Pluton's Pyre

by Gyandeep Kaushal

  ‘Dad, there’s no need for...’ I said, before I was cut off.

  ‘It’s always a good thing to be generous during the early stages of a friendship. Moreover, the samosas in your school canteen are quite good. I had some when I’d been there regarding your admission,’ he pulled out the drawer of my table, put the cash in there, and shoved it back.

  ‘Study well,’ he said and went to his room.

  Driven by curiosity, I peeked through my door. I doubted if he had a briefcase, full of cash and jewels, for the incident wasn’t well supported by precedence—Dad would never do what he’d just done. I saw him pulling out papers from his briefcase. He took out his pen and began doing some paper work. He oftentimes brought work home, for all the time he’d had at the bank wasn’t enough.

  I could figure the reason for Dad’s calm stance. It was the upshot of Daadu’s bold advice. But as to Dad’s sudden splurge, I had no clue. As far as memory goes, dad hadn’t offered me a chocolate on his own in ages.

  I wondered if everything that was going on around me was a result of Malvika’s inclusion in my life. I wondered if she was doing all this, if she was my lucky charm. Sure as hell, I didn’t owe those friends of mine anything. Besides, who knows they might have registered it as my bribing them or showing off my riches. Moreover, why would anyone like friendships to be pillared upon samosas, if not on anything else? Cross my heart and hope to die, it’s a bad example to set, a bad thing to practise. So I decided to buy nothing for them. But I took a couple notes for myself and walked to a nearby coin booth. It was only midway to 8 pm, so time wasn’t a point at issue.The owner of the machine got me some change in exchange for the paper currency.And I dialled the number.

  ‘Hello. It’s Don Bosco Boys’ Boarding.Who’s speaking, please?’That must be the woman who lived on the ground floor and attended calls at the hostel, I gathered.

  ‘Hello, Aunty. My name is Suraj. I studied in Don Bosco a year ago,’ I said politely.

  ‘There have been so many Surajs here,’ she said in a bored voice.

  ‘I’m a friend of Atul, Sunil, and Dhiren. They stay in room number 204.Will you please call them for me?’

  ‘Fine,’ her voice denoted disgust. ‘Hold on.’

  I waited in the phone booth for a few minutes, the way Indian husbands stand, while their wives verbally lambast them. I wasted two and a half rupees just waiting. I wished I’d cut the line and redialled after a few minutes.

  ‘Heyyyyyy, man!’That was Dhiren on the phone.

  ‘Hey, Dhiren, how are you guys doing?’ I sounded more cheerful, than I usually would.

  ‘How do you think, huh? How do you think? We’re doing just fine,’ he was all full of glee and joy, as always. ‘It’s so good to hear you, man! How have you been?’

  ‘Oh, me? Fine, yeah. Where are Atul and Sunil? What are they doing?’

  ‘Atul is right here standing beside me and Sunil is sleeping like a dead dog; couldn’t get him up from bed no matter what.’ I could visualise him shrugging his shoulders.

  ‘Okay, no problem.’

  ‘Hey, you wanna talk to Atul?’

  ‘Yeah, sure, man.’

  ‘Hellooo sweetie!’ said Atul, mewing like a delighted kitten.

  That’s what happens when you call your old chums after ages. It’s like a perfume that you loved long ago, and someone wearing it passes by, and it kind of just makes your day. It totally changes the colour of the world, the way you see it and the way it sees you.

  ‘You tell me where are you calling from, huh? Your dad let you call us just like that?’

  ‘No, no, I’m calling from a phone booth. I haven’t told him actually. But I’m spending his bucks right now.’

  ‘Oh, I thought so. What have you been up to? You’re calling us after like ages. New school, new friends, so fuck the old useless dogs, huh?’

  ‘Sorry, guys.You know that’s not true.Things have not been too good with me here lately.’

  ‘Oh, we know it, bhai, we understand.’

  ‘But you people should thank me. I’m calling you at least, spending pocket money that I’m supposed to spend on samosas for other people.’

  ‘I’m listening too, dog,’ I could hear Dhiren’s faint comment coming from a distance. ‘You grew up belching gusts of my pakodas and now you talk of spending on me, you thankless cur?’

