by Anirban Bose
Pheru smiled. ‘See? So tonight, we will help you lose your virginity. Right here, right now.’
A loud cheer rang out in the crowd. Harsha smiled uncertainly.
Pheru continued, ‘So who do you think is the girl of your dreams… You know, the one you think about when you fantasize?’
‘Princess Diana, sir,’ said Harsha with a spontaneity that immediately ratified the sincerity of his reply. A loud cheer of approval echoed around the room. Pheru looked pleased. ‘Excellent choice,’ he said, smiling at Harsha. Harsha’s smile broadened in reciprocity.
‘Now imagine,’ continued Pheru, his voice full of sensuality and passion, ‘you are alone with her on a beautiful island, and all she has left to wear is a black, lacy negligee. She is hot and horny for you. Her beautiful buttery breasts heave with every breath, and she spreads her silky thighs and tells you, “Harsha, oh Harsha, I want you. I want you so bad.” So what will you do next, Harsha?’
Harsha looked around uncertainly and said, ‘Sir, I will…I will…ask her if she has AIDS.’
This time even Adi burst out laughing along with the crowd. Harsha’s face quivered nervously at the reaction he had generated. Pheru stared at him, his mouth agape.
‘Man, you are cursed! You will remain a virgin! You are hopeless!’ he roared. ‘What the hell is wrong with you? Ask Princess Diana if she has AIDS? It is a bloody fantasy, you idiot! She is not…I mean….’ His voice trailed off in exasperation.
When the crowd had settled down, Pheru turned towards Adi and Toshi. ‘Freshies!’ he barked, ‘on your feet and introductions!’
Toshi and Adi snapped to attention. ‘I’m Toshitenga Lotha,’ said Toshi. ‘I’m from Nagaland.’
‘Hmm,’ said Pheru. ‘What part of China is that, Ching-chong?’
Toshi kept a straight face and said, ‘Sir, Nagaland is in the north-east, along the Burmese border…’
‘Yeah… I know where Nagaland is, you Chicken Chowmein,’ said Pheru. He turned towards Adi. ‘And you?’
‘My name is Adityaman Bhatt, sir,’ Adi replied. ‘I’m from Ranchi, Bihar.’
‘A Bhaiya. What does your name mean, Bhaiya?’
Before Adi could reply, Pheru held up his hand and said, ‘Let me figure this out. Hmm…let’s see…A-dit-ya-man…hmm…sounds like “I-did-a man”.’
Some light laughter arose from the crowd.
‘And “Bhatt” sounds like “butt”,’ continued Pheru, looking very pleased with his efforts. ‘So you are the first example of someone being born out of doing a man’s butt…and your parents named you “I-did-a-man’s-butt” to commemorate the great event.’
Adi could only smile stupidly at this brutal desecration of his name. He stole a glance at the clock on the wall. Two hours had passed and there was no reprieve in sight.
‘Wouldn’t you like to help your friend Harsha here? The poor guy is a virgin and needs to be taught the art of love. Wouldn’t you love to help him out?’ said Pheru. ‘You guys are not virgins, are you?’
‘No way!’ scoffed Toshi. Pheru looked at Adi questioningly.
The discovery of Harsha’s virginity, Pheru’s corruption of his name to caricature his manliness, Toshi’s virile scoff, all conspired at that moment to convince Adi that the knowledge of his virginity could only be a vulnerability. He let out a manly guffaw.
‘Yeah, me neither!’
‘Perfect!’ said Pheru. ‘Toshi and you can demonstrate to our dear friend Harsha how it’s done. By the end of the lesson, Harsha should be a master.’
It was Adi’s turn in the swelter pit. Sweat dripped from his forehead with such profusion that it alarmed him, and his heart began to race at the speed of a runaway train. His mouth turned dry as he and Toshi stared awkwardly at each other.
‘Come on freshies!’ growled Pheru.
Toshi walked towards Adi. Then, much to Adi’s embarrassment, he began acting coy, performing his role with inadvertent diligence. Amid loud cheering, he started to go through the motions of deflowering Adi.
Adi’s inexperience showed almost immediately.
‘Come on, Bhaiya,’ called out Pheru. ‘Show us, man. What does your girlfriend do when you touch her?’
Toshi’s sensuous seduction left Adi paralysed. He stood cowering in the middle of the room, his gaze fixed on his shoes.
