Nikhil and Riya Read online

  But memories are short-lived at places like Residency School and one day a boy stepped into Vikram’s spot in the washroom, another tumbled into his bed, someone else dumped his books on Vikram’s desk and someone stole his gels. And as autumn ended and winter approached, Vikram became a vague memory in everyone’s minds – everyone but mine. He had been such an integral part of my school life that with him gone, I felt an inexplicable, unpleasant void.

  41

  EVERY AUTUMN, RESIDENCY School held its annual athletic meet. It was the most exciting sports event of the year and over two hundred students from the junior and senior schools participated in various track and field events. The house with the most number of trophies won the Athletics Cup, the most prized trophy of our school. This was a typically gladiatorial Residency School move, pitting all the students against each other over days of races and athletic events, so that their ‘best selves’ would emerge.

  For most of my school life, I had enjoyed the athletic meet only because I could study or read in peace while the rest of the school ran, jumped and threw things around. Riya, of course, changed that. Now I was a loyal attendant – even a bit of a fan – and I enjoyed watching it more than I ever thought I would. There was something exhilarating about the intense waiting at the start, about watching her run to the sounds of cheers and that triumphal final moment when she crossed the finish line, her torso snapping the thin white thread, her arms up by her side as if she were a bird in flight.

  That year, the meet was more important than ever before. It was her last meet and she was determined to make her mark. She practised harder than I ever remember seeing her. After each run, she would sprawl loose-limbed by the tracks, spikes by her side, chewing on a blade of grass, so tired that no matter how many times I told her that we had to go, she would just say to me, ‘Two minutes, Specs. I wanna rest for two more minutes.’

  ‘But you said that seven minutes ago and I’m late for prep.’

  She would just lie there, staring at a distant tree, not listening to a word I said.

  I remember one such scolding in particular. It was two days before the athletic meet and she was relacing her spikes in her house colours after practice. Her face was pinched and pale, her stomach conclave.

  ‘I don’t understand why you ran so much today,’ I told her with a sigh. She looked so tired these days yet she pushed herself so hard.

  ‘I need to break all the records,’ she said in a small, tired voice, putting aside a half-laced spike.

  ‘But they’re already yours!’

  ‘Doesn’t matter, Specs. I want to break them all anyway.’

  ‘If only you were so ambitious about your studies,’ I scolded.

  Now she raised her head and rolled her eyes at me. I blushed. I didn’t mean to, but I sounded like her teacher, or her father. Or maybe like both.

  Then she sighed and lay down on the grass.

  ‘It’s my last year, Specs.’

  ‘We don’t know that. You still have your boards. And this time you don’t have me.’

  A half-laced spike came hurling at me.

  ‘Geez, Riya,’ I said as I ducked. ‘Maybe you should also try the javelin throw.’

  42

  THE MEET ALWAYS opened with a war-like flourish, a ceremonial march-past led by the athletics captain holding the school flag. This prestigious task was usually reserved for the boys’ athletic captain but because Riya had won so many state and national accolades, she led the processional that year.

  It was invariably a chaotic affair. The school band would strike a merry tune, and marching squads from each house – lined in reverse order of age, from strapping seniors to squeaky thirteen-year-olds – would straggle and stumble in some kind of order, winding their way along the school grounds like a disoriented snake. That year, I got stuck leading my house in the march-past, holding the blue Ashok House flag because I was a prefect, and the other prefect was leading a special contingent of all the sports captains.

  I had never participated in march-pasts, having always used my leg to explain my absence; if I had wanted to, I could have given the same excuse this year too. But I didn’t want to, not when I was prefect, not when Riya was leading the parade. That’s not to say I was any good though. My voice, squeaky as a rubber duck’s, was not ideal for shouting out commands and I made for a sorry march-past leader.

  ‘Specs, it really isn’t that hard,’ said Riya, who, in an ironic role reversal, was now attempting to coach me. Unfortunately, I was not as good a student as she was.

  ‘It’s simple. It’s just left arm up, right leg back, right arm up, left leg back.’

  ‘It doesn’t come so naturally to me, Riya,’ I complained, nearly tripping as I mixed up my left and right legs.

  She sighed in exasperation. ‘How can it not? It’s so easy.’

  ‘I guess that’s kind of how I feel about quadratic equations. Easy. Natural for me. Hard for you.’

  ‘Specs, don’t think too much … just march,’ she said with a sigh. ‘If you stop dissecting, dividing and multiplying everything in that head of yours, marching will come a lot more easily.’

  And she was right, so we kept at it, practising over and over again, marching to a beat, left, right, left, right. Marching behind her, it seemed to work, but when I tried it on my own, I would completely lose rhythm. Over time, I improved, but I never got good. Life just made more sense, marching behind Riya. But that I already knew.

  43

  THE DOME OF Residency School glowed ochre and gold in the late afternoon sun. Shreds of white cumulous cloud streaked across the sky as the house banners sparkled and snapped in the wind. The lawns shone like jade, the red tracks were perfectly chalked and hundreds – thousands – of frenzied students cheered with the full power of their lungs.

