Suddenly the below-average marks didn’t seem so bad any more, and he felt the need to sit up straight for the remainder of the periods. Occasionally he sneaked a sidelong glance in the direction of his neighbour and saw her radiant face trained on the teacher. He was impressed by her focus. He would never be able to pay attention in class for that long. His personal best was nine minutes, that too because it was Avantika Miss teaching the reproductive system.
Rishabh wondered what it would be like to have Barkha pay attention to him. Then he wondered why he wondered that. But, he had to admit, the thought did seem wonderful.
The school day ended when the bell rang, but not Rishabh Bala’s bad day.
He sat in the bus, heading home and looking out of the window with unseeing eyes. Thoughts gathered in his head like angry storm clouds. He was thinking furiously about how best to break the bad news to his parents. When one got 46 per cent in their exams, the utmost tact was necessary in dealing with the mom and pop. He toggled through all the simulations: telling them outright, lying about his results, running away for good and starting a new life in a new city. But no matter which option he chose, the outcome always seemed bleak.
He got off the bus and had almost decided on suicide, when he remembered something. His aunt and grandmother were dropping by in two days’ time. Rishabh realized he could just withhold the results till the day his relatives arrived. His parents surely wouldn’t unload on him in front of an audience. Besides, if things did get ugly, he could count on his aunt and granny to be in his corner; it would be better than facing the music alone. It seemed like an appealing option and, at any rate, kept him from chugging a bottle of phenyl.
The next two days were tough nonetheless. Firstly, at home he had to pretend as if everything were normal. He put in his usual shift on the sofa, wasted the adequate amount of time watching TV and refused to eat the vegetables his mother plonked on the dinner table. He felt guilty, but it was the only way to not arouse any suspicions.
Secondly, on the day after they got their results, a rumour began snaking through the corridor: Tamanna had scored 100 in biology. She was the only person to get a hundred in any subject in the entire batch. During the short break, kids Rishabh didn’t even speak to were walking up to him to congratulate him. Grins and thumbs ups were flashed at him as if he had managed to get full marks. While Rishabh was relieved that nobody knew about his failed proposal, he was also pained by their teasing.
Then in the longer lunch break, just as he was heading to the toilet, Tamanna skipped out of 10 A. She was walking in the opposite direction, and it was too late for either of them to change destinations. At the moment they passed each other, Rishabh suddenly found a chart about waste recycling tremendously fascinating and swung his head towards it and away from Tamanna.
His heart had skipped a beat upon seeing her, and there was a part of him that still wanted to sneak a glance. But his pride stopped him. If a man kept hankering after the girl who broke his heart, then was he really a man? No. Her rejecting him was her loss. He would stoop no further in his pursuit of her. So what if most of his biological functions failed on seeing her? That didn’t mean anything. Pfft. There was a long line of girls behind him, just waiting for him to turn around.
He whipped around and saw Adil Bambawala digging his nose with a dreamy look on his face.
Well, not literally, of course, he thought.
There’s nothing more daunting than telling your parents you’ve done badly in your exams. It was therefore understandable that Rishabh Bala waited outside his door, finger on the doorbell, rehearsing how he’d break the news. After ten minutes of deep breathing, he finally pressed the bell, stood back and braced himself.
His mother opened the door. She was smiling. Rishabh took that as a good omen.
‘Rishu, guess who’s here?’
Rishabh now had to pretend as if his grandmother and aunt’s visit hadn’t been the only thing on his mind for the last forty-eight hours. He faked the appropriate amount of surprise and bounded into the living room. As advertised, sitting on the sofa were his relatives by blood. Vidya Bala sat on one corner of the three-seater, a frail old lady who was born when India was still part of the British Empire. Most of her saris were about as old, but you couldn’t tell because she wore them ironed to a crisp. Like all grandmothers, she was a jukebox of stories, which, though overly moralistic, were always enjoyable. Really, the only disagreeable aspect of his granny was her love for cooking brinjal and her insistence that everyone eat it.
