Will She Be Mine?

by Subir Banerjee

  "I think they don't get along too well together," I surmised.

  "Who could get along well with that lout," PS agreed in an authoritative tone. "Half his head is bald from the front, the other half gray from behind,” he grimaced, referring to her husband. “Ugly from whichever angle you look at him.”

  “I'm sure he's as ugly beneath his clothes,” I added, trying to sound jovial like him.

  “Wonder how the ugliest of the lot get the prettiest girls as wives. It seems to be an undiscovered social and biological law.” He winked. “You’re fortunate that way. You’ll have a pretty wife.”

  “Why, I’m not ugly.”

  “You mean you don’t want a pretty wife?”

  “Shut up, I was referring to something else. You once told me I’m handsome,” I said.

  “How do you know I wasn’t lying?”

  It was difficult to match him in wits, but I tried anyway.

  “Because in the same breath you also said your mother was a chaste lady, revered in the family for both her looks and religiosity. I took everything as the truth.”

  He broke out laughing. “You rogue, you got me this time. Yes, I was telling the truth. You’re indeed handsome. Anyway, how did your looks spring into the discussion? We were discussing Kramer’s wife.”

  “Let’s do something about her,” I responded enthusiastically. “She must be quite frustrated.”

  “I swear! She must be. Her bald lout of a husband had the cheek to drag her from USA to this hellhole. I’m sure she’s feeling quite frust.” Frust was how students referred to the feeling of sensual frustration. His eyes took on a lascivious gleam. “After meeting me and getting to know me better, I suppose she'll despise him all the more."

  "After meeting us, you mean," I protested, trying to match his sense of humor.

  But he didn't laugh. "You know what I think, RK,” he said, sounding like a detective. “Possibly his wife had an affair in the US, otherwise- just think about it- why would a sane man want to return to this hellish country, leaving behind the comforts of the West."

  I didn't like his occasional reference to our nation as a hellish country. His eyes glistened dreamily as he referred to life in the US. But his mind was elsewhere as he looked at me with a naughty smile.

  “RK, how’d you like to share your room with her for a night? Just think about it.” He swallowed with desire. “Let your imagination run wild."

  We both laughed and walked back to our rooms from the canteen, cherishing our suggestive conversation. But once back, he switched off his lurid mind with professional ease and dug into his books till late night, completing assignments, while I carried to my room memories of Sheila, imagining her in various states of undress.

  My guilt transformed those images into Shalini. But Shalini was still to become a full blown woman. She’d not even acknowledged my hints or shown any signs that she reciprocated my tender feelings for her. I felt a little confused. Was I trying to teach her a lesson to bring her closer to me or was I cheating on her? I considered joining yoga classes for a few weeks to try and apply spiritual ideas for self control.

  Our hiring for the newsletter kicked off well. We invited another bored person, an aging professor this time, Dr. Ranadey, to join our magazine's editorial panel. He was a handicapped person who we felt would welcome the idea of getting into an attention grabbing role. We’d heard he had been popular in the college campus for his youthful dalliances with women long ago when he was younger and physically fitter, before being handicapped by an accident several years ago.

  The accident had reduced him to a physical mess. Though his limbs were still intact, he’d developed a neurological problem that refused to subside. It left his limbs in a state of perennial quiver. He trembled as he walked and panted as he spoke. His hands trembled when he held a pen. He was incapable of much physical exertion.

  He’d married twice, the second marriage with a widow coming after his accident, when his first wife deserted him due to his infirmities. Despite his frailties, he’d retained the desire to flirt. I was realizing that libido was a monster difficult to curb for those so inclined. It didn't bother whether you could rise to do its bidding or fell by the side. It simply blinded your power of reasoning and drove you on relentlessly, often dragging people into a social and legal morass.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Overall Dr. Ranadey possessed the kind of personality that couldn’t refuse joining a magazine with a pretty young woman like Sheila on its panel. It didn’t take him long to decide on our request to join the editorial board.

