Saloni began grinning. ‘Come on! Tell me what all happened with you in my absence. I can smell love!’ she said, winking.
Rupali blushed. ‘Okay,’ she said.
Suddenly, Saloni jumped out of the bed, switched off the lights, jumped back in, grabbed a pillow to place between her legs and said, ‘Yes! Now tell me, quickly!’
Twenty
With the start of the second semester, campus politics became the priority again. There had been a case of violence reported in which a few students from the students’ union in power had clashed with another group of students. The fight had erupted due to the alleged harassment of a girl outside the campus by someone who was an active member of the students’ union. Two of the boys from the other group were reportedly admitted to the ICU. When the police had booked a few members of the students’ union, the rest of the union had called a strike in a few colleges asking the vice-chancellor to intervene and get them out. Even though majority of the students were not in favour of it, they all were silenced. Rumours also alleged that a nexus of drug traffickers was flourishing in the university and that they had the backing of the members of the students’ union. This brought to light questions about how the union was spending its funds. A demand was also raised to bring in more transparency in this.
It appeared that the party that had come to power had long forgotten the promises it had made in its manifesto before the elections. Within the students’ union itself there were differences over how a few representatives had begun to act selfishly to further their political ambitions. Drunk on power and full of arrogance, they had dreams of joining active state and central politics as soon as they stepped out of university. Unwillingness to share accountability had led to blame games. Everyone passed the buck.
The prime reason behind the mess in the students’ union was the absence of its godfather, Mahajan—the accounts professor who was now behind bars. He was the one who had the strongest influence on the union, thereby maintaining a fine balance between all the stakeholders. The elected representatives used to fear him and, therefore, obey him. They looked up to him to get the necessary approvals from higher authorities wherever his influence was required. He was their liaison between the campus and national politics. Not that under Mahajan’s watch illicit things never happened. They did prevail, but then he had brought a method to the madness. In Mahajan’s absence, a few members in the union fought among themselves to retain power. And when that happened, the rift was out in the open.
Slowly, the union began to fall apart. The youth wing in-charge of the parent party at the Delhi state and national level, too, felt the heat. Mahajan’s absence had created a void between them. If the status quo persisted, it would be impossible for the party to win the next DU elections that were supposed to commence after the next batch arrived. With one semester left in hand, the students’ union badly needed to repair itself and deliver on its promises.
But this was also the time when other parties were planning to get the students’ support and raise their voices against the menace of the party in power.
‘So what are we going to do now?’ Prosonjeet asked. This was a Sunday morning meeting when the key party members had assembled on the rooftop of the college block. It was a casual meeting that had been called to kick-start the planning of the party strategy for that semester. Having lost an election in the current season, the members were eyeing to do things in a different way and looking at the next season’s election.
‘We need to bring awareness. Let’s remind people about what was promised to them and what has been delivered. Worse, how drunk on the power of authority, the current students’ union is running the political game as if it is it’s monopoly. We will involve students from various colleges and faculties and ask questions to the union,’ Arjun pointed out.
A key member, who in the previous season had fought the election for the post of president and lost, had expressed his wish to opt out of fighting it yet again. There were murmurs among the members that Arjun should fill in that gap and fight the election for the post of president. His maturity to handle things and take decisions had earned him the party’s confidence. Till the previous year, he had been a strong volunteer for their party.
‘And how do we do that?’ someone in the gathering asked.
‘We will leverage the power of social media,’ Rupali pitched in.
Rupali’s meteoric rise to fame in the previous semester in the whole of DU for her courage and her selfless determination to do what’s right had catapulted her into students’ politics. In the course of time, she learnt that in order to bring a change, it was important to step in and become a part of the system. Her six months in DU made her realize this. She realized the importance of politics and the results it can deliver if the right people step in. This is how someone who abhorred the idea of politics became pro politics. When Arjun and other members of his party invited her to join them, she happily accepted the invitation. But she was clear that she was not going to fight the elections. She wanted to use the platform to fulfil her social responsibilities. So she was there in the party now.
She continued, ‘Mahajan went to jail primarily because the video of his shameful act went viral. It had triggered the sentiments of the masses in a way that we couldn’t ever have imagined. It had made the students raise their voices on social forums, something they feared to do in the open. We all are present on various online forums. If we can use these online social circles beyond the boundaries of networking for fun and channelize them to run our campaigns we will be able to achieve a lot!’
This plan was different from the stereotypical speeches, pamphlets and banners mode of election preparation. Rupali’s focus was to push the digital and social mode of strategy-making. People acknowledged Rupali’s point of view. Most of them agreed, while a few had their reservations, on which Arjun wanted to hold a healthy debate. They did a quick analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of the power of online social media campaigns. It turned out that the pros were lot more than the cons. Everyone was of the view that because they had an entire semester’s time in hand, they must at least experiment with the idea. Arjun invited Madhab to help them come up with a rough idea of what could possibly be done. Taking a cue from Madhab’s suggestions the team brainstormed. From making a Facebook page in the name of their party to making real-time videos about the grass-root problems in DU and uploading them on YouTube, there were various such options at hand. The more they ideated, the more possibilities they saw.
