“Not much. I just don’t speak to him much. I did hear him talk about you guys the other day though.”
“What? Where?”
“I’ll tell you. Will you keep my letter then?”
“You know I will. What did he say?”
“Dean Shastri came home the other day. They were talking about this proposal.”
“The lube project,” I said.
“Yes, something like that. Prof Veera had given each of them a copy. Dean Shastri was quite impressed with the findings.”
“What did your dad say?” I said.
“I don’t think you want to hear it,” she said.
“No tell me,” I fairly shouted. Why do girls take so long to come to the point?
“He said it was an okay-ish effort. But he told Dean Shastri not to trust these students. He said, ‘who knows? They have cheated once, they could have cheated to make the findings. They just want their credits,’ and that was it.”
“Complete crap. That is complete crap. You know Neha, how much we worked our asses off on it.”
“I know. But that is what he said. And Dean Shastri told him to think about it some more.”
I put the letter on the table. I spread it out; Samir’s last words. Someone so sick of his father’s desire to get him into IIT that he preferred death. I wondered how much a train passing over you could hurt.
“Two large bricks of strawberry please,” I heard a voice in the background.
“Hello Cherian sahib. What happened, big guests tonight?” the counter boy said.
“Yes, my brother is coming from Canada. He loves ice-cream,” I heard Prof Cherian’s voice.
I froze at my table, like all the flavors of ice-cream in the fridge. Neha froze too. We were sitting right opposite him, and couldn’t run out of the parlour. We silently prayed he wouldn’t see us. But this was Cherian. A reflection on the steel counter frame was enough.
“Neha!” He turned toward us. I think all the ice-cream in the parlour melted at that tone.
Neha didn’t say anything. I didn’t move. I recalled last seeing Cherian when he was head of the Disco. Will he ruin me again? I hadn’t even ordered my ice-cream.
Cherian came and sat next to me. My heart raced as it attempted to leave my body and escape the parlour.
“You have guts. You bloody rascal, you do have guts,” Cherian said as he stared at me.
Neha cleared her throat but he signaled her to keep quiet.
“Sir, I just…sir...just had to...sir just ran into her,” I said, talking and thinking at the same time.
“Are you bluffing me again?” Cherian banged his fist on the table. It landed on the open letter and almost tore it.
“Dad, be careful,” Neha said as she tried to push his angry fist away.
“What is this?” Cherian said.
Neha opened her palms and covered the letter.
“Nothing. It is nothing, Dad,” she said.
“What is it, you rascal?” Cherian said looking at me, his fist still firmly on the letter, “love letters you write to trap my daughter. I told you to stay away from her. So one Disco wasn’t enough?”
“It is Samir’s letter,” I said.
“Hari, shut up,” Neha said, as a reflex.
I don’t know why I said it. But I wasn’t going to repeat it.
“What did he say?” Prof Cherian said.
Neha and I kept silent.
“Remove your hands, Neha,” Cherian said and glared at her. She withdrew her hands, only to bring them to her face to wipe her tears. Cherian picked the letter up and read it silently.
He tried hard to retain his composure, but his eyes contracted and his fingers started to shiver. He read the letter again and again and then again. The two bricks of ice-cream he had bought were melting and creating a puddle on our table. but, the puddles in Cherian’s mind were causing us more concern. He removed his glasses, his eyes then did the unthinkable. Yes, here he was, the head of our department, the tormentor of my life and his eyes had just become wet. Two fat tears squeezed out of the edges. And there I was, sitting with the Cherian family as they cried. I could have joined in, but I wasn’t in the mood. Besides, ice-cream parlours are hardly the place for group cries.
“Dad, are you all right?” Neha said, wiping her tears.
Her father then cried uncontrollably. It was strange to see a grown-up man cry. I mean, you expect them to make you cry. I wished Ryan were here.
“Let’s go home, Dad,” Neha said as she got up.
