the back of a red chair. I feel oddly welcomed by the chair. It was better than being faced with the sight of him in all his mysterious glory.

  The plastic cover which must have come with it is still attached. It reminds me of when Tanu bai bought one of those cheap Chinese touch phones. She had kept the
clear plastic sticker meant to protect the touch screen and would carefully peel it off whenever she had to use the phone.

  On the wall behind the table is a huge poster of Durga Ma. Wow, a religious fatso.

  I can’t make out a thing from his voice. ‘Sit.’

  I do a double take when he says that. How does he know I am standing? My heart banging away to glory, I sit down in the chair opposite him.

  I am petrified. Surely the owner of Amroli’s, in fact the Amroli, isn’t going to believe that a scatterbrained teenager can do this … shit?

  Reading my mind, he expounds, ‘You muuust be wondering why I’ve called you here, hmm?’ His tone gives nothing away.

  Heck, I am wondering! I lied to my parents to come here!

  Actually, not technically. They knew I had practice in school. I just hadn’t told them that I had also been cordially invited to meet the owner of my money-sucking coaching class.

  He seems to be waiting for an answer, but I can’t bring myself to reply. I feel a bit light-headed and try to concentrate on the soft boards in his room. Every inch is covered with newspaper clippings on Amroli’s. A separate board is dedicated to articles speculating on his existence.

  Oh god. What if he is one of those crazy megalomaniacs like Osama bin Laden who get cheap thrills from watching and reading stuff about themselves?

  What if he is a paedophile?!

  Harsh was so right about him. I shouldn’t have come here. I can’t believe I got carried away by Ira Says and all that nonsense they fed me. And I admit, it has been kind of nice to be known for something I’ve done rather than associated with something my mom or Rika has done.

  Not that I am going to agree to all this. I am not. I’ve just come to see what Ashok Amroliwallah looks like. Which I doubt I am going to achieve, considering the tacky B-grade Bollywood villain effect he is giving by hiding behind that plastic-cover-torn-in-some-places chair. Maybe I should scream or something …

  ‘You know, Ms Ira,’ he says in a firm voice, losing all the previous pleasantry from his voice, ‘children are a form of Gawd. Aeem I raaaiit?’