Truly Madly Deeply Read online

  After all, God had shaped all human beings alike and did not create sub-species in the class of Homo sapiens itself, at least not in this evolution chain. He would voice that statement in all essays he wrote and in all debates he participated in. Sometimes it got him brownie points while at other times he would blame the chair for their ‘lack of judgment and biased mentality’.

  Sahil had hoped the Indian-ness would make it easier for him to break the ice and become good friends with Rahul. He was secretly pleased and sent out a thanksgiving prayer to the skies for sending him a friend from India. He wanted to learn about the culture and traditions of his mother’s native land – something that he had only a vague idea about, thanks to his mother’s prolonged ‘westernisation’ – but it wasn’t to be and Sahil learned close to nothing about India from Rahul, who clammed up whenever Sahil mentioned India. Sahil thought Rahul would eventually warm up to him once he got used to his new environs.

  They would sit beside each other on neighbouring chairs and Sahil would often notice Rahul twisting and turning his stationery, writing things in the air or scribbling on the last page of his notebook, when the professor would be dictating notes or browsing through the text orally. Very often, he would peek into his notebook to notice him drawing incomprehensible pictures. The very moment he thought he was getting it, Rahul would notice him looking, throw him a scorching glare, and shut the book. He would often see Rahul lost, and occasionally even caught him mumbling to himself. Initially, he had thought that the new Indian chap was demented and hence avoided him for some days. But gradually things began to fall into place; and Sahil began to like Rahul (he was so much better than the Indian loud-mouths he had encountered earlier).

  ***

  Sahil was sure that Rahul would approach him sooner or later to ensure his creature comforts in the school. Surprisingly, Rahul did not follow him, neither when he missed lecture notes nor when he needed directions to reach a rescheduled class. Rahul preferred to stay alone, just coming to school and going back to his abode in the hostel.

  Outside school, no-one had seen him doing anything else except walking alone along half the Algon Avenue before turning into Benson Street and taking a right to reach Frontenac Street and finally bringing his steps to Castor Avenue where the school

  was situated.

  While going back, Rahul could be seen at the nearby bus stop, waiting for the SEPTA 59, the bus that would drop him back near his hostel on Teesdale Street, at some distance from Algon Avenue.

  He had found it strange, getting accustomed to the shiny, isolated lanes of Philadelphia after spending his formative years in the noisy, dirty bylanes of Mumbai where one would be tormented by street urchins and stray dogs if not, the potholed roads. He would not pause to admire the trees that lined the roads or the flat-roofed row houses which stood out behind them. He would let his feet sink in the snow on the pavement and yet manage to drag himself ahead. Somehow the feeling made him feel that he was not a stranger in this land.

  Sahil heard from Rahul’s roommates, who happened to be students of the neighbouring division, that Rahul climbed his bed very early in the night, woke up to the twittering of the birds at dawn, and then usually went for a walk after doing the morning necessities. They also told Sahil that he kept muttering things in his sleep. Once in the middle of the night, they had reportedly seen him missing from his bed but just when they were thinking of reporting the matter to the heedless warden; Rahul had walked into the room, looking every bit as nonchalant as his mood.

  In the mornings, he came to school and sat in the class lost in his own thoughts, staring into empty spaces until the lunch break, when a woman would bring him his tiffin, which he ate in the canteen.

  “Who’s that lady?” Sahil asked him over lunch, one day after noticing the act.

  “Maid,” Rahul replied.

  “Your family sent a full time maid to cater to your needs?” Sahil asked, trying to glance in Rahul’s tiffin.

  “Uncle,” Rahul grunted, munching on the hardly edible morsels.

  Sahil never noticed him going to visit his uncle and he rarely heard of him making phone calls back home. He once spotted a cell phone in Rahul’s room when he had gone to the hostel to return a borrowed book; the only point was that it was still packed in the box, which had the original seal unbroken.

  “Wow, it’s a Blackberry. Why don’t you use this beauty?” Sahil asked him in disbelief.

  Rahul just looked towards him and shrugged, shaking his head.