  "Of course!" he boomed.

  Of course, even we’d been sure of his affirmative response. The bait was unavoidable. He was bound to join.

  "When do we start?" he asked, eyes gleaming with enthusiasm.

  He seemed more eager than us. Had he nothing better to do with his time, I wondered. I’d thought he was a senior professor with his hands full of work. Considering his broken down constitution I’d assumed him to be harmless compared to another professor who we heard had eloped with a colleague’s wife. But it seemed I was wrong. Captive in that fatigued, tottering frame still lurked a spirit which eyed women with the desire to enjoy.

  PS exchanged glances with me as professor Ranadey said ‘of course’. Was he already drooling mentally over Sheila’s figure? I was sure he’d seen her at professors' get together parties and made a mental note of her wares.

  With his inclusion into our editorial team, it made four of us. Next we decided to hang around the girls' hostels. This time we didn't fair as well, both PS and I being too tongue tied to make inroads into the veritable harem we’d imagined to recruit. To complicate our miseries, on our second trip there, PS stumbled and fell while descending the staircase. The next morning he couldn’t get out of bed.

  “Forget about recruiting girls,” he said irately. “Looks like I sprained my back badly from last night’s fall.”

  “Don’t let wisdom desert you in the face of hardship,” I said solemnly, as I watched him take a deep breath, wincing with pain. Before he could retort, I quickly added, “Try taking a few steps.”

  With my help he stood up, wincing again. After a few steps he straightened.

  “Feeling better?’ I asked.

  He nodded and limped over to his chair to sit down. As he straightened his legs he howled in pain again.

  “Rhus Tox 200,” I prescribed with a professional air.

  He stared at me for an explanation.

  “It’s a homeopathic remedy,” I clarified. “Don’t worry, I’ve been reading the materia medica- which is like a bible in homeopathy- for several years now. I’m confident this medicine will help you.”

  “But where would I get it?’ he asked. “I think I should go to the health center and get some pain killers instead.”

  “Your choice- but if you want I could run to the college gate and get Rhus Tox for you from a shop there. Homeopathic medicine doesn’t cause undesirable side effects like allopathic medicine.”

  Doubtfully, he nodded. Obviously the pain was too discomforting for him to undertake a trip to the institute hospital. I grabbed my bicycle and pedaled to the campus gate. When I returned to his room, he was writhing in pain and had lied down on the floor, unable to navigate the distance from the chair to his bed. I gave him a dose of Rhus Tox 200 and helped him to his bed before hurrying back to the gate to get Rhus Tox 30 and Hypericum 200 as well.

  “So many medicines!” he shrieked when I showed him the new medicines.

  “Shut up!” I retorted. “From now on, take these two medicines- Rhus Tox 30 and Hypericum 200- alternately every two hours till you feel 50 to 60 percent better. After that, stop both and switch back to Rhus Tox 200, which was the first medicine I gave. Don’t worry, I’m here to guide you how to take the medicines and also remind you when to take them.”

  He remained doubtful and took the doses as if consuming poison, but after two days he had a big smile on his face when he knocked on my
door.

  “Dr. Kumar,” he grinned. “Perhaps you chose the wrong profession. I always felt you were not cut to be an engineer. Seems I was right.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked with a frown. “I studied as hard as the rest of you to compete for selection to MSIT- not to be told I’m in the wrong profession.”

  “Take it easy. Let me put it this way- I think you’re more qualified than the rest of us. You should have studied homeopathy medicine.” He noted the look of satisfaction on my countenance and continued appreciatively, “Yaar, you prescribe like a professional doctor. Your medicine works so well! A formal degree can help you set up a roaring practice.”

  I nodded, but didn’t see any point discussing the merits and demerits of my career, irrespective of whether it was medical or something else. Given a choice I’d have preferred pursuing music or painting for a living.

