by Durjoy Datta
Mittal slept and I revised the chapter.
29
Subir Verma was probably the smartest professor in MDI; he was also the most self-aware. He was known for his mercurial temper, and many students had borne the brunt of the red pen which he used with much brutality on the answer sheets of his least favourite students. He was known to dock peoples’ placements on a whim. Other than that, he was a cool guy when he was in a good mood, and often regaled us with stories about businesses he had turned on their heads working as a consultant.
My hopes were dashed when he banged the door shut from inside even though he was a few minutes before time. He took the attendance like a drill sergeant and his eyes stayed for more than a few seconds on me, probably because of the ‘A’ marks on the attendance sheet. He had spotted my absence in class as Shashank had said he would. I gulped.
‘Deb, to the board,’ he said as he walked up the stairs of the class. ‘Show me the slides.’
I put the pen drive in and clicked on the icon. The slides Shashank had prepared for me showed up on the projector screen, white and green and complete with data and analysis of a company that made diapers for old men and women.
‘Start,’ he said.
‘… the company was named Acme Diapers, where Acme retained the original management style …’ I started reading from the slides.
‘What? What did you just say?’ he bellowed.
‘Sir … original … original management …’
‘Sixth semester … and this is what you say? Original? You’re an engineer, aren’t you?’ he asked.
‘Yes, sir, mechanical engineer …’
He resumed the shouting, ‘I figured that out, son. Just because you have paid the fees does not mean I am obliged to listen to your garbage and suffer you. Give me the goddamned word for the organization. For Acme Diapers! NOW!’
‘Sir, Omega was a flat organization, whereas Acme was a tall organization with more hierarchy …’
‘What kind of class am I holding here? Is this an English class or an organizational behaviour class? You are going to be a God darn manager, Deb. Use words like they mean something. The company was a world leader for diapers for adults. Give them the courtesy at least.’
‘Sir, Acme is more horizontally differentiated … Omega is not, but the power is more decentralized …’ I spoke for a few minutes and sprinkled as much jargon as I could, shocked at the amount of senseless terms I had retained in the past year.
‘What crap are you talking, Deb?’ he shouted out again.
‘Give me that word. Or you get a minus ten in class participation. NOW,’ grumbled Subir Verma, famous for marking students in negative. ‘Leave the class if you don’t know. Leave the class right now!’
I stood there and stared blankly at the professor. With every second I could see my grades slipping. A, A-, B, B- … nope, definitely a D-. He shouted again and I felt the ground slipping away from beneath my feet, my head spun, and I could feel tears welling up behind my eyes.
‘Did you not hear me? Give me the terms, or get out of the class. Don’t just look down and stand there like a dumb donkey,’ said Subir Verma.
I looked up, embarrassed, angry and broken, and saw Avantika staring right at me from three benches away. She was trying to tell me something. She mouthed something, her lips moved. I followed her lips as I had done so many times in the past.
‘Sir. O-o-o-rganic … and … umm … e-e-e …’ Avantika gave me a thumbs up and smiled and mouthed the words even more clearly for me to follow. ‘Mechanistic?’
I felt students sighing, vicariously enjoying the defeat of the tyrannical professor, united in my victory.
‘FINALLY. That’s right! Go back to your seat. Kanika? To the board.’
I went to my seat, smiling and slightly relieved. Avantika was marking her book, flipping pages, like nothing had happened. It was our first contact in a month, and I felt like I had been underwater, out of breath, dying, all this time.
‘Avantika?’ asked Shashank.
I nodded my head.
‘It was Avantika, right?’ asked Malini as we sat down for lunch.
‘Yes.’
‘So, you are going to talk to her?’ asked Malini, crunching the half-sodden poppadum in her mouth, cringing.
‘Yes.’
‘When? Do it now!’ exclaimed Malini.
‘I will call her tonight.’
