EX

by Novoneel Chakraborty

  Finally, Yo-didun gave me her 20-year-old umbrella which was embarrassingly huge. I didn’t have an option, but I still didn’t take it. With a little money from Yo-didun, I managed to summon a cycle-rickshaw passing by which took me to my new school. I ran as fast as I could to a shaded enclosure inside the school campus where other students were gossiping among themselves. I guessed this was where the morning assembly took place. The rain had only increased its fury while I was running inside the campus. As I stood alone gasping for breath, I suddenly noticed everyone was looking at me mockingly. I was pretty sure I wasn’t wearing any special newcomer’s robe to my new school, so why were they staring at me? Half a minute later, I realized my blue bra line was completely visible through the white cotton school shirt, totally wet by now. Okay, time for a secret: at sixteen I had well developed breasts. Like a woman’s.

  With humiliation clouding my mind, I didn’t know what to do next. The girls and boys were chuckling among themselves. My earlier school was a girl’s school and now seeing the boys ogling at me and my bra-line got to me. I started crying. I had never cried in front of anyone before but that day was different. More so because I knew staring at me they’d also notice my fat, specs, pony, and what not. I was proud of what I was but for the first time their stares hurt me. I quickly covered my bosom with my school bag.

  A girl came up to me. After I told her I was a newcomer, she showed me to my class: 11, Science. I scampered to the adjacent building. I may have looked funny while doing so, but I was happy to finally disappear from the sight.

  The corridor was empty when I climbed the last step to reach it. Second floor, the girl had said, and then the third classroom to the left. I checked a brown coloured square wooden plate pinned above on the right corner of the door. It had ‘11-Sc.’ written on it.

  I was relieved to find the classroom empty. I closed the door, switched on all the fans, and stood under the one right at the centre of the room, desperately wishing to dry up before the assembly breaks and students began to pour into the classroom. All the cacophony coming from outside kept subsiding steadily.

  A minute later it was all quiet. I heard a sudden noise in the classroom. I looked around but there was nothing. Something fell on the floor. I scurried towards the door stupidly fearing it to be some blood-thirsty-lost-soul. Shreya, a classmate from my previous school, used to share the stories of all the ghost/ vampire/supernatural movies she had watched. Then I used to watch them, after which we freaked out together discussing it.

  The blood-thirsty-lost-soul soon popped its head up from under a table. I could see its eyes; sparkling black. Its hair was slightly ruffled in the front. Slowly its face came up from behind the table. The blood-thirsty-lost-soul was a boy. If not a soul, I was sure he was a vampire. This vampire boy had a caught-red-handed look on his face.

  ‘I’m sorry.’ he said.

  ‘What are you?’ I asked.

  ‘Who are you?’ He stressed on ‘who’ as if to point out that my English sucked.

  ‘Titiksha.’ If he was really a vampire, I thought, it would be difficult to hide things from him anyway, and thus I decided to speak the truth.

  ‘Why are you not in the assembly? And which class are you in?’

  ‘Class 11, Science.’ At that moment I realized he was yet to look beyond my face though he could have easily looked at my breast-hugging wet shirt like the others. Was he blind? Or, did my breast detest him so much that he was ignoring them? Or, was he really a vampire and only blood was his priority?

  I’m a newcomer and…’ I didn’t finish my sentence because I suffered a loud sneeze.

  ‘Sor…’ Before I could apologize, I sneezed again.

  ‘Sorry,’ I completed quickly.

  ‘If you don’t tell anyone you just saw me having my tiffin here, then I think I can help you.’

  Help me? By sucking my blood? ‘I actually didn’t see you have anything,’ I said.

  ‘Great.’

  He almost jumped out of the last bench, wiping his face with a handkerchief. He was about the same height as me. As he came closer, I realized that the vampire boy was actually a couple of inches taller, with a healthy figure, a charming face, and a cute nose. Vampires around the world were cute. He was the first Indian vampire I had seen. Or so I thought.

  ‘You said you could help me. How?’ I was just being curious. There was something about him—I don’t know what—that compelled me to continue the conversation

  ‘It’s simple but you have to be quick. You game?’