  Riya marched proudly with the Residency School flag firm and high: two lions on a field of azure. She was glorious in her navy blazer with its golden captain’s crest and her white skirt, which for a change had no grass stains. She wore sparkling white socks, dust-free shoes and red ribbons in her neatly plaited hair.

  I, on the other hand, cut a sorry figure, barely able to hold up the heavy metal flag post, my glasses slipping down my nose. I saw her chatting with the other captains, all so strong and confident, bearing their respective flagpoles as easily as if they were toothpicks.

  Riya was beaming and it seemed as if the whole world, especially the boys, were staring at her. As I watched, my heart sunk to my wobbling knees. And then we began marching; I tried my best to march to the drumbeat, at least my pounding heart was matching its beat.

  I marched – 1, 2, 1, 2, 1, 2, I said over and over again. Thank God for the numbers; they made everything all right. Just as I relaxed, I tensed up again, it was my turn in front of the pavilion. I drew a deep breath, and unleashed it the way Riya said I was supposed to, with all my might. ‘Ashok House, turn left!’ I roared. All the boys turned their heads to the left, saluting the chief guest.

  Sweating and nervous, I felt myself falling behind, the pole too slipping closer and closer to the ground. And then, somewhere on the tracks, along a serpentine turn, Riya and I found ourselves face-to-face. Just for a second, she broke the command, quickly cocking her head to the left and winking at me. My heart soared through my head and everything felt all right again.

  44

  I REMEMBER THE day as if it were just yesterday. The games began immediately after the march-past. The students waved their colourful flags and Scindia Pavilion seemed like a vast swarm of butterflies. As the runners took to the tracks for the 400m dash – their long limbs supple and brown, their faces chalky and drawn – the crowds went wild, chanting their names.

  Then the whistle shrieked, and the runners in their crouched starting positions sprang up and took off. There wasn’t much suspense because Riya had won the race even before it had begun. After all, she had held the school and state record since the tenth standard. I watched her intently because it w
as a pleasure watching her run. The 400 metre was her event and Riya would finish the race with the next winner not yet at the 200-metre mark.

  The race started with Riya racing ahead, swift and strong like a jaguar, her legs pumping with a life of their own. You could almost hear how cleanly her spikes grabbed the dirt, almost see how the wind carried her. Somewhere near the bend of the 200-metre mark, her hair tie fell off and her hair streamed behind her, as wild as a dupatta in the wind.

  She began slowing down at the 150-metre mark. From a steady sprint, she dropped to a fast jog. I assumed it was a cramp – I had seen it happen before – and with the next runner so far behind, Riya could afford to slow down. I waited for her to pick up pace but instead she became slower and slower till she was at a slow jog, head down, hands on her hips, heaving for air. I only suspected that something was wrong at the 100-metre mark, when a runner caught up with Riya, a new-found determination in her stride. At the 50-metre mark, I began hearing the susurrus of worried whispers and noticed that in the teacher’s tent, B.P.’s face had turned to stone. Though she was still running, she was going very slowly, her legs wobbling, her shoulders drooping, her body moving in strange, uncoordinated jerks. Two other runners had overtaken her by now, but if Riya sped up, even now she could win the race.

  It all happened as if in slow motion and I stood there, very still. I saw B.P. run to the sidelines and stand there waiting for her. He would let her finish the race: this is the athlete’s ethos, this would be the right way. She ran very, very slowly, her spikes digging into the ground and when the lead runner burst through the thread, winning the race, not a single cheer went up in the stands. Riya ran behind everyone, barely able to finish, and right after she crossed the finish line, she collapsed on to the ground. Lots of people fainted during races, but something just felt so wrong about this. B.P. ran to her, lifted her up as easily as if she were a rag doll and sprinted towards the medical tent with her in his arms. Behind him I noticed a thin red trail of Riya’s blood.

  Part 2

  45

  RIYA DIDN’T COME to school for a few days after the race, and I was worried sick. But she got annoyed with me when I tried to fuss over her, pale-faced and thin.

  ‘Everything okay?’ I asked as she lay still on the sofa at her house.

  ‘Yes, yes, I’m fine,’ she replied in a wisp of a voice. But she didn’t look fine. Her face looked thin and exhausted like she was tired, or ill or maybe both.

  I fretted and twittered like a bird. ‘Anything I can do to make you feel better?’

  ‘No, I told you, I am fine. It’s just low blood pressure – it happens to runners all the time.’

  She didn’t say anything after that and I knew from her tone that the conversation was done. I got up, collected my things and left for prep.

  Things went on like that for a few days, till one evening, at around 9.00 p.m., as I was settling in with my books, a junior knocked on my door and told me I had a call. I was surprised – no one had ever called me on the Ashok House telephone. It turned out to be Riya, calling from the train station, saying that she was headed to Delhi with B.P. for a race. I was surprised. Was she well enough to go? She replied in a flustered tone that her father was with her and I had nothing to worry about. I heard the whistle of a train in the distance and the rattle of the tracks, and she told me hastily that she had to go. And then she was gone. Even though I was confused, I didn’t think much of it. She left so often for meets that while this sudden departure struck me as odd, it was nothing out of the ordinary.