Rishabh dived at her feet and she clasped him to her as he rose. ‘So thin this one has become!’ Dadi exclaimed, holding him at arm’s length and shaking him to prove her point. Rishabh couldn’t believe that a septuagenarian had such strength.
‘Tch!’ uttered his aunt. ‘He’s almost bursting out of the uniform. What, fatso! How are you?’
That’s the thing about family: no matter how much you weigh, you will always be too thin for half your relatives and too large for the other half.
But he liked his aunt best of all. Vinaya Bala was like Santa Claus—jovial, kind and usually seen during festivals. She was a professor of biology at Shekhawat College, Vikhroli, and insisted that of all the animals she had studied, the weirdest ones were those related to her by blood. She had a keen sense of humour and a hearty laugh. Rishabh loved spending his summers in the more relaxed home of his aunt. He liked the company of his cousins—an older brother, Vignesh, and a younger sister, Shreeja. His aunt usually cooked him fish, and he was allowed to watch as much TV as he wanted for he didn’t have to study during those carefree months. Just having Buaji around gave him fortitude.
But his spirits sank once more when he saw his father. Mr Bala sat dourly on the sofa, twiddling his thumbs and acting formal even with his mother and sister. It was as if the many years of corporate rigour had squeezed the cheerfulness out of him. Now the only interactions he understood were those he had with colleagues, and every meeting—even one with family members—was a board meeting.
‘Rishabh, you are looking very scruffy. We have guests at home. Go freshen up and come,’ instructed Mr Bala.
‘But they’re not GUESTS!’ Rishabh wanted to scream, but then he remembered his marks and ate his words. He spent two soapy minutes wondering what his exact words would be when he made the shameful reveal. Finally, he settled on a plain-spoken denouement.
‘I got the first-term papers today,’ he said.
Dadi had been in the middle of a rather ripping account of her rheumatism, which she paused as Rishabh fished out his papers and handed them to his father.
Mr Bala took a deep breath in preparation and plunged into the papers. With each successive script, his breath quickened. The blood drained from his fingers even as they held the answer sheets. His face contorted. He looked like a spoonful of Dadi’s brinjal sabzi had been shoved down his throat.
‘You . . . 37 . . . you got 37 in maths,’ stated his father. Dadi pulled her starched pallu to her mouth.
‘It doesn’t mean anything. It’s just a term exam,’ reasoned Rishabh. His eyes sought out Buaji for support, but he couldn’t manage to tear them away from the bloodshot ones of his father.
‘What do you mean it doesn’t mean anything? You are in the bloody tenth standard. This means everything!’
Dadi hissed at the curse word. ‘Don’t use that kind of language,’ she said.
‘I’m holding back only because you’re here,’ said Mr Bala. ‘His work deserves much worse.’
‘Show me the papers,’ demanded Mrs Bala, who’d been playing observer next to her husband. Now she couldn’t contain her anger any longer. She took the scripts and her jaw moved restlessly as she shuffled through them.
‘What is this?’ she said at last. ‘You are hardly getting 50 per cent overall.’
His mother was genuinely shocked. From senior KG onwards, her son had done well. Agreed, he had never topped or even come close to topping the class, but he had alw
ays been gloriously above average. These marks were alien to her. She double-checked the name on the sheets. No, there was no wishing it away. It was her own son who had produced these atrocious numbers.
‘Is there a problem? Is there something bothering you? Do you want to talk to us about it privately? Should I tell Dadi and Buaji to go? SHOULD I TELL THEM TO GO?’ Mrs Bala had become quite hysterical, and she only calmed down when Mr Bala put a firm arm around her shoulder.
‘Nothing is wrong with him. He’s just lazy and distracted. All the time I see him lying on the couch like a maharaja and watching TV. He doesn’t understand the importance of—’
With the paternal unit yelling at you, the best course of action was to remain silent, take the abuse and hope they forgot about it in a couple of days. One of the worst courses of action was to answer back. Worse still was to answer back with something sarcastic.
‘Papa, you’re not understanding. These are term papers. The final exams are in March. What month is it right now? October. Therefore, this doesn’t count. Hence proved.’
