Nikhil and Riya Read online

  It gradually wore Riya down. I saw how she pretended to do schoolwork during tea break, sometimes even skipping tea completely, so that she would not have to have tea by herself. I noticed how she lingered in the classroom when the lunch bell rang, waiting for everyone else to walk out in their groups, so she didn’t have to walk alone. When it was time for games, she ran out of the class, so she didn’t have to be the only one packing her bag silently while everyone else chatted about the day that had passed.

  During these times, I desperately wished that I could have given her company; snuck her a biscuit and a cup of tea, walk with her to lunch, or stand by her desk while she packed her bag. After all, she and I were friends and wasn’t that what friends did? But this sort of behaviour wasn’t allowed in our school – at least not between boys and girls in tenth grade. If you were even seen talking with a girl, just the two of you, you were teased, rejected, possibly thrashed. So, I stayed away from her during class and in the halls, between periods, after supper. I taught her math, I watched her from the corner of my eye, wishing that I could be with her. Maybe she thought my behaviour was strange, but I figured that by now she knew how it went at Residency School, so she and I both stuck to the unwritten rules.

  17

  AS I WALKED alone down the cobblestone paths, I knew that winter had finally set in. The air was damp and misty, the greenery of the conifer trees was giving way to brown. Usually, I hated the onset of winter. The new cold made my leg hurt, and when it snowed, I could scarcely get around campus. This winter though was better than it had ever been before. Everything, even the unpleasant things, somehow seemed magical and romantic – the icy cold air that burnt my chest; the dark winter nights that came around sometimes as early as 4.00 p.m.; even the cold dampness that hung in the air.

  Today, she had been in a good mood and though we hadn’t studied much, she told me about the race that she had just run.

  ‘She came in at the bend and she tried to trip me. Imagine that! What a lowlife technique,’ Riya beamed. ‘But, I slowed down so suddenly that she actually fell and she took down two stragglers with her too.’

  Her hair shook as she laughed. I listened quietly, wondering – as I always did whenever she talked about her races – what it would be like to actually run.

  Riya was my laughter and lightness, my fun, my silliness, and I looked forward to our hour together more than anything else.

  When I arrived at the dorm after spending a blissful hour with her, the sour smell of post-games sweat and socks hit me. I wished for the thousandth time that next year, in eleventh grade, I would be placed in a room with someone like me, a non-athlete, a science student, though we were a rare specimen at the school.

  I walked over to my bed, the last in a row of fifteen tucked into a dark, dank corner which no one had wanted to have, and lay down for a few minutes recalling moments of the day, how her skirt had gathered in little pleats around her brown thighs, and how she had scratched the tip of her nose with the end of her pen.

  I hardly heard them walk in; lulled by the cold, I was sinking into a gentle sleep. My last hazy thought was that they would probably drop clumps of mud everywhere that I would have to clean up later.

  I woke up with a start when I felt a wet blob on my face. Even before I reached out and touched it, I knew that it was somebody’s spit. I opened my eyes and there were twelve jeering faces looking down at me. Amongst them was Vikram, his big white teeth stretched into a wolfish sneer.

  I reached for my glasses, but within seconds one of the boys grabbed them and placed them on his nose. He shrieked out in alarm at the high power, and then everyone laughed.

  ‘How were tuitions?’ asked Vikram, in a cold and clear voice.

  ‘F-ff-ine,’ I stuttered, holding the fear at bay.

  ‘Do anything besides geometry?’ said one of the boys.

  I couldn’t tell exactly who was speaking, I didn’t have my glasses on. A part of me was glad, because I had thought that some of the boys in Vikram’s gang were my friends. I suddenly heard an unforgiving crunch. My glasses, I thought with horror. I couldn’t afford another pair. Someone grabbed my arm and twisted it behind my head. I grimaced with pain and looked at Vikram. Why was he behaving this way? I simply didn’t understand. I had just finished a science project for him that had saved him from failing the class.

  And then I heard his voice, hard as a rock.

