‘Maybe we are the problem…’ I said. ‘They want you to have better friends.’
‘Oh, no!’ Rohan said. ‘I mean, they don’t exactly love you guys’—Ankit rolled his eyes at this—‘but I can’t be bothered about that.’ He turned to Sameer suddenly. ‘Do your parents preach to you about adolescence and puberty?’
Sameer responded with a blank look.
Rohan plodded on, oblivious to Sameer’s lack of interest. ‘My learned mother knows too much. She acts like I was born yesterday. It’s all for your own good, she says about everything. Apparently, I’ll thank her for this later. It’s so unfair! When they can’t convince you about something, they use your siblings for reinforcement. Darling Nakul. Studious Nakul. Athletic Nakul. Just go to fucking hell, Nakul! If they want another fucking Nakul so badly, why don’t they just fucking clone him or something?’
The rest of us stole uncomfortable glances at each other. We had never heard Rohan talk about his parents in this way. Or his elder brother Nakul. Come to think of it, he hadn’t really discussed his family with us at all.
To me, his parents had always appeared to be the don’t-push-me-around type. His mother was tall and slim and a total gym freak. Whenever I had seen her at Rohan’s place, she had pretended I was transparent and ignored me like you would a dirty cobweb—like she’d get the maid to clean it up later. She would not have looked out of place in a chic salon, getting a manicure or pedicure or whatever. Rohan’s father was a high-profile business executive. He drove around in a cumbersome BMW and probably wore only Armani. He walked ‘rich’, talked ‘rich’ and probably even dreamt ‘rich’.
Rohan lived in a pristine white bungalow bordered by a beautiful, well-maintained park. He always had an abundant supply of expensive phones, iPods, digital cameras and other gaming gadgets. He never carried his lunch to school. It was delivered by his driver in a Tupperware box. The lunch itself would be wrapped in foil, with a special covering to keep it hot. Despite his fancy fare, though, he was always the first to dive into my roti-bhindi.
‘What’s the trouble?’ I demanded. His attitude was beginning to piss me off.
Rohan took a deep breath and said, ‘They want to send me away… boarding school.’
‘What?’ We gasped. ‘Doon. Where Nakul is. They think it’ll do me a lot of good. They’ve already sent the “C” form.’
We were shell-shocked. We knew that Rohan’s parents had made him try for admission into Doon last year, but Rohan had messed it up by getting chickenpox the day before the admission test. What now? Chickenpox didn’t come as a portable pill, did it?
‘You can’t go, dude!’ I wailed.
‘Yeah! Just tell them that you’re fine here. What’ll you do in Dehra Dun, anyway?’ Ankit said.
‘I dunno. You think I want to go? I’ve been pleading with them since god knows when!’
‘But… how can they just pack you off? There must be some law against this…’
We had reason to be worried. Rohan’s antics had become a daily affair for us, something to look forward to. I tried to imagine the gloomy prospect of life without him—I couldn’t. School without Rohan? You might as well try to think of Pinocchio without his nose! My mind zoomed back to the day I had first met Rohan. Well, it wasn’t fair to say that I had met him. He had actually met the whole class at one go.
It had been the first day of school for me. I was half an hour early because I had thought—quite rightly—that I would get hopelessly lost if I showed up when the school was packed with students. I walked into class and introduced myself to the few others who had also shown up early. Soon, a tall, fair guy walked in, a large cardboard box in his hand. It had holes on the top and the sides. Without a word to any of us, he hid the box behind the teacher’s cupboard. Then the guy went around the class and introduced himself as Rohan.
The day passed quite uneventfully. The next day, the class smelt like something had died in there. The dadas were summoned. They said they knew nothing about the smell, though they all agreed, nodding solemnly, that it was very, very bad. They swept the class with phenyl; the class stank of phenyl now. Over the next couple of days, the rotten smell grew worse, much to the distaste of the teachers. Of course, the five-odd students who had seen Rohan hide the box had put two and two together and knew the source of the smell. However, we all kept mum. Finally, one day, a week after the first day, I confronted him.
‘Dude,’ I said. ‘That’s a great joke, but I must confide something to you. I JUST CAN’T STAND THE SMELL! Please, please, please just take it away! You’ve hidden it too well for anyone to find it.’
