Will She Be Mine?

by Subir Banerjee

  “Where to, RK?”

  “I’m going to the lib to re-issue a book. Coming along?”

  “You go ahead, I’ve to go somewhere else,” he said, adding with a grin, “I thought you were on your way to Delhi.”

  “Why?”

  He laughed. “Don’t you know? Whenever you step out of the hostel, the boys feel you’re on your way to Delhi. It’s become a kind of joke.”

  The only distractions in my Shalini-sick life were the pranks I and PS shared. PS was my best friend as a freshman and we continued to be close for a long time. His name was actually Saurabh Pal. It was a decent name which I’d abbreviated and flipped around to make it PS.

  One winter night in hall 2, which was one of the undergraduate hostels at MSIT Kanpur meant for the first and second year students, on our way to the dispenser kept outside the dining hall to fill drinking water into our bottles, I pointed out to him the row of bicycles parked in our dormitory between a pair of pillars.

  “Do you think all the bikes would fall if I kicked the last one?” I asked.

  “It’s like one of those tricky questions in Physics. These are usually tough to answer,” he said with a mischievous smile. “Perhaps we should find out?”

  “I’m always ready,” I said with a nod.

  “Then go ahead,” he prodded, looking up and down the dormitory surreptitiously.

  I looked around too. It was very cold and the dormitory was empty at that time of the night. With the mid semester exams in progress, most boys were busy studying behind closed doors following dinner while some had gone to the central library.

  “Be ready to run, before the boys start coming out of their rooms,” I cautioned. “There’ll be a big sound.”

  “Don’t worry, just go ahead.”

  I planted a hefty kick on the last cycle and made a dash for the next dormitory, aligned perpendicularly to ours. PS had already disappeared. I spotted him at a distance walking unconcerned and rushed to catch up. There was a generous sound of tumbling metal behind us as we walked the rest of the way to the water dispenser nonchalantly. On our way back after filling water into our bottles we noticed most of the doors in our dorm standing open, with boys busy extricating their bikes from beneath the pile. PS stopped near them uncertainly.

  “Hey, I just remembered my bike is in that pile too,” he said with sudden realization.

  “I know,” I said with a smile.

  “You knew?” he asked suspiciously. “Where’s yours?”

  “Oh, sometimes I can predict the future. So I took care to park mine in the other dorm today.”

  He gave me a playful jab and I dutifully lent him a hand to fish out his bike.

  But these were short-lived incidents, insufficient to offset the constant wear and tear of my mind that Shalini’s memories caused. My frequent visits to my parents were misunderstood by our neighbors and also my friends in college as a sign of my homesickness for my home and parents. I preferred to let them think that way. It saved uncomfortable explanations. They anyway had no business to know who lived in my neighborhood or for whom my heart throbbed day and night- though in my initial days I did confide to PS about how my heart was full of love for Shalini.

  Why did love have to be so one sided, I sometimes wondered desolately? In this state of mind, it was difficult for me to enjoy my brother Sujat's wedding or my sister Madubala's, both of whom got married before I graduated out of MSIT. I went home on short vacations to attend their marriages, much like a reluctant outsider who is sometimes present at a function more out of a sense of duty than belonging.

  Something deep within told me that I should have helped my father more sincerely, in terms of sharing his mental and physical burden, and the exertion surrounding the enormous preparation for the ceremonies. I should have also tried to ease my mother's pains around the wedding arrangements. But I consoled myself that my college schedule and academic pressures didn’t permit me the luxury of fulfilling these responsibilities or running errands during the weddings at home.

  I carried a few textbooks and lecture notes along to justify my lack of interest in the family celebrations, and ostentatiously dug into them to prepare for the mid semester exams lurking around the corner after the weddings, while keeping a stealthy eye out for Shalini’s movements- but she didn’t take much interest in the weddings either and mostly kept out of sight, to my utter dismay.

