The Turning Point

by Nikita Singh

  ‘Bad game, skip,’ the goalie of Kunal’s team said, as he went past him. He didn’t mind; he had bigger things to worry about. After packing his sports gear, but still in his sullied football uniform, he walked in to the men’s washroom closest to her staff room. Shirtless, he studied himself in the mirror. He didn’t look seventeen. The previous year, in the game against the Salwan Boys, a referee had called foul play thinking Kunal was a local club player, not a student, and a lot older than the seventeen years he claimed on the fact sheet.

  He wiped the sweat off his body and stood there, admiring the muscle he had gained in the past few years. Still no match for his hunky, model-like classmates who were regulars at the school gym, but none of them had abs as well defined as his. He put his football T-shirt on, having seen in numerous ‘My First Sex Teacher’ porn that students who played sports were often the subject of a dark fantasy of strict-teachers-with-horn-rimmed-glasses.

  He fought with the streaming images in his head; images of Mrs Ravina’s long, wavy black hair grasped firmly in his hands, as hers crept up his nylon football shorts to spring his manhood free, and of her playful eyelashes batting while she flirts coquettishly with his member down south. Knocking those images out of his head, and after spraying himself with copious quantities of deodorant, he walked out of the washroom.

  The sweat came screaming down his temple as he flitted nervously outside the staff room. With trembling hands, he knocked on the door and asked, ‘May I come in?’

  ‘Yes, come in,’ the sugary voice from the other side said.

  ‘Good afternoon, ma’am,’ he stammered as his eyes met Mrs Ravina’s big almond shaped brown eyes. Her smooth, shiny, flat-as-a-washboard stomach lay in full view and he struggled to tear his eyes off it.

  ‘Sit,’ she said and pointed to a chair. He felt the blood rush downwards.

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Kunal, you know why I have called you, don’t you? Your performance has been steadily dipping. At the beginning of the year, you were one of the highest scorers and now you’re finding it difficult to even pass your exams?

  What’s the problem?’ she asked.

  This is going well, he thought. In the porn movies he had watched, it all started with a problem and ended in animal grunts, moans, rhythmic pelvic thrusts, cries to go harder, and the teacher’s promise that sex will go on secretly in abandoned classrooms and stuffy washrooms.

  ‘I have been distracted. With the football practice and...’he paused.

  ‘And me?’ she asked, batting her eyelids rather unnaturally.

  ‘Umm...yes, ma’am.’

  ‘Tell me about it,’ she said, arching forward, the tiny cleavage beneath the blue saree spiked a surge in testosterone in his body, giving him sexual gooseflesh. This is going perfect! ‘Am I not a good teacher?’ she asked, chewing the pencil in her hand, biting it and almost suckling on it. ‘The other teachers say so. They say I am not good enough.’ She swirled the pencil in her mouth, her tongue wrapped around the rubber end of it, making it wet. Her lips were parted wide open, her hands brushing against the side of her soft mounds. The sight of her fingers, long and slender, sent him into throes of frenzy, as he imagined her nails scratching against his body.

  ‘Your teaching skills are par excellence,’ he assured her. He figured the other teachers were just jealous, as she was someone their potbellied husbands would fancy them turning into during the last mile of their pathetic, monotonous, missionary style orgasms. She was what they imagined themselves to be, and wished they could be. Their criticism was nothing but cleverly concealed soap opera jealousy, reserved for younger sisters-in-law with glowing skins and gravity defying breasts.

  ‘Then what’s bothering you?’ she queried, leaning over more, her bosom inches away from him.

  ‘I can’t help...but fantasise about you. You’re all I think about, ma’am. Ever since I saw you, I have followed you everywhere. You live in Gangotri Apartments, opposite to the MCD School. You wake up at six thirty every morning and go for a morning walk at the DDA Park nearby. Mostly, you wear your pink track pants and a black razor back. Sometimes, your husband accompanies you. He has a small business of spare parts in Chandni Chowk. The lights go out at twelve every night...’ he said. His voice trailed off before he could tell her how he had climbed up the drain pipe in an unsuccessful attempt to place a spy cam he had bought off the internet in her bedroom. Before he could tell her that he had spent sleepless nights thinking about her, that he had once bought movie tickets close of their seats and had felt like killing himself on seeing her face buried in her husband’s shoulder. There were times when he felt murderous seeing her husband wrap himself around her. The urge was not to see him vanish, but to see him suffer, to make him pay for every time he had touched Mrs Ravina. But he stopped himself before he could tell her that.