  He extended his hand towards me. Seconds later I understood I needed to hit it in order for him to speak further. I clapped his palm with mine.

  ‘Cool! If you keep wearing that shirt of yours, you will fall sick on your very first day of school. So if you want, we can swap our shirts.’

  I liked the way he relayed my problem to me; not with an indecent look or a smart ass comment but with a genuine solution.

  ‘But won’t you fall sick if you wear my wet shirt?’ I asked stating the obvious.

  ‘Trust me, I want to. Moreover it’s raining so nobody will doubt if it is my shirt or not,’ he smiled. This vampire boy was weird.

  ‘Okay,’ I said, confirming the shirt-swapping deal between us.

  ‘Alright. I’ll give you my shirt and stand outside the classroom, but be quick. The assembly,’ he said and looked at his wristwatch once before continuing, ‘will be over in two more minutes, max!’

  I nodded suddenly interested in this ordeal. He moved out and closed the classroom door behind him. I would have never gone through such a ridiculous shirt-swapping deal with any other guy, on any other day. But was it any other day and any other guy? If life had a flash forward button, I would have pressed it then and there to find out who this guy was, would he ever mean anything to me, and if at all our roads would crisscross in the near future?

  ‘Quick,’ he quipped. I gave him my wet shirt. His shirt fit me quite well. Half a minute later, when he pulled open the classroom door from outside, I felt happy to see mine fit him rather better than I had imagined. For the first time, my large size was of some help. The bell rang again. The assembly was over.

  ‘See you,’ he trailed off and walked away whistling some tune.

  Yo-didun was right. A special sort of electricity did run through me that day while watching the vampire boy walk away from me in the corridor. Somewhere within my heart, a bulb did light up. A bulb which I was ignorant of till then. Most importantly for the first time in my life, I felt connected to the magic in me. This boy had to be a vampire.

  3

  I washed the vampire boy’s shirt the moment I came back from school. If you think that’s funny, listen to this: I stood by the rope where I had placed it on the terrace to dry and, like a fool, kept staring at it till it dried in the evening.

  I ironed the shirt, folded it neatly, put it inside a nice plastic bag, and then kept it beside my school bag to give it to him on Monday. All the while I kept asking myself, what the hell was I doing washing a stranger’s shirt? Didn’t he belong to the same species as dad who left my mother? The day dad informed me that he would go away and live with this other woman, I had promised him that I would never give any man a chance to reject me for another of my species or of his own. He said I was a kid and hence thought like an idealist just like he did at one point in his life. He said as I’ll grow up, the idealist in me will die a slow and sure death. For it is life’s incorrigible habit to take us to a point where we make certain decisions and swear to stand by it, and then it is life again that takes us to another point in time where in order to get what we want, we have to compromise that very decision of ours.

  Post dinner, looking at my unusually lost self, Yo-didun told me about the lighting of bulb thing. I finally realized that I had washed the vampire boy’s shirt not because he saved me from a possible Pneumonia attack. I washed his shirt, dried and ironed it for a different reason. I knew what that reason was but the point was t
he reason was in direct conflict with what I had decided the day the divorce was finalized between my parents.

  I quickly copied certain important English and Physics notes from a fellow classmate’s notebook, and then went to the terrace to ponder over the matter. For the first time, I felt an urge in me to be attached knowing well attachments were a dangerous proposition. But wasn’t it attachment, again, that made people dare the impossibilities of their routine life?

  I was finally summoned downstairs, and reprimanded by Ashok mama for being on the terrace for no business because according to Bijoya mami the neighbourhood is full of bad boys, and that girls of decent houses don’t go to the terrace for no reason. I didn’t react. When I told Yo-didun I wasn’t hungry, she understood something was troubling me. She sat down beside me on my bed and stroked my forehead. It felt good whenever she did that.

  ‘What happened, Shonamoni?’ she asked gently.

  ‘I’m feeling sleepy,’ I lied.

  Yo-didun’s eyes shone with an amusing twinkle.