After a few minutes, Pheru called out to him, ‘So you are a virgin too, aren’t you?’
Unable to look up, Adi nodded quietly.
Pheru let out a loud groan. ‘What the hell is this world coming to?’ he said. ‘Damn it…except Ching-chong here, you guys are all virgins? This is unbelievable! We have to do something about it. You guys need BP!’
Although Adi had no idea what BP meant, at that moment, he was willing to try anything else.
BP stood for ‘Blue Picture’ or pornographic movies. The crowd murmured its approval and almost immediately, as if by magic, a TV and VCR appeared in one corner of the room. Within a few minutes, somebody had inserted a tape into the VCR, and an orgy began unfolding on the television screen.
Adi stood wondering what part of this was ragging when Pheru pointed to the screen and said, ‘Okay, Rajeev, you are this guy; Bhaiya, you are this other guy; Harsha, you are this blonde girl; and Ching-chong, you are this girl.’ Then he turned down the sound and said, ‘All right! You have to make up the dialogues.’
For a few minutes the four of them stared blankly at one another.
‘Start, freshies!’ barked Pheru.
Toshi was the first to begin, grunting with gusto. Painfully awkward at first, the other three joined in, providing the soundtrack to the wanton sex on the TV screen. They dug into new depths of their raunchy onomatopoeic repertoire, grunting, groaning, moaning, squealing and screaming through the night. It was easier as a group, each losing his inhibition in the lewdness of the other, burying his humiliation in their common misery. Luckily for them, the movie commanded a lot of the audience’s attention, and slowly the crowd dissipated to the privacy of their rooms, offering explanations of fatigue and early lectures the next day. By the time the sadomasochistic ritual was over, the wall clock had chimed thrice and then some.
Finally, only the four of them remained. Having been publicly humiliated and most of their intimate details exposed, the need for introductory niceties was easily skipped.
‘I hate that guy…man, I’m going to kill him if I get a chance!’ seethed Rajeev.
‘Can’t we tell the warden?’ asked Adi, wiping the last drops of sweat from his face. ‘They say there is no ragging here…that was brutal…they should take some action against these guys!’
‘I think the warden already knows. He just behaves as though he has everything under control,’ said Rajeev. ‘Assholes…I hope they break their legs!’
‘If I was a local, na,’ said Harsha, ‘I would get friends and teach this Pheru-beru a lesson. Saale, naani yaad dila deta.’
‘What does that mean?’ asked Toshi.
‘You don’t know Hindi?’ asked Harsha.
‘No, not very well,’ said Toshi.
‘What?’ said Harsha. ‘How do you not know your rashtrabhasha? You know – national language?’
‘Well, it’s a little different in Nagaland,’ replied Toshi.
It was Adi’s turn to be surprised. ‘That’s still India,’ he said, then quickly added, ‘are you from Imphal?’
‘No, I am from Mokukchung,’ said Toshi. ‘Imphal is in Manipur. The capital of Nagaland is Kohima.’
‘Arre,’ said Harsha, ‘but everybody is teaching Hindi in India…and also Hindi movies…and songs… If you can’t understand, then you can’t speak in Hindi?’
Toshi looked at him with exasperation and said, ‘You guys aren’t talking much in Hindi either.’
The discussion halted abruptly with Toshi’s simple, yet potent, rebuttal. The clock on the wall chimed to indicate it was 4 a.m. It suddenly reminded them of their overwhelming mental and physical exhaustion and effective
ly disqualified that moment as the time to discuss India’s geopolitical make-up. They dragged their weary bodies to the dishevelled cots and collapsed on them, too tired to care about the books and clothes that lay strewn everywhere.
Adi lay silently in the darkness, feeling the rush of blood into his legs sapping up the tension in his muscles. He tossed and turned on the creaky cast-iron bed, the surfeit of adrenaline from the evening’s experience making it difficult for him to fall asleep.
As he stared blankly at the bare ceiling, he heard Rajeev say, ‘Ask Princess Diana if she has AIDS? What the hell…!’
Suddenly, they were all laughing. Exhausted, Adi fell back and was almost immediately overcome by sleep.
THREE
If he had had any inkling about the incident that would give him his first shot at fame – or, more appropriately, infamy – Adi would have chosen to sit somewhere else in class that day. Either way, it was the beginning of a series of events that propelled him to a prominence he had seldom imagined in his hitherto humdrum existence.
