The first thing that caught my attention was her elegant earrings. My sister loved wearing similar kinds of earrings on festive occasions. So it was a bit of a surprise for me to see her flaunting this piece of jewelry in a place like this college. Her hair was longer than most of the girls in our class and was neatly tied back. She had a round face with a small nose and a certain level of confidence was visible on her face. I was not able to move my eyes away for a couple of seconds.
“Yes?” Prof. Das was clearly not happy upon interrupted like this.
“Good morning Sir. We are new students. We have got admission in the second round of counselling.” She said.
Prof. Das looked at his watch and said in his usual stern voice “But Miss, you people are late by fifteen minutes. How can I allow you to sit in my lecture?”
“We were held back in the admin block for completing some admission formalities. You can check with Mr. Kalra. He only has sent us here” The girl was unfazed.
Prof. Das wanted to say something more but then decided otherwise. He asked the students to come in. So all the four students including that girl entered the room and settled into the front bench. The professor reluctantly re-opened the attendance register and turned towards the girl.
“Miss, tell me your name”
She stood up and said “Sameena Hussain”
“Sameena” I repeated softly after her.
The professor then asked the other three students their names and jotted them down in the attendance register. As he was about to close the register, his eyes fell on me. He kept staring at me for a few seconds before belting out a warning.
“Mr., be careful next time. Tell me your roll number”
“Yes Sir, roll no. 7, Anshuman Shukla” I said
As I sat down my eyes went for a fleeting glance towards the first desk where she was sitting.
In the evening I sat down with my father and apprised him about the result. He nodded but didn’t give any reaction.
“What do you say? What should I do?” I asked.
“I’m totally fine with JEC. It is you who has to make a decision. I will be paying the same amount of money, only to the other college, next year. Consult Bhalla Sahab’s son or any other person from RV. You’ve still got a couple of days.”
So basically my father had made it clear to me that if I go for mechanical engineering in RV and things don’t go as per plan in the future, then he shouldn’t be blamed for that.
I was in a predicament.
Anyway, I decided to go with Sulabh and my father’s advice and got hold of numbers of a couple of senior students from RV. Yet again, it didn’t prove to be of much help as one of them complained about how bad everything is in the college and my life will be completely spoilt if I go there. The second guy asked me to reach out to him next week as he was busy with some project. He even disconnected the phone before I could tell him that I needed to make the decision by the next day anyhow.
I finally had only one option left. Now it was there since the beginning but I was reluctant to make a call due to how bitterly things had ended between us. Finally, after making myself prepared for all sorts of scenarios, I decided to get in touch with Rashi. I didn’t have the courage to call her straight away. So, I dropped a formal message. A few minutes later I dropped another message with an apology. I waited for some time to confirm if she had seen the messages. She saw them but didn’t reply. After waiting for another half an hour, I finally gathered enough courage to call her. But even that didn’t work. Rashi rejected my call after a couple of rings.
The next day I had another round of discussion with my friends, but yet again to no avail. I finally decided that I will have a word with Prof. Shiksha in the penultimate lecture of the day. She was a computer science faculty. I liked her way of teaching and she was very calm and patient with the students. She was my best bet now.
The penultimate lecture of the day was in fact a designated free lecture for us. Though the purpose behind it was to give the students the opportunity to either clear the doubts by approaching any professor who is free at that time or to finish any other pending work, almost every student used it as either a ‘gossiping session’ or a ‘roaming around’ session.
Prof. Shiksha’s cabin was at the far end of the building where all the labs were situated. As I reached near her cabin, my eyes fell upon a familiar figure outside the Physics lab.
Sameena was standing at the door of the lab and peeking inside. Just a moment later she looked outside and scanned the corridor in both directions. I could make out that the lab was unoccupied as not a single noise was coming from it. The expressions on Sameena’s face were that of puzzlement. I decided to enquire.
“Hi,” I said as I came near the door of the lab where she was standing “any problem?” I asked as I stole a glance in the lab. It was indeed vacant.
“Yeah, actually I’m looking for Prof. Gupta. I was told that he is here but he’s ..” she gestured towards the empty chair “so I thought maybe he is somewhere …”
“Did you check the darkroom?” I said promptly.
“Darkroom?” she was a bit surprised.
I raised my finger towards a door diagonally opposite the entrance door where were standing. Coincidentally, at that very moment, the door opened and Prof. Gupta came out holding a small box.
“We have some darkroom experiments in this semester and that part of the lab is being set up now. So he had been busy with that since last week” I explained.
“Thanks a lot” a wide smile appeared on her face “I didn’t know that. I joined the college ..”
“I know,” I said quickly “actually if you hadn’t made that dramatic entry yesterday, Prof. Das would have made the day miserable for me. He is quite a character.”
She let out a small laugh. By then Prof. Gupta had seen us and asked us to come in. Sameena nodded and went inside the lab and I too went towards the cabin of Prof. Shiksha. When I came out of her cabin 20 minutes later, my mind was in much better shape to take the decision.
That very evening I had to take my sister to the shopping mall in Raja Park where a big sale was going on as she couldn’t drive scooty due to a small fracture in her thumb.
As my sister got busy with choosing a halfway decent, but not expensive, purse, I started wandering around to kill the time. I stood by the glass railing and glanced below. From where I stood, I could see the people entering the mall as the entrance gate was right in the opposite direction across the hall. At that very moment, I saw a small group of girls entering the mall. I initially didn’t pay much attention as my eyes moved from one corner to another corner. Only when the group headed in my direction to climb on the escalator leading to the 1st floor, did my eyes notice them properly.
I was seeing Rashi for the first time since the spat that we had a couple of months back. She was engrossed in chatting and laughing with her supposedly new friends. She looked way prettier than I had ever seen her before. She was certainly enjoying her college days. As she was about to step on the escalator, instinctively she looked up and her eyes fell on me. The smile on her face disappeared instantly. I raised my hand to say hello and tried to smile but she moved her eyes away and whispered something to her friends. A couple of them turned around and looked at me with such scornful eyes that I was taken aback a bit. They dropped the idea of coming up through the escalator and instead turned around & went towards the elevator.
This reaction hit me like a punch to the gut. My whole body warmed up as the blood rushed through my veins. I almost felt like jumping from there and follow Rashi to demand an explanation for what had just happened. But at that very moment, something else happened that mellowed me down.
Sameena appeared from one of the stores on the ground floor. She gestured towards someone in the store to hurry and then out of nowhere our eyes met. Straightaway a smile appeared on her face and she waved towards me. All the rage inside me disappeared in a fraction of a second and I waved back.
At the dinner table that night, my father asked me about the decision that I had made.
“What decision? I am not going anywhere.” I answered coolly as my hand reached out for a piece of Barfi.
To be continued ...
Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author's imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
