3. We share lab experiment observations.
4. Our friendship is above GPAs. With all the new spare time, we live our lives to the fullest.
5. We combine our hostel rooms into one living unit – one common bedroom, one study room and one fun party room.
6. We split the cost of vodka regardless of how many drinks each person has had.
Ryan looked at us as if he was expecting us to break into applause. We kept silent, hoping he would explain where he was going with this.
“So, what do you guys think?” he asked.
“What is this? Some kind of teenage club thing?”
“If you agree, sign it. Sign it with your blood.”
“Yeah right,” I said, “How old are we, like twelve?”
“I am serious man,” Ryan said and then before we could say anything, he flicked out a razor blade from his pocket. In one nick, his thumb sprouted a dot of red.
“Ryan, are you crazy?” Alok squeaked, almost losing his breakfast at this gross act.
“No. Just want to drive the point home. You decide what you want to do,” Ryan said, signing the document with a toothpick dipped in his blood.
“Can we discuss this first?” I said.
“What is there to discuss? I am not forcing anyone.”
“Like this whole sharing assignments and observations. Isn’t that heating?” Alok said.
I agreed with Alok, though I was more concerned about the vodka costs, given that Ryan out-drank us ever y single time.
“It is not cheating, it is cooperation. They have divided us with their GPAs, we are just pulling together to fight back.”
“I don’t see it that way,” I insisted.
“Are you signing or not?” Ryan put his hands on his hips.
I thought about the C2D one last time. “Well. I can sign it, though I am not cutting myself or anything.”
“It just takes a second,” Ryan said and flicked the blade on my forefinger and blood spouted out of me before I could form my denial.
“Fuck you.”
Ryan laughed and said, “Sorry man, look at your face. C’mon man, get into the spirit. Just sign it.”
I looked at Ryan in disgust and signed the sheet.
Alok sat there, petrified like a chicken in a butcher shop. The old Alok would have vociferously stood up to Ryan, but the new, improved version, just back with us, did not want to fight again. “I’ll make the cut myself,” he said finally.
And soon he did get some blood from his little finger and we signed the C2D document like primitive tribesmen. I have to say, the whole blood thing made this feel important. I was not sure of what I had done, but somehow it sounded exciting. We converted our three single rooms into one apartment the same day. Ryan’s room became the party room, Alok’s was the study room with three tables and my room had the three beds.
“So you friends moved in together,” Neha said.
We were en route to the insti roof as per plan. She met me at eight p.m., her parents blissfully ignorant about her real whereabouts, picturing her by a cake at a non-existent friend’s birthday party.
“Yes, sort of. We combined our rooms to one living unit,” I said, panting as we climbed the back stairs to the building.
“Sounds exciting,” she said, blowing the fringe out of her eye.
It was already dark when we reached the roof. As always, there was no one there.
“Wow, look at all the stars,” Neha said.
“Yes,” I said, proud as if I had finger-painted the sky myself. “And it’s all ours. Check out the campus view. See – that’s where you live,” I pointed.
We couldn’t see much, apart from the lights in the living room.
“Wow. We are so near to them, yet so far,” Neha said dreamily, flopping on the concrete floor. “So?”
“So what?” I said.
“Where is the vodka? Don’t you guys drink here?”
“Yes. But you don’t drink, do you?”
“Says who? I’ll have one if you have some.”
“We do hide a bottle under the bell. Let me look,” I said, surprised at Neha’s request. She was a nice girl, I thought. Nice girls do not drink. But I kind of could do with a drink myself, so I came back with the bottle.
“Nice,” she said, as she lay back against the dish antenna, “look at the stars above, just so beautiful. I wish I were a bird.”
When people want to be birds, they are normally getting drunk. But she was getting trippy just from the idea of drinking on the insti roof.
“Oh, I could lie here forever. Give me another drink,” she said.
“Don’t have too much,” I had to caution.
“I won’t. My dad will kill me if he smells it.”
