‘You can go now,’ said Raghuvir. ‘And I had read your assignment when you had submitted it. Good work.’
‘Thank you,’ said Aranya, making the slightest of fist pumps.
Aranya left the room with a sense of victory but the feeling died instantly when she saw Dhruv waiting for her outside, arms folded across his chest, his nervy, overbuilt arms on blatant display, a far cry from Raghuvir’s understated yet overpowering awesomeness.
‘Aw! Look at that blush,’ said Dhruv.
‘You need to get out of my face,’ said Aranya and walked away from Dhruv.
‘I just wanted to congratulate you for your efforts inside that room.’
Aranya stopped, turned and walked up to him, and stood so close she felt she would choke on his cheap cologne. She said, ‘The next time you do something like that, I will crush you. I’m not saying that in the figurative sense of the word but I will crush you. I will make your life a living hell, so dare you cross me again. I can throw anyone, especially a smug, vain bastard like you who thinks he’s better than everyone, under the bus if push comes to shove and no one knows that better than you. I know you seek revenge for what I did to your poor little heart, but you’re going to stop now. If you don’t, it’s going to rain misery on you and you’re going to regret the day you dared to stand up against me. I have seen guys like you talk a big game and then crumble to dust. Go to your little, insignificant world of porn, protein supplements and little slutty girls, all of which will slowly disintegrate into a life of slaving for people like me, people with real talent and drive, who reign over minions like you. Go, live your days, slave, for the future will only bring wretchedness to you and it will make whatever happened to you in the past seem like good old times.’
Dhruv looked straight at her, held her stare, and then broke out in his ridiculous smile. ‘That was almost poetic. Did you like read a book yesterday and mark out lines that you would say to me today?’
Aranya started to walk away from him when she heard Dhruv say, ‘Crumble to dust I might, but what about you? And what about you and Raghuvir? Did he notice your sly smiles and your flushed cheeks and your little nervous knee shakes? Or were you just another of the nondescript girls who fawn over him? And yes, I might be insignificant in the future but who on earth has seen the future! RIGHT NOW, I’M THE FUCKING KING AND YOU’RE INVISIBLE. TO ME AND TO HIM! You’re the ugly duckling, the spotted, ugly, loathsome toad, dude. You always were. Don’t you look into the mirror? No matter what you try to do, you are never going to wash off that skin. You will always be repulsive,’ Dhruv said and walked away.
I Love u Rachu
28
Aranya felt nauseous about how he had used the word dude—wannabe and gender-inappropriate—and how honest Dhruv was in declaring her an ugly toad.
She missed her dinner that night and thought of going for a run but settled for quantum mechanics instead. She didn’t want to be seen running. It was too embarrassing. Instead she would jog on the spot for thirty minutes in front of the mirror and slump on the ground, crying and exhausted and hungry.
She could feel a wave of depression washing over her. It happened every few months for a couple of weeks. She wouldn’t eat, she wouldn’t be able to concentrate on work and she would spend hours in front of the mirror wishing she looked better.
For the next few days, Dhruv was too involved in pandering to his pretty girlfriend’s wants and kept out of her way. She had been avoiding Raghuvir too, wondering if he felt the same way about her as Dhruv did—an ugly, loathsome toad.
She went on another one of her depressing crash diets that made her weak, irritable and cranky, and crushed her feminist, beauty-is-skin-deep soul. Her class performance started to dip infinitesimally which no one but Raghuvir noted.
‘What’s up with you?’ asked Raghuvir having called her to his staffroom.
‘Nothing, Sir.’
‘You’re slowing down in class. What’s the matter? Only weeks ago you were up in arms about a guy burning your assignments and now you’re listless even when on the first bench?
Raghuvir led her to a chair and his touch was strangely comforting. ‘What’s troubling you?’
For the next ten minutes, Aranya stayed mum and Raghuvir waited for an answer.
‘You wouldn’t get it, Sir.’