  ***

  The only time Sahil would get to talk to Rahul freely would be the lunchtime when Rahul would quietly head to the canteen and Sahil would follow, hoping he would find him open up. The rest of the time – like the one when school ended for the day – Sahil would hardly get a chance to see Rahul disappear out of the gate. The dialogue strangely remained one-sided and except for the occasional grunts and nods and usual stares, Rahul preferred to remain as mute as the gargoyles shooting out from the school’s foundations.

  “Which city in India?” Sahil casually asked taking over his lunch box next to Rahul in the half empty school canteen.

  “Mumbai,” Rahul said tersely.

  “Oh, I have a couple of relatives in Mumbai. My mum’s younger sister’s husband’s brother-in-law… if I’m correct! I had gone to India once but I was very small then and all I remember from that trip was that I had a throat infection due to the dust and pollution around. And of course, there was this white coloured round sweet delicacy called racegola which I had stuffed in my mouth by the dozens and I still miss it. Unfortunately, mom doesn’t quite know how to make it. Not that she didn’t try, she did once but it tasted more like raw rubber than the memorable sugar syrup dripping dessert we ate once,” Sahil said nodding to himself looking at Rahul who gave no sense of acceptance of that fact.

  “What’s your last name again?” he asked him, gathering a club sandwich from his lunch box.

  “Kapoor,” Rahul answered after a pause.

  “Oh, are you by any chance the brother of that handsome bloke Shahid Kapoor?” Sahil asked, wide-eyed.

  Rahul eyed him and he thought Sahil got the answer.

  “No? Shakti Kapoor?”

  Rahul flared his nostrils, making Sahil shift in his seat.

  “I was just trying to show that I do watch Indian movies sometimes. My cousins from India do send over DVDs of good flicks once a while. I particularly remember enjoying the one called ‘The Turning Brain’ ...it was an awesome story, the two blokes did a wonderful job...”

  Silence accompanied by another glare.

  “Are you a Punjabi fellow?” Sahil asked next.

  Rahul looked up from his lunch-box and met Sahil’s eyes and placed down the spoonful of soup back into where he took it from.

  “Gujarati?”

  Nothing.

  “Bihari?”

  Indifference.

  “Bengali? Tamilian? Maharashtrian?” Sahil went on trying to remember the ethnic races of his motherland.

  Rahul glared at him fixedly.

  “Then, what are you? An alien?”

  “Human being!” he said in just a pitch higher than his usual low tone.

  Sahil merely nodded and kept quiet for a while before his brain started functioning again. The answer made him happy somewhere.

  Sahil would get him home cooked food sometimes. His mom concocted excellent Indian sweets, a result of her Indian culinary training and he would get extra servings in his lunch-box to share it with Rahul. The only thing he disliked about his mother was that she did not know the recipe of the syrup infested racegolas they had devoured in India but the rest of the sweets from jalebis to gulab jamuns came out delicious. He would push them Rahul’s way, hoping he had a chance to push it down his throat but he was much too scared of that unnerving glare, to even attempt that stunt. Rahul specifically liked carrot halwa, Sahil surmised, because when he would bring the same to school, Rahul would not decline it the same number of t
imes he would decline the other sweets, before accepting.

  ***

  “So how many people back home?” Sahil asked him one day outside the library in the dull grey coloured corridor.

  “Two,” Rahul replied.

  “Mom and Dad?”

  Rahul merely nodded.

  “What do they do?”

  Rahul looked towards the oak tree outside the big glass windows in the school park as if it held the answer.

  “Woodcutters?” Sahil asked, narrowing his eyes.

  Rahul glared at him with a deadpan expression.

  “Earn a living,” he said after what seemed like hours.

  Something would always fascinate Sahil about this character. There was a certain enigma surrounding him, a certain sense of mystery encircling his actions. After two weeks of avoiding him since the start of the term, he had resumed talking to Rahul like he used to, although a bit warily. He tried to coax him out of his depression, to prod into the unknown depths of his mind. When Rahul would end a dialogue abruptly that most persons would respond by giving a brief history of their lives, Sahil understood. He would give Rahul his space and then, the silence would stretch on.