Before the members dispersed, roles and responsibilities were distributed. From generic thoughts, they wanted to arrive at specific bullet-point actions. People undertook the task of doing more research on their specific areas of action before they planned to meet again during the same week.
After the meeting ended, Rupali had plans to pay a visit to Arjun’s mother. The previous day, when she had expressed her urge to eat home-cooked food, Arjun had asked her to visit his home. ‘You can meet Ma as well. In fact, we can have lunch together.’
Rupali had double-checked that Arjun had really meant it, after which she had happily agreed. It didn’t make her feel concerned that she was going to meet the mother of the guy whom she was now in a relationship with! Arjun, too, made it sound casual. In the past, he had invited various friends, including girls, to his place and they had eaten food cooked by his mother. It was quite regular for him. On one occasion even Raheema, who treated Arjun like her brother, had visited his place.
Rupali sat beside Arjun in his jeep. Madhab and Prosonjeet jumped on to the back seat. They had asked Arjun to drop them at the nearest metro station. The two of them had plans to watch a matinee show. They had insisted Arjun and Rupali to join them, but Rupali excused herself saying that she would prefer home-cooked food to a movie.
‘You will drop me back at the hostel, right?’ she asked Arjun as soon as he started the engine.
‘Yes,’ Arjun said, looking at her.
‘Will it ta
ke us more than an hour to reach your home?’
‘Traffic on Sunday is quite less. We should not take more than forty minutes,’ Arjun replied.
‘And what time will you drop me back?’ Rupali again questioned.
This time she heard Madhab and Prosonjeet giggling behind them. She turned back to ask them what was the matter. They first denied that they had been giggling, but could not hold their laughter when they looked at each other.
‘What?’ Rupali asked out of curiosity. She could make out that they were hiding something from her. So she looked at Arjun, hoping that he would help her understand what she had missed.
‘Six months back when they had been sitting on the back seat of this jeep, they had seen me interrogating you. Today they are seeing you interrogate me! And that’s why these idiots are enjoying!’ Arjun said focusing on the road ahead of him.
That statement immediately took Rupali to the past. For the first time she realized that about six months back, in her first week of college, the two guys who had sat on that seat in that very jeep, when she had been planting the sapling, were Prosonjeet and Madhab. And all she had remembered was the bearded face of Arjun.
Twenty-One
Sometime later, after having dropped off the two friends, Arjun parked the vehicle near the entrance of his house. Rupali was eager to meet his mother. She stepped out of the jeep, and unlocked the main gate and walked in.
‘Hey! Wait for me to come! Guess this is my house!’ Arjun yelled from behind her.
Rupali immediately stopped. She turned back and smiled. Then she waited at the porch for Arjun to join her.
The entrance door was open. Arjun stepped inside and called for his mother. Rupali followed him inside the drawing-cum-dining room. It was neat and tidy. It had everything a middle-class drawing room comprised of. A sofa set on one end and a dining table on the other, curtains on the windows and showpieces on the shelves of a glass cupboard.
‘Come,’ Arjun asked Rupali to follow him.
Arjun escorted her to a bedroom where his mother sat on the bed busy cutting vegetables and watching a soap on television.
‘Namaste aunty,’ Rupali greeted her and touched her feet. ‘Arey bas bas . . . Jiti raho beta!’ Arjun’s mother blessed her.
For the next few minutes Arjun was quiet, watching the two ladies interact and get to know each other. They talked and soon his mother was asking Rupali all sorts of questions, about her family, home town etc., which Rupali answered patiently.
Arjun’s mother didn’t forget to mention and praise Rupali’s courage in the Mahajan case about which she had come to know about a few months back from her son. Rupali felt happy that she had remembered. Arjun too was happily surprised.
The television was still on in the background. Arjun picked up the remote and pressed the mute button. That suddenly turned everyone’s attention to what was playing on the screen. Rupali noted that even her mother watches that particular serial which Arjun’s mother had been watching. This made her talk about a few more TV serials and she happily recalled the names she had heard from her mother.
Arjun got up and was about to walk out of the room when his mother asked where he was going.
‘I need to get some party banners made, Ma. You two have a good time,’ he said and left.
His mother shouted and asked when he would return, to which he shouted his reply from the main gate—he would come back in an hour or so.
Once Arjun had left, his mother clasped her hand to her forehead and expressed her disappointment when she said, ‘All the time the only thing he is bothered about is his party work. Sometimes I can’t understand whether he joined college to study or to become a politician!’
Rupali smiled as she listened to a mother’s innocent concerns. She thought Rupali too was worried about Arjun, like her. But she realized she was wrong when she heard what Rupali had to say, ‘Aunty, today the country, like never before, needs politicians like your son. Arjun is doing the right thing.’
For Arjun’s mother, it wasn’t new to listen to Arjun’s friends praising him for the choices he had made in his life. Time and again, various friends and party volunteers who had visited the house in the past, had talked about Arjun’s ability and his honesty in the arena of campus politics.