“Of course you’ll smell of it.”
“Not much, check this out.”
She opened her purse. Ten items later, she took out a pack of cardamom pods.
“See, one of these and I go home minty fresh.”
“Really? Then have one now, be minty for me.”
“What? Do I have bad breath?” she sat up straighter.
“I did not say that.”
She held my arm and pulled me toward her. “Look me in the eye and tell me if I have bad breath.”
“I don’t know. I have never been that close to your mouth,” I said honestly, even as the millimeters between our mouths lessened.
“Go to hell,” she laughed and pushed me away.
“See, you are chicken. Just so chicken,” I said.
“No, I am not. Look at me, a professor’s daughter, getting drunk on the insti roof with a five point something loafer.”
If she had not been laughing, I would have resented that, but I decided to milk the opportunity anyway.
“Loafer? So I am a loafer,” I said.
“Yes, but…”
“But what?”
“But I love my loafer,” she said and pulled me toward her again. Again, our mouths were millimeters away. She tilted her head sideways. Was she going to kiss me? Or rather, was she-plus-two-glasses-of-vodka going to kiss me?
“We don’t need no ejju-kay-shion…” a hoarse singing voice startled us from our embrace. Someone had just come to the insti roof.
“What the…” Neha said, “I thought you said no one was here.”
“I don’t know. Shh…quiet,” I said as we tried to hide behind the antenna.
I finally recognized Ryan’s voice through all that bad singing and saw him heading for our vodka hiding place.
“It’s Ryan!” I said in a voice mixed with relief and irritation at losing my moment.
“Ryan,” I shouted.
“Hari,” he shouted back, walking over. “Bastard, you are here and I was looking all over for you. Is there someone with you?”
“Ryan, I want you to meet…”
“It’s a girl!” Ryan exclaimed as if he had spotted me with a dead rabbit. Neha continued to cower behind me, attempting anonymity.
“It’s Neha,” I said. “Neha, meet Ryan. Ryan, be nice and say hello to Neha.”
Ryan’s voice mellowed down instantly. What is it with men; they become another person in female company. So predictable!
“Hi Neha,” Ryan said, trying to avoid staring too much at someone he had heard so much about.
“Hi,” Neha said, still unsure if Ryan could be trusted.
“I was just looking for Hari to do an assignment,” Ryan said.
“Drop it Ryan. We’re having a drink,” I said.
“Really?” Ryan said as if he expected Neha to be winged and haloed or something. “But I thought Neha was not like that.”
“Like what?” she asked immediately.
“Uh, nothing,” Ryan said and sat down on the warm concrete.
“So what have you heard about me?” Neha said.
“Lots,” Ryan said and started telling her sacred details about all our past dates. They kept talking for like ten hours or something and I just kept getting more dr
unk. Ryan has a computer memory or something, and he told her about the times even I had forgotten about.
“He told you about the family planning documentary?” Neha tittered.
“Of course, he tells me everything,” he said with considerable pride.
I wondered if Neha and I would have kissed and managed more if bloody Ryan had not dragged himself up here. I considered pushing him off the insti roof, but thought it would kind of spoil the mood anyway.
“So why did you say I wasn’t that type of girl?” Neha said.
“You know, the whole vodka thing. You are supposed to be well…forget it,” Ryan said.
“What? Tell me,” Neha said with a firmness only good-looking women possess.
“You are like this good girl. Like why else won’t you let him do anything? Dating for a year, still no kiss even. Just this goody-goody prof’s daughter.”
“He told you that?” Neha squeaked.
“Of course. You think you are dating a guy or someone asexual? You don’t think he has needs?”
“Shut up, Ryan.” This from me.
“C’mon man. Show some guts sometimes. This is for your own good.”
“Needs?” Neha repeated, dazed.
“Yes, ever y man has needs. And pretty girls like you are either not aware of them or deny them for power games.”
“Power?” Neha repeated.