  Both siblings in our family thus got married in quick succession- first my sister, followed by my brother. My sister's in-laws stayed at a nearby town, while my brother married into a business household in a distant city. After their marriage I was the only one who remained unmarried in our house, I thought with glee.

  I dreamily thought about my turn to marry next, and pondered about my future with Shalini. She seemed too cold about my interest in her. Didn’t she have any reciprocal feelings for me? There was still a lot of time to plan my moves to make her my own instead of feeling ignored. Till I heard from her directly that she didn’t wish to marry me, I wouldn’t give up. I couldn’t afford to get bogged down by dismaying thoughts about a future without her. There was hope still. This was the only life I knew, and I couldn’t afford to miss any opportunity to make her my life partner.

  Over time I had a suspicion my love story was getting too one sided. Did I alone harbor all the feelings of love? Did she feel nothing for me? Nothing short of an open admission of love from her side would satisfy me, or a clear denial that she wished to have nothing to do with me, in which case, of course, I’d die. I had to do something about the uncertainty urgently, otherwise spending the rest of my time in a distant hostel till my graduation would become impossible. Age old wisdom taught to fight poison with poison. The brave stood up against the brave, friends of the same feather flocked together, and so on. I too needed to work out a strategy.

  Hence, to combat my tremendous pull for her, I hit upon a philandering strategy and let my eyes rove the college campus. If I could come close to another girl on the campus, it might balance the push and pull on my mind for Shalini, save me a few trips home and also allow me to focus better on my studies. Besides helping to make up for my sinking grades, it would also create in her mind a sense of uncertainty over the sudden lack of my seriousness for her. For a change, she might start chasing me instead. The thought was intoxicating- but unlikely, or at least unbelievable at the present.

  Falling in love all over again, and finding a substitute for her right here in MSIT, was an exhilarating goal mixed with the melancholy of cheating on her. But was it cheating? It wasn’t, I decided. It was a strategy. She hadn’t committed anything to me yet. In a sense she’d invited her own misfortune and deserved it! She’d always acted oblivious of my feelings for her. As if I was dumb. My love for her had been a one way street so far for all practical purposes. It was time to change the game.

  The girls' hostel was a good place to hang out to achieve my objective. I was in for some disappointed though. On closer scrutiny, I found there were no lookers in my batch who took my fancy. To be fair, no girl compared in looks to my Shalini. The setback couldn’t shake me off so early and I decided to look a batch above or below to find the right girl. But disappointment was in store for me there too.

  Gradually I came to the conclusion that lookers perhaps didn't have enough gray matter to make it to an MSIT. Maybe that was an overstatement. I felt I shouldn't generalize since I’d not seen all the girls in all batches. But it was true of my batch.

  I did see a few pretty girls on the campus though and wondered. On chasing them I discovered them to be the daughters of some of our college professors. It was a dampener. I was already having trouble getting pass grades. This wasn’t the time to jeopardize them further by standing in different professors' offices explaining what I was doing chasing their daughters.

  If two such professors got together to discuss my amorous activities, I might be thrown right out of college! As a respite I turned my attention to sports. I and some of my fr
iends launched ourselves into badminton. We played badminton on abandoned tennis courts, sprinkled with shrubs that had found their way out of the ground through cracks in the cemented surface- till one of us noticed that the adjacent badminton hall’s door seemed unlocked one day. Cautiously we sneaked in.

  Wow! What an alluring sight the hall presented, with its sprawling courts. The gallery meant for the spectators was decked with rows of seats arranged on ascending layers of wide steps on one side of the courts. I shouted at the high ceiling to hear my voice's echo. I fancied it sounded somewhat like Kishore Kumar’s, who sang many of R. D. Burman’s famous compositions. A couple of my friends followed suit, but their voices sounded gawky and awkward in comparison, I was sure.

  Despite our find, we seldom got to play to our heart’s content on those courts. The inter college players often barged in and showed us the door. To our discomfiture we later learned that those indoor badminton courts and some of the better tennis courts outside were reserved for the institute players during certain time slots.