I had expected Rohan to sneak the box away after school. However, he proved my assumption wrong. He walked up to F&L during her period.
‘Ma’am,’ he said. ‘I’ve discovered the cause of the smell.’
I watched in disgust. I expected some cock-and-bull story that would ultimately heap the blame on someone else. But again, Rohan proved me wrong.
‘Ma’am,’ he said, retrieving the box from behind the cupboard. ‘I found a dead rat at home and got it to school for dissection in Biology. I guess I forgot all about it. I’m so sorry. I didn’t remember it till today.’
F&L probably knew he was lying, but I guess she forgave him solely because of his ‘honesty and innocence’—rather, his idiocy.
And now, the same Rohan would go away? The others were also staring vacantly, mouths hanging open. We had nothing to say.
Just like a volcano cools down after erupting, Rohan composed himself after his blabbering. Suddenly, he started thumping our backs.
‘Don’t worry, guys,’ he said. I’ll try my best. I’ll try to screw up the written test. Don’t worry, I’ll try not to go. Maybe if the examiner over there “catches me cheating”…’
We huffed and puffed our way up to the eighth floor of the newly constructed building in Ballygunge. Sameer had invited the three of us to his new house for a sleepover as a housewarming celebration. Kolkata was experiencing one of its habitual load-sheddings and we were paying for it. No power, no lift. As we banged on the door, I couldn’t help but compare the ancient, carved door of the old house to the plain laminate on plywood here. A plump lady answered our knock.
‘Hello!’ she said.
‘Hello!’ we answered and walked in.
It took me a moment to realize that the lady was actually Sameer’s mother. This was because of the alarming change in Aunty’s appearance. Earlier, in the old house, Aunty had always dressed in saris and worn a vast array of gold jewellery. Right now, she had curly, dyed hair, wore a salwar kameez and had applied a very liberal layer of make-up on her face. She had obviously made several trips to a boutique and a beauty parlour after the ‘separation’. Although she looked happy and freed of the responsibilities of a large joint family, I didn’t think that the changes really suited her. She just didn’t look as elegant and graceful as before.
I caught sight of Dadi sitting on a sofa in front of a television set in the living room. She looked like a fish out of water in the flat. I was used to seeing her in the courtyard of the haveli, ordering her sons and daughters-in-law about. Here, she looked oddly powerless. She probably felt like a guest in her own home, I mused.
Sameer greeted us and showed us around the place with his mother. Two bedrooms, a drawing room, a kitchen. It was a typical high-rise apartment—not bad, but nothing compared to what he had left behind. His old house had been more like a palace. There, we used to get tired just trying to count the rooms. The kitchen alone was as big as the new flat. A whole wall used to be lined with huge steel drums full of goodies, all prepared by the ladies of the house. Sweets, paapad, samosas—you name it! Whenever we visited, people would drown us in various milk products— fountains of lassi, ghee and butter, all courtesy of Dhanno, Sameer’s pet cow. Yep, a cow.
Even I, as a casual guest, missed the old house. Going there was like going to a place of peace, far away from the daily hustle and bustle of the c
ity. I could only imagine how Sameer felt, away from the house, his uncles, aunts, his countless cousins.
After a while, Aunty brought us what she said were quesadillas and cold soup for dinner. These dishes were completely unknown to us and we were wary of them. Even Sameer seemed unfamiliar with them. Apparently, Aunty had joined cookery classes somewhere and had started making fancy items for dinner. Dadi refused the food, though not unkindly. She ate some leftovers from lunch instead.
We checked out Sameer’s room. It was still spotlessly clean, still neatly arranged, still had a large shelf full of the most fascinating books and still had a study table that looked like it was being overused. Well, at least some things never changed! Be it in an old-fashioned haveli or in a modern building in an upmarket locality, Sameer liked his room just so.
Sleep was slow to come, at least for me. Ankit kept snoring and mumbling a load of gibberish. Rohan soon joined Ankit in this strange song of theirs. Between the two of them, they finally managed to lull me to sleep with their rhythmic snores and grunts.
