Random Expressions

A Story By Deepak Jeswal
Episode Four

When I reached the canteen, Vishal was sitting with Shilpa and Sugandha, quite an unlikely pair to sit together. But with Vineeta now firmly ensconced in Ashish’s arms and Saina probably busy with one of her umpteenth beauty parlor appointments, I guess Sugandha had to latch on to some other life force to survive her measly existence.

Shilpa Saxena’s breezy beauty made her a natural choice to play the leading lady in many dramas. Fortunately, she had talent as well. Last year, I had seen her play Desdemona in Shakespeare’s Othello during the Annual Dramatics Society Festival. She did the part with such consummate finesse that it came as no surprise when she won an award for it. A few months later, she made a brief appearance as Queen Helen of Troy in Christopher Marlowe’s morality play Faustus, and with her peaches-and-cream complexion, she looked so ravishingly beautiful that the line ‘a face that launched a thousand ships’ seemed to be written especially for her.

Since she spent more time at the theater than the class, our interaction had always been minimal. But whatever there had been, it was always mutually satisfying especially, her knowledge of literature was deep-rooted. Our debates on the nuances of Shakespeare, or the sub-text in John Donne, would go well beyond the normal text-book discussions. When she spoke emphatically to prove her point, the feral dance of her animated eyes was extremely appealing.

The canteen in our college was a badly lit grim rectangular room, hastily white washed, with tables and chairs carelessly strewn. On one end was the huge stone counter, behind which was the kitchen. More than the canteen, it was the partially covered foyer in front of it, and the lawn that extended beside it, that were the favorite of the students.

Vishal, Sugandha and Shilpa sat just outside the canteen’s entrance, below the foyer, on the farther corner. I dragged an empty chair and sat with them.

“Mil aaya Arora se? Kya kaha?” asked Vishal.

I smiled wanly, and said, “Kuchh nahi, routine yaar,” hastily, to avoid any further queries from him. I couldn’t have told the real reason for Arora’s calling me, here. For a split second, Vishal looked at me curiously, but didn’t press further.

“So what’s new Shilpa?” I turned to her, to change the topic.

“Bas, naye play kii rehearsals chal rahin hai,” and she gave a good five minutes monologue on the layers available beneath the supposedly simple surface of Becket’s Waiting For Godot a play which I didn’t care much about. “You be there to watch it. We are hosting it first at the Hindu College Fest.”

“Sure, I’ll be there, wouldn’t dare to miss your play!” I assured, more interested in seeing her performance, than the play per se.

Sugandha had been silent all this while. I turned to her. “Aap kuchh nahi bolengii, madam?”

She gave a stupid smile, which showed her small square fox-like teeth, and replied, “Ab do mahanubhav baithe baat kar rahe ho toh mai kya kahuun. Ek topper, ek super actor!” I could sense a trace of sarcasm there. But I let it go.

We lived in the same colony, and took the same bus home. Still, our conversation during those daily journeys had been so antiseptically clean that Dettol could have easily sponsored it.

“So why is the trio disbanded today? Where are Vineeta and Saina? You not with them today?” I gave back my own brand of sarcasm.

Again that idiotic smile. “I am not tied to them.” Aah! Point one to me! This time there was a definite hint of irritation. “Saina had a parlor appointment and Vineeta has gone home early,” she offered.

I raised a questioning eyebrow. “Sure?”

The stupid smile chilled on her flat visage. “Yeah, kyun?” Round two to me!

I gave a sweet look and said,”Aise hi yaar, don’t get hyper. Of course you would know better!”

Sugandha recovered soon, “Ha ha, yeah yeah. Waise, Smita nahi aayi kuchh dinon se?” Uh oh ! All points to her. She had touched a raw nerve.

“Yeah, what’s this I hear about Smita?” Shilpa butted in. “I mean, is this really true?”

Even before I could answer, I saw Sugandha’s huge oily head bouncing wildly in affirmation. My discomfort would have been visible, and Sugandha was clearly having fun pouring a bucketful of salt on my raw wounds!

“Sad, no?” said Shilpa. Thank goodness, she sounded genuinely concerned. “You know what Dinesh? When I first heard of it, I was sure it couldn’t be Smita. She comes across as a sensible person, not someone who would get into such a mess.”

I pursed my lips. “Hmm,” and shrugged to denote an it happens kind of sentiment.

“I am sure it is terrible for her,” Shilpa went on. “I mean, if I were put in her situation, goodness knows what I would do. Probably, jump off the balcony or something. I really shudder to think of it. Dinesh, give me her number. I will call her up. I think at this point, she needs friends and acceptance the most.”

I gave her the number that was on top of my mind’s address book. She noted it carefully in her small telephone diary. As she wrote, I saw she had a very strong and controlled handwriting much like her own self. I was happy to see that there was someone who was more bothered about Smita as a person, than just about Smita as a scandal in college. I had begun to feel that everyone had forgotten that behind the juicy gossip was a living person who breathed and felt just like anyone of us.

We sat for some more time before parting ways. Shilpa went back to her rehearsals, Sugandha ended up in the library, a place where she was fit to be enshrined. Vishal and I walked to the bus stop. The rain had subsided, and our feet splashed on the puddles as we made way towards Patel Chest Institute.

I downloaded the entire conversation I had with Krishan Arora. As ever, Vishal offered no comment. For all I knew, I could have spoken into a recording machine with the playback button missing.

“Waise, Shilpa ne ek baat pate kii kahii,” he said, as we rounded a corner to reach the stop.

“Kya?”

“That Smita really needs love and care the most at this time. I wonder if she is getting it, even from you.”