Cherian surrendered himself to his daughter. I gave Neha the bag of ice-cream, mostly a syrupy mass now. Her father kept kissing the letter.
They left the parlour and I hadn’t gotten a chance to fix my next date with Neha. But I felt damn lucky to survive meeting Cherian again. Neha drove the car with her dad still sobbing in the front seat.
“Sir, are you going to pay for that ice-cream?” the counter boy asked me.
“You mean Cherian was in tears. Like real crying-crying?” Ryan was disbelieving.
“Howling man, with hands on face and lots of tears right until he left. Damn it, I had to pay for two bricks of ice-cream.”
“Totally worth it. I would pay for four for a repeat performance. Yes. Even he suffers. Yes!” Ryan performed a little jig.
“It isn’t funny Ryan. He must have been in shock,” Alok said.
“So? Not my problem. But I missed it. If only I was there,” Ryan said.
“Can we do the assignments for tomorrow then? Do we have RAC?” I said.
“Yes, we do,” Alok said, “So what is going on about the proposal?”
“I don’t know. Neha told me Cherian wasn’t so keen. Let us talk to Prof Veera some time next week.”
“The companies have arrived you know. I saw the recruitment notice board. Many new ones in the software sector,” Alok said.
“No point looking at them yet. If the credits don’t work out, we’ll have another year to think about it,” I said as we opened fresh sheets to do our assignment.
I slept at four that night. Cherian’s face after he’d read the letter swam before me. Sure, it was somewhat funny as Ryan said. But it was also sad. How could a strong man like Cherian get like that? What are these tough people really made of? And the way Neha took her father back, she must love him a lot. And Cherian must have loved his son a lot, even though he drove him mad enough to kill himself. Do all parents love their kids? What about Ryan? Did he love his parents? Did they love him?
And then I got up. At four a.m. I had the urge to write a letter. Maybe the havoc a letter had wreaked that morning influenced me. I left Kumaon and went to the computer centre. The twenty-four hour center had students working away on their resumes. The job interviews were coming, yes, but not for us.
Dear Dad and Mom,
This is Ryan. I am sorry for typing this. I just had to write tonight to tell you what has been going on in my life. And not all of it is good. But if I don’t tell you, who else will I talk to… I kept writing for like two hours. I don’t think I made much sense at all times, but I did write about a lot of things. About our GPAs, our Disco, our tainted grade sheets, Prof Veera, and our stuck lube project. I also wrote about how they had never really loved me enough to keep me with them. I kind of knew I was doing wrong, posing as Ryan and typing away his life story, his deepest secrets. Simply said, Ryan would kill me if he found out. But I kept writing until daybreak. I thought I’d done a good job with the text, better than Ryan for sure. When I finally took the printout, it was ten pages long. It was easy to fake Ryan’s signature, and his parents would hardly compare for identity. I had stolen the address from Ryan’s room. It took thirty rupees of stamps to mail the damn thing.
“Where are you coming from,” Ryan said as he noticed me come to my room at dawn.
“Nothing. Just went for a walk,” I said.
Is lying bad?
26
—
Meeting Daddy
PR
OF SAXENA HAD TO INTERRUPT HIS CLASS THAT DAY. A peon had delivered a message to him, which he read and then turned to the class.
“Who are Hari, Ryan and Alok?” he asked, fully aware we sat in the front row.
We duly raised our hands.
“Go to Prof Cherian’s room. He wants to see you right now.”
I tried to be calm, but my heart was beating fast like it had a mind of its own. Could it be the end of the lube project? Will Cherian hold another Disco? Will he hand me over to the police for buying Neha an ice-cream? Did he realize I paid for his bricks as well? Irrelevant thoughts darted back and forth until we reached Cherian’s office, where I noticed there was a new lock.
Inside, Prof Shastri and Prof Veera sat next to Prof Cherian. No one asked us to sit down.
“Sorry to bring you boys out of class. But just thought we’ll talk to you while we were still together,” Dean Shastri said.