  We were the orphaned general category for whom nothing was reserved or easy in life, in college, outside in society, in jobs or anywhere else. We were the ones with shrinking rights and nowhere to go. We were the classless, faceless category, shameful of our very existence- yet too dignified to unite and protest for equality or fight for what was rightfully ours.

  We couldn't even unite during elections to vote political parties out of power who insisted on enacting the English colonial power's policy of dividing and ruling the nation on the basis of caste, creed and religion. It seemed like some of the nation's present crop of divide-and-rule politicians had inspired policymakers within the precincts of pedigreed colleges like the MSITs as well, to orchestrate reservation policies to percolate down to mundane things like who played on which badminton or tennis courts.

  At MSIT we were the undergraduates and called the postgraduate PhD students 'phuddaas'. A couple of separate hostels were allotted to them. Halls 4 and 5 were the PG hostels during our time. As it was difficult to discern from external appearances as to which student was pursuing a PhD degree and who an M.Tech, we ended up calling all postgraduate students heading towards the PG hostels as phuddaas.

  One day in the hall 4 canteen, we came across a phuddaa doing his PhD. He claimed his ambition was to use his degree and stamp of being an MSITian to find a wealthy father-in-law who’d let his educated son-in-law live in his own house, termed ghar jamai in the local lingo, with the added license to squander his hard earned wealth. PS and I glanced at each other and hid our smiles as the guy ranted seriously about his dubious parasitic ambition.

  Another wanted a heavy dowry from his in-laws when he married. He planned to qualify in the civil services exams and spend time at Mussorie to up his ante. I felt ashamed to think that people obtained admission to premier colleges like MSITs with such weird goals…

  The undergraduates- especially those belonging to the first and second years- would sometimes stand in the dorms of hostel numbers 2 and 3- called Hall 2 and Hall 3- and jointly shout 'phuddaa, phuddaa' while their victims dug their faces into their chins and hurried past to their hostel, hall 5. A good many of them aspired for selection to the IAS cadre, the country’s administrative services, and prepared for the allied UPSC entrance exams- called the civil services exams- using the well stocked MSIT library to good advantage for their mission.

  “RK, forget if any of these phuddaas have ulterior motives in using our institute library or campus or hostels- some people carry ulterior motives throughout their lives,” my best friend, PS, occupying the room next to me in the hostel, once said upon entering my room, “Much as we’d like, we can’t abolish the IAS exams in our country, but we can at least try promoting better information sharing and issue based discussion in our college.” He paused for effect. “Shall we start a newsletter and try building a literary culture in the campus? What are your thoughts?”

  I removed the headphones of the stereo cassette player from my ears to hear better what he was saying. I adjusted the pillow beneath my head and turned around to bring his face into better focus.

  “You said about abolishing something?” I asked.

  “Forget it. It’s not something that intelligent, honest people should waste time on. I came here to discuss a literary idea.”

  He went on to repeat his desire to start a newsletter on the campus. It sounded like a great idea! I’d already written a few articles for my high school magazine before joining college and believed PS had somehow recognized my literary prowess.

  I envisioned my name as an editor on the proposed newsletter (or co-editor since he too deserved some recognition for pioneering the idea). I imagined the introductory page of the newsletter reading like the casting on a movie screen in a cinema hall. Editor: Rajat Kumar, 3rd year, Aeronautical engineering. Shalini might like that. She’d already liked my paintings! Perhaps she admired offbeat pursuits. After my painting, she might like my editorial abilities too, and think of me as the big man at my college. Somehow, I could never keep her out of my mind while considering the good things in life, but she never seemed to think of me or tried to understand my pains.

