‘I should have got popcorn in the interval,’ said Tamanna after a long while.
‘Sorry?’
‘Nothing. I was just saying that I’m feeling a bit hungry.’
‘Would you like a biscuit?’ offered Rishabh, his heart picking up pace again.
‘Yeah, okay. Which one do you have?’
‘Threptin—they’re high-protein supplementary biscuits,’ he said, fishing out the tin from his bag.
She burst out laughing. ‘Why do you carry these around?’
Rishabh always thought the biscuits were insipid but had to carry them on the insistence of his mother.
‘You need the energy,’ she would say. ‘Constantly running around. It’s good to always carry something to eat.’
‘Can’t it at least be tasty?’ Rishabh would whine.
‘Not everything is about taste,’ his mother would answer. This was as true for her aloo methi as it was for the biscuits. Rishabh had been sullenly lugging them around for weeks without once touching them, but now he couldn’t thank his mother’s foresight enough.
‘It’s a long story. But they’re good for hunger pangs. Try one. Pineapple flavoured, I think.’
She took one and liked it. So she took another. Rishabh suddenly found himself viewing the crumbly, powdery snack in a favourable light. They nibbled on their biscuits and sat in a more relaxed silence. Years later, Rishabh would think back to the time when he sat in a dark theatre with a tin of Threptin biscuits lying open in his lap and his heart beating like the wings of a hummingbird. He would wonder where romance went wrong and when it became just about dinners and dates.
Towards the end of the movie, Audrey Tautou and Tom Hanks shared a kiss. When it happened, Rishabh looked at Tamanna and found her looking back at him. There was something in her eyes. They flickered brightly, her eyebrows quivered and she drew back. Words bubbled to his lips but fear froze them away once again. Finally, with great effort, he whispered, ‘Did you like the biscuits?’
‘I liked the biscuits more than the film.’
Rishabh liked her more than the film or the biscuits, but he agreed with her assessment anyway.
It’s a real pity that life doesn’t come with a soundtrack, thought Rishabh as Puro and he sauntered to class after training. Rishabh’s bag felt light on his back. His shoulders were relaxed, his arms swung freely. Puro bounced on his instep. Their deodorant wafted into the classrooms, where the teachers had begun. Their droning stopped abruptly as El Paso entered their nostrils.
The boys reached 10 F and asked if they could enter. Before Pinto even said yes, they stepped in. Rishabh could feel her dark eyes dart towards them like two shoals of fish. He set his bag down and was astonished to see veins prominently snaking around his forearms like vines around a tree. Barkha’s eyes sparkled with curiosity at the rivulets of blood but she looked away, embarrassed, when she saw Rishabh observing her.
Rishabh smirked. He had distracted Barkha from a textbook. He felt his shirt stick to his back. Under the slowly turning fan, his wet hair felt cool. A bead of sweat slid down a stray strand of hair from his otherwise brushed-back look (think early-era Beckham) and plopped on to his trousers. He flicked it off. Pinto had resumed her high-pitched description of the Brahmaputra River.
Less than a month ago, Rishabh used to feel broken in class. His legs—his shin bone in particular—would throb with a dull, insistent pain. His mind used to be fatigued, surprisingly worn out by an hour of football. Why does my head hurt more than my legs? he would wonder.
‘You clearly never used to think in a game before,’ the coach had said when he had voiced his predicament. The coach always justified his torturous drills and also demanded explanation for their actions.
‘Why did you pass to Oza when Abel was open?’ the coach would ask.
‘Sir, I thought he was in a better position.’
‘Who was closer?’
‘Floyd?’
‘You’ll use your brain tomorrow or what?’
And the throbbing in Rishabh’s upper machinery would begin. These drills, coupled with the inevitable quizzing afterwards, slowly taught the boys the meaning of tactics. Until recently, they’d mistake formation-making for strategic genius. Now they’d begun to understand positional awareness, zonal marking, link-up play, making intelligent runs and just plain old picking the right pass. Slowly, they had come to realize that the most tiring aspect of football wasn’t the running—it was the thinking. And slowly, they had overcome the fuzziness that would cloud their minds towards the end of sessions.