Profs together is always trouble, I thought. We maintained a deep and meaningful silence.
“We have gone over your work with Prof Veera and your proposal, and we understand you worked on it in your suspended semester,” Prof Shastri said.
We looked at Prof Veera.
“Yes sir, they worked for three months in my lab,” Prof Veera said.
“Now Prof Veera has made an appeal that we show your absence in the seventh semester for research work instead of disciplinary reasons. Is that right?”
We had promised ourselves not to say a word in that room. It was a simple question, but we didn’t want any more trouble.
“Answer Dean Shastri,” Prof Veera bade us.
“Yes sir,” Alok said.
I never made eye contact with Cherian, but his silence was unnerving. Why wasn’t the kingpin in all this saying anything?
“Then I guess you will have a clean grade sheet, right?” Dean Shastri said.
Alok, Ryan and I nodded.
“Well, the final decision in these matters is with your head of department. And you well know your mistakes are quite unpardonable. But this time, Prof Cherian has agreed to show your seventh semester as a research semester.”
“What?” the three of us said in unison. Sometimes, even good news can be a shock.
“Yes, Prof Cherian has agreed. Congratulations and good work,” Prof Veera said.
I looked at Cherian for the first time. His face remained frozen, as if he was not part of this room. What is up with him? Has he tripped out on grass, I wondered. Whatever the reason, I wanted to get the hell out of that room before he changed his mind.
“Thank you sir. Thank you so much,” Alok said.
“Thank you sir. Can we go sir?” I said.
“Sure. We were leaving as well,” Dean Shastri said as he and Prof Veera stood up.
“By the way, how is this semester going?” Dean Shastri said.
“It is okay sir. We are still five credits short,” I replied.
“Short for what?” Dean Shastri said.
“We don’t have enough courses to finish the degree in four years. So we can’t apply for any jobs or admissions,” I said.
“Well, did you take a full course-load?” Dean Shastri said.
“Of course. We have packed classes,” Ryan said.
“Well, again this is a departmental issue. That is why I tell these boys not to get into disciplinary trouble,” Dean Shastri said and left the room.
Prof Veera patted my shoulder and left as well.
“Thank you sir,” I said to Cherian. I don’t know why I did it, kind of just felt like a good exit line.
“Hari, can you stay back for a minute,” Prof Cherian spoke for the first time.
“Sure,” I said as Alok and Ryan gave me curious glances before vacating the room.
“Sit down,” Cherian said and pointing at a chair before him, he got up to lock the door.
Why did he ask me to stay back? Was he going to kill me?
“So five credits short, eh?” Cherian said. So he was listening to what people had said in his room.
“Yes sir,” I said.
“You know if I sanction you all to work with Prof Veera this semester to follow through on this project, we could get you laboratory credits.”
Now what was that supposed to mean – ‘if I sanction’? Was Cherian just reminding me of how much he controlled my fate. Hell, I know that Sir. I am just excited to have a clean grade sheet for now. Maybe one day after several years I might get a job. Can I go now?
“What are you thinking?” Cherian said.
“Uh, nothing sir,” I said, returning hastily from my thoughts.
“I said I could get you lab credits, that is if you are ready to work on this project this semester. I know you are already overloaded,” Cherian said.
Had Cherian totally lost his mind? What was he saying? He was offering to rescue my degree. And if I was ready to do some lab work. Hell, I’d live in the lab for the next four months for five extra credits. I’d eat lubricants for lunch to get my degree on time.
“I think we can manage some extra lab work, sir,” I said when my Adam’s apple allowed me.
“Good. Let me speak to Prof Veera and see what he can get you guys to do. If all is fine, we’ll add five credits to this sem.”
“For all of us sir? I mean, Alok and Ryan too.”
“Yes, of course,” Prof Cherian said.
“Thank you sir,” I said, wiping sweat off my forehead. This wasn’t a real moment.