  ***

  Rahul completed his homework regularly and his was always the first completed assignment on the professor’s desk. Once during an Algebra lecture, Prof. Quinn put up a particularly difficult question to the class.

  “Now tell me folks, barring the last two numbers between zero and hundred if you count the digits of the remaining numbers, what would be the figure you’ll arrive at?” Prof. Quinn surveyed the class with his eagle like eyes. With each passing sweep of his sight, the smile on his face began to widen as students started shifting in their seats, staring back blankly at him. He repeated the question twice to some erudite students in the front who seemed to be furiously scribbling something in their notebooks.

  “Sir, do we have to count the extreme two numbers as well?” one of the front benchers put up his hand.

  “Yes, my dear. Including zero and hundred, how many?” He peeked into their books but with a frown of displeasure soon looked away.

  “Yes, Mr… Kapoor , is it? Yes, so tell me your answer!” Prof. Quinn had caught Rahul staring out of the window with the same disinterested look pasted on his face.

  “What would you…?”

  “189!”

  “So… Sorry?”

  “189, sir! The number of digits,” Rahul answered casually.

  “Oh! Good, sit down,” Prof. Quinn said turning back to the board, not bothering to notice that Rahul had never stood up.

  Sahil slyly glanced in Rahul’s open book to check his working note but the pages just reflected his state of mind.

  ***

  Rahul would not laugh at jokes in the class nor would he digest the cheap humour Sahil would attempt on him, resulting in visible embarrassment to his only acquaintance here. Rahul would remain indifferent to his absurd shenanigans. Sahil would even try self-deprecating farcicality, often lowering himself to the depths of his sense of humour but all he would get in response was a cold stare fixed on a still face that neither galvanised nor addressed anyone.

  “What do you get when you combine big boobs with a pretty face, a dull brain and boring speech?” Sahil asked him one day in between their History lecture while the professor was busy looking at her notes and scribbling a schedule on the board.

  Rahul continued to look into his textbook and Sahil was sure he was not reading.

  “Mrs. Brookes,” he said pointing to their History teacher, stifling a laugh that erupted from his already burgeoning tummy.

  “I know you’ll like this one. Listen... Mrs. Brookes’ hubby once told her that he fancied kinky sex and wanted to cum in her ear. She looked aghast and said she might go deaf. Her hubby replied, ‘I’ve been coming in your mouth for the past twenty years and you’re still fucking talking!’” Sahil thumped the desk with his fist, making Mrs. Brookes turn back from the board.

  He immediately stiffened and assumed a straight face until she turned back to resume writing on the board.

  “Not funny enough? Ok, digest this. What would Mrs. Brookes’ hubby say if you ask for him while he is kneading her tits in their bedroom?” Sahil continued, holding onto his tummy.

  “Pass? Well he’d definitely say that he has his hands full… haha!” Sahil laughed loudly, making Mrs. Brookes focus her ire towards their direction.

  ***

  Sahil would point out all the ‘attention magnets’ on the campus to him whenever he spotted them.

  “They generate more attention from guys than the state’s thermal plant generates electricity,” Sahil informed him daily. Rahul would resume whatever he was doing without as much as a glance in the direction that Sahil would point out to his lost eyes.

  “Laura!” he exclaimed, one day in the school grounds. Rahul looked at him, for a moment considering how an Indian brought up in the States could utter a disgusting Hindi expletive.

  “There, there… She just looked at you and smiled… I swear. Wow, again… look, look!” Sahil pleadingly pointed out, but sensing the real source, Rahul continued his promenade across the grounds, showing more interest in a crawling caterpillar on the dull ground grass than in Sahil’s puerile excitement.

  ***

  Sahil remained befuddled about Rahul’s behaviour and would remain so like everyone in the class, all until one fine day when Prof. Sarah ordered them to note down some important Physics problems in their books. All the students including Sahil, who was till then busy staring at the professor’s shapely bottom, started rummaging in their bags and so did Rahul. He took out all his possessions to find the concerned book and replaced them all back in the bag after finding it. All but one – his diary.

