Hooray! School was open again!
There’s something very funny about school. When it’s on, you hate it. When it’s over, you get bored and yearn for it to be open again. On the first day of school, you love it. By the second day, you’re back to hating it. It’s really quite puzzling.
I had never looked forward to school more. The four of us had so much to share and discuss. I told them the story of my trip without highlighting the bad parts. It looked like Sameer had taken my mother’s advice seriously—he described how his parents and he had bonded during the puja days and showed us several photos of bizarre looking pandals. Rohan had done anything but study despite his tuitions in Kota. After all, he had vowed to submit a blank answer sheet for his Doon entrance exam in November. Ankit, of course, had a lot to gossip about—fifteen days of spying, trailing, computer and mobile hacking and field research by this stellar LURVE agent had not been in vain. He had gathered evidence that Anoushka Didi was seriously dating this guy. His name was Karan Chopra and he was a ‘young, cool, rich, smart hunk studying engineering in Delhi,’ Ankit said.
He sounded like someone out of an old Hindi movie— Mr Perfect! The kind of person who made people swoon at his feet.
‘Not bad, yaar!’ I joked. ‘If you feel that way, why should we break the affair up? You make him sound so great!’
But my friends were shocked at this. ‘You speak like you’ve had personal experience with dating “great” guys,’ Rohan said to me.
I made a face at him.
But Ankit had more to say. Lately, Anoushka Didi had been lying a lot. She would stay out late at night on the pretext of studying with girlfriends. But Ankit had discovered that she went to discos like Tantra and Venom with Karan. She was boozing too. Ankit had smelt the stench. She would dress in a regular salwar suit while leaving home, but would change into a sexy outfit outside the house. Apart from this, Ankit had also discovered some non-veg, ‘adult’-ish emails in her Orkut mailbox.
‘But you know, Ankit,’ I said. ‘Anoushka Didi is older than us. Some of these things are a little too much, yeah, but should we really be interfering? This Karan might be a nice guy, yaar, and Didi is just having fun.’
‘You don’t understand, Aman,’ Ankit said. ‘I’m not worried about just that guy. I’m worried about what this could lead to. Didi has always been very seedhi saadi— suddenly she is acting completely out of character.’
‘Maybe it’s a different aspect of her personality that she is not comfortable sharing with anyone else? Your parents are very conservative, you know,’ Rohan said.
‘But then why would she lie to me? We’ve always been very close!’ Ankit protested.
We thought about this for a while. Maybe we were wrong to interfere, but it was possible that Anoushka Didi had fallen in with bad, bad company. Having lost her head over her newfound romance, maybe Didi was letting this guy take advantage of her. And we couldn’t risk her getting hurt.
Ankit’s father was a very busy man. He left home at eight in the morning to go to his store at Bagri Market and returned only after eleven at night. Ankit and he hardly had any chance to talk on weekdays. And Ankit’s mother was the epitome of ‘simple’. She spent the entire day at satsangs, singing praises of the lord with other ladies. The rest of her time was spent at home, in the kitchen. Neither of them would be able to help in this situation. And Ankit was afraid of confronting his sister directly—he did not want to lose her as a friend and was basically very afraid of her making some kind of wrong decision in her lovesick state.
We made a quick decision. We would find out what kind of a person Karan really was. If he was a jerk, then we would expose him to Anoushka Didi.
‘Find out if he’s a flirt. If he is, we’ll expose him. If he isn’t… we’ll think about it then,’ Rohan said.
The rest of us agreed.
All thoughts of his November exam forgotten, Rohan decided to spearhead LURVE’s ‘Anti-Lurve Operation’.
Quickly, he came up with a plan.
Plan I: A pretty, attractive girl would act on our behalf and flirt with Karan. Then we’d make them meet somewhere and show the entire scene to Didi.
Risks involved: The actress would fall in love with Karan and reveal our plan to him in typical Hindi-film style; or, she would deceive and double-cross us; or, Karan would understand our ruse and not flirt with the girl.