“Thank you, Hari,” Cherian dismissed me.
“For what?” I said.
“Nothing. I think you should go back to Prof Saxena’s class. And start preparing for those job interviews,” Cherian said.
“Of course, sir,” I said and stood up.
“And don’t behave in the interviews like you did in my viva,” Prof Cherian said and started laughing. I tried to sense if there was malicious intent in his laughter, but he sounded genuinely amused. I joined in the laughter.
“Right sir,” I said and left his room grinning like an idiot.
We had promised to drink less since the Disco, but Cherian’s news was huge and worth intoxication.
“Open the second bottle,” Alok said, “today I am telling you Ryan, open the second bottle.”
“Take it easy, Fatso. We still have assignments and lab work, not to mention those job interviews,” I said.
“How? How did you do it Hari?” Ryan said, by now already high.
“I didn’t do anything. I really thought he was going mad. But that is what he said.” I shrugged.
“You are awesome man,” Ryan said as he came forward and kissed my cheek. I hate it when he does that.
“Which is the next interview then Alok?” I asked, pushing Ryan away.
“Okay guys, here is the deal,” Alok said, taking out a file full of brochures of companies, “we are five-pointers, remember? So a lot of these jobs won’t even short-list us.”
“I don’t care man. Tell me any job that will,” Ryan said.
“Software. That is the hot sector this year. They hire in droves and don’t have GPA-based short-listing criteria,” Alok said.
“I love software,” Ryan vouched.
“When is the interview?” I said.
“Well, a good one is in three weeks. What do you say? All of us apply? Who knows, we can all be together,” Alok said.
“We will be,” I said and raised my glass.
“Cheers, to five credits,” we all said in unison.
The alarm rang at six a.m. The big interview day had arrived. For the first time that semester, we skipped the first three classes. The last few weeks had been backbreaking with Prof Veera’s lab work adding three hours to the already full fourteen hours a day workload.
But today was the software company’s interview; the best chance for low-GPA students like us to get employment.
“Wake up, Fatso. We need to dress up for these interviews,” I hollered.
“Will we get it?” Alok said.
/> “Not if you stay in bed,” Ryan said, pulling his quilt away.
IITians really dress up for interviews. For the first time in four years, I wore a tie. It was a weird tie, with orange spots on black or the other way round, I forget. But it had worked for a senior last year and Kumaonites considered it lucky. Ryan had got a new Italian silk tie from his parents, bastard. For some reason, his gifts had increased the last few weeks. I wondered if they had received my letter.
Ryan’s scooter was now engineless, so we had to take an auto to the institute. We couldn’t walk and spoil the creases on our shirts and trousers, as Ryan pointed out.
“Technosoft Software inter views here,” said a sign in the insti building. There were over fifty of us, all students from my batch dressed like we were attending our wedding.
“Apparently, half the batch has already got jobs. This is the best chance for the under-performers like us,” Alok sighed.
I tried to think of the day when I had started relating so well to the word under-performer. Was it the first quiz we messed up? Was it our first GPA? Was it the Disco? I guess there were enough things we screwed up to earn our place in that club.
Amongst the three of us, Ryan had his interview first, followed by Alok and then me. Before the interview, we took an aptitude test. It had simple IQ type questions that any IITian could answer after a bottle of vodka in him.
“It is the interview. That is where they decide,” Alok said.
We submitted our grade sheets. The seventh semester column was blank, with ‘Research Absence’, emblazoned across it. The rest of the semesters were pretty ordinary, lots of Cs and Ds.
“Best of luck, Ryan,” Alok said as he hugged Ryan.
“Careful, don’t spoil the crease,” Ryan warned.
He came out after twenty minutes.
“How was it?” Alok said.
“Don’t know. Not too great I guess. They only asked about my low grades, and why I wanted to do this and all that,” Ryan said.
“So what did you say,” I said.
“Just whatever. Let us just wait and see,” he said.