I wanted to tell Ryan I had just been getting somewhere nicely, thank you, when he whistled by.
“Yes, power. What else?” Ryan said, calming down finally.
“I crave power? Now that is a joke. You guys just don’t understand women do you?” Neha said, with a vodka-infused confidence that could take on even Ryan.
“Huh?” Ryan said, proving that we really did not understand women.
Neha had to go home soon after that, so we left the topic there. I wanted to scream at Ryan later, but he rolled two joints for me and gave me a scooter ride back to Kumaon, so I left it. Besides, Neha really did not seem mad or anything.
I had a hunch he might have helped my case!
11
—
The Gift
I AM A HORRIBLE PERSON ON THE INSIDE AND THIS I demonstrated while fitting in Alok for the morning classes, citing his practice of waking early during those Venkat days, laying on thickly the unreliability of Ryan and me for any sunrise job.
C2D was great, I found out, as I was responsible for only two courses in a semester. For the rest, Alok and Ryan gave me all the assignments (which I copied) and their notes (which I photocopied). I returned the favour in my courses. We now needed to spend only an hour or two a day in studies, leaving us with plenty of time for movies, scooter drives, restaurants, chess, scrabble, indoor cricket, sleep, squash (yes, Ryan was trying again) and of course, booze and grass. The first minors that semester were a breeze. We didn’t like ace the class or anything, but our expectations were low – just maintaining our five-point GPAS. It is amazing how happy one can be with low expectations of one’s self.
I was in the design class one day, a course for which I was responsible. Ryan chose to attend the class with me. I think he believes he is like this great designer or something. Prof Vohra was teaching us.
“Class, note down this problem that I want you to do in the next fifteen minutes. Design a car jack to lift the chassis in case of flat tires etc. Do a simple sketch.”
Prof Vohra was a portly man in his fifties, who had an unusually kind face for a Prof. Of course, nothing in his nature supported this. With six term papers a semester and a lethal red pen that crossed out one design submission after another, kind was hardly how you’d describe Prof Vohra.
It was my course, therefore my hand that had to sketch the car jack with Ryan merely having to copy it. Prof Vohra had taught us enough for us to execute at least a basic screw-type design. I had just begun to draw when Ryan said, “What? You are going to make the same damn thing like the rest?”
“Yes sir, I am not Thomas Edison,” I said, “and this is my course so just shut up and copy it.”
“I have another idea,” Ryan said.
I wanted to tell Ryan to screw his other idea and copy my screw-jack. But I never say anything to Ryan, and he never listens to anyone anyway.
So Ryan drew this ‘modified screw-jack’, in which one did not manually have to open and raise the jack. A flat tire did not mean the engine had failed, he said, hence one could attach a motor on the traditional jack and hook it up to the car battery. If one switched on the car ignition, the motor could derive power.
“What are you doing?” I said, worried about Ryan’s sketches of the car battery, obviously irrelevant to the current task.
“You wait and see, the prof will love it,” Ryan said.
I stuck to my traditional screw-jack like the rest of the class. The course was called Design, not Original Design after all.
Prof Vohra walked along the class rows, looking at the familiar designs that all his students drew year after year – the simple screw-jack. His stroll ended at our desk.
“What is this?” Prof Vohra said, twisting his head around to make sense of Ryan’s unfamiliar drawing.
“Sir, this is a modified screw-jack,” Ryan said, “It can be attached to the car’s battery….”
“Is this an electrical engineering class?”
“No sir but the end need is the same...”
“Is this an internal combustion engines class?”
“Sir but…”
“If you don’t want to be in my class or follow my course, you may leave.”
Prof Vohra’s face no longer looked kind. If only Ryan had kept quiet, he would have moved on.
“Sir, this is a new design,” Ryan said, as if it was not painfully obvious.
“Really? And who told you to do that?”
Ryan did not answer, just lifted his assignment sheet. Then in one stroke, he ripped it apart in two pieces.