Possible consequences: Break-up; jolting Didi back to her senses.
Problems involved: Where to get the girl?
End result: PLAN FLOP.
This new preoccupation of ours added of flavour to the bland month which otherwise featured just boring classes, monotonous elocution and essay-writing competitions and endless march-past practice. The only other interesting thing that happened all month was the taking of the class photographs. We all smiled our cheesiest smiles and pulled funny faces, forcing the cameraman to shoot again and again and again.
One day, after school, we stayed back to discuss Plan II.
Plan II: Learn from faults in Plan I! We didn’t need a pretty, attractive girl. All we needed was a pretty, attractive sounding voice and some good material for emails and chatting. In this internet-centric yug, this would the easiest thing to do!
Possible problems: No chinks in the armour this time! Sameer the Great Ventriloquist volunteered to play the ‘attractive woman’.
End result: We left for home feeling cheery, having given ourselves the ‘homework’ of thinking up great stuff for the character-building of this girl.
At home, all of us checked out various girls—our mothers, sisters, aunts, maids—looking for inspiration for the ‘dream girl’ for Karan. I even looked up film heroines and watched some Ekta Kapoor serials, paying close attention to the vamps. I got nothing.
The next day, we pooled our limited info. Rohan had managed to scavenge out the October issue of Femina.
‘What on earth is that for?’ asked Ankit, looking very nervous. He was rather uncomfortable with all the planning we were doing.
‘Oh, in here is the “actress” for Karan,’ Rohan said. He flipped through the pages and landed on a page with ‘New and Upcoming Models’ written across the top. There were many thumbnail photos of size-zero-type girls on the page.
We set to work, going through the profiles of the models and combining them into one Super-Female. After some mixing and matching, our candidate was ready.
Name: Sonia Kapoor
Complexion: Fair
Height: 5’5”
Appearance: Very attractive
Education: Third-year student of Mass
Communication at St Xavier’s College
Residence: A posh apartment in Sunny Park
Hobbies: Dancing, singing, golfing, playing the piano, travelling
Future plans: Becoming a journalist
We would think up the rest of her profile depending on what turn the conversation with Karan would take. But we gave her the face of one of the ‘New and Upcoming Models’ for her Orkut account. We made Sameer pay special attention to what her voice should sound like. It was to be smart yet innocent, mature yet vulnerable, serious yet good-humoured.
Amidst all this excitement, Rohan took a day off and half-heartedly appeared for his Doon entrance exam at the regional centre. He did not actually submit a blank paper as he had planned—it would have broken his parents’ hearts. He just ‘made his answers as bad as bad can be’. The next day, he rejoined our mission, glad to finally have all the tension over with.
‘I’m sure to be rejected, dudes!’ he said proudly.
The idea of the first mail was to name-drop and make it sound like a mistake—as though she meant some other Karan.
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Subject: Hi!
Hi, Karan! How are you? How is Meenu Aunty? What have you been up to, yaar? Life’s rocking here. I’m still in Cal. Tell me about u. Five yrs is a looooong time…
Tell me wha
t u r doing.
C u l8r.
LURVE, Sonia.
To our disappointment, no reply came.
Then Rohan gave us a long lecture. ‘We need to make her sound more available, guys! She needs to be all chic and modern! What Meenu Aunty and all?’
Thus…
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Subject: Hi!
Kya hua, yaar? No reply? Forgotten me or wat? I’ve forgotten what u look like!
Well… U know, Sanjeevani is getting married! Remember her? She was like the biggest nerd in our batch!
I wonder when I’ll find my partner…
Write back dis time, OK?
I have 2 go now… I still have a hangover. Came back late from Tantra last night.
LURVE, Sonia.
To our excitement, a reply came the very next day.
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Subject: ’Tsup!
Oh! Hi Sonia! how could I have forgotten u?! I just didn’t get the time 2 check my mailbox… IIT’s difficult, u know. Congratulate Sanjeevani from my side. Sometime, I’ll catch u at Tantra.