Now that she had sort of responded, I was at ease. At least I was not getting paranoid now. Things would be fine now. After all, she smiled at me in the class, I said to myself. Sooner or later. Better sooner than later.
There was still no answer. The phone rang till a woman from Vodafone told me politely to call the user later; maybe there was a message in that.
I was underwater and dying again. Maybe what happened in the class was just out of pity of seeing me stand there and get slaughtered by a Hitler-esque professor. She wasn’t online; my staring at her name didn’t make the red icon on the left of her name glow. Everyone said things would be okay, and it rarely means anything, but I still believed in it.
When? When? When?
I sat down on the corner of the bed with the phone in my hand, and scrolled through all the pictures we had clicked together, wondering if she ever did the same. We were so fucking happy.
Crying came naturally to me those days; I could cry into the night, cry in the morning till I got to class, cry while walking back to my bed, bury myself into the mattress and cry some more. It seemed so pointless that I was killing myself over someone who did not even care what was happening to me.
There was a loud knock on the door and I was half sure it was Mittal. Half-heartedly I pulled myself up, put on a T-shirt, torn near the armpits, and unlocked the door.
‘Avantika?’ I asked, almost immediately aware of my red eyes, the unshaved beard, the torn T-shirt, and in general, my unhandsome face.
‘I missed you,’ said Avantika and threw her arms around me.
30
I took her by her hand and closed the door behind her. It didn’t look like she had cried for her almond-shaped dark eyes were still clear, but her face had a strange melancholy, like she was hiding something, but I could very well be imagining it.
‘I missed you too,’ I said. It sounded stupid and inadequate and I felt like there was lexical gap in the Oxford English Dictionary because ‘missing’ her didn’t cover the tip of how I felt.
‘Baby,’ she said and I found both of us crying profusely in her embrace. Which only got tighter with us crying harder. Guilt swept over me, but I also felt relieved. I wished that I had a time machine so that I could go back in time and make everything all right for her. The corridors felt silent and the crickets were on to their jobs, and we were still sitting on the bed, hugging each other.
‘Why did you go?’ I asked her.
‘I needed time.’
‘Please don’t do it again.’ I kissed her.
‘I will try not to.’
I wanted to ask her about Kabir, but I did not want to spoil the moment. Though the topic kept pricking me from the inside, like my heart suddenly had turned into a porcupine in its excited state.
‘You’re hanging out a lot with Malini?’ asked Avantika, half-joking, a whole lot annoyed.
‘Oh … you noticed?’
‘What were you thinking? Wasn’t I supposed to?’
‘Yes, you were. The only reason why I was with her was because I wanted to catch your attention,’ I said. ‘You seemed so distant and aloof. What was I supposed to do?’
‘You succeeded,’ she said.
‘All I want is you, Avantika. I am so sorry,’ I said.
‘…’
‘…’
‘I missed you so much.’
‘I missed you too.’
‘Am I forgiven?’ I asked her.
After a few seconds of deathly cold silence, she said, ‘Deb …’
‘Yes?’
‘I love you. So muc
h that it scares me,’ she said.
‘What do you mean?’
‘I should have been angry at you that you kissed her. I was … but only for a short while. I had forgiven you even before we reached college,’ said Avantika, tears streaking down her cheeks.
‘You had? Then why did you need time?’ I asked.
‘I just got scared that I had forgiven you so easily. How could I love you so much? I mean … What if you leave me some day? What will happen to me then, Deb? What if you just decide to go and never come back? What if I wrong you some day and you’re unable to forgive me? What happens then?’
‘I will never leave you …’
‘That’s what you said the last time … and you kissed her,’ she said.
I had nothing to say and I hung my head in shame, waiting for the earth to open up and swallow me whole. The power of her love for me always made me feel insignificant.
We just talked that night, and periodically, we broke down more than once. She told me how hard it was for her to get Malini out of her head. It was tougher for her than it was for me, she said. She told me that she had spent the last few weeks crying to sleep every day; and that my countless messages gave her the strength to go through the days or it would have been a lot tougher for her. I was glad that I had not stopped texting her. It is always tougher for a girl, she said.