  ‘Oh, really? Is that how it is? Is that how it is? Since when did you baboons start cutting down on your monthly expenses to call a dead friend, huh?’ I retaliated, laughing. True as the Holy Grail, I became a totally different thing when I talked to them, always.

  ‘Come on, man, you know it ain’t about the money.’

  ‘Yeah, I know. Dad is not the most receptive man in the world, but tell you what, he’s really changed. He gave me a hundred bucks today to bust up with some guys in school.’

  ‘Good for you,’Atul said. ‘So, what made you run to the phone booth? Do I smell some coke burning?’

  ‘Well,’ I said, emphasizing on the last sonant. ‘There is something, actually’.

  ‘What is it?’Atul asked immediately.

  ‘Actually, there’s this girl named…’ I said, before he cut in.

  ‘Wow, man? Three months into the school and the lad has a girl thing going on already.’

  ‘Girl? Give me the fucking receiver, you,’ I heard Dhiren grabbing the phone from Atul. ‘You have a girlfriend, already?’

  ‘No, she’s not a girlfriend,’ I tried to explain.

  ‘Is she hot? What is she like? Does she like you? Does she have a rich dad? You proposed to her? What did she say? Yes or no? Come on, man.Tell us, won’t you?’ His questions came fast as bullets.

  ‘Will you please let me finish?’ I asked in return.

  ‘Please.’

  ‘She is not my girlfriend, yaar. But she’s in my group.’

  ‘What group?’

  ‘Be patient!’ I yelled.

  ‘Okay, sorry. Go on.’

  ‘It’s nothing.You know, she’s a girl in my class, Malvika. She’s cute.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘Thing is, three days ago, our English teacher said she wanted the class to get divided into groups for a new activity. It was some playwriting stuff and there were marks and all, she said.This girl and I happened to be in the same group. Now, our group has been sitting together in the English classes and I, from a friend in the same group, learned that she secretly looks at me and smiles.’

  ‘That’s huge, man.What now?’

  ‘So to confirm whether what I was told was true or not, I gave it a shot myself.And guess what?’

  ‘What?’ Both of them,Atul and Dhiren, spoke together impatiently.

  ‘She smiled back at me.’

  ‘So what did you do next?’

  ‘I started a conversation. I talked to her.’

  ‘Stomp my brains out—you talked to her, really?’

  ‘Yeah, I asked her to check my lines and stuff.’

  ‘So, did she?’ Dhiren asked eagerly.

  ‘Yeah, apples, she did! And she said she liked them too.’

  ‘Oh, this is getting better by the fucking second,’ I could hear a lot of breathing and excitement on the phone. ‘When did all this happen? You know, you confirming her smiling at you, she liking your lines and stuff?’

  ‘Today. Why else do you think I couldn’t wait for the next day to call you?’

  ‘Oh, okay, keep speaking.’

  ‘So, today we had English in the second class. You know what the good thing is? You wanna know? Not only did she smile at me in the field, not only did she go through my work, she must have smiled back at me like a million times, whenever I looked at her again and smiled.’

  ‘Every time?’

  ‘Every single fucking time! At least today she did, yes.’

  ‘Whoa! That girl likes you; I’m telling you, that girl likes you.’

  ‘Well, don’t you think that it’s too early to assume?’

  ‘Hear
daddy speaking. She likes you. Hear daddy speaking into your numb ears, you ugly fucking dumbfuck.’

  Okay, before I proceed, I need to tell you I understand what you may be thinking. Do boys this age really talk like this? The truth of the matter is that when a friend watches porn like a hungry pig, words like ‘fuck’, ‘shit’, ‘sassypants’ get into his diet.They fuse right into his vessels; they inherit a part of his heart. I wasn’t like that always. I always wanted to be linguistically sober. In fact, I, on my inside, really was. But did someone tell you ‘fuckaria’ is contagious? Right, it is. Dhiren, that rotten-mouthed brat, had introduced me to such filth, I could only thank my blessed tongue that it didn’t dish out such dirt in front of Dad or Daadu.

  ‘I don’t believe you. I can’t trust you, I can’t.’

