Fiction: Late

Two months left Rudro. Just two months. What you do in these two months will determine the rest of your life. And with that, his mom signed the test score card from the maths tuition teacher and handed the paper back to him.

Rudro sat staring at the paper for a couple of minutes. It wasn’t a bad score by any means. He had passed comfortably. And this was just a mock test. The boards were still two months away. The engineering entrance exams a month after that. But Rudro knew this wasn’t enough. With a score like this, he wouldn’t get on the merit list any of the engineering colleges he wanted to. And his parents weren’t rich enough to pay for the management quota.

It wouldn’t be the end of the world. Lot’s of people had successful careers without getting into one of the top engineering colleges. He was sure he would as well. He would find a fallback option, if it came to that. But it would mean the end of his dream. The one he had spent the last couple of years pursuing. All those times when he could have gone out for a movie with friends but didn’t. All those nights he had pushed himself to keep awake for an hour more when he would have given anything just to lie down in his bed and go to sleep.

It wouldn’t be the end of the world but it would be the end of his dream. And he didn’t have a fallback dream.

This can’t go on. I have to concentrate. I have to do this. 

I have to forget about her.

And yet a part of him knew he couldn’t. Even if he wanted to. It was like being caught in a current, getting pulled towards the waterfall, growing stronger and stronger, dragging him further and further away from the bank.

The funny thing was it was probably all in his head. It wasn’t as if she was his girlfriend. Girlfriend. I can barely even speak to her.

Why did God have to make him so shy. The only complaint his teachers ever had of him was he was too quiet, too introverted. And it was worse with girls. His entire school life he could barely remember having any conversations with girls on anything other than studies, and that too when initiated by the girl.

To be honest, he had never been that interested. And he was sure the girls in his class were not that interested in him either. After all he didn’t have anything which the girls seemed to be attracted to. He sucked at sports of any kind. He couldn’t play any musical instrument. He wasn’t good at entertaining people with stories or jokes or imitating the teachers behind their backs. He was like the neutrino in social situations, hard to detect because of such limited interactions with other particles. Invisible, for all intents and purposes. The only time  some of them seemed interested in him was when the test results were out, to know how much he had scored, to know where they stood in relation to the “first boy”.

And yet, she was different. She tried to talk to him about other things when they were in the tuition class together. She smiled at him, that brilliant smile of hers which seemed to punch a hole in his heart and leave him gasping for breath.  Maybe she did it with everyone. She was just friendly. Friendly and popular. Maybe any boy she interacted with him felt the same way, felt as if he was special to her.

But Rudro was convinced that she did like him. Why would she join all the same tuition classes as he was otherwise? Why take the same electives? Why make eye contact with him and smile at him for what seemed like a fraction of a second more than she did with others? Why, when in the other day in the class when she was sitting beside him and his leg accidentally brushed hers, she didn’t draw her away? Why? Why? Why? There were so many little why’s which seemed to indicate that maybe, just maybe the most beautiful, the most popular girl in the school liked him.

But Rudro had no way of finding out. If he was anyone else in class, it would have been quite simple. His friends would have done it for him. But Rudro didn’t have any friends. At least not anyone who was close enough to him who he could share his secrets with. It had always been like that with him. He was a bit like an onion, with layers in him, and not many people knew about the inner layers, maybe his parents knew more than others but there was so much even they didn’t know.

No, he couldn’t depend on any others. If he had find out, he would have to do it on its own. And he didn’t have any time left either. He had kept pushing it and pushing it. He had been afraid. Afraid, of getting humiliated in front of everyone in class if it was all just his imagination, of being the frog who had tried to kiss the princess. But tonight was his last chance. School had already closed for the study break before the boards. Tonight was the last tuition class they would be together in. After tonight, the only time he would see her would be two months later, during the board exams. And after that, who knew, maybe he would never see her again. Maybe tonight his life would change.

**

He had read somewhere, if you really want something, the whole universe conspires to get it for you. Maybe it was true. Maybe the universe was conspiring in his favour. No one else had turned up for the tuition class. It was only Rudro and her. He would talk to her today. On the way back. It was a couple of minutes walk back from the maths sir’s house to the bus stop. A couple of minutes was enough for him.

He couldn’t concentrate. She was sitting beside him. He could smell the light floral perfume she always seemed to wear. Math’s sir was trying to give them some advice on differential equations. Something about a complicated problem which was in last years board papers. He tried to listen but somehow it wasn’t making sense to him. She seemed distracted as well. He kept looking at the watch. Why was it taking so long to become seven thirty.

Finally it was time to leave. They got out of the house together. Rudro could feel his heart hammering in his chest. It had started drizzling a little. He didn’t want to hold back any longer. I want to ask you something M. I hope you won’t be angry with me. I want to know..Do you like me M? Can we ever be..

He felt a sense of relief. As if some great weight had lifted from him. And she didn’t seem surprised. Looking at her eyes, he could see she understood. Maybe she had sensed it all along. But more than anything, she seemed sad.

You are a bit late Rudro. We are going away. After the board exam. My family is moving to the US. 

He couldn’t say anything else. Not when she took his hands in hers and they walked to the bus stop together. Not when her bus came. Not when she hugged him and said maybe we would meet again Rudro. Not when he lost sight of her face pressed to the bus window looking back at him while he stood there alone in the rain.

It was only when she left that he seemed to regain his senses again. The rain had picked up now. The water was warm, almost comforting. Rudro had never felt this was before. The pain felt almost sweet. He didn’t want it to go.

He decided to walk home in the rain..

Grey & Rain

I like the grey. It has a beauty all its own. Not the freshness of spring, not the passion of summer but a cold gloomy beauty. Austere, melancholy but beautiful. There can be so many shades, the dark grey of the clouds, the transparent misty grey of the rain, the frothy grey of the sea, the city street grey, the barren landscape grey.

It doesn’t always work though. Not if there are other colours around.  A grey landscape with a little dash of red here or a spot of orange there or a bright blue somewhere else wouldn’t work. But a landscape with just the greys in it can be beautiful. Maybe it’s not a friendly colour. It likes being on its own. A loner at heart. Like me. Maybe that’s why I like it.

I like the rain as well.

But I don’t like the way it rains here in the UK. A halfhearted, apologetic drizzle, drizzle, drizzle all day. I miss the monsoons. The growl of thunder, the drumbeat of the torrential rain, the sound of the raindrops on leaves and roofs and ponds, the little streams forming on the sides of the roads, the chorus of the frogs. I have a mediation app on my mobile in which you can play nature sounds. My favourite is the rain on the leaves.

Sometimes on the train, I plug my earphones in, close my eyes and play it on my phone. I always visualise the same thing, I don’t know how I first came to think of it.  But it is always the same little bamboo hut, raised on stilts, in a forest with a stream nearby. I feel the water falling on the thatched roof and running down channels on the side of the house.  Everything outside the window is the bright shiny green which you get when the rain has washed all the dust of the vegetation. I can almost feel the breeze which brings in the freshness of the rain. It’s beautiful. I have never lived in a house like this and I don’t know how I conjured it up in my imagination but I sometimes feel like it is the kind of place I would like to live in when I retire. Spend days staring at the rain. And maybe writing a book.