Love, Karan.
PS: y do u keep saying LURVE???
Ankit was flabbergasted. ‘He-he-he’s PLAYING UP!’
Sameer and I were shocked too. Although we had been having great fun at the thought of exposing Karan, I think we had kind of been hoping that he was a genuinely nice guy, and Anoushka Didi’s behaviour was just a temporary phase and would go away before we intervened. Only Rohan seemed unperturbed.
‘Yes,’ he said, nodding like a wise old guru. ‘He’s smarter than I imagined. Par wo sher to hum sawa sher!’
Over a fortnight, twenty-five exchanges of this kind took place between the two. Both posing to be long-lost friends who had got back in touch after five long years. It was very entertaining, writing all these fake mails and all, but one thing was for sure—this guy was a pukka badmaash.
On the one hand, he was having an affair with Anoushka Didi, and on the other, he was leaving no stone unturned trying to impress his ‘long-lost friend’. According to Ankit, Didi was still boozing with Karan—he snuck a look at her text messages to ensure that we were not making any wrong assumptions—and coming home late. While all of this was fun and games for us, only Ankit understood the gravity of the situation—the kind of hurt and betrayal that Anoushka Didi was headed for. What we were doing might also hurt her, but it would be nothing compared to the hell she was in for if she continued seeing this guy.
It was time for Phase II of our plan.
‘Pop quiz!’ Reebok announced one day in class. We let out a collective groan. ‘The Revolt of 1857’ was easily the longest chapter in the book and was stuffed with all kinds of dates and details of treaties.
Reebok was handing out the questionnaires when I noticed something that distracted me greatly. From my seat beside the window, I could see hordes of parents streaming into the school.
A lot of guys had their parents coming to pick them up after school, but this was different. For one thing, it was only the fourth period. Two, parents were turning up in far greater numbers than normal. Three, they looked really, really worried. Maybe they had come to storm Father Prefect’s office, I speculated. That would be fun!
Suddenly, an announcement was made over the loudspeakers—‘All students must remain in class until their guardians come and collect them personally,’ said Father’s authoritative voice.
The entire class just sat there, staring at the far left corner of the room where the loudspeaker was. We looked at the hordes of parents. We looked back at the loudspeakers, as if expecting it to make a new announcement—‘Ignore what Father just said.’ It didn’t come. That meant… TROUBLE!
The class suddenly erupted. Under another peon-carried instruction, Reebok shut the doors so that no one would ‘escape’. So we all ran round and round the room, trying to guess what the matter was.
‘Mamata again?’ someone offered.
‘Fire in the neighbourhood?’ someone else asked. We looked at each other, panic in our eyes. Maybe this guessing game was not a good one to play.
Just then, a sharp rat-a-tat sounded on the door. Reebok rose from his chair to check who our visitor was.
‘Yes?’ he said, opening the door a crack.
It was Dhruv’s mother, come to collect him. In the two minutes that it took for Dhruv to pack before she hugged him and hurried away, she imparted only snippets of information—there had been riots and violence in some parts of the city, and a curfew had been declared.
Then the peon came and spoke to Reebok.
Reebok arranged all of us in a line. We were marched to Father’s office, where we were expected to call our parents and ask them to pick us up. The entire school was supposed call their folks. Even the burly class twelve students weren’t being allowed to leave by themselves.
Then our class was marched back to the classroom. We all sat at our places, playing games, chatting, discussing the cause of the commotion. We could see the stream of parents and guardians getting thicker and thicker. One by one, protective parents, dependable drivers, caring carpoolwallahs and angry aunties came and collected their wards, each letting drop some tiny detail about the situation outside. Father Prefect in his new avatar as Father Frantic ran around the whole time, arranging departures, calling up people and yelling at the top of his voice. Finally, only Sriniwasan and I remained in the classroom. Very worried, we went to make another call. A gruelling half hour later, I was finally able to get through to my mother.