But then she was a mother who hadn’t kept up pace with the changing times. In her mind, she still perceived politicians to be shrewd and involved in every sort of antisocial activity. How could she forget the terrible days when none of the political leaders had turned up to see her ailing husband who had been so loyal to his party?
Arjun’s absence had given more space for her to open up to Rupali. She had always had these close discussions with Arjun’s friends whenever they visited her. She always felt that Arjun kept things to himself. So she never missed an opportunity to know about a different side of Arjun from his friends.
Looking at the picture of Arjun’s father that hung on the wall towards her left, she mentioned how he once used to work as an active volunteer in a state-level party. She told Rupali that her husband was a man of great ideologies and that he had played an active role in extending the reach of the party among the lower-class colonies and slums of Delhi. He would rarely ask for party money and would often spend his own savings for party work. She said that in order to campaign for his party he had given his sweat and blood, so much so that he was once caned by the Delhi police and later booked in the lock-up for protesting against the corrupt administration in power. ‘Political prisoner,’ she said.
But then, when times changed and the party he worked for came into power, things too changed along with it. Now it was time for the leaders of his party to fulfil their own interests. That was also the time when Arjun’s father discovered that he was suffering from cancer. Even when he was dying, no leader visited him. They were busy counting the money they had been making. It was only his friends and acquaintances who knew him for the man he was, who visited him. Better treatment in a better hospital could have saved him. But they didn’t have the money as a good portion of what Arjun’s father had earned, he had already spent on party work. He believed his party too was his family. But unfortunately, the leaders of the party never shared that feeling.
‘Phir kya mila is politics se humey?’ His mother asked disappointedly about what they had possibly gained from politics. ‘Nothing,’ she said, looking at the garlanded photograph of him.
Ever since then Arjun’s mother had lost faith in politicians. That was a long time back. Her wounds had healed to a large extent. But now, seeing her son get into politics, it seemed to her that he had not learnt from his father’s mistakes.
But that’s exactly what Rupali’s point was. She felt that because there was a dire need to clean politics of such people, it was essential that good people stepped into the dirty puddle of politics.
‘If good people don’t step in, the people of this country will have no option but to choose the bad representatives as their leaders and hand over their fates to them,’ she felt. Rupali reached out to Arjun’s mother and held her hands. ‘Just because something awful has happened in the past doesn’t mean the future too would be like that.’
The warm touch of her hands, that affectionate gesture and that positivity in her thoughts gave solace to Arjun’s mother. She wanted to believe in Rupali’s words but she didn’t say anything.
‘Now let me give you a hand with this,’ Rupali said, picking up the plate of vegetables that Arjun’s mother had been cutting from. And despite protests from Arjun’s mother, Rupali succeeded in taking over the knife to chop the vegetables. A little later, Rupali helped Arjun’s mother with the cooking. She was impressed to see Rupali’s expertise with kitchen chores. None of Arjun’s friends, including girls who had visited her earlier, knew anything about cooking. The only time they had entered the kitchen was to keep their used dishes after having eaten their meal. Rupali’s interests and abilities were in stark contrast to theirs.
Rupali’s
presence in the kitchen made Arjun’s mother recall her own daughter, who would also help her with the cooking. She mentioned her to Rupali and talked about dishes she used to make. ‘What nice kheer she used to make!’ she recalled.
But this time Rupali didn’t let her turn sad by remembering her daughter. She knew what had happened to her. Arjun had mentioned about her when the two of them had been to the Bangla Sahib gurudwara.
‘Next time, I will make it for you!’ she announced and hugged her. Arjun’s mother hugged her back and smiled. With that, Rupali smartly changed the course of their discussion.
As the two of them cooked the food together, they talked about a lot of other things. At times Arjun’s mother talked about Arjun’s childhood and how naughty he used to be then. At times, Rupali talked about her family back at her native place.
Half an hour later, when Arjun came back, the three of them ate their lunch at the dining table. Rupali and Arjun sat opposite each other. From the way Arjun’s mother spoke about Rupali and her cooking skills, Arjun realized that Rupali had impressed her. Arjun winked naughtily at Rupali, who blushed.
He was about to have his first bite when his mother asked him how they’d met.
Both Rupali and Arjun looked at each other and laughed. Arjun’s mother was now more than curious to know what was so funny about what she had asked. Rupali took the opportunity to tell her all that had happened on her first day in college. Listening to her, Arjun’s mother playfully slapped Arjun’s shoulder and said, ‘Stop scaring the girls at least!’
‘Arey, she’s not among those who get scared! She has instead scared big shots!’ Arjun laughed and began eating.
Late in the afternoon, Rupali and Arjun stood at the gate. Arjun’s mother came from inside to see Rupali off. Rupali folded her hands in respect and Arjun’s mother ran her hand over her head. She blessed her and asked her to visit her again and, if possible, soon. ‘You are a nice girl. Meri beti ki yaad dila di tuney,’ (You remind me of my daughter) she said.
Your Dreams Are Mine Now Page 15
