Chapter 17

Priya Makhija, meanwhile, started seeing her second boyfriend in six months. Kunal,

who she met during Vibrant, according to her, was not only intelligent (he had passed the

first MBBS in first class, and was now in the II/III term); he was tall, fair and handsome,

besides being a Punjabi, like Priya herself. And he had several relatives in the USA and

Canada. One of his cousins had already cleared the FMCG (An exam needed to be

cleared for further studies and medical practice in the USA; now obsolete and replaced by

other tests), and had settled there. I did not like Kunal a wee bit, and I found him even

worse than Sanjeev Chawla, Priya’s first. Sanjeev was tall too, but had a dusky, man-like

complexion. He wasn’t all that good at studies, but carried himself very well. I still feel

that it was Sanjeev who pulled out from the relationship though Priya claimed, all the

time, to have had dumped him because he was too dumb. Anyway, Sanjeev was now past

tense, and Kunal, the present tense that made no sense to many. The above description of

Kunal was through Priya’s eyes. Here is a description through mine, and most others with

sound eyes: Kunal was of medium height at five-eight; had a toady face with extremely

fair skin that turned crimson at the slightest exposure to the sun. He had started shaving

while he was in the twelfth class, in school, and the absence of a moustache revealed an

ugly pair of thick-set lips. His loose clothes tried hard to cover it up, but the world knew

about his premature paunch. Everyone said he wore his hair like Elvis Presley did, but the

rest of his body could have easily been Oliver Hardy’s. He spoke in a strong Punjabi

accent, which Priya loved so much. The existence of such flimsy competition kept my

hopes alive. Priya was just being immature, that’s all. But what I feared was her failure to

grow up in time. And her sheer disregard for me, at times.

The elaborate parking area, right in front of the college building, had come to be the ideal

location for post-college gossip among the students. Relieved by the day’s culmination,

and loaded with things to talk about, groups of students, and many times awesome

twosomes, could be spotted engrossed in animated conversation. Infatuated, and naively

optimistic, boys would often linger around the vehicles of their femme-fatales to

‘accidentally’ meet them and strike up a conversation. Some of the girls, in fact, loved

the attention.

After a rather long day at the dissections, I reached the parking lot rather late to find Priya

bent over the open chain-guard of her Luna. Chhotu, the parking attendant, fervently tried

to fix a loose chain link, his hands blackened-out with engine oil.

“Something’s gone wrong here?” I asked, more to announce my presence.

Priya straightened up and turned to face me, and her frown instantly turned into a feeble

smile. “A breakdown!” she exclaimed with regret, “we’re expecting guests at home and

my mom’ll kill me if I don’t reach in time.”

“Perhaps I can help,” I volunteered, “if that chain is giving a problem, that is. A moped’s

chain cannot be very different from a bicycle’s.”

Chhotu took the cue and got up, rather readily, rubbing his hands on a rag to rid of the

grease.

I placed my bag on a bike parked nearby and squatted down, rolling up my sleeve. Priya

closed in and bent down again. I could smell her cologne. I took a quick look at my clean

hands and bravely held the oily chain in my hands. Chhotu had loosely fixed a link, and

the whole thing fell apart almost instantaneously. A connecting rod was missing and I

raked the mud immediately beneath, to try and locate it. It wasn’t there. Soon enough, the

machinery looked worse than before, and I had as much clue about the whole thing as I

did about the Pithecanthropus male. Beads of perspiration filled my forehead and my

knees ached from constant squatting. My hands were filthier than Chhotu’s had been, and

some of the dirt had spilled on to my clothes. Priya’s perfume was no longer in the air,

and I suddenly realized that I was alone. I stood up and saw her engaged in a bubbly

conversation with Kunal, who sat on his bike, a little ahead on the road. The bike’s engine was still running and Kunal raised the throttle randomly, with a sense of carefree lavishness. I clapped my hands loudly, partly to shake off the dirt; partly to draw Priya’s attention. Both Priya and Kunal looked towards me, and the latter waved a hand. I waved back and beckoned Priya.

I expected her face to dim out by the update on her vehicle. Instead, she appeared

unnerved, and with a very girl-like, melodramatic ‘puhleeeez’, she requested me to tow

her moped to the nearby mechanic while Kunal so considerately dropped her home. Of

course, she instructed Chhotu to help me out. So thoughtful.

Chhotu was a real dear; he tugged the moped all by himself and even helped me clean up.

I treated him to a cup of tea at a nearby shanty before paddling back to the hostel. Sunil

spotted some stains on my shirt but I lied about them.

