by Pankaj Dubey
She turns to Aamir in mute appeal. He looks coldly at sir and strides away, out of the library. Dheeraj sir leaves as well. Leaving her in a dazed and foul mood. The NPAs remain unresolved for her mind is spaced out and nothing seems to make sense any more.
It’s only much later, in the Mess hall, that the haze starts to lift somewhat. Muted discussions are being held at every table. Something is titillating the OTs more than their meal today. Lunch is a game of Chinese whispers. Ramya and Dheeraj sir . . . last night . . . a fight . . . passes from ear to ear, from table to table, until the whole Mess hall is abuzz with the news that their course director has been making out with an OT. That too an OT who is not really an OT. Apparently, she had faked her way into the academy, and he knew it and had been shamelessly taking advantage of the situation, enjoying a free ‘ride’, ‘balatkaar’ they said. Turning her ‘no’ into a ‘yes’ and more . . .
Sanam is scandalized.
Dheeraj sir! This she finds incredible. Ramya looked the type, so her footloose behaviour comes as no surprise: ready to bed and wed anyone. But fakery? That seemed far-fetched. Was it that easy to con the academy? No way!
She sits cogitating on her thoughts more than her meal . . . her ears tuned keenly to the grapevine.
As for Aamir, he isn’t around. He probably didn’t need lunch. Not just his heart, the senorita has stolen his appetite as well. Sanam fumes.
By evening, the Dheeraj sir-Ramya story is confirmed. Yes, she is a fake. And he has been bedding her. He had ruthlessly capitalized on her subterfuge to get her into his bed. No longer is it a whisper. The OTs openly snigger about it, relishing the spicy shenanigans of their course director.
Aamir seems to have disappeared completely. He neither showed up for lunch nor his classes that day. Sanam is slowly going crazy thinking about Aamir and the senorita and the rapport they shared. Try as she may, she finds it difficult to not think of him. She ought not to give a damn about what he did and with whom, but she can’t resist the temptation to wonder where he is and what he is doing. Has he eaten at all? Is he fine or is he upset? A zillion questions run amok through her mind.
When he does not come to the Mess for dinner, Sanam panics. She calls him even though she has vowed to never call or text him; but this is an emergency; she has to know.
‘Yes?’ Aamir takes her call.
‘Where are you?’ asks Sanam. He tells her that he is at the campus medical centre. ‘Aren’t you well?’ Sanam gets anxious.
‘No, it’s Ramya,’ Aamir clarifies. ‘I’m with her.’ Sanam hangs up. Completely deflated.
He was with her. That is the only line that registers in her mind. Sanam tosses and turns in bed that night, unable to sleep. Finally, she gives up, puts on her jacket and walks to the medical centre. To Aamir. She is worried for him. Boys are crazy; they get carried away by a pretty face. She doubts that he has eaten anything all day.
Sanam pushes apart the curtains to peek into the ward that has the sick beds. Only the last bed is occupied. And next to it, flopped on a chair, is Aamir. Finding him by Ramya’s bed sets her blood boiling again.
She flounces out.
Aamir’s eyes had been shut when she entered the room but he senses her presence and opens his eyes to see her leaving. He runs out to talk to her. He catches up with her and has to stop her by holding her shoulders. She is tiny and delicate, but he is surprised, again, at how fiercely she resists him.
Aamir pulls her to him and locks her in his arms. He feels her breathing ease his own. Slowly.
And then she begins fighting again. Pummelling his chest. Crying. Releasing all the anguish he has caused her. She blames him for everything—for talking, for not talking, for chasing that senorita . . .
He can’t make out half of what she is mumbling for she is sobbing simultaneously. What percolates through that outburst is her gibe about him running after a pretty pair of legs even if they were fake. ‘So blind you have become that you even assaulted sir! See what she has driven you to. Soon you’ll be murdering me too for saying this: you are so obsessed!’
He clamps her mouth with his hand. ‘Hush!’ He then drags her back into the ward. To Ramya.