  Before I could speak anymore, I got a warning audio message saying I needed to insert more coins to continue. You can’t talk for twenty years in just ten bucks. ‘Bhai, I’m running out of coins. It’s my last coin. Speak fast.’

  ‘Right, okay. Hey, listen to me. Why don’t you do something?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Take your time, take three whole days, take what you like.You look at her, and you smile. Not every time, though. Doing that will only make you look like a jerk to her. But you smile when you smell opportunity, do you get me?’ He spoke awfully fast.

  ‘Okay, and?’

  ‘And three days later, you call us and tell us what happened.’

  ‘Umm, okay. I’ll try.’

  ‘Try, you idiot, try.We’ll be standing on the ground floor waiting for your call, all right? Same time.’

  ‘Yeah, okay. I’ll call you later then. Good night to you two,’ I said and I waited for a second, expecting a “good night” in return, but it was replaced by the beeping of the phone.

  Okay, that wasn’t a bother. I was rather more concerned about something else. I wondered how lousy I may have looked in front of Malvika, smiling so many times that day. Dhiren had actually rung a few warning bells in my head.

  I decided that I needed to make my smile more natural and comfortable.

  It may sound movie-like to you, but it’s the truth: I actually rehearsed my smiles in front of the mirror in my room so many times that I could have made the world happier, if only each smile of mine could turn one man happy. And over the next three days, I smiled. Sometimes I felt like an idiot, but being an idiot can be such a sweet thing after all.

  Over those three days, during each break between classes, I pretended as if it was only a coincidence that I was looking at her, before I smiled. No kidding, I counted the times.Thirteen.That’s the number of times I smiled at her over the next three days.

  ***

  ‘Thirteen, that’s the number of times I’ve smiled at her over the last three days,’ I said to Dhiren on the phone. It was 7:30, and Daadu thought I was out having papdi chaat.

  ‘How did she react?’

  ‘She claps every time I smile.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘That was a joke, yaar. Hell, how would anyone react if someone beamed at them?’

  ‘Okay, the situation seems to be developing very positively for you.’ Dhiren could actually speak without using the ‘f’ word, sometimes.

  For about a minute, none of us spoke. I was afraid there was a problem with the line and my money had gone to waste.

  ‘Right, I’ve figured the game out for you.’

  ‘Trust the government’ my heart said, when I learned I hadn’t been disconnected.

  ‘Oh, have you?’ I said.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Propose to her.’

  ‘What?’ I forgot to add ‘the fuck’. ‘Have you gone nuts?’

  ‘Yeah, I knew you’d overreact to this and whine about it.’

  ‘Oh my God, are you crazy? This is not happening.’

  ‘Man, this is going to change your world.’

  ‘What makes you think that I should propose to her? I mean I’ve barely talked to her, man.’

  ‘Face the fact, the talking thing is highly overrated.The more you know about each other, the harder it gets to like each other, breathe in each other’s company, because there is no surprise element in your characters anymore.You know every goddamn thing about each other and that makes you land in her friend zone.And what son of a fuck wants to be a friend to the girl he likes?’

  Dhiren was one of those guys that assure you that you’re in good hands. But for all the years that I’d been with him, I’d found his rationale too funny to believe. But this time, I wanted to take him seriously for some bug-eaten reason.

  ‘It’s beginning to make some sense, actually,’ I admitted to him.

  ‘See? I’m telling you. Propose to her like a gentleman and allow her to check her options, and in the grand scheme of things, luck will favour you, lad.’

  ‘Okay,’ he had me all geared up for it. ‘So what am I supposed to say?’

  ‘And the next thing you’ll ask is what to name the babies. For the sake of holy mamma, learn to figure out a few things yourself. Do you want me to outline each step for you?’

  ‘All right, okay, I’ll think about it.’

  ‘And you’ll do it.’

  ‘Okay, okay, can I please breathe?’

  ‘Have all the air you want.All the best. Call me and give me the good news when it’s out.’ I heard him turn back and whisper to Atul, ‘Can you believe our lad is going to have a missus?’

  ‘Okay, that’s a lot of visualization,’ I told him. ‘I suggest you guys don’t think that far ahead. Sometimes, I really feel like not listening to a word you speak.’