  Blood rushed to his face, his palms started to sweat and he started to look everywhere but at her. He readied himself for an onslaught of harsh words for his perversion, and was caught off-guard when he felt her hands grasp his shoulder. He blanked out and felt out of breath as he felt her body against his. Her heaving breasts strafed against his chest and he struggled for air. Her lips hovered around his ears and he could feel her warm breath. Her tongue snaked to his earlobe and sent jitters down his spine. Trembling, he put his hands around her tiny waist. The feeling of her naked skin in his hands felt like an out of body experience. All the years of deprivation accumulated in that single moment as he grew inside his pants. Beads of sweat rolled down his forehead on to his nose and he looked at the growing bump in his nylon shorts. She followed his eyes to the bump and met his gaze, her eyes wide and wielding an inexplicable expression.

  ‘Close the door,’ she said, her voice suddenly husky.

  He got up with a start, almost as a reflex and bolted towards the door. He latched it shut. Mrs Ravina giggled and in a second, her lips parted and her demeanour changed to sexy as she leaned far back into her chair. Kunal’s entire pornographic history flashed in front of his eyes.

  ‘Come here,’ she said. ‘Why are you looking at me like that? What’s going on? Kunal? Are you okay? Kunal Roy!’

  The sound finally registered. He snapped out of his fantasy. He was still outside the staff room.

  Kunal sat at the last bench of his classroom, absentmindedly doodling on the last page of his notebook. His thoughts were where they always were. He had no idea how to control them, and he did not even want to try. He was happy when he thought about her. Just thinking about her made him feel warm inside, and he was not willing to let go of that feeling. He was obsessed, the magnitude of which was increasing by the minute.

  The bell rang, announcing the end of math period. A shiver went down his spine. Math period was followed by English. He had seen Mrs Ravina in the morning at the school assembly (and three more times as he purposefully passed by her classes—he obviously had her schedule saved in his head—on pretence of going to the toilet). She was wearing a yellow saree, with a contrasting neon pink blouse. Ah, that blouse.

  His eyes fixed intently at the door, he felt his breath grow heavy in anticipation. And when she finally entered the classroom, his palms started sweating. He wiped them on his trousers, as the class rose to greet their teacher.

  ‘Good morning! Sit, sit,’ she said cheerfully, unloading a stack of textbooks she was carrying with her on her desk.

  ‘So, how are we doing today?’

  She was like that—always cheerful—a smile constantly on her lips. Except in his imagination...there, her lips didn’t just smile. She opened up the English textbook and picked up from where she had left the previous day. As if by magic, the class settled down. There was pin-drop silence whenever she was teaching; she was the kind of woman who when entered a room, everyone sat up and noticed. That’s the kind of attention she commanded when she walked into a room with a purpose.

  As she walked across the classroom, speaking, he concentrated on her lips moving. Th
e bright pink lipstick went with her blouse. The colour looked prettier against her pearly white teeth when she spoke. She was wearing a nose ring that day—not very big—barely big enough to catch one’s attention though. And his attention was caught. She came by his row and was just about to pass him by when his eyes closed. He had not intended to close them; they seemed to have a mind of their own. He had stopped looking at her. His head was bent down, his eyes shut, his nostrils inhaling the sweet smell of her perfume...mixed with the smell of her.

  He knew what her perfume smelt like; he had a bottle of the same at home. But it was never the same when he sprayed some to try and capture her smell. It was the perfume mixed with her natural scent, which created a heady mixture that never failed to get him intoxicated. He inhaled deeply, as the pallu of her saree brushed past his hand. Without meaning to, he held it.