It was a bad idea and Rishabh had known it, but there was something black and bilious inside him that he couldn’t hold back that afternoon. It gave him twisted satisfaction to see his father’s face turn to stone, stunned as he was by his son’s insolence. However, that victory was a small one. Soon his father’s features squeezed together, his mouth opened and a deafening stream of invective spewed out.
‘Shut up! Just shut up!’ screamed Mr Bala. ‘I don’t care when the goddamn exams are. I can tell you now only that you won’t do any better. This is not about your marks. It is about your attitude. You just wait and see how hard life will be when you screw up your tenth!’
‘Ram, ram, ram, ram, ram,’ chanted Dadi, her eyes rolling heavenward.
Mr Bala turned to his sister. ‘Vinaya, look at this. He’s done the worst in the sciences. How will he get admission into any good college?’ His aunt remained silent. Mr Bala faced his son again. ‘Do you know how high the science cut-offs get?’
‘Have you asked me if I want to study science?’
‘Accha, so now you want to quit?’
‘I have to do something to quit it, no? I’m not going to do science. I don’t want to do engineering. I don’t want to do an MBA. I don’t want to run a stupid business. That’s what you want me to do, no?’
‘Rishabh!’ hissed his mother.
‘Okay,’ said Mr Bala, ‘take the easy way out. You don’t want to do science? Fine. What do you want to do? Play your goddamn football? You get out of my house and try to feed yourself playing football. Let’s see how long you last. We give you a roof, give you hot meals, get you 3000-rupee football shoes—’ He turned to Rishabh’s aunt. ‘Vinaya, 3000-rupee shoes! Can you imagine? It’s gone to his head.’ He locked eyes with his son again. ‘You take all of this for granted, no? You go and earn and see. Then you’ll know how hard it is. You quit science, quit studying, quit everything—just play your FUCKING FOOTBALL!’
‘OM NAMAH SHIVAYA!’ screamed Dadi. Showing surprising agility for a rheumatic person, she bounded in between Mr Bala and Rishabh. ‘When did your language become so unclean? I thought I raised you right,’ she said to her son. She turned to Buaji and gave her a small nod.
Buaji floated over to Rishabh. ‘Let’s go to your room. Come, come.’ She grabbed him by his shoulders and gently steered him to his room.
Meanwhile, Dadi took Mr Bala to his room and, in an impromptu tag-team effort, the two women tried to diffuse the situation.
‘Be honest with me—is something bothering you?’ asked Buaji. Like most teachers, she wore bifocals and was gazing at him concernedly over the frames.
‘No . . . I just didn’t study enough,’ said Rishabh, leaving out the part where he had lost two football tournaments, got rejected by his long-time crush, hated his teachers and was barred from playing the sport he loved with his own team. ‘I’m sorry. I know it’s my fault . . . but I don’t understand why he’s so angry with me. All. The. Time. I said I’ll do better in the final exams, no? What more does he want?’
Rishabh had worked himself up again and was pacing about his room. His aunt considered his condition. She liked her nephew. He was a soft-spoken, well-behaved boy on most days. He did have a streak of mischief and a hint of wickedness, but then so did Lord Krishna and he’d turned out just fine. It hurt her to see him so cagey and confused, and she decided that there was only one way to arrest his turmoil. She would have to tell him the truth. And adults, as a rule, didn’t like telling the truth because children exposed to reality too soon tended to malfunction. But she decided to chance it.
‘Your father isn’t angry. He’s just very afraid,’ she said.
Rishabh stopped pacing and looked at his aunt sceptically. The reaction had felt pretty angry to him.
‘He’s afraid, Rishu. He’s been where you are. In fact, I was there too. I’ve seen it before. This same thing.’ She chuckled to her herself. ‘Do things ever really change?’ she asked of no one in particular.
‘What do you mean?’ said Rishabh, who wished she would have epiphanies on her own time.