The little drama occurred in the Anatomy lecture hall of Grant Medical College.
Established by the British in 1845 to introduce western medicine in India, Grant Medical College is one of the oldest institutions in the country. Its campus, spread over a few square miles in the heart of Bombay, reflects a lot of its history – from the distinguished buildings that are the Anatomy and Physiology schools, to the fort-like hospital with its empty gun turrets and crumbling wooden staircases. Dates etched on the stone facade commemorate important incidents in the life of the 150-year-old institution. Years of expansion have led to the grounds being remodelled, landscaped, structured and restructured again and again, in ways that reflect a lack of coherent planning.
Yet, it was this lack of a discernible plan that fascinated Adi. There were dark buildings with sombre padlocks; strange coffin-like nooks; unpredictable turns with sudden dead-ends; dizzying spiral staircases that led nowhere, and dark passageways that mysteriously opened onto vast naked terraces – all of which lent the campus a maze like mystique. Adi loved exploring these architectural idiosyncrasies, his imagination flirting with a bygone era, conjuring stories about these halls steeped in history. And nowhere was this perception of historic grandeur as heightened as in Anatomy Hall.
The lecture hall was built like an amphitheatre, thirty rows of seats rising thirty feet in the air to complete a semicircle around an ornate central podium. Portraits of past luminaries smiled benevolently down at the students from the walls on either side. Bright metal plaques below the decorative wooden frames extolled the accomplishments of each one. Breaking the parade of pictures and covering most of the wall behind the podium was an antiquated six-panel blackboard. In an ambiguous attempt at scientific art, an assortment of dissected body parts sat in a display case near the door, instantaneously inspiring awe among the newcomers.
One particular dissected out face, tracing the innervation of the facial nerve into the muscles responsible for human expression, enthralled Adi. The filleted face sat motionless in a jar, staring at him from within the formalin, an expression of perennial surprise in its dehiscent eyes. Whenever the wall-mounted speakers boomed out the lecturer’s voice, Adi thought he perceived a distinct grimace crease those facial muscles. The outrage with which the dead face responded to such auditory impertinence would send a queasy tingle down Adi’s spine. He’d scrunch up his face and savour its flexibility before returning to admire the hideous beauty of the grimace again.
That day, Adi sat in the lecture hall, busily trying to get the pages of his notebook in order, when he noticed the guy sitting in front of him turn back to look up every few seconds. Finally, out of curiosity, Adi followed his gaze. When he saw nothing of interest, he turned back.
‘Did you see it?’ asked the guy, sitting in front.
‘See what?’ asked Adi.
‘You can actually look up Sheetal’s skirt, man,’ he said with a naughty smile. ‘She has nice legs.’
‘I…I didn’t see anything,’ said Adi defensively.
‘Come down here. It’s a view of heaven. Check out those legs, man.’
Adi hesitated for a few seconds before quickly gathering his stuff and climbing down, just as Dr Gomke, the head of department of Anatomy, was getting ready to begin her lecture.
‘Hi,’ said Adi. ‘I’m Adityaman Bhatt. Adi.’
Shiny black pupils sized up Adi as they shook hands warmly.
‘Hi, Adi. I’m Sam, Samuel Ashok Biji.’
Adi’s first and overwhelming impression of Sam was the engaging congeniality of his broad smile. A few inches shorter than Adi and a few stones heavier than him, Sam’s tight black jeans, bulged between the stitches to contain the excesses of gluttony. A head full of curly black hair, generously speckled with bits of dandruff, inevitably invited a look of disgust from the beholder. Not that it registered on Sam. His dark brown impish face glowed perennially with a sprightly smile, unseating any other emotion that tried to manifest itself.
‘Check out the view, man,’ he said, pointing behind.
Adi turned to look up. He jerked back almost immediately, half expecting Sheetal to catch him red-handed.
‘Did you see?’ Sam asked, excitedly. Adi nodded.
Sam closed his eyes and purred. ‘Man… Sheetal is something. Imagine licking those milky thighs. Mmm…’
‘Quiet!’ hissed Adi. ‘Gomke will throw us out of class. She is strict and crazy!’