Sanam does not want to go but she is no match for the strength of her mountain man. Her mountain man? No. He wasn’t hers. He was this girl’s; the one lying on the bed, looking half-dead. She looks even scrawnier than before, if that were at all possible. Her face drained of colour, hair long hair lying limp and spread over the pillow. An intravenous line feeds into her vein through a cannula; the skin swollen and a blotchy blue at the site where the vein is punctured.
Suddenly, she is aghast. How could someone wither away so much in just one day?! Ramya looks barely alive, her face expressionless. Only the beeping monitors confirm that she lives.
‘Fake,’ growls Aamir into her ear. ‘You call her fake?’ He hauls Sanam to the bed. ‘Yes, she’s fake, but she may have her reasons.’ He didn’t want to spell it out how Ramya came from a lowly background and wanted to hobnob with the powerful set at the academy, albeit on false credentials, so that she might get a leg-up in life too. A government job or a bureaucrat for a husband or . . .
He turns to look at Sanam. His eyes glacial, piercing, his voice icy, ‘A fake OT she might be. But your Dheeraj sir, he’s real . . . a real rapist.’
Sanam freezes at his tone. Icicles of horror dig into her, numbing her. Sanam stands staring at Ramya’s inert face. ‘Oh God, no!’ she says. No one deserves this, no matter what they have or haven’t done. To be violated thus . . .
Hot tears run down her face and she runs out into the darkness, away from a world that she can no longer comprehend. She burrows into her pillow seeking its frugal comfort.
All her concepts . . . the way she saw . . . assumed . . . judged . . . were all wrong, totally wrong! She had no right to condemn anyone so unjustly and yet, she had.
Neeti wakes up. Sanam’s sniffles sound loud in that small, shared room. She finds her roommate crying and chastising herself. Neeti doesn’t know what is wrong but decides that this might not be the right time to ask, so she sits beside her and pats her consolingly until Sanam’s sobs subside somewhat.
Sanam becomes quiet but cannot asleep. It’s only much later, when it is almost daylight, does she drop off.
* * *
Sanam oversleeps and misses PT. The classroom lecture would have already started, so she skips breakfast and hurries to class. But she finds the room empty and shakes her head as if to clear it and does a recheck. It is still empty. She decides to go to the lounge where the OTs usually hang out when not in the class or the library, or out walking or loitering around.
Kuldeep catches up with her, ‘Where have you been, sleepyhead?’
He had missed her at PT and had called. And then he had texted her when she didn’t appear at breakfast either. Only later did he learn from Neeti that her phone was on silent. Neeti had muted it to let the girl sleep. Sanam had been quite disturbed last night, she told Kuldeep.
‘Why no class?’ Sanam asks, changing the topic.
‘All morning classes cancelled,’ he tells her. ‘Didn’t you read it on the WhatsApp group?’
‘But why?’
‘Love, sex and dhokha,’ replies Kuldeep, rolling his eyes dramatically.
They’re in the lounge now. Rohit and Shivam amble over to join them.
‘Arrey, but why cancel classes?’ repeats Sanam.
Rohit responds, ‘They’ve thrown him out.’
‘Both are gone,’ adds Kuldeep.
No names are necessary. Sanam knows who the two are. Dheeraj and Ramya.
‘But she was in no state to go . . . not last night . . .’ Sanam exclaims.
Kuldeep stops her, ‘How do you know?’
She falls silent.
‘Okay. So that’s where you were last night then.’
Neeti’s words now make sense to him. All this is to do with Dheeraj sir. That’s what had upset Sanam. It wasn’t onl
y Kuldeep, the whole class knew how fascinated she had been by that bloody course director. All those tête-à-têtes over ‘coffees’ and ‘assignment discussions’. This Ramya affair must have come as quite a blow to her. About time too, Kuldeep thinks. He never could stand that creep of a sir anywhere near his girl. Yes, Sanam is his girl. That’s how he sees it.
Not bothering to reply to Kuldeep, Sanam leaves the lounge and the building. She needs to go out into the open and breathe. Air her mind and detox her heart. She walks aimlessly around the campus, past the admin and hostel blocks, down to the polo grounds and right up to the gates. Then back again, taking the unpaved route, over the pebbled tracks that wound past the staff quarters, across the hillocks bordering the northern end and right up to the patch of forest within the campus.