Now, sitting in class, Rishabh’s mind was clear. It felt like a white expanse in his head, clean and calm. It was this mental stillness and physical sturdiness that was transforming the football team. A quiet energy swirled around them.
Where they walked, the whispers began. Girls blushed at the sight of them. The reverence once reserved for the basketball team had now passed to them. No longer did they look scruffy and aimless. They looked like they were finally headed somewhere, and they knew it was towards victory. It was a doubtless belief that stemmed from the coach. He’d worked his magic in mysterious ways.
When Puro had been packing up his studs after training one morning, the coach had walked up to him and said, ‘You’ll play for India one day.’ Saying so, he’d continued on his way.
Puro had sat confused till the words sank in, and then bloomed with happiness. He’d told everyone what had happened. The difference was enormous. Before that day, Puro had been a boy captaining a school team and after it, he was a man bent on representing his country.
‘Confidence,’ Mehfouz Noorani had once famously said, ‘is like an erection. When you have it, it shows.’
When there were less than two weeks left for the first-term exams, Rishabh finally decided to start studying. He commenced his academic campaign by copying down the exam timetable from Puro.
‘You sure it’s correct, no?’ he asked as he noted down the dates.
‘Haan, bey,’ said Puro, twanging a plastic ruler on his desk.
‘But you’ve crossed stuff out and rewritten things all over this. See, here you wrote “physics”, then you struck it out. Now it’s “computers”. Then again it’s become “physics”. What is this icchadhaari subject!’
‘Arre, it’s physics only. I couldn’t see it because . . .’
‘Because you’re a dwarf?’
‘You want the timetable or not?’ growled Puro.
Rishabh conceded that he did want the timetable and finished copying it without any more mean comments. It took him two more days to will himself to sit at his desk and open a textbook. It physically pained him to do so. He felt like an invisible force was stopping him from even separating the pages.
However, he felt oddly confident. There’s enough time, he thought. I’ll begin right after I watch this episode of Friends. Three episodes and one tennis match later, he felt too sleepy. No point studying in this state, he ruled. Might as well make a fresh start tomorrow.
But the promises we make to ourselves are the hardest to keep. The next day disappeared in reading a book, watching Animal Planet and running to tutorials. At least I studied at coaching, he consoled himself. That counts.
‘It doesn’t,’ said a voice inside him.
Shut up. I’ll definitely be up to it tomorrow, he assured the voice.
Remarkably, he did plant himself at his desk the following day and opened the textbook briskly, before somnolence overpowered him. He began reading, but his eyes moved faster than his brain. He was reading the words but couldn’t make much sense of them. So he had to reread them. This was frightfully dull work, and soon his mind made plans to shut up shop and take a nap.
‘Rishabh! Study!’ came a sharp bark from his mother, and Rishabh sprang to attention and shook his head as if to shake the sleep off.
He gave the textbook another shot, but soon an itch developed in his scalp. He dispatched a finger to take care of the emergency and, before
long, found himself fascinated with the flakes of dandruff that fell from his hair. He couldn’t believe his head housed so much of it! He was equally enthralled and appalled by the larger chunks. They’re as big as icebergs, he marvelled. No wonder I don’t feel the breeze on my head! So for the next hour, he occupied himself with personally scratching out each dandruff flake before deciding to shampoo his hair and confront this dermatological demon at the root. And another day passed.
The real problem was that Rishabh couldn’t care less even if he tried. Studying just didn’t have that dizzying excitement he felt when he was on the pitch. On the pitch he was confident, attentive, diligent, eager to learn and hard-working; at his study table he was lazy, reluctant, bored and asleep. He really did a lot of sleeping at his desk while preparing for the first-term exams.