‘You didn’t miss me as much as I did, did you?’ I asked.
‘I did.’
‘Why? Kabir wasn’t as interesting?’ I do not know why on earth I was taking his name repeatedly for it pained like a bitch.
She turned my head and kissed me, ‘No one can replace you, baby,’ she said. ‘You are the best.’ She went on to tell me that he was not as funny or as interesting as I was. My grin kept widening with every passing second.
‘Thank you.’
‘… and you owe me a treat, Deb … a big one.’
‘And why is that?’
‘Subir Verma? Strikes a bell?’
‘Yes, for that, you deserve one … should we call Kabir too?’
‘Deb? Can you stop with Kabir? Enough.’
‘Sure. Sorry.’
‘I can talk about Malini and you, too, you know. That’s all I thought about in the past so many days,’ she said.
I did not debate that. I had been unfair to her. A few days later, I came across a few poems she had written in that period and every one of them was more painful than the previous one. Not a day has gone since, when I haven’t regretted what I had done to her.
The next few days I followed Avantika like a shadow—never let her out of sight, and showered her with surprises every few hours, tried out every cheesy line I could have come up with or heard somewhere, and tried to do my best to be funny and charming and spontaneous. I wanted her to be so incredibly happy that she would never think of leaving me again. Had I had more money, I would have changed her entire wardrobe in a matter of weeks. I was broke by the time she knocked sense into my head and asked me to stop buying her things that she didn’t need.
Those days, it was hard to wipe that huge grin off my face. It was just like the old times. Life was complete again, and I was falling in love all over again, for the millionth time, with the same girl, for the same little charming things she did.
‘You really are wooing me all over again,’ said Avantika. ‘I can get used to this. This will be our new working standard. Anything less and I would be seriously disappointed.’
‘I will make sure that doesn’t happen,’ I answered.
‘Deb … you don’t have to do it again. I am already yours,’ she smiled lovingly.
‘I wouldn’t really mind doing it again. I’m not doing it for you. I’m doing it for myself.’ I leaned into her and rubbed my nose on her neck and she slapped me away.
‘Behave. This is a class!’
‘So? You really have gotten old and boring! Remember? Last year?’
It was in December, I remembered. She had challenged me that I could not get a CGPA in excess of seven, which was a daunting task, bordering on the impossible. When I got a 7.08, it was payback time. We had made out in the dean’s office. I had jumped out of the window, just in time before the dean walked in and wondered if a cat had vandalized his table.
Mittal entered the class late and sat next to us, grinning wildly. ‘I told you she will be back,’ Mittal said.
‘Mittal, had it been up to you, you would have made him sleep with Malini,’ Avantika butted in.
‘I would have. Most certainly. But it wouldn’t have mattered to you, Avantika. You would have still forgiven him and taken him back. That’s what girls do. They forgive, but they never forget. Guys, on the other hand, don’t do either.’
Avantika shrugged and held my hand under the table. ‘Whatever.’
‘Is it? Kiss me, Avantika,’ said Mittal, ‘and let’s see if Deb forgives you and accepts you.’
‘I would rather die,’ Avantika remarked.
No one said a word for a while; Mittal’s words hung like a smokescreen between us; Avantika fiddled with her pencil, her grip on my hand loosening.
Mittal broke the silence, ‘Anyway, since now you are off Malini—’
‘I was never on her!’ I protested.
‘Whatever. But since you two are together again, I guess I have a chance with Malini again. I think we had fun the other day. We drank, we smoked some weed and we talked. She’s really nice, a little rude and upfront, but nice,’ he said.
‘I agree. Why can’t you stick to one?’ asked Avantika.