It was four in the morning by Rohan’s digital watch when I woke up with a start. I had been dreaming that F&L had given me another ‘redo’ for an essay and I had protested. At that, she had transformed into a giant griffin and had tried to strangle me with her dragon tail and tear me apart with her eagle claws.
I walked away from the bed and looked out of a window. I stood there for a long time. It was that time of the day when all was quiet and peaceful. The weather was crisp and cool, the air seemed clean and free of pollution. The usually jam-packed, crowded street below was absolutely deserted. Not a sound was to be heard. No birds, no people, not even the leaves on the tall trees stirred. I grabbed a drink of water, then headed back to bed. I was glad to see that Rohan had woken up and was sitting on his bed.
‘What time is it?’ he asked.
I looked at his watch. ‘Five-thirty.’
‘Oh damn! Why am I up already?’ He slumped back, face down.
‘Dude, wake up!’ I shook him by the shoulder. ‘I’ve been up since four or something. And I’m getting so booored…’
‘Shut up. Let me sleep.’
I left him and lay down on my bed. ‘So what do you think of this place?’ I asked.
‘What am I to think? It’s not my house!’
‘No, I mean—do you think they are happier here?’
‘Actually, no. Like, Dadi is obviously unhappy because they split up, Sameer is unhappy because Dadi is unhappy and… Well, I dunno about Uncle, but Aunty sure seems happy.’
‘Not all the changes are good, huh?’
‘Yeah… I think the lady has gone off her rocker. I mean, look at her—it’s like she can’t see their unhappy faces!’
‘No, man, I think she’s decided to change. Maybe she’s just waiting for them to change as well.’
‘But her change isn’t for the better! It’s not like the metamorphosis of a caterpillar into a butterfly.’
‘Yeah. It’s more like the metamorphosis of a mammoth into an elephant!’
Suddenly, the sound of the flush from the bathroom interrupted our laughter.
‘Shit!’ Rohan muttered. ‘What if she heard us?’
I had other ideas. I looked down at the floor. The place beside Dadi was empty.
‘Shit, shit, shit!’ I whispered. ‘Man, Sameer’s not here. He must be in the loo. He probably heard every word.’
Sameer, Ankit and I walked up the steps to Pizza Hut. We had been invited to a friend’s birthday party, but Rohan had some family function to attend and was not going to be able to make it. Ronak’s birthday party was not an ‘official’ party. No streamers, no balloons, no khoi-bags, no cake—we had apparently outgrown all that. It was just going to be lunch with a few friends and his parents. The folks at Pizza Hut, however, rarely let birthday parties be too uneventful. Just tell a waiter it’s your birthday, and a barrage of his buddies will announce it to the whole restaurant, make everyone dance and cover your face with chocolate ice-cream.
So, despite Ronak’s attempts to restrain us, we rushed to the head waiter and then basically rearranged Ronak’s hairstyle using ice-cream as hair gel. I excused myself after that and went to wash the ice-cream off my face and hands. On my way back from the restroom, I saw something that made me sprint through the restaurant at super-speed, knocking over a waiter and a Chicken da Makkhan pizza in the process. A long detour to the bathroom later—I had chicken in my hair now—I rushed back to our table, taking care to look around corners this time.
‘Come… with… me…’ I panted to Ankit and Sameer, who were pigging out on garlic bread and pasta primavera.
The bozos followed me, albeit reluctantly. I gestured towards a seat with a better view of the restaurant—rather, a particular table. We sat down and pretended to study the menu. I told Ankit where to look.
‘Three o’clock. Three o’clock. Arre, no… that’s nine o’clock! Don’t you ever watch detective movies?’
Over the top of the menu card, I studied his face. He looked confused at first. But then his eyes focused and his features exhibited a marvellous range of emotions—from utter befuddlement, he went to shock, then anger. It looked like a storm was brewing on his brow! Quietly he said, ‘Keep me posted.’ Then he ducked under the table.
‘Oi! Where are you? What are you doing?’ I whispered.
‘Shh! She’ll recognize me, you oafs! Now just lie low, find some cover and tell me what they are doing.’
‘I think he told her a joke. Yep, they’re both laughing,’ said Sameer, pretending to talk to his plate.
‘Okay.’
Two minutes passed. Then came Ankit’s furious whisper. ‘Guys, have they been struck dumb? Tell me what they’re doing already!’