  A day passed, and then another. Before I knew it, a whole week had slipped by and I had no news from her. She had been gone longer than usual but I told myself that I had nothing to worry about. She was gone for a meet, her father was with her and things were absolutely fine, she had said so herself. Yet I couldn’t help but worry. She had left so suddenly right after her fall.

  What made it worse was that I had no way of getting in touch with her. I began hanging around outside Ansari Sir’s office in the evening, hoping for a phone call. I became so desperate that once when I thought I heard the phone ring, I rushed in only to have him look at me oddly, as the phone sat quietly on the hook.

  One evening as I sat glumly in my room, having almost given up hope, a peon came to tell me that I had a call. I leapt to my feet and rushed down the hall in my socks.

  Riya’s voice was weak and tired. I should have known then that something was wrong but I was so absorbed in my own desire to hear her voice that I didn’t realize a thing.

  ‘Hi, Specs.’

  ‘Riya, where have you been?’ I said, suddenly angry after days of waiting and worrying.

  ‘Specs, are you angry with me?’ she said finally with a laugh.

  I never got angry with her, even when she had messed up the easiest of sums. I even more rarely called her by her name.

  ‘Uh, yeah … I mean, no…’ I cleared my throat so I would not sound like a fool. ‘Why didn’t you call me all these days?’

  ‘I’m sorry. I forgot the number.’

  Typical Riya. She had never had a head for numbers.

  ‘I was worried about you.’

  ‘I … I know … I’m sorry,’ she said, her voice sounding very far away.

  ‘Is everything okay?’

  ‘Everything is fine, Specs. You worry too much.’

  I heard an officious woman’s voice in the background, and a lot of clattering. Where was she?

  ‘I…’

  Before I could finish, she cut me off.

  ‘I gotta go, Specs,’ she said in a hurry, and hung up.

  ‘Miss you,’ I completed the sentence to the plastic phone. I sat in Ansari Sir’s chair for a moment, staring at the receiver, holding it for a moment and letting her voice sink into my soul.

  Thankfully, I couldn’t dwell on my misery, as I would have in the past. I was on my feet from morning until night, looking after two hundred boys, adjudicating disagreements, meting out punishment, organizing games rotas. I barely even had any time to study and for the first time in my life, my grades slipped. But I knew that I could pull up at the end of the year. It was only the boards that mattered in the twelfth standard, and teachers tended to cut prefects a lot of slack. I tried to get through my days trying my best not to obsess over her. But no matter how hard I tried and no matter how much I ignored it, I missed her all the time. Seeing her felt to me as necessary as oxygen, as fundamental as air. At least I still had my dreams and no one – not Ansari Sir, not Principal Sir, not even Riya herself – could take those away from me. In the night, utterly exhausted, I would close my eyes and there she was, waiting for me on the other side.

  46

  I KNEW IT was late because the morning sun was strong on my face, and though there were a million things to get done, I didn’t want to open my eyes. My dream was as beautiful as a dream could be. She was running on a fluffy white cloud, in the background was the crimson sky and there I was, running as gracefully as her, right by her side. My legs pumped easily, matching her stride for stride. It was all so real that I could feel my thumping heart.

  Then, suddenly, my door flew open with a bang and I was jolted out of my reverie. For a second, squinting against the stabbing sun I thought I was still asleep and then in the next, I thought that I was seeing a ghost.

  There he stood before me, thinner, harder than when I had seen him last, wearing a pair of jeans, tight around his muscled legs, and a black T-shirt which clung to his chest. He stood in my doorway, staring at me blankly, looking at the room for a long time, not saying a word to me. For a second I was thankful for my poor eyesight: I might be mistaken, it might not be him. Then he spoke, and I recognized that voice without an iota of doubt.

  ‘You know, Oily, this room, it’s cosy, it’s meant to be mine.’

  With that, he walked away, slamming the door behind him. I blinked stupidly, still fuzzy with sleep, wondering how this could possibly be real.

  The official s
tory was that Vikram had returned, his expulsion revoked so that he could lead the Residency School hockey team in the national championships, which people said they couldn’t win without him. Maybe there was some truth to it, but it wasn’t the entire truth. All sorts of theories were hatched and floated – Vikram’s dad had used his influence over the board to get him back; someone else said that the chief minister had made a special call; Mrinalini stupidly insisted that she knew for a fact that the prime minister had intervened.

  Whatever it was and however he had done it, it didn’t matter because he was back – back in his uniform, back in his bed, back in his spot in the sun during line-up. Vikram, who was meant to be gone forever, had returned and now it was like he had never even left.

  Seeing him again was really like something out of a horror film and I passed the next few days in dread, trying my best to avoid him and his gang, who had gravitated back to him as naturally as the planets around the sun. I took to lurking around Ansari Sir’s office even when I didn’t have any work, simply to avoid Vikram. But Ansari Sir, tired of my endless questions about dress code policy and school trip protocols, promptly asked me to leave. But, in the way he paced the room and kept asking me to bring in boys so he could rap their palms with steel, I could tell that even he was worried. He disliked Vikram almost as much as I did and was furious, and probably a little scared too, that he was back.