  ‘Love is just like sleep,’ she said. ‘When it happens, you invariably close your eyes to the world and remain disconnected. You travel beyond time and space. You float in the river of realization, you climb the mountains of compassion, and you fly over the valley of emotions with the wings of faith. By the time you open your eyes again, you may have—just may have—missed out on a lot, but then it is okay, for by then you gain much more than you missed.’

  It was evident she understood my problem. I was glad someone did. I was just having a problem accepting my problem. How could I fall for a vampire boy in just a few minutes of our meeting?

  4

  It was mandatory for us to change seats and partners in every period because our class teacher believed the worst thing we could allow life to do to us was make us accustomed to things. By changing seats, she said, we were embracing the concept of change so that we didn’t panic whenever we encountered change of any sort—be it in a relationship, job, domestic life, or whatever.

  Before interval, I was sitting with a weirdo who didn’t talk to me at all except for asking me which deodorant I used. Post lunch break, I was sitting with a girl named Nisha who looked like a sweet person. She told me about all the subjects I was lagging behind in, and also which teacher gave private tuitions. I did ask my mathematics teacher, Rajiv sir, about it later, and he said I was free to join his tuition classes from that very evening. It was Nisha who told me about Neel. Finally I had got to know the vampire boy’s name. Neel and Titiksha—the names sounded perfect together. That’s how most stories start, isn’t it? Something somewhere seems so perfect that the thought creates a rippling impulse within us and we start sleeping with its possibility.

  In the evening, I went to Rajiv sir’s house. Though Bijoya mami was against me taking tuitions since it would have given me a chance to better myself than her sons, she couldn’t say much since it was my mom’s money I was using to give the tuition fees. The truth of the matter was that I could tackle other subjects without private tuitions but mathematics was a bitch.

  I was surprised to find almost half of my class at Rajiv sir’s house. And one of them was the vampire boy: Neel. Though Rajiv sir was teaching, I was finding it difficult to concentrate. I kept furtively glancing at Neel. But he didn’t look up at me even once. As if he wasn’t interested in me. And why would he be interested? At that moment I wished something which I shouldn’t have. I wished I wasn’t me. I wished I was some hot-looking model who can make guys drool. Whatever nonsense people say, I think beauty is important. Who has the time to know a person and then fall in love anyway? Would I have glanced at Neel if he was obese, thick browed, and half-bald?

  It was only after the tuition got over and we were about to leave that Neel gave me my shirt-washed and ironed. I was tempted to inquire whether he had washed it himself but realized how stupid it would sound and hence asked, ‘How did you know I would come here?’

  ‘Nisha told me.’

  Of course! But why did Nisha had to tell you this specifically? Did he inquire about me? I wondered.

  ‘What happened to you?’ I said.

  ‘What happened to me?’ he echoed.

  ‘I mean why didn’t you come to school today?’

  ‘Great, you noticed!’

  ‘Yes. That’s because I wanted to give you your shirt. I had brought it with me to school today. I don’t have it now.’ The justification was not required, still.

  ‘You can give it to me tomorrow.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘Where do you stay?’

  ‘Salt Lake,’ I said. ‘And you?’

  ‘Paikpara. We can walk to your home if you don’t mind.’

  ‘Isn’t Paikpara far from Salt Lake?’

  ‘It is but I’m in no hurry to go home.’ So beauty wasn’t everything after all. I was supposed to take a cycle-rickshaw from the tuition back home but I gave him a walk-is-fine shrug even though I was screaming with joy from within.

  He was traipsing beside me with his Hero Ranger cycle between us. It was a quiet night. But don’t ask me about the noise I was experiencing inside. It was noise because I could hear it aloud but I couldn’t make out what exactly it was telling me. There weren’t many people on the road either. The area was much more lonelier than the one in which I used to stay in South Kolkata. We were just the two of us with a cycle-rickshaw or two passing by us with sometimes an indifferent, and at times an inquisitive looking passenger on it.

  ‘I didn’t come to school today because I had practice,’ Neel said breaking the silence between us. I was happy for I feared we would end up walking home without saying a word. I was a bit nervous to initiate any talks. This was so new to me; walking alongside a boy. Correction: walking alongside a cute vampire boy.