It alarmed Mrs Bala. ‘It’s all this football that’s tiring you out and putting you to sleep!’
‘It’s the bloody syllabus that’s doing it, Ma,’ he explained, only to be dismissed as a smart alec and have his TV rights revoked.
But he wasn’t trying to be cheeky. He had given it an honest think. He felt alive when he was on the pitch. He felt every breath that entered his lungs, remembered every run and pass and goal. The sacrifices he made—getting up before most roosters, gulping down a raw egg in milk, tolerating abuse from the coach—seemed necessary to him. These things were worthwhile. He did them gladly because, unlike studies, football was something he actually liked doing.
As the exams drew nearer, even the teachers at Oswal’s started feeling the pressure. They had to justify the criminal amount they charged in fees. The lectures became more focused, the breaks became shorter and the doubts were treated with greater scorn. Needless to say, the change in style didn’t sit well with Rishabh. He hadn’t exactly had a wild time there earlier, but now he despised Oswal’s even more.
The only consolation, as ever, was the presence of Tamanna. He spent many a lecture staring at her attentive side profile, like a man holding on to a lifebuoy while drowning at sea. He had tried making contact with her many times since their movie outing, but none of their conversations had lasted longer than thirty-eight seconds. A strange gagging reflex kicked in every time he was near her, preventing him from speaking. But what he lacked in confidence he made up in perseverance. Now he always made it a point to say something, even if it was something inane, like ‘Nice handwriting!’—in the hope that one day Tamanna would go, ‘I love how Rishabh talks about things that don’t matter whatsoever.’
It was about a week till the term exams when Rishabh had his longest conversation with Tamanna, at the end of which, he had a distinct impression that he had finally broken the proverbial ice. He walked into Oswal’s that day and saw Tamanna sitting at the back with earphones plugged in. Spotting an opportunity for some light banter, he walked up to her and said, ‘Hi, what are you listening to?’
Rishabh didn’t have a booming voice to begin with, and his nervousness decreased his volume further. This ensured that he had the worst possible vocal equipment to get the attention of a girl who was sitting with her eyes closed and silently headbanging to really loud rock music. Hence proved: Tamanna completely missed his pithy conversation starter.
Now, Rishabh could have walked away and kicked himself for trying to talk to the love of his life, but he was the persevering kind. So he cleared his throat and said, only slightly more loudly, ‘What are you listening to?’
He managed to get the attention of every person within a three-row radius, but Tamanna herself remained oblivious. He noticed that all eyes were on him. He was in too deep. Earlier he could have slid into his seat with no one the wiser about his sad attempt, but now he had an audience. He had to commit himself to the cause; the show had to go on.
Now Rishabh almost shouted his question at the object of his adoration and touched her on the shoulder for good measure. It was the first time he had touched her, and he felt the temperature of his blood rising. Tamanna’s eyes flew open, and, gasping, she recoiled in horror.
‘Sorry . . .’ mumbled Rishabh.
There was a long, empty silence.
‘I . . . I just wanted to know which song you were listening to . . .’ said Rishabh.
Tamanna brought out her iPod, paused the music, yanked out her earphones and said, ‘Oh.’ This was followed by another stretch of radio static. ‘“Numb” by Linkin Park.’
Rishabh’s eyes lit up. He knew Linkin Park. He had heard their song ‘In the End’ a couple of times. It was on that CD that Sumit had burned for him, which had music and a folder called ‘New Folder’ in which was a folder called ‘School Project’ and within which was ‘Notes’, within which were a whole bunch of films that were of a decidedly unacademic nature. But that was not the point. The point was that Tamanna had spoken of a band that Rishabh had heard of, and he sniffed an opportunity for conversation.
‘Linkin Park! I love that band,’ he said.
‘You do?’ said Tamanna, shifting in her seat to face him.
‘Yup. “In the End” is my favourite song in the world,’ lied Rishabh.