‘Mum, where are you?’ I yelled. ‘I called you three hours ago and you’re still not here. Everyone in my class is gone!’
‘I’m coming, beta,’ she said. ‘There’s a lot of traffic. I’m stuck at a crossing. Just wait for five more minutes.’
‘Okay, bye!’
I waited for Sriniwasan while he made his call.
He spoke in Tamil, which I did not understand, but his facial gymnastics and the tone of his voice told me something was wrong. He slammed the phone down loudly.
‘What happened?’ I asked.
‘Park Circus seems to be the centre of the riots. My parents don’t dare leave home—there’s curfew there. And I can’t even walk home alone because it’s not safe. I don’t know what to do.’
I suggested he come home with me. After hesitating for a bit, Sriniwasan agreed. He made another call and informed his parents that he would be with me and gave them my phone number.
The deserted city flew past us as we sped along, doing ninety kilometres an hour. There was tension in the air and we wanted to get home as soon as possible. Everyone was confused about why the riots had started. On our way, we encountered broken windshields, a charred, battered bus and hundreds of army jawans on full alert. At one point, while we were passing through a semi-riot area, people banged on our windows, threatening to break them with bricks. We struggled past them, urging our driver to go ever faster.
Once at home, I tried to make Sriniwasan feel comfortable. He looked really funny wearing my shorts and T-shirt, both of which were several sizes too small for him.
‘Don’t be embarrassed,’ I told him.
Shortly afterwards, his parents called, concerned about his safety. Sriniwasan assured them that he would be spending the night at my place.
A reporter on one of the news channels gave us the full story. ‘The residents of Kolkata had only needed an excuse to blow up, and the excuse came when the exiled author Taslima Nasreen paid a visit to the city. She had just landed when a riot broke out, protesting her controversial book, Dwikhandito.’
People had been pissed off already because of the Rizwanur Rahman controversy that had taken the city by storm a few weeks back. Add to that the advent of another controversial figure like Taslima Nasreen. Then drag Nandigram and Singur into the mix as well. The city had simply exploded. Nobody knew precisely what
they were rioting for or against, or who the enemy was, but everyone was participating in the general mayhem.
By late evening, the situation had been brought under control. The police had used tear gas and batons to disperse the rioters in the Park Circus area, the epicentre of the riots. But I felt like I had suddenly been dragged back to the Kurseong riots again—an experience that I had hoped to forget about forever—without even knowing why.
My City of Joy was turning into the City of Danger.
Sriniwasan and I started discussing the political situation in West Bengal. He was very well-informed on the subject. He followed the news carefully and knew all about the fracas—history, updates, correct statistics. It was like he could give a one-hour extempore speech on any subject, whether political, social or economic. He was not like the other ‘toppers’ of Xavier’s, who were typical rattu maharajas—mug-pots. Through our conversation, I learnt a great deal about him. His father owned a simple south Indian café where his mother helped out as well. And I found out, much to my surprise, that Sriniwasan gave tuitions to younger students in order to support his family financially. His family had once owned coffee plantations on the outskirts of Chennai, which he visited once a year. He had actually seen the 2004 tsunami rise and recede.
Despite being only in class seven, Sriniwasan was very focused. He had set high academic goals for himself and was working towards rapidly achieving them. I was very impressed by all that I came to know about him in the short time that we spent together. The next morning, when I dropped him home, I knew that the two of us had formed a friendship that would last a long time—it was rather marvellous!
While Kolkata reeled from its problems, we reeled from ours. It was time for Sonia (a.k.a. Sameer) to call Karan up.
Over mail, ‘Sonia’ had talked about a very strict family and had insisted that only she would call Karan. He was not supposed to call her, ever. Sameer practised his ‘voice’ while we wrote out a script for him to read from. Then we huddled together in Rohan’s car, chucked his uniformed driver out and flipped open Rohan’s expensive looking mobile.
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