  ‘Oily, this here is a bottle of ink, an objects nerds like you know very well.’

  I heard a few sniggers and squirmed uncomfortably, trying without luck to readjust my arm, which was now in excruciating pain.

  ‘We need you to dump this whole thing inside Riya Pratap’s desk.’

  On hearing her name, I no longer felt a thing in my arm.

  ‘Riya?’ I dumbly said.

  ‘Riya. You remember her, don’t you? The bitch you sniff around.’

  ‘But … her copies…’ I muttered under my breath.

  His voice was soft and dangerous. ‘Yes, Oily. That’s exactly the point. Dump this inside her desk on top of her copies. And bring us back a few copies too.’

  A bottle of indigo ink landed hard on top of my knee. ‘But … the boards…’ I squeaked.

  But they didn’t seem to hear me, my voice was drowned out by their howling laugh.

  Vikram’s goon let go of my arm and he stomped away with the rest of them.

  I stared after them as they walked away, and then suddenly Vikram turned around, a vicious look on his face.

  ‘If I were you, I would make sure I do this and bring back those copies too,’ he said in a dangerous tone.

  With jeers they walked out of the room, swinging their hockey sticks like swords.

  I couldn’t sleep that night. Every time one of the boys got up to go to the loo, I thought it was someone coming over to beat me up with a hockey stick or to pour ink all over me.

  For most of my life, Vikram had protected me in lieu of help with schoolwork. So, unlike most boarding school boys, who had gone through some bullying at least, I hadn’t been bullied much at all and so now I was scared out of my wits.

  What would they do to me? Beat me till I bled? Kick me till parts of me were as blue as the bottles of ink that lay at my side? Break parts of my body? What if they did something to my leg?

  More than anything I wondered why Vikram was doing this. It wasn’t like he was my friend but with the boards around the corner I figured he could use my help now more than anytime else. In a sense, I was a valuable person. He needed me. But maybe that had changed. Perhaps he’d found another helper – Mrinalini? – or he had a contingency plan. Maybe he counted me being so weak that he could do this, and still expect my assistance. But still, what had I ever done to deserve this? I couldn’t get my head around it and thoughts buzzed in my mind like stinging bees.

  Going to the teachers was not an option, not if I were to have any sort of future in this school. The last boy to do that, back when I was in the sixth standard, had been tormented so cruelly that he voluntarily left the school. If I did not do what they asked me to, I feared what they would do to me. But the thought of doing what they wanted me to do was even more devastating.

  Stealing notebooks and pouring ink may seem like a trivial act, but with the board exams around the corner, these notebooks were our lifelines. We had spent all year working on them, so that we could use these to study for our boards. These notebooks were as precious as jewels. I of all people knew this well. I kept mine guarded in the cabinet beneath my bed with a heavy-duty lock, because they were always the first ones to get nicked.

  If I besmirched her copies with ink, how would she study? What would she do? What if I told them I did it, but never did? They would probably find that out, after all we spent all day in class. How would I possibly get away from that?

  And Riya, what if she found out what I had done? Would I lose her forever? Would she ever speak to me again? Every permutation and combination had a disastrous solutio
n, and I knew that there was no simple way out.

  I tossed and turned all night till finally at dawn I fell into a fitful sleep, awoken a few hours later by the screeching final morning bell. I struggled into my uniform without even brushing my teeth, my leg still hurting like hell.

  All through the day, the only thing I could think about was them coming at me with hockey sticks, like I had seen them do with other boys, me lying in a corner, blood spewing out of my face. The sight of Riya usually made everything better, but today I couldn’t bear looking at her. I was too exhausted by the end of the day to even walk. During our mandatory games period, when I was meant to ‘walk and run’, I must have looked so bad that the coach told me to go rest. I slunk off beneath a banyan tree and lay on the cool grass, looking up at the brown-bottomed clouds gathering menacingly on the horizon beneath a royal blue sky. Behind me, a crow, perched on a leafy oleander bush, lifted noisily into the sky; only if I were like that crow and could fly far away, too but I was stuck here, earthbound with my problems. Forget about flying, I couldn’t even run.