  I changed the topic. “So, are we ready to head back to the girl’s hostel to complete our recruitment? Or has your fall from the staircase frightened you?”

  “Of course not! We’ll go there again. We both believe in diversity, don’t we?”

  “Can’t say about myself, but you’re an absolutely lusty goat who eyes only diversity.”

  “Okay, okay, think whatever you like- but I’m only considering ways to make our magazine more successful. Otherwise, I have the highest regard for girls,” he said with a lurking smile that belied his words.

  We finally managed to rope in a bespectacled girl doing her PhD, who seemed neglected by everyone else including the girls in her own hostel and turned pale whenever anyone looked at her. PS felt we shouldn't overstaff our fledgling team, and firmly ended the hiring with an undergraduate boy from a junior batch.

  One night as we stood in the dormitory discussing the next steps for our newsletter, it started raining.

  “Let’s sit in one of our rooms to carry on the discussion further,” he suggested.

  I nodded. “Before that, I’ll make a trip to the loo.”

  “Me too.”

  So we both headed to the restroom. After relieving ourselves we stood a moment in front of the washbasin’s mirror appraising our looks.

  “Someone forgot his tube of toothpaste,” PS said, pointing to a big tube lying on the washbasin beside the tap. He took a peek outside at the dormitory and returned with a mischievous smile.

  As if on cue, I caught on, and took a peek inside the shower cabins. There was no one. I looked at him in anticipation.

  “Whatever you want to do, go about it quickly,” I prompted in an urgent tone, glancing over my shoulder. He hesitated for a moment. “Don’t worry, I’ll keep watch,” I prodded.

  I stood in the doorway keeping an eye on the dormitory, and another on his antics. He quickly uncapped the tube of toothpaste and squeezing it merrily, began writing on the big mirror with the gushing paste, with the air of a professor writing with a piece of chalk on the blackboard in L-7. Finished, he turned around with a smug smile.

  “Hey, you didn’t leave any for me,” I said ruefully, eyeing the empty tube, which he capped and kept carefully on the washbasin just as he’d found it.

  “Next time would be your turn. At that time I’ll keep watch,” he promised and we returned from the loo happily.

  He scripted the plan for the newsletter along with me, based on which both of us handpicked articles for it. Along with the two other students in the editorial board, we gathered statistics of gymkhana spend, departmental annual budgets, interviewed visiting professors on the campus and worked our asses off on all aspects of the publication.

  We students did most of the hard work and running around while Dr. Ranadey and Sheila merely got together once in a while to review our articles and approved the readymade material simply because one was a professor and the other a professor's wife.

  "We got ourselves into this," I told PS one evening. "Sheila is okay. She's dumb but beautiful. I try holding her eyes whenever she looks my way. I think she too likes looking my way while talking.”

  “Don’t live in dreams, RK,” he interrupted. “She looks your way, not at you. I’d call it looking through a person absent-mindedly. That’s a big difference. Possibly she also gazes at the playfield visible from the window behind your chair.”

  “There’s no window behind my chair in the gymkhana, you lout.”

  “Sorry, then she looks at the wall behind,” he said without batting an eyelid. “I feel bad some people have to struggle so hard. In my case, she looks at me directly. She values my views and tries to engage me in talking to her. I’ve noticed women like her never miss a man when one’s around.”

  “Let’s ask her in our next meeting and clarify.”

  “What do you mean?” he asked suspiciously.

  “Whether she looks at the wall behind me or directly at you.”

  “Are you crazy?”

  “Yes, I’m crazy as well as determined enough to ask her that. After that she can use her judgment how to deal with you.”

  He hurled a small writing pad at me, which I dodged.

  “You got me wrong,” I said innocently. “I’ll tell her that since your fall from the staircase at the girls’ hostel, you regularly hallucinate, and it’s good to stay away from you during this period. Anyway,” I added quickly before he could issue a rejoinder. “She soothes our nerves in a heavy editing session. But Ranadey’s a jerk.”