“There, it is useless now,” Ryan said.
Prof Vohra’s face contorted and turned red, “Don’t act smart in my class.”
“Sorry sir,” I said, though it was not for me to say it.
But it broke the tension. The prof and Ryan looked at me via the corners of their respective eyes. Prof Vohra exhaled and moved on; Ryan sat down.
“That wasn’t very smart. You know he can flunk you,” I said to Ryan after class.
“I don’t care. I can’t wait to get out of this stupid place man,” he said, kicking the scooter stand as if it was Prof Vohra’s face.
It wasn’t Ryan’s course anyway and he did not attend any further classes in design. He directly copied answers of my assignments mindlessly, and never as much as looked at the question-sheet. Yes, our greatest designer gave up.
The three of us were in our common study room one day, copying Alok’s thermal science assignment.
“So, Prof Vohra is mad at you now,” Alok said.
Ryan kept silent.
“Of course he would be. You should have seen his face,” I contributed.
Alok laughed, shaking his head.
“He can flunk me for all I care,” Ryan stated.
“That is not the point,” Alok began.
“Fatso, you won’t get the point, so give up. By the way, Prof Veera called me to talk about my lubricant assignment.”
“Really?” Alok and I said in unison, wondering if Prof Veera had caught us cheating.
“Nothing to worry guys. I gave him a separate paper. It wasn’t a class assignment.”
“You have time to do separate papers?” I said.
“I have time to do what I want. I had thoughts on doing some experiments with various substance mixtures to check lubricant efficiency in a scooter engine.”
“Where?” I said.
“Well, ideally in the fluid mechanics lab. But then we need a scooter engine, and a small budget to buy materials. Until then, I tried a few tests on my scooter.”
“Wow. you’re screwing your scoo
ter up. How will we travel?” I said.
“It is for science. I might be on to something. Anyway, I combined different types of oils to check mileage. I think I can beat normal lubes by ten percent.”
I have to say, I was impressed with Ryan. Against all odds, this man was working to reduce our petrol bill. I thought of all the extra paranthas we could buy with a ten percent lower fuel cost.
“So, what did Prof Veera call you for?” Alok said.
“He said he’d help me get the institute’s permission to use the lab and get some research grant.”
“Wow! You will be a scholar man,” Alok said.
“Yeah whatever,” Ryan shrugged, “It is not that easy. One has to submit a proposal to Prof Cherian, detailing budgets, benefits, timing and all that crap, then a committee decides. It takes months.”
“But if you do get it...” Alok blinked rapidly, “so neat man.”
“I have to work hard on the proposal over the next few weeks. Don’t worry, I’ll do my courses, but no partying or movies,” Ryan said.
Now, if Alok had said the same thing, Ryan would have blown a fuse. But this was Ryan, and we never said anything to him. Besides, I was kind of glad he was into something sensible.
“Sure, we’ll tell you what you missed,” I said and winked at Alok.
“Yeah, though that makes you the mugger now,” Alok said.
“I am not a mugger. You are the mugger, Venkat-boy,” Ryan retorted.
I have to say, it was never my thing to visit Alok’s house. Just the thought assailed me with medicine smells, crumbling concrete and cooking smells, topped by a middle-aged woman wailing at the drop of a hat. Yet, there I was one Saturday with Alok, if only because Ryan was busy with his do-not-disturb-me lube research proposal. It was depressing to see Ryan work so hard and he did like three night-outs one week in the computer centre and the library. On top of that, he spent his days in the fluid mechanics lab mixing lubes and then testing them on the scooter. I told him about this movie at Priya in which there were as many as six topless scenes and he only looked blankly at me. I tried luring him with new cocktail recipes, but Ryan stuck to six straight cups of coffee a night. Objectives, scoping, budgeting, applications, past research – each section in his proposal was like a million pages. He submitted drafts to Prof Veera, who almost always wanted Ryan to do more.