“Meaning?”

“True friendship probably. Think about it. I think we have all been taken up by the enormity of the ’scandal’,” he said, making a quotation mark sign with his hands, “that we seem to have forgotten that perhaps we should be just normal with her, like we were before, and not remind her of the problem round the clock.”

“Hmmm…”

Not getting a very voluble response from me, he continued after a pause. “She has lost her self esteem, her confidence and her peace of mind. This sudden glare of the entire class and college has made her feel very small worst of all, in her own eyes. She’s probably very insecure. Come on, she is not the first unwed mother, not the last, but the whole exercise of being interrogated even by you I guess has had a very bad effect. His emphasis on very sent a shiver down my spine. Self love is a precious thing to lose. It makes a person weak from within. All his defenses are destroyed; he remains like a wounded animal, watching and waiting in fear for the hunters to arrive. At that moment, one can cross the thin line dividing sanity from madness.”

I wasn’t sure where his monologue was leading. I wondered if he himself was. Strangely, I realized that despite being friends, we had never really talked about our past lives. Was he bringing all this out from his own experience? At that moment, I felt woefully sad to realize that we had remained only superficial friends, something that was probably amiss from my side, since being the more extrovert person I should have tried to bridge the gap.

“At this time, Dinesh, just be around her normally as you would had this not happened,” Vishal said. “And I stress normally. Please.”

I nodded.

*******************************************

Even though I thought I had understood, as soon as I met Smita, I realized to my utmost horror that I really didn’t know how to behave normally, especially when my illogical eyes went, on their own free will, towards her still flat tummy. This was going to be very tough for me.

I told her about college and the classes in the past few days, about the awful rains that I am sure she also knew about since her house had windows and about some trivial news items. But clearly, it was a sham, and I think she saw through it.

Before entering her apartment I was sure that I wouldn’t talk about my meeting with Mr. Arora, and certainly not about Vineeta and Ashish. But when an awkward silence befell between us, and out of the blue she said, “Ashish hasn’t called as yet,” I couldn’t help blurting out that “probably he is too busy with Vineeta to bother about you.”

Evidently, it was a very bad thing to say and as always I found that my foot had managed to lodge itself in my mouth. But her reaction was so numb that I feared she would faint and despite my friendship, I didn’t want to be alone with a fainted pregnant girl in her own house. Well, make that in anyone’s house, or better any place!

“But I could be wrong too, I tried to clean up the air, and told of what Vishal had overheard,” but since I was on my own not convinced, I don’t think I passed it on much convincingly.

Since the curtain of normalcy had already been ripped apart, I went on to narrate my meeting with Mr. Arora. This was the biggest mistake. She burst out like a volcano raised from its dormancy.

“And who are you to speak on my behalf?” she exclaimed, taking me completely off guard.

This was depressing. All that I was doing was to help her, and she was chiding me for no reason at all. I tried to explain that I had merely repeated to Mr. Arora what she had said at her own place some days back.

“Listen Dinesh. Just get one thing straight. No one can take Ashish’s place in my heart. He may have ditched me right now, but I have spent some wonderful moments with him, and have been close to his heart, and I am sure there is a valid reason for his not owning up!”

I was very pissed off at her reaction. “My! My! How you talk! You know that he is going around with Vineeta, you know that all your wonderful moments were nothing but carnal pleasure for him. You yourself said you hate him, and now you make me sound like some third rate villain.”

“Dinesh, if you think by creating enmity in my heart for Ashish, you will succeed in finding a place there, you are sadly mistaken!” she spoke sharply.

“That’s not what I’m doing ?”

“That’s what it looks to me. You are distorting facts, and interpreting them the way you want them to be. I never said I did not want to marry Ashish. I still love him. You could have used your meeting Mr. Arora to get that point across, and probably help me reach Ashish. But no, you chose to put your agenda ahead there.”

“What are you saying? I was only trying to protect you.”

“I am not yours to protect. You told all that to Mr. Arora to ruin my chances of marrying Ashish and then take pity on me and claim me!”

“You are not an object that I have to claim, Smita. I genuinely care for you!”

“Stop it, Ashish, pl…”

“I am Dinesh! Smita!!!”

“Yeah yeah, Dinesh, Ashish you all are the same. Leave now please, I have had enough of men, opportunists all of you…”

She closed her eyes, and was breathing heavily. I wasn’t sure what to do, but the next instant she cried, “Please. Just leave. I want to be alone…”

Despite her rudeness, I was a bit hesitant to leave her in this excited state. Yet, I knew better. It was no point in sticking around; also, my wounded ego was spurring me to run away from her house immediately.

On my journey homewards, the conversation with Smita played like a stuck reel in my mind. Suddenly, I felt very unsure about everything. A few months back I had attended a pravachan at the local Arya Samaj Mandir. It was on the Vedas. The speaker an eloquent person with a deep soothing voice had said that a person leaves the road of truth for two reasons: fear and greed. If Smita was right that I had left truth, what could be my reason? Fear? What did I fear? Probably losing Smita, whom I had started to love. Greed? Yes, probably I was greedy greedy to want her, to want her love which, I think I lost forever that day.

I also debated whether I should still talk to Ashish, now that Smita had disowned me. One part of me said that I should. Instead of going back to Mr Arora (and I shuddered at the thought), I should make Ashish realize his mistake, and hence retrieve whatever I could of Smita s battered trust and friendship. The other half said that I should distance myself, and wipe off my hands from this matter forever!

When I reached home, I hadn’t made any decision.

To Be Continued

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This entry was posted on Thursday, March 1st, 2007 at 5:30 pm and is filed under Fiction . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.