  “He's a liability,” he nodded in ready agreement, his mind still searching for a suitable repartee to my jab.

  “Shall we kick him out?”

  “Who do we replace him with? Editing this newsletter is my only distraction. I can't compose music like you or dabble in medicines- but in my own way I too like being creative sometimes instead of burying my head in engineering books all the time. This magazine is my only outlet in that sense.”

  I had no solution in sight. We were somehow trapped by the magazine and Ranadey’s imposing presence. “I find him quite irritating. We should have picked a junior professor, not an opinionated, senior one like him.”

  “I felt a frail person like him would be fairly harmless,” he said thoughtfully. “I usually measure up a guy physically, assessing whether I can beat him in a fist fight if it ever comes to that.”

  “You jerk, was that your criterion for picking the editorial board?”

  “Well, only for the men. For the girls my criterion is obviously different,” he said with a lurid smile and we broke out laughing.

  “Anyway, whatever gave Ranadey the idea that he's the editor?” I asked, resuming our dialogue. “He keeps telling what to include in an edition and what to omit. We do all the hard work while he just sits there to enjoy Sheila’s company and approve.”

  "Because he dare not disapprove- or there’d be no articles left to print," PS prophesied tiredly.

  I’d realize later in life that most bosses were like Ranadey. They did little value add to your work, but duly approved it and tried to justify their superiority by picking on you. They dared not disapprove but had to show some reservations all the same, just to show their worthiness, and resist losing their relevance altogether.

  Getting articles was tough enough in this academic institute. At this rate we’d soon have to fabricate news to fill the pages. The newsletter was slowly turning into a liability for us. Gradually, after the first edition was out, the girl left our editorial board, followed by the boy, both citing academic pressures. From that point onward we were left to do everything ourselves, with no more volunteers left. And that literally meant the two of us, me and PS.

  We wrote the articles, edited them, incorporated the views of Ranadey and Sheila, ran to a city press by an institute bus to fetch the proofs and again ran back to submit the reviewed content for printing. Electronic publishing had still not caught on.

  We consoled ourselves that we were the pioneers and so the initial grind seemed of titanic proportions. Finally, after the initial cranking and sputtering, nearly two decades later I noticed my
alma mater had started publishing a regular electronic newsletter somewhere along. It was a solace to think our efforts hadn’t gone entirely in vain.

  Though PS sometimes referred to our country as hellish, mostly he deplored the West, including the US, and ranted about patriotic values, as well as spoke of export quality desis, which was how he referred to Indians.

  “Export quality?” I smiled upon first hearing the phrase.

  He laughed. “Spread your antenna wider, RK. Just like select vegetables and fruits are grown with special care in countries like ours with the explicit purpose of exporting them to foreign countries, especially to the West, to earn money, families these days grow kids to send them abroad. The formula is simple. Be born in this nation, absorb her culture, have your roots here, but settle down abroad as soon as you get the chance and replant yourselves in new soil. I don’t know if it’s a kind of business, but these are the export quality desis I referred to.”

  I chuckled at the description. “I'd never settle down abroad. In my opinion only third rate people do that.”

  “Why?” he asked as if affronted.

  “There are unspoken social undercurrents prevalent in the society there. They consider us invaders.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “From what I’ve heard, they don’t welcome the idea of colored people settling in their countries, despite their claims of being an equal opportunity employer and bla-bla.”

  “But the day-to-day life there is much more systematic, cleaner ethically and comfortable. They don’t deny us any of that, though we’re outsiders.” He paused. “My sources of information are authentic.”

  “As if mine aren’t. From what I know of social interactions there, one gradually becomes aware of their aloofness towards us, their condescending attitude and racial undertones,” I defended, but later assumed a more broadminded view. “In a way, it’s natural for them to feel frustrated. It’s a fact that we do take away their jobs. I might feel the same way if they came to our country and took away our jobs.”