‘Well, their pizza has come,’ Sameer said.
‘They’re pretending it’s not even there, dude!’ I added. ‘They’re just talking and talking and talking!’
‘Now they’re eating the cold pizza and drinking their Coke… ugh, it must have gone flat.’
‘They’ve ordered dessert…’
‘Oh bunk the food!’ Ankit snapped. ‘What are they DOING?’
I gave Ankit a sharp kick under the table. If he didn’t hush, we would be heard by Anoushka Didi in no time.
‘Can you see the boy?’ he said, quieter this time.
‘Yeah. We’re kinda spying on him, aren’t we?’ ‘No, I mean, what is he saying?’ Ankit was sounding really impatient. ‘What does he look like? Do we know him?’
‘Actually, we can only see his back.’
‘Does he look like a Xaverian? They say that Loreto girls hang out with Xavier’s guys.’
‘I dunno, all right?’ I was losing it now. ‘I can’t even see his damn face!’
‘Okay, okay!’ Ankit said. ‘Why doesn’t one of you go to the loo or something? Maybe you’ll be able to see him on the way.’
‘Don’t look at me, dude,’ I said. ‘The waiters out there probably have me on their blacklist or something.’
‘Okay, I’ll go,’ said Sameer. He then shot off to the loo—I think he really needed to go. On the way back, he took a detour and strolled around the restaurant and found himself a broad pillar. A very broad pillar. Hiding behind it, he started to steal a few peeks at the table. After a fairly long wait, he came back to our table, looking very pleased with himself.
‘He kinda looks like Shah Rukh Khan,’ he said.
‘What? You mean handsome?’ I said.
‘From what angle does SRK look handsome to you?’ Sameer said, sounding exasperated. ‘I meant that he looks like a chocolate-boy hero who can’t do action scenes to save his life.’
‘Shut up! SRK does great action stunts!’ I said.
‘Whatever.’ Sameer rolled his eyes.
‘Will you two shut up about SRK already?’ Ankit yelled at us from under the table, making the plates and glasses rattle alarmingly.
‘You shut up!’ I yelled back. ‘You’re speak
ing so loudly— they’ve probably heard us already.’
‘So what are you going to do, Ankit?’ Sameer asked.
‘About what?’
‘About her, of course!’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Tell you what, complain to your parents.’
‘What for?’
‘Hmm. Just ask her directly.’
‘Yeah, why not—as if she’ll just admit it!’
‘Observe her haav-bhaav for some time,’ I suggested.
‘Shut up, Aman. You’ve been watching too many Shah Rukh Khan films.’
‘Carry a camera next time,’ Sameer said.
‘What rubbish!’ Ankit retorted. ‘What will I do then? Publish it in the papers? Headline—“Teens Today”?’
‘Blackmail her!’ I said.
‘Just ignore her for a while. She’ll dump him herself,’ said Sameer.
‘Do they look like “just friends”, “acquaintances”, “special friends” or “something more”?’ Ankit asked.
‘I don’t know, Mr Love Guru,’ I said. ‘Come up and see for yourself.’
‘Tell you what, maybe they are just friends,’ Ankit said. ‘Go home, tell no one what we saw and don’t do anything unless you see them together again or something.’
‘Okay,’ Sameer and I said.
‘Swear that you’ll tell no one!’
We swore, then crept away from our stakeout table and rejoined the birthday party. No one had noticed our long absence from the table. They didn’t notice that we weren’t quite as enthu as before either.
The next couple of days at school, the mood was very serious. Even though Sameer hadn’t said anything, Rohan and I were worried that he might have heard our animated conversation at his house the other night. Of late, he seemed quieter than usual. It wasn’t exactly polite to call someone’s mother a mammoth or an elephant. Especially if the comparison was a valid one!
However, my real concern was Ankit. Since the Pizza Hut episode, he had been sporting a very down-in-the-dumps look. He was worried about his sister and had even tried to discuss teenage dating with some of the more approachable female teachers. He hadn’t asked his sister about the incident (thank god!) and hadn’t told his parents anything (double thank god!). Instead, he was keeping it all bottled up within himself and was, as a result, very irritable and cantankerous.
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