‘Do I need to read out my CV again? People think of me as quite intelligent, you know.’
Aranya sighed. ‘There’s this girl, a cousin of mine. She just got married.’
‘Okay. That seems plausible. What about it?’
‘She’s pretty. Her Facebook, Instagram and Twitter profiles have a cumulative strength of 764 pictures, with an average “Like” and “Comment” rate of 123 and 34 per picture respectively.’
‘I still can’t see where you’re going with this.’
‘She hasn’t read a book in her life and thinks Africa is a country. Blue, red, pink, purple are the colours she got streaked in her hair in the past nineteen months, none of which looked ridiculous on her, in fact they looked very pretty. In the pictures she wears spectacles she’s called a nerd, an intellectual even. She poses with books and coffee mugs. The only consolation is the grammatical mistakes in those comments.’
‘So what’s your point?’ asked Raghuvir.
‘Her fiancé is Harvard-educated, lives in Mumbai and is a hedge fund manager. He drives a loan-free Audi.’
‘So?’
‘Do you have any idea how much pressure that puts on me, Sir?’
‘No. I’m not in marriage dealings or I would have known.’
Aranya took a deep breath and collected everything she had been thinking in the past few days into a cogent argument. ‘I ignored her for the majority of my childhood and adolescence despite my parents’ constant reminders. While she blossomed like those women in fairness ads, I bloated and battled with my disease, my weight problem and my facial hair. While she wore little black dresses to family functions, I wore sweaters and jeans and thanked God for not giving me polio instead. I was either invisible or someone to maintain one-arm distance from to my extended family and she was talked about in verses. I waited for my time to come—the tenth standard board exams. Something that separates the winners from the losers, and I knew it was my time to shine. I scored a 97.9 per cent and she came down with jaundice and passed with 43 per cent. She was the success story, the brave one who battled a life-threatening disease, not I, who would have preferred getting jaundice for a lifetime over what I have. Later she took humanities, because she claimed to be artistic. Imagine! Humanities! A subject where marks don’t matter and people lose track of how to judge you. How would I ever outshine her? I knew that no matter how successful I am, I would never trump her. It’s like comparing a liquor baron with a painter.’
‘What does it have anything to do with her getting married?’
‘I was getting to that. For all practical reasons, she’s illiterate and I hoped karma would bite her in the ass, that some day she would have to get married to a rich, fat businessman with an intelligence of an ape. And that’s when I would parade us, my future man and me, the power couple, the ones who can talk business, politics, art, philanthropy with equal panache. I intended to smash her ego, her pride, her superiority to smithereens. But guess what? Her fiancé has a blog where he writes about the political scene in the US and its ramifications on the Indian economy and is a part of an NGO that cares for cancer-stricken children. Imagine! CANCER CHILDREN! How am I supposed to compete with a man like that? How am I supposed to win? Why are men blind? How hard would it have been for God to give her a husband who believed in dowry and hated children?’
Raghuvir scowled. ‘Is this where I tell you that you should be proud—’
Aranya snapped, ‘I’m a fucking feminist, okay, a struggling one, but I am. I think men are disasters and we are better than them because, you know, periods and labour pains and higher emotional intelligence, but what the hell is wrong with you men? Like what? And it’s not ea
sy to look at yourself in the mirror and wonder if guys will ever like you! It’s too much pressure. And the worst part is when you know you shouldn’t think of it and yet you do! AND THAT SUCKS. Why can’t I be ugly and fat and still be wanted? Why is the girl in biotechnology more talked about than me? She can’t even tell an array apart from a pointer!’ She felt exhausted and slumped in her chair, her body in severe deficit of carbohydrates she had ruthlessly cut out of her diet. Whoever said sharing makes you feel lighter must have written the quote on a shit pot while taking a dump, because right now all she felt was embarrassment, and the silence in the room was making it worse.
‘I think you’re pretty.’
‘Stop making fun of me. I’m borderline suicidal.’