  And then as fate would have it, he moved out of the classroom to attend nature’s call during the break, and the diary went into the hands of the person seated next to him. Sahil picked up the unusual looking object out of curiosity and flicked the lock open using the key peeking out from the hard cover in the front.

  The first page that Sahil opened was the last as his eyes fell on the sketches that covered the handwriting around them: blood-dripping hearts with arrows pierced in their cracks and glasses placed beneath to collect the pain of the beating organ, surrounded by decorated letters that looked like snakes slithering on the pages. Before he could dwell on their understanding, his eyes fell on the words that accompanied the sketches; SEEMA they said in exquisite calligraphy, the name heralded a cord in Sahil’s mind. It was the same name that Rahul’s roommates had informed Sahil about, the one, which he muttered, incessantly in his wavering slumber. A random page sticking out of the diary caught his eye. He pulled it out and unfolded it to reveal a white sheet of paper that contained an adeptly drawn sketch. A sketch that Sahil would never forget!

  The beauty of the portrait caught his eyes and overwhelmed him with considerable awe for the artist. It was not just a mere portrait but also the outpouring of someone’s emotions and feelings, Sahil realised that. The more he saw it, the more it fascinated him. The shades of human creation seemed to entwine themselves with God’s fingers as the expressions of the pretty visage announced; the portrait was a work of an exquisite artist.

  The face of the girl in the portrait highlighted not just her beauty but spoke of something much more. He sensed the pride that was evident in her eyes and a searching look that they contained. Such depth, such charisma, he had never seen so far. He sensed the isolation that she felt inside her and the call that escaped her lips; he felt her need for a companion though he saw the arrogance of success written all over her charming countenance. Her free flowing curly hair highlighted her unadulterated desire for freedom to escape the travesties of the world and discover her true potential. Sahil let his hands roam around the portrait to feel something more, but before he could do that, the portrait was snatched away from his hands. He turned back to see a bald bulky guy with reddish freckles on hi
s face, the feared school hooligan holding the portrait and whistling like a wolf over the perfection of the creation.

  “Got this from Mr. lonely, did ya?” he asked Sahil without looking at him.

  “Keep it back, he really won’t like it, if he sees people making an issue of his things,” Sahil advised.

  “Who cares a damn man, who cares a fuckin’ damn,” the big guy replied, still looking at the picture.

  “Give it back… ” Sahil tried to reason it out.

  “Yo, easy brother, take it easy now! You can drool over her all ya want but ya won’t give us the chance, huh? Wha’ kind of a jackass in-charge are ya, man? Anyway it’s not me who’s taken it. Hey guys look at this, man… ain’t she great for a good fuck?” the huge guy called out to his partners.

  “Damn mate, looks like she’s got nice boobs,” one of the guys behind the hooligan whistled.

  “Is this the loonymoony’s Mona Lisa, haha!” another

  one guffawed.

  “Mate, when’re ya gettin’ her?” another of his aides asked the

  bald hooligan.

  “Won’t go for less than a hundred dollars! Get collectin’ guys… the mad, lonely guy supplies hot chicks. Looks like he had a deal or two goin’ with old Sal here and we thought that all that weirdo does is jack-off on seeing his own ass in the mirror… haha!” the bald guy, who was standing to showcase the picture to all the people who remained in the class, shouted.

  “Keep it down folks! Please BD, Rahul won’t like it… it’s his personal life and this would do no good,” Sahil requested but no one listened to him.

  Therefore, Sahil did what he normally would not have done. Though being the class in-charge, he had always been deterred by the presence of seniors in the class and he had learnt never to correct them, but this time he just walked off towards the bald guy, the leader of the pack and pulled the portrait out of his hands. There was a stunned silence as the sheet tore off from the corners. A big, wide protruding gap displayed the chalkboard behind the professor’s desk to the eyes peering at the sketch.