‘I love that song!’ squealed Tamanna.
‘It’s genius.’
‘Hybrid Theory was awesome but Meteora is waaaay better.’
‘I think so too!’ said Rishabh, not knowing what any of those words were.
‘Their lyrics are so perfect. I feel like “Numb” is about me only.’
‘I feel the same way about “In the End”,’ said Rishabh, making it a point to not stray too far from known territory.
‘I didn’t know you liked them too.’
‘How can you not like a band that made—’
‘“In the End”?’
‘Yes . . .’
Tamanna giggled. It was a sound so pure that it made Rishabh totter in his place.
‘I like how much you like that song,’ said Tamanna. ‘It’s damn cool.’
Rishabh blushed. He felt his breath quicken. A small voice inside him told him this moment was perfect—it was best that he left while she still thought he was cool.
So he winked at her.
In his head, it was what a cool guy did, except that when he executed it, his eye remained shut for too long and then his lips began twitching. Tamanna soon grew concerned by his contorted face.
‘Are you okay?’ she asked.
‘Yeah, yeah,’ said Rishabh, sweating to get his face under control. ‘Okay, see you later . . .’
Rishabh turned away from her and sat down at his desk, his face in his hands. Kunal patted his back.
‘It was going so well,’ whispered Rishabh, prying open his left eye with his fingers.
‘But in the end, it doesn’t even matter,’ said Kunal.
A week before the exams, football training was halted.
‘There are complaints from parents about training during exam time,’ said the coach. Dave and Floyd shifted uneasily, staring at their shoes. ‘I don’t want to give you a break and all before a big tournament but . . .’ He held up his hands with his wrists criss-crossing each other, signifying that his hands were tied. ‘Listen, all of you—I know you’re not going to exercise but at least eat right for the next few days. No oil and vada pav and all. Home food only. I don’t want fatties coming back, okay?’
‘Yes, sir,’ they chorused.
‘Go now. All the best.’
Puro and Rishabh resolved that they would keep up a light fitness regime, exams be damned. In reality, it proved harder to do. As the countdown ticked closer to the papers, they felt genuine nervousness. No number of football trophies would spare them the wrath of their parents if they flunked their first-term exams, and that seemed like a real possibility.
Rishabh’s fingertips would freeze as he flipped through the many pages he had to study. He would bunch them up and stare at the thickness of unstudied material in disbelief. It amazed him how little knowledge had penetrated his skull even though he had been physically present in each
and every lecture. Many chapters were entirely new to him. The term seemed to have gone by like a drunken night out—he remembered how much fun he had at the beginning, then there were bits he remembered hazily and some he didn’t recall at all, but now he had come to his senses and piecing it together made his head hurt.
Along with the anxiety came a slithering sense of regret. Why hadn’t I just paid attention? he wondered as the clock stuck 2 a.m. and he was nowhere close to finishing the endless chapter on the freedom movement in India. ‘I’m never doing this again. Next term, I’ll be more careful. Just got to get through this. COME ON!’
He was up the whole night before the first paper: English. It was the only paper he felt confident about and even that had kept him up all night, frantically making notes, scanning wildly through the words, reading with wide-eyed intensity—almost like blinking was a luxury he couldn’t afford. On the morning of the exam, he remembered God. He got ready and stood in front of the mandir for a good ten minutes, mumbling and grovelling, explaining to God that he had done his best and now he was leaving the rest in His hands.
His seat was at the head of the class, near the blackboard. He neatly arranged his notepad, pencil box and ID card on the desk, and waited. He felt the thump of his heart when Anita Miss, the invigilator, handed him the paper. At first glance, the paper didn’t seem hard. However, as he began writing the answers, he suddenly realized how much he’d have to imagine and invent. By the time the bell rang, Rishabh was reasonably pleased with his effort. His English paper was 20 per cent fact and 80 per cent fiction, and, though he was tired and sleepy, he could see how fitting that was.
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