There, amid the deodars, she finds him. Perhaps, it was fate—good or bad, she couldn’t say yet. He lies supine on a bed of leaves, twigs and pine cones of the forest floor, his head resting on his crossed arms, his brown eyes fixed on the patch of blue sky visible through the canopy of green.
He hears her come. The leaves crunch and the pine cones crackle, although she does her best to tread softly. He neither speaks nor rises to acknowledge her presence. Sanam quietly sinks down to the forest floor beside him. There is no need for words. The quiet of the forest is only broken by bird calls and the cool swish of the wind. The heady feeling of isolation stirs something deep within her. Her cheeks are soon wet with tears that flow unbidden and unchecked.
That seems to move the mountain boy who sits up and turns to her. He touches her wet cheek, his palm warm and comforting. He pulls her to him and holds her. He whispers into her hair she knows not what, but it feels so good that she embraces him like she would never let him go. She had wanted to apologize for doubting him. But as she sits there with him, the forest blows away her remorse. The deodars bring them together as before . . . standing guard over the emotions that roil within them.
‘Ouch!’ Sanam yelps when an ant bites her ankle, rendering it red and itchy. She rubs the foot of her other leg against the sore ankle. The intimate moment is broken. The two get up and make their way back to the hostel.
‘I’m hungry,’ growls Aamir. ‘The Mess won’t open until eight.’
Sanam takes him to the dhaba on the winding hillside path for some hot, runny and amazingly tasty noodles.
After they wash it down with a cup of tea, they rush back to the lounge when a message on the group messenger pops up, summoning all the OTs ASAP. It’s India Day tomorrow—they need to discuss costumes and acts. India Day is important; all OTs deck up in regional costumes and put up cultural performances, presenting the diversities in our country. The Ramya episode is forgotten, life in the academy is too fast-paced and full of things to dwell on any matter or person for long. The OTs move on to plan and prepare for this next big event.
The lounge is jam-packed. Their mood switched from the sombre to the buoyant, the trainees animatedly debate about how best each can represent the region. There are so many ways that an OT can make India Day his or her own: wear traditional outfits, do a folk dance or regional drama, play folk music, prepare dishes of the local cuisine or any other entertaining novelty act they can think of.
‘I’ll do the saila,’ offers Sanam. This is a tribal dance from Madhya Pradesh.
‘And what will you wear?’ asks one of the girls who is listing down the regional costumes.
‘Lehenga choli.’
The guys whistle and whoop.
And so it goes . . . each OT declaring his or her act.
An hour later, Aamir is hungry again and wonders what the menu is for dinner.
‘You’re a hog!’ Sanam teases.
‘That’s why you like me,’ Aamir grins as Sanam makes a face at him.
Even as he is slotting the order of performances, from the corner of his eye Kuldeep watches Aamir fooling around with Sanam and feels deeply insecure. He asks Sanam to come over to help him and monopolizes her with little tasks until it is time for dinner.
As she enters the Mess with Kuldeep and the others, Sanam overhears Aamir speaking to Ramya on his phone.
Ramya . . . Ramya . . . Ramya.
The senorita remains a thorn between the two even when she is no longer in the academy. But she is a thorn that Sanam has learnt not to talk about or even think about. She will just have to live with it because Aamir matters to her.
20
Lolling on his bed, Badal watches Aamir don his blue Peshawari long coat that belonged to his Abbu. It has delicate Kashmiri embroidery around the collar that lends it elegance. He buttons it all the way up to the collar and looks quite dapper. He goes into the en suite bathroom and emerges with water splashed all over his coat, his face is wet. Again. That’s the third time Badal has found him washing his face since he awoke.
‘What the f***’s wrong with you today?’ he exclaims in his half-awake state. ‘Why you cleaning that mug again and again? It’s already extra pale.’
Aamir’s face goes tomato red. He begins to straighten his desk to cover his embarrassment.
Badal decides to go to the bathroom and gets off the bed but lingers by the desk to examine his roommate properly. The fellow has been behaving strangely ever since the previous evening. It started in the Mess hall, he notes to himself—the Kashmiri absent-mindedly gobbled up half the fish on Badal’s plate, not even realizing what he did until Badal objected. This he did when the bugger doesn’t even like fish. He just ate form the plate next to him when Badal had gone to get himself a glass of water.