  She stopped walking and turned around, to check where her pallu got stuck. ‘What are you doing?’ she asked.

  Kunal opened his eyes abruptly and looked up at her. She was looking at him, only him, all of her focus on him—his breath caught when he realised that.

  ‘Kunal?’ she said.

  He stammered, ‘Yes...yes ma’am?’ He quickly let go of the end of her pallu and said, ‘My...my ring...your saree...got caught...’

  ‘No, but why aren’t you taking this down?’ she asked.

  ‘Huh?’

  He looked around the classroom to find that while he had been busy staring at his teacher, the rest of his classmates had their notebooks out on their desks and were jotting down what Mrs Ravina had apparently been dictating.

  He stood up slowly.

  ‘Answer me.’

  ‘Ma’am, I...I...’

  ‘Yes?’ she prodded, now looking a little concerned. ‘Is

  everything okay?’

  Kunal was finding it difficult to form words and shove them out of his mouth. He would rather just stare at her—there was nothing better. Or maybe there was, but all that happened only in his imagination. He forced himself to look away from her, and down at his desk.

  ‘Answer me,’ Mrs Ravina said sternly.

  ‘I am sorry.’

  ‘What do you mean you are sorry? I am asking you why you are not taking this down. I need a reason from you, not a vague apology. Is this not important enough for you?’

  ‘It is, ma’am,’ Kunal said hurriedly. ‘I just...didn’t have a pen.’

  ‘What rubbish! You could not have asked anyone for a pen?

  Where’s your notebook? And your textbook? You don’t have those either?’

  ‘I do.’

  As he dug into his bag to pull out his notebook, Mrs Ravina shook her head in frustration. ‘I am teaching here... Were you even listening?’

  ‘Yes, ma’am.’

  ‘Great, so tell me what we were discussing.’

  Kunal stared at her for a brief moment before forcing himself to look down at his clammy hands.

  ‘Do you even know which chapter we are at?’

  ‘Umm...’ He did not have the faintest idea.

  Mrs Ravina sighed. ‘I don’t understand what is wrong with you. You were just sitting there blankly, doing...what? What were you doing?’

  Looking at you.

  ‘What?’

  He looked up at her in horror.

  ‘What did you just say?’ she lowered her voice and repeated.

  He hadn’t realised he had said it out loud. They looked at each other, and kept looking. He could see that she was mad at him. Her eyebrows were crumpled and her eyes squinting slightly, as they pierced into his. After a moment, she stepped closer to him.

  ‘I am your teacher. Weren’t you taught to respect your elders?’ she muttered through clenched teeth.

  He kept looking into her eyes, which were furious. ‘Answer me. Why aren’t you saying anything? You are really disturbing me. Kunal, I think I will need to ask your parents to come in for a sit-down.’

  He gulped.

  ‘And stop looking at me like that! This is all very unsettling.’

  And unsettled she looked. Her expressions had changed from fury to confusion, concern and a certain amount of...fear, was it?

  ‘Get out,’ Mrs Ravina said and stepped back.

  He didn’t move an inch.

  ‘Get out of my class,’ she said louder, so that the whole class could hear. ‘And ask your parents to find time to meet me tomorrow. I’ll have admin give them a call too.’

  Finally, he looked away from her, slid out from behind his desk and walked towards the door, a crooked smile spreading across his face. He stepped out of the classroom and stood by the door, leaning against the wall. His smile was getting wider and wider. He did not mind not being in the class and not being able to see her, even. He had enough mental images to last him the day. He was oddly excited about what had happened. It was the longest one on-one conversation they had had since their association with each other as teacher and student. Somehow, it was even better than everything he had imagined in his head all this time. This was her, the real her; not a figment of his imagination. She could think, speak and act on her own, in her own way, without Kunal having to decide these for her.

  He replayed the incident in his head. He replayed her facial expressions—from confusion to concern, to fury, to confusion and concern again, and just a tad of fear at one point. It did something to him—the mixture of fury and fear in her face.

  It turned him on.