Sam gave Adi a cavalier shrug. ‘Relax, man. Don’t freak out…this is the best place to sit for the view. Check out Rupa; if she moves a little bit I’ll tell you the colour of her panties.’
He laughed. The humour escaped Adi’s worried mind that was now re-evaluating the merits of his decision to sit next to Sam. Sensing his discomfort, Sam cast Adi a sympathetic glance.
‘Don’t worry, Adi. I’ll let you know if anything else shows up. You keep up with Dr Gomke.’
Adi focused on the podium where Dr Gomke looked all set to begin her lecture.
She was a specimen of old-fashioned propriety. Tall and buxom, with a gratuitous accumulation of fat in all the wrong places over six decades of life, she could be best described as un-aesthetically plump. Her hair, pulled tightly into a huge bun, stretched the skin on her face like a taut elastic sheet, making the veins on her forehead look like rivers that emerged from the depths of her eyeballs only to be squished at the hairline. A huge red bindi centered those veins, looking from a distance like the perfect bull’s-eye for target practice. A curved pinched nose, scant eyebrows artificially darkened by the liberal use of eyeliner and narrow lips on a pale white wrinkled face conveyed a distinct aura of unapproachability. She wore a red sari and the matching bangles on her wrists clinked noisily every time she raised her hand to write on the board.
She began her lecture in a funny nasal voice, absolutely devoid of inflections. ‘Today, we will start the series of lectures on the lower limbs – thigh, leg and foot.’
‘We have a head start,’ whispered Sam, and Adi chuckled softly.
Everybody dived for their notebooks. The collective enthusiasm was contagious; Adi opened his books and prepared to take notes.
He was trying to keep up with the lecture when Sam whispered excitedly, ‘Adi, Sheetal just crossed her legs. Check out her thighs.’
‘Sam, you’ll get us into trouble!’
‘Don’t miss this, man. Don’t!’
Mostly in an effort to get him off his back, Adi turned around to look in the direction of Sheetal, sitting three rows higher. Oblivious of their lascivious stares, Sheetal had crossed her legs, catching the fabric between them. The slits now exposed her firm, smooth thighs all the way up to her underwear. Lost in the world of scholarly pursuit, she was eagerly taking down whatever Dr Gomke said, unaware that three rows away, her anatomy was the subject of another, rather non-academic, discussion.
This time Adi did not make a hasty retreat. Sam joined him. ‘Man…wha
t a view. If only I was a fly that could sit beneath her legs and admire what’s between them.’
‘She would squash you, Sam!’
‘But at least I’d die happy, man.’
Following their line of sight, a couple of other guys joined in surreptitiously, enjoying the spectacle that was Sheetal.
Suddenly, as if awakened from this outrage by some sixth sense, Sheetal looked in their direction.
The speed with which some of them looked away could have given them whiplash. Sam lowered his head and began laughing. Adi scribbled furiously in his notebook, suddenly feeling his ears go red when he realized that their antics had attracted Dr Gomke’s attention.
She stopped in the middle of her lecture. Her eyes narrowed; the artificial eyebrows furrowed quizzically as she stared sternly in their direction for a few minutes.
‘You!’ she barked, pointing in their general direction. ‘Get up!’
Adi’s heart began palpitating so loudly he was afraid she would hear him. He looked up, trying to muster the most innocent look his fear would allow. Sam didn’t budge.
Dr Gomke tried again. ‘You! Yes, you, there!’ she shouted, pointing at Sam. Her pale face was suddenly suffused with colour.
Sam sat unperturbed. He turned to look behind him casually, as though Dr Gomke’s pointed glance couldn’t possibly be implicating him.
Dr Gomke, firmly entrenched in the Anatomy division for twenty-eight years, was not blessed with patience. Unmarried and unattached, her life revolved around teaching Anatomy and running the department – a commitment that automatically authorized a gargantuan demand for respect.
Striding up the steps rapidly, she approached their row. With her face approximating the colour of her sari and the veins on her forehead looking ready to burst, she bellowed, ‘You…yes, you in the blue shirt. Stand up, now!’
‘Who…me?’ asked Sam, his eyes wide with incredulity.
‘Yes, you! What is going on? What are you doing?’
‘Nothing, ma’am…just…studying,’ replied Sam calmly.
‘Studying? Studying what?’ she hollered, showering the air with a thin mist of saliva.