  The next day when Vikram and his goons began warning me, tapping their hockey sticks and cricket bats menacingly on the ground, I realized that I had no choice. I would have to spill the blue ink inside her desk and steal her notebooks. But I decided that I would also make amends. I could not leave Riya without her notes, not now, not when she had come such a long way. I would make fresh notes for her, of every single subject that I could. Photocopying was not an option, as I did not have enough money for that expensive process, so I would copy all the notebooks myself. They wouldn’t be her notes, written by her hand; but sometimes I doubted that she could even understand her own writing, like ants crawling around on the page. It would take me hours and hours – I would have to copy during meals, during classes, during break, during prep, but no matter, it would be a small price to pay for what I would do to her. I only hoped that she would never ever find out that I had spilt the ink, or that I had stolen her notebooks, because that I knew I would simply never be able to bear.

  18

  I SNUCK INTO the classroom after games while everyone was at tea, my heart flapping like the wings of an injured bird. I had with me the two bottles of ink, expensive Parker ink that I couldn’t afford to use, yet Vikram could buy for a ruthless prank.

  Thankfully Riya did not use a lock on her desk. I guess she didn’t have much to protect.

  My hands were shaking badly and little tremors of fear were rising through my spine, but I managed to lift the top of her wooden desk. The inside of her desk was messy – notebooks thrown carelessly in, bits of paper floating around, carcasses of pens, pencil shavings, a few hair ties, and an old pair of socks, that for a second I thought of stealing for myself, but then the bell rang, and I realized with a jolt that I had much less time than I had previously thought.

  Hurriedly, I searched for the notebooks I had decided to steal, English, economics, civics – the easier subjects. I was so nervous that I was spilling the ink even when I didn’t intend to and the fear was choking my breath. Everything was taking much longer than expected. It didn’t help that her desk was disorganized and so many of her notebooks were unlabelled and then of course there was the matter of her messy handwriting, which, after all this time, I still didn’t quite understand.

  I had been in there almost ten minutes, and tea break was about to end. The warning bell had already rung, after which some students would come in to get the books they had left behind. I was so frightened now that I just wanted to dump the ink and bolt, but I had planned to spill the ink strategically so that it wouldn’t ruin all her notebooks. But now I could not move, I could not think, I just stood there frozen in fear like a fool.

  And then I heard the unmistakable clip of high heels on the marble floors.

  Some survival instinct greater than fear took over me and I acted so quickly that even my brain didn’t comprehend. It was as if some survival instinct greater than fear took over me and endowed me with superhuman speed. I grabbed a few notebooks, dumped the ink and slammed the desk shut. But I couldn’t move fast enough, my leg had no life, but it did have a mind of its own.

  The irascible Rao Ma’am walked in and saw me standing next to Riya’s desk. Rao Ma’am: my nemesis, my albatross, my saviour for assigning me my Riya. Her face was dangerously still, her eyes unnaturally hard. For a long moment she clocked the mess by my side, scraps of paper, her notebooks, the ink, even her socks. She pursed her lips and pointed a talon-like finger at me as I stood there, notebook in my hand, my heart racing, guilt written in red on my face.

  ‘You,’ she said sharply. ‘You’re in trouble, young man.’

  19

  AS EXPECTED, RAO Ma’am immediately reported me to Ansari Sir, who was almost as much at a loss of words as I.

  I was the quiet one, the good one. The one who had never once given any teacher trouble, who could be relied on to tutor others, but now here I was vandalizing property and stealing notebooks.

  Ansari Sir was as strict as he was old and he had a knack for making boys cry, regularly beating them with the cane with which he walked.

  I stood there in silence, hands clasped behind my back, my skinny legs shaking like twigs in a storm.

  Ansari Sir leaned back in his chair and fixed his ancient watery, red-rimmed eyes on me.

  Finally, I stammered, ‘So-oorry, sir.’