‘What’s the use?’ asked Mittal. ‘And frankly speaking, I have seen so many girls cheat on their boyfriends that I can’t trust anyone. I don’t want some guy to come and fuck over my relationship and make me feel worthless about it. I would rather be the guy girls cheat on with rather than the guy whom they cheat.’
‘Some day you will have to let go,’ Avantika said.
Someone’s phone beeped and all eyes turned towards Mittal’s, including the professor’s, and he looked down at his phone. He said ‘Mom’ and walked out of the class.
‘That wasn’t his mom,’ Avantika said.
‘I don’t think so.’
31
Midterms were just two days away now, and it was just in time that Avantika and I had patched up again. The only good thing about a break-up is that the patch-up sex is always great. So is the patch-up love, the patch-up gifts, the patch-up moments, the patch-up tears. They all make up for all the time lost during the break-up. Whenever the time you were away from that person flashes in front of your eyes, it just makes you love the person even more.
‘Will you stop staring and concentrate on the book?’ said Avantika, with a smile. ‘And no, I don’t mind you doing that, but you are distracting me.’
‘I am sorry for that,’ I said and tried to make sense of the graphs in my books which were alive, like earthworms, and their patterns were beyond my understanding. Her phone rang again, for the tenth time that day.
‘Hey … My room … Yes, he is here too … No, I will be here … How much have you done? … Best of luck … C’mon, you will do it … You always do … Yeah … Yeah … Ha ha! … Why not? … No … Yeah … Later … Bye …’
God knows I tried, but I couldn’t help myself from asking, ‘Kabir?’
‘Yes.’
‘And this is not distracting?’
‘I didn’t call him,’ said Avantika, her eyes asking me to shut up. I did exactly that. I tried hard to concentrate, but all I could do was to relive the conversation again.
‘He is here too.’
Does he want to come here?
‘I will be here.’
He has asked her to come out?
‘No … Yeah … Later … Bye’
She said no to what? What did he ask? I tried to frame as many questions as possible to it and each one made my insides squirm in disgust.
Say you love me? No.
But you do, right? Yeah.
Then, say it. Later … Bye.
I wanted to check her dialled calls, received calls and inbox, but then I checked myself for I knew I was being paranoid. She was still taking notes in a small diary. She looked at me, smiled and got back to brand management. A few hours passed.
‘How much have you done?’ she asked and I told her the page number I was on.
‘What the hell are you doing?’ asked Avantika and called me over. ‘Is there something wrong?’
‘No. I just love you,’ I said.
She smiled and took the book from me. ‘That is a nice thing to say and you can say it over and over again till your tongue’s paralysed, and then say it again, but that is no excuse for not studying.’
She flipped through the pages and started to explain each topic to me, took care that I listened to every word that she said and I understood everything. She probably used more time in explaining everything than she had taken in studying everything herself. She would make a great teacher, I remember thinking to myself at the time.
‘That is all I have done till now,’ she said, tired from all the explaining.
‘You are the best teacher, ever.’
‘Only for you, baby,’ she pulled my cheeks and kissed them.
‘I am glad.’
‘You want to stay here? Or go back to your room?’
It was two in the night, and I wasn’t supposed to be in the girls’ hostel.
‘Is that even a valid question?’
‘Not really.’
It wasn’t until the early hours of the next morning that we finished the course and post that we lay next to each other; her touch still got my nerves to tingle, and then we made love, tired yet fulfilling.
‘Isn’t it so strange that even after three years, I can’t keep my hands off you?’ I said.
‘Not really. I like to believe that I am incredibly good-looking even after all these years.’ She winked.
‘Yeah. That is true, too.’
‘You’re sweet,’ said Avantika and pulled hard at my cheeks. ‘I think it’s because we are still in love with each other.’
I nodded. ‘What’s love to you?’ I asked. My mind went off to when Malini had asked me the question and I had replied that love for me was Avantika. For me it was a simple answer to a simple question. But Avantika was a girl, and females have a convoluted answer to every question, no matter how straightforward it is.