‘No, you are. I would pick you over that cousin a zillion times. I have been in that guy’s shoes more times than you can imagine. Going for a face that is said to be conventionally beautiful when beauty is all but a construct of the media, fed through movies and television and music and advertisements. I have been down that road and it blows. It’s no fun dating a face. I have had my heart broken a million times—not by the women I chose to date but the mistake I did by choosing them. And that guy is making a mistake too and he will know that soon. Though I do agree with you that men are flawed and unfair. But that’s why God made women like you to set things right. Law of averages. If I were you I wouldn’t sulk in a room.’
‘Then?’
‘You should go to your sister’s wedding and engage the guy in conversation about the situation in Darfur and talk about the fiscal deficit and then leave the conversation midway and walk away, giving him time to soak in your brilliance and realize his folly.’
Aranya smiled imagining the situation in her head. ‘No, I can’t do that. She’s my sister after all. She’s family, so can’t hurt her.’
‘Then stop feeling bad about yourself,’ remarked Raghuvir. ‘And where did it all start from?’
Aranya debated whether she should say it and she decided to anyway. Screw it, he already knew everything. ‘Dhruv. We were in the same school and he has followed me here. He called me an ugly, loathsome toad.’
‘What?’
‘And he told me the rest of the world thinks the same of me. Which is sort of correct because my own parents and relatives think of me as a disaster.’
‘But he’s not your sister or your family. Feel free to exact your revenge,’ said Raghuvir and smiled at her.
Aranya thanked him and left the room. She desperately wanted some cake.
And a little revenge.
I Love u Rachu
29
The burden of genius isn’t an easy one to carry.
Twenty-nine years of lugging it around had worn Raghuvir down. He had stopped treating it as anything other than a curse. It was fun in the beginning, he had to admit. The effortless exam scores, the feeling of superiority, the unabashed admiration, it was all quite heady to be honest. But slowly, the pressures that came with all this started to mount.
He was put into groups with other boys and girls with similar or greater intelligence, sent to competitions where he was reduced to a really slow computer.
And slowly, the headstart of having a greater IQ faded. Numbers stopped to matter and hours spent teaching himself courses way ahead of his time went up. The competition between geniuses is fierce and it stripped Raghuvir of everything else in life. He was the only twelve-year-old who refused to go on family vacations, or watch cartoons, make friends or even go outside and play. Instead, he would stay locked up in his room and attempt questions of advanced calculus. He had practically brought himself up. His parents, concerned at first, had resigned to their kid being abnormally precocious.
The only relationships he had had were with his teachers and professors. It wasn’t until his late teens that he learned to hold down conversations. These were little sacrifices though. He wouldn’t give up his position as a child prodigy, and later a promising young scientist, for anything in the world. He had got used to the attention, the promise of a legacy he would leave behind.
He spent a good eight years of his adolescent life locked up in labs, or in his room poring over books, research papers, publishing his own reports, criticizing the reports of others. The scientific community is a hostile, unforgiving place. New discoveries, inventions, technologies are frowned upon at first, looked at with suspicion and envy; most scientists are driven by the fear of being left behind.
But just like in every book, every movie, every play, he fell in love and everything changed.
The girl was a young and beautiful understudy, and Raghuvir was a young, good-looking professor. Their conversation started at the laboratory, and soon they were talking about their dreams and aspirations, things they loved, cuisines they liked and movies they hated. In a month’s time Raghuvir knew she was the girl he wanted to spend the rest of his life with.
He had finally found love outside his research and his quest to leave a mark on the scientific community and the world.
It was the most beautiful thing he had ever experienced in his life, something science or logic could never explain. They were the best six months of his life. He got quite obsessive with the idea of love and how powerful it was.
Every turn in his story had been a cliché and so was what happened next—the girl left him.
She went to Germany on a research scholarship. Raghuvir was ready to go along but the girl insisted she would go on her own. Having just found the joy of having someone to love and be loved by, Raghuvir was miserable and lonely without her.