  ‘Practice? As in?’

  ‘I play guitar.’

  ‘Really?’ I was into music myself; heavy metal, death metal, rock, jazz, R&B. You name it and I knew it. Though I was yet to learn a musical instrument but guitar was surely a musical turn on for me.

  ‘Yes. We have a school band.’

  Even better! ‘Wow, great!’

  ‘You like music?’

  ‘Hell, yes! What’s your band called?’

  ‘Paintbrush.’

  ‘Awesome. When do I get to hear some of your stuff?’

  ‘Soon. We practised today. My house garage is our makeshift den. Would love to have you come and watch us play one day.’

  ‘Deal!’

  ‘Do you sing?’

  ‘Oh no! I write.’

  He gave me a surprised glance and said, ‘Paintbrush needs a good songwriter.’

  I smiled. My words, his tune. Never before had a thought given me the kind of chill like this one did. My heartbeats were sounding totally different that night.

  We took a turn. With the road turning lonelier, I felt nosier inside me. I didn’t know if the night was a figment of my imagination or reality. I prayed and hoped I wasn’t in the middle of a dream. The gush of wind was pretty consistent. The moment I got used to it caressing my skin, I thought the breeze was sweet-talking to my heart, ‘I know what’s there inside you. And it’s okay.’

  ‘What does your father do?’ Neel asked.

  Whatever noise I was connected to vanished, and as if someone pushed me back to reality when I was so ready to jump off from its edge and onto the oblivion of love with a faith whose name was Neel.

  ‘He works in a real estate firm. And your father?’ I said.

  ‘Businessman. We have shops in Hathibagan, Ram Mandir, and New Market. We deal in clothes, especially Jaamdani and Toshore saris.’

  ‘That’s nice.’

  ‘Nice? That’s boring. You know my father has been sitting in the first shop—Hathibagan— since he was of my age. Now he shuttles between three shops. I don’t want to waste something as precious as life running from one shop to another. Everyone seems to choose a specific coordinate in their life and remain there all thro
ugh. But I want to live the life of a wind-shift co-ordinates continuously, go wherever I want to, and make people aware of my fucking existence.’ A pause later he added, ‘Sorry for the F-word.’

  ‘Why the fuck are you sorry about that fucking word?’ I quipped.

  We laughed out aloud.

  ‘What it is that you want to do? As in, do in life?’ I asked curiously. I wanted to know more about him through his thoughts. His rebellious instinct was such an emotional turn on for me.

  He kept looking at me as if he didn’t get me.

  ‘I mean…’

  ‘I know what you mean. I want to be a rockstar. Travel to countries, continents with my music band. Sign autographs on fans’ biceps and bosoms. Live a very unsettled and Bohemian life. Have sexy groupies following me. Do drugs. Do girls. And die by the time I’m thirty.’

  ‘Thirty? Why?’

  ‘If you don’t die by the time you are thirty, you are so dead anyway after that.’

  I couldn’t stop laughing.

  ‘Your smile is beautiful.’

  I paused. Looked at him. There was something in his eyes that scared me. All the noise within me suddenly came forth with a greater gusto. Nobody ever appreciated anything about me. Never ever. And here was this supposed vampire boy who thought my smile was beautiful. This vampire boy was special. He was not sucking my blood, but he was slowly sucking me out of me.

  ‘There’s my place. I’ll give you your shirt tomorrow,’ I said and even before I could hear his reply, I walked towards my mama’s house at a brisk pace. I wanted to turn back and see if he was looking but I didn’t. I couldn’t.

  I didn’t sleep that night. At four in the morning, I went to the bathroom and looked at myself in the mirror. I smiled. Was my smile really beautiful? Why had I never thought so before? Depressed, I went to bed and forced myself to sleep.

  Next day as I stood under the shed in school, waiting for the assembly bell to ring so I could talk to Nisha about a particular problem in Physics, someone came up to me. She was fair, had a trendy haircut, and a slim figure. In short, she was everything I was not.