  Ansari Sir leaned forward and cleared his throat, then in his pseudo British accent, far too British to be genuinely British, said, ‘And what were you doing when Rao Ma’am found you?’

  Although, I had planned the operation a hundred times, I had never once thought of what I would say if I got caught, that thought had simply not occurred to me.

  ‘Sir,’ I finally mumbled. ‘I … I was confused.’

  ‘Confused?’ he said so loudly that his jowls quivered.

  ‘Sir … I, sir, I don’t know, I thought that maybe this…’

  He cut me off. Guilt was pumping off me. I sounded like the liar and thief that I was.

  ‘This is no time to be doing this. No time to be stealing things. Right before the boards. If I report this to the principal, both you and your scholarship will be in big trouble.’

  ‘Sir, I wasn’t stealing,’ I said with a squeak.

  ‘That’s for Miss Pratap to answer,’ he said coolly.

  Then without another word, he brought out a ruler from his desk, and, with his gnarled, veiny hands, he begin thrashing me with unbelievable speed, hitting my palms so hard that the metal ruler turned red.

  20

  EVERYONE KNEW WHAT had happened to me, but no one said a word. Beatings were a relatively common occurrence at Residency School and red swollen palms were almost a badge of pride. But to me they were a mark of shame.

  In class the next day, there was a lot of commotion when Riya, rifling through her desk, held up ink-stained notebooks.

  Vikram smiled and saluted me sarcastically. Mrinalini rushed over to attempt to console her. I cowed in my seat, too ashamed to look at her while the rest of them just howled with laughter and whistled through their teeth.

  I was awake that night and several other nights after. I was either up completing notes for Riya, or I was too disturbed to sleep. I despised myself for what I had done, for being such a spineless, pathetic fool.

  In many ways, the notes were a saving grace. They kept me sane as mortifying thoughts flooded my mind. Would they send me back home? Take away my scholarship? Now that my grandfather was dead, my grandmother would never be able to afford to pay for this expensive school. The worst thoughts visited me just as I would finally fall asleep. Did she know? What if she found out? Would she ever speak with me again?

  If she knew what I had done, she never let me know, and as difficult as it was for me to face her, our tuitions continued, mostly because I realized how important these lessons were for her. I owed her that much, and more.

  Riya, noticing me tired and nervous, and even gettin
g sums wrong, asked me more and more often if I was all right – even acting more cheerful than usual, as though to allay my guilt.

  ‘You got something wrong. Something must be wrong with your specs,’ she teased.

  The absolute truth was that I really couldn’t see. I was wearing a five-year-old pair of glasses with the wrong power. But, this trouble paled in comparison to the others I had right now.

  ‘What happened to your hands?’ she asked curiously once, lightly touching the broad welt with her finger. It was the first time she had ever touched me.

  I pulled back and cleared my throat.

  ‘Polynomials. Many-sided shapes. Ever heard of them?’

  Days passed by and nothing happened and no one said a word. I got more and more scared. Ansari Sir ignored me like he mostly did. Rao Ma’am went back to her old habit of asking for my copies to check the other students’ homework. After the prank, Vikram and his gang left me alone. Strangely, they also left Riya alone: no more teasing or harassing, the war, evidently, had ended. Perhaps Vikram had grown bored or maybe he was behaving this way out of pity, so that my last days could be pleasant, the same way jailers were kind to prisoners about to be hanged.

  Then finally, six days after Rao Ma’am had reported me, Ansari Sir called me in.

  This time, I was mentally prepared. I had promised myself that no matter what happened, I would go with dignity and maintain some self-respect. I would try to be a man, there would be absolutely no crying, no matter what.

  Ansari Sir, leafing through a book, didn’t even look up at me when I came in.

  I stood in front of his big wooden desk, eyes on the floor, my chin to my chest, my hands clasped behind my back, the portraits of ex-Ashok House headmasters staring at me stiffly from their places on the wall. They would smile, I knew, when my sentence was given to me. The acid yellow light of the uncovered tube light made Ansari Sir’s pale skin seem almost green.