“Thanks a lot, Ajay,” Priya said the next day in the Biochemistry lab, “thanks for your

help with my moped yesterday, its all spic-and-span now.” Though she smiled as widely

as she always did, I found it a little drab; as if something was amiss.

“You ok, Priya?” I said casually. In response she rolled her eyes, wide in mock

astonishment; tilted her head to a side and said, “Are you a face reader or what?”

“So, something is wrong?”

“No.”

She went back to her experiment but her unease was evident from several failed titrations

and a broken beaker. Sarkar Sir quietly scolded her for the damage and I immediately

looked away when she searched the lab for people who might have noticed her fiasco.

Later when I proposed a trip to the canteen, she reluctantly agreed.

“Have you ever been in love, Ajay?” Priya’s question surprised me so much that I almost

spilled my tea. The question was too personal, I thought, and too ill-timed. One discussed

such things with close friends, and I don’t suppose I figured anywhere on Priya’s list of

confidants.

“C’mon, Priya,” I blushed, “I’m only eighteen; I don’t know what love is.”

“You don’t?” she seemed disappointed, “you’ve never felt attracted towards a girl?”

I blushed more. I wished Priya stopped the interview.

“Will you have some more tea? Shetty’s samosas have deteriorated.” I asked to change the topic.

“I don’t want any more tea. Are you trying to change the subject? C’mon Ajay, please tell

me - have you ever been attracted towards a girl?”

Yes.

“By the way,” I asked, “What makes you talk to me, of all the people in this world, about

er.. this?”

“Because I think you are a serious, thinking kind of a guy: always observing things, and

people. You don’t talk much but I think you try to imbibe a lot from what happens around

you. You watch people. Maybe that puts you in a better position to understand human

emotions. Many times I’ve felt that you could easily be a good two to three years senior,

and not a classmate. Are you really just eighteen? You know what I mean?”

Come again!?

“Hey, I am eighteen. And you’ve got me all wrong. I’m just a bit of an introvert, that’s

all. I don’t speak much because most of the time I don’t know what to say. You might

have seen me brooding at times, but those are reveries, really; please don’t try to put me

in Aristotle’s league,” I argued..

“Tell you something, Ajay? I think I’m in love.”

Somehow I felt this was coming and that prevented the fright.

“Kunal?” I sipped my tea.

“You’re not surprised?! See? You know things before they’re told to you; you can read

people!”

I can read stupidity.

“No, it was just a wild guess.”

“In that case, it was a pretty good guess.”

Give me a medal.

“It’s a strange feeling, though.”

I lifted my eyebrows questioningly.

“I mean, I think I’m in love with Kunal, I just don’t know how to be sure.”

I was beginning to get bored. For more reasons than one.

“What you feel for Kunal must only be fascination; we’re all too young to fall in real

love,” I said philosophically.

“But I think about him all the time. I like what he says, does, wears; I even like the way

he walks!

He walks like a pregnant cow.

“Many of us feel attracted towards the movie stars. We like everything about them, but

that doesn’t mean we’re in love with them.”

“Maybe you’re right. What shall I do?”

“Just don’t label your relationship with Kunal right now. See how you feel about him,

say, six months…no… two months from now and then decide?”

She thought for a while and said, with a broad smile, “I’m impressed, Ajay! Thanks!”

But then she frowned. “But what if someone else proposes to him in the meanwhile, or

worse, what if he proposes to someone else?!”

“If he falls for any other girl, you were never meant for him, or rather, he was never

meant for you, right?”

Priya waggled her head in enthusiastic agreement. She grabbed her lab coat and other

girlish accessories and got up to leave. “Bye, thanks for the tea.”

Shetty’s boy came to clear the table and I ordered another tea.

Sunil saw her leave the table as he entered the canteen. He sat by my side and gave me a

playful nudge.

“Something cooking?”

“Gimme a break!”

“I’ll have a tea.”

“Order one for yourself, and pay for mine and Priya’s too,” I got up to leave.

I heard Sunil fume behind me. He was such a dear.

Two weeks later, Priya cried on the same canteen table, as I held tissues for her. Sunil

had been good to share my plight. He sat with a gloomy face as if attending a funeral.

Priya had broken off with Kunal, who, according to her, had been so mean to take Shilpa

on a movie date. What she did not tell us was that there had been two more people on the

trip, and Kunal had indeed been nice enough to invite Priya to join them. Priya was

miffed over Kunal and Shilpa making all the plans, and not her and Kunal. Entirely

criminal, I thought.

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