  Days passed by and Kunal was listless about how to control his growing obsession with her. He knew he had to manage his rising urges. He went a week without fantasising about her in his morning showers. But then, when he gave in, he did it nineteen times in a single day. His condition worsened as he found himself stationed outside her house 24/7. Often, it felt as if someone else controlled his body and his actions. Sometimes, he realised he had no recollection of how he got to stone hard benches of the park she used to go to for her morning walks. His extreme dislike for Mrs Ravina’s husband grew exponentially. Their love seemed to strengthen with time, the hugs became longer, the kisses now seemed more out of love than rabid lust, and they took out more time to experience the little joys of life together.

  The boards came and went. He did well in all the subjects barring English, which he barely passed. Luckily, he got through a government engineering college. Without a second thought, he shifted to a hostel and chalked out an elaborate schedule to track Mrs Ravina’s whereabouts. His fantasies, which earlier were based out of Mills & Boon books—naked, passionate and gratifying, were now more about domination and kink. In his dreams, he could see her lying helplessly on her back, bound in chains and submitting to all his desires. The more he saw the love between the married couple blossom, the more violent his dreams became. Her husband became a common feature in his dreams. Often, he imagined him being in relentless pain, knowing that his wife was wilfully yielding to another man’s wishes.

  As his first semester examinations approached, his frenzied watch on Mrs Ravina intensified. From the earnings of a few home tuitions he had taken up, he rented a miniscule flat close to her apartment. Later, he got himself a pair of binoculars. When just watching her from a distance wasn’t enough for him to gratify himself, he started recording her and watching the tapes over and over again. He used to cut and edit the clips of videos to make it look like she was entering his apartment, and not hers. For some reason unknown to him, he started to stock things you would find in a serial killer’s hideout. Knives. Chains. Ropes. Between all these contraptions, sometimes he scared even himself.

  Slowly, his attendance started to dip. The professors got concerned about the classes he missed and the frequent fights he got into. His aggression often startled people. It was like the onset of a second puberty. The only time he was calm was when he watched her. The people in his building loved him. He taught their kids and was well mannered. Though they had no idea of what went on in his perverse head.

  He wasn’t allowed to s
it for his second semester exams. On being caught with notes stashed down his underwear, he had lashed out at the invigilator and broken his nose. He was lucky not to have been suspended. That day, he went back to his dingy apartment, feeling lost and angry. Rage dominated psychological profile. Something needs to be done, he thought. I need to get over her, he reprimanded himself. Or find a way out...

  Kunal Roy was smiling the widest at the Annual Excellence Awards at his company. For the third year in a row, he was adjudged as one of the star employees of the South Asia wing of the company. He spearheaded most of the innovative projects of the R&D department in India, of the Norwegian cell phone company. Not only was he respected for his ideas, but revered for his ideals. He had completed all his education from Delhi, rejecting generous offers from universities across the better parts of the world. If anything, he was the glowing example of how your college doesn’t play a part in your success, a case in point against brain drain.

  By the time the evening came to an end, he was exhausted. The smiles, the thank-yous, the handshakes, and the small talk took a toll on him. He had hardly got any time to eat. The raging hunger didn’t allow him to wait any longer. Just as he turned to walk towards the buffet, he spotted someone who made his heart wobble. A woman—newlywed—was sitting at a distance, her long legs crossed, and her eyes roving restlessly around the banquet hall. She was waiting for somebody. Her face looked strangely familiar, like a face from the past. In that second, he felt transported back to his school days when he used to obsess over a woman who looked almost exactly like this woman across the hall. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t look away. The woman’s long hair flirted with her eyes and she kept swatting it away. She kept nibbling at her food and it seemed like she did so more out of boredom than anything else. Kunal Roy’s eyes didn’t blink. He was staring at his past, once again. His heart, his mind started chugging like an old coal locomotive fired after decades of neglect. The images were rusty at first, then they became clearer, and he could finally see clearly. The woman looked freakishly like Mrs Ravina. The face of the young woman in front of him seared itself on his temporal lobe, almost obliterating the previous face.