Trending in Love
Page 18
He hands over the Best Trainee trophy to the dazed duo. A series of snapshots later, Aamir and Sanam are finally allowed to leave the stage.
Utter chaos ensues after the convocation ends when the OTs hoist the couple on their shoulders and parade them around the auditorium and then out onto the campus grounds in a manner wholly unbefitting IAS officers. But who cared? Today is a special day and they had all already got their certificates. The academy couldn’t take them back, could it?
The media jumps in, this time to applaud the very trainees they had castigated two weeks ago. Sanam remembers an anchor going hysterical at that time. ‘This girl who usurped someone else’s seat by capitalizing on the quota seats to come to the academy to do what? To get sucked into some “love jihad!” Such is life! Those who deserve, don’t get it.’
When asked today about how she is feeling, Sanam replies, ‘To be in love is the greatest feeling of all. The rest is secondary!’
When Aamir is pressed for his take, he says, ‘I follow her; she is rank number one, I will forever be rank number two. The academy is just humouring me by announcing my name as the joint rank number one for this course. They don’t want to upset our domestic applecart.’ And then, with a wink, he moves away with his girl.
Kuldeep watches from afar. He has not won his certificate because he has botched up two of his papers. He has to prepare for the re-examination. ‘Girls! They are the bane of your existence!’ he mutters to himself.
Badal crosses his path. Kuldeep envies him; girls can’t bother someone like Badal. Then sighs. Maybe it is not such a bad idea, after all . . .
Meanwhile Sanam’s dad has his arms around both Aamir and his daughter. Her mother wipes away a happy tear.
Tears are flowing in Kupwara too. Ammi and Abbu shed joyous drops even as they stand by Moeen’s family, hit as it is by one calamity after another. First, Moeen, who was out on bail, absconds, putting the entire extended family under police suspicion. Next, Sabah met with an accident and got hospitalized. Thirdly, their town was again under curfew, with Internet suspended and telecom network fickle and mostly unresponsive. But parental blessings need no network and these flowed in ample measure from Aamir’s home in Kupwara to his academy in Mussoorie, bathing him in a warm glow as he received the trophy.
THE BEGINNING
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This collection published 2020
Copyright © Pankaj Dubey 2020
The moral right of the author has been asserted
Jacket images © Neelima P Aryan
This digital edition published in 2020.
e-ISBN: 978-9-353-05747-3
This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.