Abhinav. That was to confirm my theory and when I confirmed it, I was curious to know how far his relationship had gone. I left his phone in your room with the voice recorder on, hoping that Mr. Amodhini would come to your room soon to talk about his girlfriend. Well, I’m sure that explains why you didn’t find your room keys, where you placed it, on my table and it was I who found it for you, from my pocket. I hope all of the rest is clear.” He finished. I was in awe.
“What if, you had screwed up anywhere along this?” I asked him.
“I didn’t.” he told.
_______________________________________
March turned to April and April into our exams. The plan went forgotten. All the while nothing changed. The exam results followed. A good sum of the students of our batch passed. So all of us guys, we stuck together in the classroom. And the second year of med school was even better than the first. The clinics were way more interesting than the first year subjects. But the knowledge from first year didn’t go in vain. Pathology was a re-modeled Anatomy. And so were the other subjects. A week’s class was over already and those subjects were also piling up in my list. I was sitting in my room on the Saturday evening and reading Robbins’s Pathology. There was a sharp knock on my door. I was guessing Deva and opened the door. It was Tarun.
“Hey. I’m leaving man.” He said. I must have had a blank face,
“My girlfriend’s birthday.” He continued.
“Oh! Yeah. Is it 30th or 31st?” I asked
“Its 30st. I’m going early so I can buy a present.”
“When will you be returning?” I questioned again
“I’ll be back for posting on 31st morning.”
“How long back you guys committed?”
“We got committed in March, when August begins on Monday, it’ll be five months.”
“Oh cool. Have fun.” I said and he left.
I slowly opened my eyes. A new day had broken. I got out of my bed and left for the bathroom. While returning I found the other rooms locked. I went into my room and looked at my phone. It showed 9:30am; 31st July. I was late and not just late; I missed one entire lecture and as I stood in my room in my shorts another lecture was proceeding in the college. I cursed myself for having watched a movie very late in the night and got ready quickly. By the time I got out of the hostel, it was 10.05 am. The lecture must have been over. The guys should have gone to the canteen for the break. I headed there.
When I reached there I was most surprised to see a crowd converged around the table we usually left. I made way across the crowd to see what was going on. In the centre was Tarun with a depressed look. Many guys sat next to him, including Deva.
“It’s alright man. You can get her back.” Said Janani
“No. I won’t.”
“Be positive man. Things will change.” Said Shivram
“Not from what I have been through.” Tarun replied with tears streaming down.
“See it this way. May be she was never the love of your life. Easier to forget.” said Deva. Deva’s words enraged Tarun. He took hold of Deva by his collar and yelled, “Shut the fuck up. You may have found your life, but what I have found is worse than death. Do you know what it feels like to have a girl say ‘I love you’ to you? Have you ever had woman break up with you? Then how the fuck you talk like you know-it-all?” Guys made him let go of Deva and calmed him down.
“It’s okay. When in depression, all of us are hostile. I too was once. Let him be alone, at peace.” said Deva. I pulled him out of the place.
“I was right all the time. Love is tragic.” He muttered to me.
The posting and the practical went uneventfully. I didn’t see Tarun for the rest of the day. I went up to the library in the evening. I spent the whole evening there. At around 8.30pm Abhinav came to the library. I was quite glad to have some company, finally. But things didn’t go as I thought. Abhinav came over to me and told, “Hey, I’m here to warn you. There’s a big problem going on. Tarun is heavily drunk and he is searching for you, to hit you.” I was jolted to hear that.
“What?” I asked.
“He was blaming you saying that you did something to break up his relationship.” He told sounding worried.
“It was Deva who told not me.” I explained.
“I don’t know. He seemed to be blabbering something like this. The other guys are with him. Even Ranjit is furious with you for having interfered. Don’t go to the hostel.”
“Thanks man. Then I’ll spend another hour here and then I’ll go to the hostel.”