For the next few years, he was quite lost, but more than that he was just lonely. Love is quite an addiction. It trumps research, glory and all that bullshit by a mile.
He tried to write a book and failed. Like everyone who has lost in love, he tried writing a song for her but he couldn’t rhyme it. He tried a host of other jobs but couldn’t stick to any for too long. There were always a slew of job offers lined up for Raghuvir, now tagged as the irresponsible, reclusive genius, but Raghuvir knew it wasn’t what he wanted.
What followed were whirlwind relationships with a bevy of beautiful women, none of which lasted. They were all faces he could fall in love with but never be in love with for a really long time. It’s not to say that he didn’t enjoy being with them at the beginning. He would never admit it but for the most part he would be with them for the sex and think that the love would come soon. How hard could it be to find love again? Especially when the women were beautiful and willing? Quite hard, he had come to realize.
Even though he flitted from one relationship to another, he couldn’t quite find what he was looking for. In fact he got lonelier than ever. Slowly, his reputation as a philanderer caught on, his respect as a breakthrough researcher dwindled and he quietly stepped out of the limelight and people’s minds.
Increasingly, he believed that love was good, but only as a concept. Only relationships existed and only those relationships endured where people were willing enough to compromise on love, careers and sexual freedom.
A year back, he got an offer from a leading engineering college in India. He wouldn’t have taken the job had they expected him to be on his top game. But one meeting with the dean, Prof. Mitra, told him that he was just required to be a poster boy of their faculty, nothing more. It worked out well in the beginning, but slowly he was drawn back to the laboratories and the research. It was the only thing he was good at. And soon, he dived headlong into it for it was the only thing that could fill the void left behind by love.
And then walked in Aranya, the most vulnerable, insecure, adorable girl he had come across in years. She was a little, fat Raghuvir in a female body. That’s what he remembered thinking the first time he met her. Strangely, he never noticed the discoloration on her face, her body. And even before Raghuvir had started taking classes for her batch, she had slipped in little notes of appreciation for Raghuvir’s work, the list of numericals she hadn’t been able to solve,
and a comprehensive list of alternative solutions to the prescribed questions.
She was nothing like the girls Raghuvir had been with earlier. Maybe that was a sign?
Curious, he had first tracked her down to the library where she sat at the far corner, almost hidden behind the tower of books. It’s strange to say this, but it was love at first sight. Unlike Raghuvir, or the girl he was in love with, Aranya was a hard worker. Her assignments reeked of years of back-breaking work she had put in to sharpen her mind. She wasn’t gifted, but her attention to detail was exemplary.
By now he had heard stories about her Hitleresque leadership but there was something very honest about her behind the carefully constructed facade of being indestructible.
It was hard for Raghuvir to tell when he really started to feel something for the girl who walked the corridors of the college alone, always clutching an armful of books. At first he mistook it for pity. But time passed and he knew it wasn’t so. He wanted her to be around. She was nothing like the other girls who fawned over him. She was different and he began to think that maybe she was the answer. He was looking at all the wrong places. Maybe she was the normalcy he was looking for.
She reminded him of his old days when he used to isolate himself from the rest of the world as if meeting common people would erode his intelligence.
He was a lonely kid as well. He was just like her.
I Love u Rachu
30
Dhruv’s commitments were always severe. He took that shit seriously.
So while Ritika was getting her legs waxed, he sat patiently flitting through glossy magazines on a leather couch in the reception area which had outlived its intended use.
Unmindfully, he was running his fingers over the scar on his right palm he got as a kid.
‘What’s up?’ a voice said, startling Dhruv.
Dhruv looked up to see Sanchit standing tall over his head. Sanchit had now started faintly reminding him of Betal from Vikram and Betal, the pale white ghost hanging from Vikram’s shoulders. ‘What are you doing here?’ asked Dhruv.