‘Yeah, yeah. So impatient, just like your papa. So much in common and you still can’t get along. He’s afraid, babu. When he was your age, he was worse than you. He got 58 per cent in his tenth and 42 per cent in his matriculation. Sorry, the twelfth, as you now call it. Everyone made so much fun of him. All our relatives. They would come and tell our father, “What is your son doing? He will never amount to anything.” Only difference was our father never let that pressure touch us.’
She drifted off into thought. Rishabh hadn’t heard much about his father’s early years, and now he understood why.
‘So, your father,’ said Buaji, snapping back. ‘He had to really struggle for years afterwards. He worked so hard, you know, to get into IIT. For four years after his twelfth, I didn’t see his face only because there was always a book in front of it. He used to sit in a banyan and shorts and read, read, read. “Vinaya, I’m trapped by my marks,” he used to tell me. And when he finally got into IIT, he cried so much, you know. I remember it so well because he never used to cry. But that day, oho, our whole house was flooded. He cried because he had escaped certain failure. He went to IIT, then IIM, and then there was no looking back.
‘But before he got in . . . his fear was huge. You’re still better off. Our father had even less, and Hari wondered if he didn’t do well in life then how would he survive? See, we don’t tell children this, but you should know: money is important. Thinking long-term is a must. And the key is education. Tomorrow, you will have a family of your own, and you will want them to live well, no?’
Rishabh didn’t respond.
‘Of course you will. For that, you will have to earn money. And if you do well in these exams, you will get into a good college; and if you do that, then you will get a better job and you will be settled for life. That’s what your father wants. He isn’t worried about the marks; he’s worried about your future. Trust me, babu, he’s seen too much—we all have—to not be worried. The world is a pretty harsh place. The least you can do is not add to your own problems.’
‘But he has no faith in me or what?’
‘He does. He’s just afraid to show it. He’s doing what he thinks will be best for you.’
‘Why is he so scared? Why doesn’t he know how to handle things?’
This was the reaction Vinaya Bala had been worried about, but she had decided to tell the truth and she would tell all of it. ‘Because none of us do.’ It was an odd admission of weakness from his fifty-year-old aunt. Her eyes shone, but her face looked tired and older than before. Her vulnerability flooded her voice. ‘I hope you see where he is coming from. And I want you to promise me you will work harder on your studies, yes?’
There were many questions Rishabh wanted to ask and many injustices he wanted justified, but he suppressed them all. He was surprised to find his eyes were moist. He couldn’t
explain it. He felt angry and helpless but also guilty for not being a better son. He blinked back the tears and nodded.
The tears would flow eventually and unexpectedly.
The next day, Rishabh was catatonic in class and equally vegetative in his Hindi tutorial. Prasad Sir asked him two questions just to check if he was alive. Puro, too, was concerned about his best friend’s lack of liveliness, and as they hiked back from the coaching class he tentatively probed, ‘You seem a little . . . down?’
No response.
They kept walking.
‘You want to talk about it?’
Rishabh’s gaze didn’t shift from the road and his lips remained firmly shut.
‘Is this about Tamanna? You deserve better than her. I’m telling you, bey. She’s stupid and her hair looks like a crow’s nest and everybody hates her.’
Suddenly a tear trickled down Rishabh’s face. His eyes crinkled, his lips parted and a low wail escaped him. Water now gushed out of his sockets, enough to irrigate the entire football field. Puro was alarmed.
‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry . . . I didn’t mean any of that about Tamanna. She’s not all that bad . . .’
But it didn’t stop the bawling. Rishabh was embarrassed. It had been years since he had cried in front of any of his friends. He’d had his best crying spell as an eight-year-old, when he had wept for a whole week for a G.I. Joe figurine (and had got it too). Since then, his stats had fallen and his crying average had come down drastically. His friendship with Puro rested exclusively on football, jokes and boyish high jinks. Emotions, feelings and especially tears were never part of the deal. He didn’t want Puro to rip up their contract because of this flagrant violation. Besides, Rishabh had always felt that crying was for the weak and the powerless—and now he cried because that was just how he felt.
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