  “Which song is it?’ PS asked, indicating my music cassette player. Music pods and mp3 players were still not in vogue at that time. Portable music cassette players were more common among students. He sat down on the chair. “What I like is that at least you don’t use external speakers placed on top of earthen pitchers to amplify the volume, as some others do. I plug cotton into my ears whenever I hear their blast. They just don’t know the upper limit of volume. It’s nothing but terrible noise pollution.”

  “It’s a Kishore Kumar song,” I replied to his query about the song I was listening to. “The music is S. D. Burman’s- Phoolon ke rang se, dil ki kalam se. It means- with the color of flowers, I write to you with my heart. It’s one of my favorites, besides another by his son, R. D. Burman, Badi Sooni Sooni Hai, or, my life is too lonely. These two songs amply sum up my own life.”

  He laughed, but I frowned. I didn’t find anything funny in what I’d said and diverted his attention to the composer of the songs instead.

  “RD’s father started composing the latter, but fell ill, so RD took over and completed it.”

  I held out the headphone to him.

  He placed them about his ears and nodded. “Good song- though I like Sehgal’s nasal tone better.” He handed the headphone back. “Anyway, put this aside. I came here to discuss something more important. There’s a lot of planning required if we agree to come out with a newsletter. It would be the first of its kind in this college.”

  My heart missed a beat as a thought occurred. What stopped us from enlisting the services of a few girls from the girl's hostel, or GH as we called it, for our proposed magazine? At that time we had one girl’s hostel. It would be fun. I mentioned as much to PS and the lusty guy's eyes lit up. He promptly approved of the idea.

  The more we discussed it, the better both of us liked the thought of starting a regular newsletter and promptly got cracking. It was our first stint at marketing an idea, finding sponsors to stand by our side and driving publicity. Besides helping us finance the newsletter from institute funds, the sponsors would also serve as a safety fender. They’d be props meant to take the hit if things backfired and missiles came our way. We needed to find some gullible, vain professors for the purpose.

  My friend was brighter at these things. “Let’s start with Kramer's wife,” he suggested. “She looks quite bored and might be a good means of passing our time too.”

  Kramer was the nickname for Dr. Karam Chand who’d recently returned from USA to settle down in MSIT Kanpur. He boasted of a varied background. Smart academic credentials (read graduated in India, followed by a US stamp with a masters and a PhD in USA), worked in American companies for several years, developed a desi American- also called Indo-American- accent that was neither here nor there, metamorphosed his surname to a mysterious
Kramer from a respectable Karam Chand and finally returned to India, thoroughly disillusioned and confused with life.

  His return to his birthplace wasn’t out of patriotism for the motherland, but owing to some problems with the mother of his would-be kids. By bringing her to India, he probably hoped to bring her to a state of motherhood before others abroad succeeded in achieving the same behind his back. I wondered with what hope he’d brought her to India. As if this country lacked lusty opportunists waiting to engage in adultery.

  "She looks good,” I agreed. “Her presence would attract other professors to join our editorial committee too."

  "One professor, RK," PS corrected patiently. "Who needs a crowd? You don't want them in majority on our newsletter and take over control from us, do you? We’ll be the rulers,” he grinned, raising a thumb. “The newsletter’s our baby."

  I smiled and raised my thumb too. In this way we both started recruiting our first editorial board member, Sheila Chand. At the professor's house, I did most of the talking to her husband while PS ogled at her. Her husband had recently returned from the US and wanted to come across as a broadminded American who didn't mind his wife mixing socially in his absence- or presence- with other men.

  "Got it," he nodded magnanimously, trying to sound American, readily grasping our noble goals in setting up the newsletter to enlighten the institute's student community, besides being a platform for exchange between the students and professors on pressing issues.

  "Ma’am, our first meeting would be on Monday evening," PS informed Sheila cordially, but his smile looked anything but innocent or academic. His voice sounded more like he was inviting her to his bedroom. The lecher did most of the talking to her while I stood aside to handle her decrepit, intrusive husband.

  Monday was still 3 days away. But in the meantime, we found a nice, wet topic for our canteen conversations.