And now this bizarre face scrubbing business! Something or someone seems to have gotten that calm and composed head of his and rewired it completely without his knowing. Yes, had to be that!
By the time Badal emerges from the bathroom, Aamir is gone. He almost trips on a hairbrush, the Kashmiri’s hairbrush. Why that fellow uses a hairbrush instead of a comb is a mystery to Badal. He picks up the unoffending hair tool and slams it hard on the shelf that functions as their dressing table, almost knocking over a glass vial. He has never seen that tiny, narrow-necked and weird looking bottle before. Ittar reads its label. Curious, Badal pulls out the stopper and a strong floral scent overwhelms his sensitive nostrils. He hurriedly corks it and returns it to the shelf. His roommate has used ittar! That staid and simple fellow wants to smell nice! Finally gone around the bend, has he? Badal is tickled pink. He is mystified about these changes in Aamir. Who is it that has upset the balanced guy’s equilibrium? Badal had, in the past, prodded, pushed his roommate to behave like a normal young man—dress up, go to parties, have fun. But he hadn’t budged an inch from the serious business of living. And now . . .
Before the Bengali can dwell any further on the whys and wherefores of Aamir’s behaviour, his phone pings, ordering all OTs to report to the auditorium in ten minutes flat. And he hadn’t even brushed his teeth. He dashes into the bathroom again.
Aamir enters the auditorium where the India Day event will be held. No, he has not lost all his sanity, though his roommate believes otherwise. There he is, at the venue, before any other OT is even half-dressed for the event. He coordinates with the sound system operators, checks the props that the OTs will need for their India Day acts and starts lining them up in performance sequence. In the process, he discovers that no props have been listed for Sanam’s tribal dance and no lighting instructions either. Aamir shakes his head—so like her! Muddled and always late. Makes him smile. So sharp and yet so casual. Totally contrary. Unlike anyone he has ever met . . . or imagined. All that planning she does . . . her every step timed and mapped . . . and then . . . goes following her heart, even if it drags her down a dusty bylane. That is Sanam. His Sanam. Yes, his. The admission doesn’t scare him that much today. He has learnt to live with it. As for her props, he’ll take care of them. But what . . . what did she want?
Aamir pulls out his mobile to find out about the arrangements he should make for her. He texts her but the message remains
undelivered even after several minutes. He calls her, but finds that her telephone is switched off. Kuldeep and the other OTs in the organizing committee have arrived and are taking charge. Aamir strolls to the window and looks out at the undulating, verdant campus, dotted with the admin and hostel buildings. The Plaza Café appears forlorn at this hour, with its chairs and tables all folded up and stacked tidily. More OTs trickle into the auditorium. Someone runs out of the medical centre where he had just spent a night and a day. The scurrying figure tweaks his antenna. Sanam! Still in her pyjamas, she is turning into the hostel block now.
Aamir tenses. Why was she at the medical centre? Was she sick? Hurt? Why is her phone switched off? He tries calling her again but it is still not on. Restless, he walks out of the auditorium, past the OTs now dressed in their lovely regional attires, looking flamboyant and colourful. Anita, at the other end of the auditorium, spies him and crosses over to show-off, but her voluminous Rajasthani ghaghra and high heels take time to reach him.
He is out of the auditorium and its bustling madness even before she has made it half-way across the auditorium. His sherwani makes him sweat in the sun outside, but the thought of something being wrong with Sanam makes him sweat even more. Perhaps she has a fever. She was sitting out there in the open with him last evening for over an hour and she isn’t really used to this cooler climate. He ought to have been more thoughtful. When it comes to taking care of herself, she is still like a little kid. All that bravado and independence she displays is just a façade; in reality she is quite a softie, he thinks. That curious contradiction in her personality is a heady mix and draws him to her like nothing else.
Aamir repeatedly calls her as he hurries to her hostel block. Her phone remains switched off. He then calls Neeti. Surely she would know what was up? No answer from her either. Perhaps she is in the auditorium now and cannot hear it ring.