“No. I don’t think you can be safe in hostel tonight.” He told me. This was not at all my fault and I have to pay the price. If Tarun were drunk, it would be no use trying to explain. Every mess Deva made, I was the one to clean ‘em up. Then it struck me. I could be able to sneak into Deva’s room. It was at the end of the corridor. He could help me solve the trouble here. So I left the library. When I went into the hostel, I made sure, it was safe before taking any turns around the corner. When I hurriedly went over to Deva’s room, I saw him locking it from outside.
“Where are you going?” I asked
“Didn’t you hear? My death sentence is lifted. I’m going to live.” Seeing my blank face he continued, “My sister’s wedding, actually. I’ll be returning three days late,r after my supposed to be death date, like Jesus did, cool huh? You can pronounce me as a saint then. Just kidding.” He chuckled. But I on the other hand was annoyed
“I’m not at all amused by that atheistic joke of yours. Care to know why? There’s Tarun drunk and sober and he’s hunting for me. Care to know why? To hit me when I return to my room. Care to know why again? Because of whatever plan you had for his girlfriend worked. I come to you for help; here you are running late for a wedding. What the hell you think?” I finished. He didn’t reply. He just tossed over his room keys and left. I chucked his keys on the nearby wall and stood there furiously. Only a little later I understood what I could do with the keys. I picked them up, went into his room and locked myself in. Every now and then I called Abhinav and checked if I could reason things with any of them. But nothing seemed possible. Night went on. I couldn’t go over to my room at all. I slept in Deva’s room that night.
I woke the next day at 5.30 am. I was hoping that things that began last night should’ve died down. I got out of Deva’s room and headed to my room. All my stuff was there. So in order to get ready for class I had to go to my room. No sooner I walked about ten feet from Deva’s room, I heard Tarun’s cry,
“This time you can’t escape man” I ran back into Deva’s room. He knocked on the door wildly. I was hoping he would go away soon enough. But the knocking got wilder, more guys had joined. I looked for something to defend myself. I looked around and found a wooden plank, placed on the top shelf. I pulled it out. “Better open it or we’ll break in.” someone shouted from outside. After a few more bangs, the latch broke open. Ranjit came in head-on. The wooden plank was no match for him. He plucked it off my hand and threw it down. Tarun pushed me towards the wall. A punch was the first thing that landed on my face, followed by many more elsewhere. I tugged but it was of no use. Finally, I was left on my bed with bleeding lips and bruised. Atleast it was over. I hurt trying to get up.
I lay in Deva’s bed thinking of the year that I had been through. I wondered what I did in the first place to get beaten for someone else. I recalled everything as I lay in Deva’s bed. I heard a conversation from outside.
“I didn’t want to hit him actually. I felt bad. Any idea why they broke up? It seems untimely.” Said Shivram
“No.But in his drunkedness, Tarun blabbered that his girlfriend broke up over the phone and after sometime her number was not reachable. Nothing else”
Clearly, my roommate hadn’t changed his way of talking. What he told me intruigued me again. If her number went to unreachable, she should have pulled it out of her mobile probably. If only what
ran in my head could be true…… I picked my phone from the ground and went into my messages. Tarun once borrowed my phone to message her that his phone ran out of balance. I found the message and her number there. I called her. The number was still not reachable. That clearly meant one explanation. I knew what might prove me right. I opened Deva’s suitcase, there were some phone-bills, it belonged to one number, Amodhini’s but the name was not Amodhini. It was ‘Savithri Kannan’. I opened Facebook in my mobile and went into Deva’s timeline. I remembered how Tarun once told that Amodhini didn’t have a facebook profile. I searched for a Savithri Kannan in his friends list. The result showed one entry and I saw the same photo Tarun showed me a few months back set as her profile picture.
Amodhini never existed at all. It was Deva’s friend who pretended to love and cheat him. I realized my mistake. When Deva told me that he had a plan for Amodhini, I thought he was going to cause their break-up but he made up not just the break-up but the entire plot. It was his Master plan. I was awestruck. It even explained how the pair broke-up exactly a day before the predicted day; in an untimely manner which some of them wondered. This might turn out to be his largest mockery at us.
I thought of the moment when I stood in the corridor that night we did the Ouija, not knowing he was going to be my best friend and when he said to me, “ I pretend to acknowledge…” I