  ‘And yet you’re going to do exactly as I’ve told you.’

  ‘Okay, I’m running out of coins now.’

  ‘No worries! See you soon, then. Bye, luck again.’

  ‘Bye, both of you,’ I said and placed the receiver on the handle.

  I matched my steps back to the rhythm of a half-decadeold song I sang in my mind:

  Pehla nasha pehla khumaar

  Naya pyaar hai naya intezaar....

  It’s beautiful to be in love and it kind of puffs liveliness into your world, when your feelings know their colour. Flashbacks of her smile played in front of my eyes, as I walked with the music in my head, down the lonely road.

  And then, my worries returned. Does she feel for me the same way I do for her? She knows Aditya for a much longer time than she knows me. I’ve barely arrived, it’s only been a few months, and he’s been there a while now. No matter how much Aditya tries to pretend, no matter how much he maintains that she’s just a friend, he can’t deny he never thought about her. He must have prayed she was his girlfriend. Why would anyone think about another girl, when the most attractive one is in front of them? He must have wanted; he must have tried. But he couldn’t make it. Was it because he’d pulled it for too long, before he could tell her? Had the bare chances of him getting a ‘yes’ from her imploded inside his guts? Had he landed into her friend zone? I bet he had, for if he were anything more than her friend she would talk to him more often. Is Dhiren tutoring me right about that friend zone thing?

  The whirlpool in my mind did an about-turn. I think it’s the right time. She doesn’t know me, which is why she finds me interesting? Perhaps! She even said my lines were okay, when I knew they were as good as horse crap.Why would a girl smile back at you, if she doesn’t want to? It means she wants to smile at me, she chooses to. It means she doesn’t want me to lose hope in her. Does it mean I haven’t slotted for the so called friend zone of hers? I bet she never looked at Aditya or anyone else the way she did at me. Do I have a green signal? Do I have a go here? Does she want me to tell her? Does she want me to propose to her? I think she wants me to propose to her. Yes!

  And bammm! I was enlightened the second I barged into my house. I knew what I had to do. I had to propose to her, like a gentleman.

  Giving her a rose would make it too obvious and to
o public. What if she felt embarrassed? Bending my knee to ask for her hand in marriage would do no good either.And sure as hell, I couldn’t ask her to accompany me outside the classroom.Was I supposed to obtain her phone number, surprise her on the phone, and ask her out somewhere? No, no, no, that would make it too obvious again. Besides, what if her parents came to know about it? My story could end on the very first page. I had to do something more covert, something less guessable.What could it be? After wracking my brains for about an hour, I finally got it. It had to be a poem.

  Yes, a poem wouldn’t be a shocker, wouldn’t freeze her brain.After she read it, it would give her time to think. She didn’t have to say anything if she didn’t want to, let her face do all the telling.All I had to do was write a masterpiece of a few beautiful lines, etch my heart out on a scented piece of paper and hand it over. I could ask Shraddha to take it to her. She wouldn’t screw up things, I knew. Or I could do it myself. It was only a letter after all, not a bloody hand-grenade?

  So I tore a piece of paper from an art-book I never used. It had a little yellowish tint to it, just the way I wanted. I began with drawing a rose with a red ink pen, through the entire length of the paper. I even added a few thorns to make it more real.Then I redecorated it with oil pastels and glitter pens.

  Then I thought. I thought for an hour, before I wrote the lines that changed my fate:

  Ankhon mein tere jo shabnam hai,

  Maano tu ho hoor koyi,

  Kehta hai dil jab poochun usse,

  Yeh hai wahi,Yeh hai wahi,Yeh hai wahi,

  I LOVE YOU!

  I was glad I knew a few good Hindi words.Thanks to my curiosity that would drive me to ask Daadu the meanings of some words that I didn’t know, when I’d come across them in Bollywood songs.

  After I wrote those lines down, I lightly sprayed some perfume on the paper, taking care not to wet it completely, but adding to its individuality. I then folded the paper into four, making clean visible creases, and placed it in the front-most pocket of my schoolbag.And then I made my bed and went to sleep.

  Tomorrow was going to be a big day!