And the introduction surprised her. He wasn’t reading out from a paper, but speaking from memory. What he was saying wasn’t even her usual brief biodata, which she had given to Meher earlier for this purpose. He enumerated her academic achievements from the time she was an undergraduate student at the institute and went on to describe every important milestone of her career during her Ph. D. and post-doctoral work, all the awards, all the illustrious journal publications, all the important conference presentations…. When did he learn so much about her? And why? Before this meeting? For this introduction?

“I don’t think I need to add any assurance from my side that Dr. Rupali Banerjee is a valuable addition to our department. I’m sure her achievements in research and teaching here will continue to make us proud,” he said as a way of conclusion. He didn’t have to ask for applause, as he got a big one naturally. Despite the competitiveness and insecurity many felt in the academic world, Rupali’s achievements were too good for people to hold back.

After the applause died down, Paritosh looked at Rupali indicating to her to say something. “That was…” she felt her cheeks going red and hot again, “That introduction made everything sound so glorious that I am taken aback myself.” Humility! There was no dearth of good qualities in her, Paritosh thought. Was it only empathy that she lacked? “I just want to say that it is an honour to come back to the institute in this role and to be able to call myself a colleague of many people who have taught me. I hope I am able to live up to their expectations.”

Another round of applause followed and then they broke the meeting. Snacks and tea were served in the room and people chatted on informally. Rupali had conversations with all the faculty members and staff. Paritosh noticed satisfactorily that she was becoming more comfortable by every minute.

“So, why did you decide to come back to India?” someone asked Rupali and Paritosh listened with curiosity. But she didn’t give any concrete answer. “It was just supposed to be this way,” she replied with a shrug and a philosophical smile. Was she unhappy about returning?

And why did so many questions about her keep coming to his mind?

—

Rupali looked at the project proposal two students had brought to her. It was a part of her course. Given the topic they had chosen, Paritosh’ input could be extremely valuable for the project. She was about to suggest that to the students when she stopped .What if he refused? Because the request came through her? She decided not to give this idea to the students until she could be sure of his cooperation. She just offered her comments and asked them to meet her the next week after they had made some progress.

After the students left she struggled to write an e-mail to Paritosh for a while. Then she gave up. How difficult could it be? At worst he would refuse. What harm could come from that? She decided to just talk to him face-to-face.

She knocked at the open door to draw his attention. “Rupali. Come in,” he wasn’t startled; he didn’t look confused or uncomfortable as he had in some of their earlier encounters. That gave her courage. “What’s up?” He was polite. Her courage redoubled.

“I was wondering…” her fingers had curled into a fist in nervousness, despite the doubled courage. Paritosh noticed that.

“Why don’t you sit down?”

“No… I’m fine… I mean…” Why was she bumbling like an idiot? He had only asked her to sit down. It made sense for her to sit down if she was going to discuss a project with him. “I should sit down,” she finished even more foolishly and sat down.

He frowned and in that moment the answer struck him. He knew what had changed about her. She didn’t have that bindaas attitude he had associated with her always. There was a nervousness, an air of misery about her. Why? ‘Wonderful!’ he thought with some annoyance, ‘I hardly get the answer to one question I have about her and the other one pops up.’ Outwardly he kept his calm and asked, “Everything all right?”

“Yes. Of course. Do you have some time? I wanted to discuss some student projects with you.”

“Okay?” he was confused. Was that what she was so nervous about?

He wasn’t asking her to leave. She took a deep breath and handed him the printout of the proposal. “I was hoping you could provide them and me some inputs on it. Specifically in designing the simulations.”

“Sure,” he said while looking over the proposal.

It was that easy. She let out the breath she had been holding. At worst he would have refused. What harm could come from that? But she realized now that his refusal would have made her extremely miserable. “Thank you, Dr. Khanna.”

“You can fix up a meeting with the students once they are ready to start the work.”

“Yes Sir. Thank you, Sir,” she got up.

“Rupali,” he stopped her as she was leaving. He could not suppress his curiosity, “Is that what you were so nervous about?”

Her face turned ashen. Her gulp was visible. “It isn’t the first time I have been an absolute idiot,” she replied and left.

What the hell did she mean? This change in her, it didn’t have anything to do with him, did it? It couldn’t. She didn’t care about him. It was all about a bet!

—

“These days it is just easier to use cloud services for running these simulations. Even the best machine locally will have maximum of 16 GB RAM. It will be much faster and not particularly costly to just run an AWS instance for a few hours. It is preapproved in the department and we also have special rates from Amazon. Speak to Meher about it,” Paritosh explained to Rupali and her students about the project.

“And any suggestions on simulation design itself.”

“Their reading list seems to have most of the papers. I had given this talk at IIMT a couple of years ago. In that I had explained some of these in simple terms; and had also suggested some sources of relevant data. Let me see if I can find the transcript. If not…”

“I have the video,” Rupali said.

“Video? How come?”

“They had recorded it and posted it on their website after your talk. I downloaded a copy for my reference.”

“That’s great…” It was weird. How did she even know about the talk, much less follow it and download a video.

He didn’t know that she had a Google alerts set up for his name! It wasn’t just he who had followed her life obsessively since their parting six years ago.

—

“Seriously? Three competing quotations? For an online service costing ten dollars… five hundred rupees a month?” Rupali was asking incredulously.

Meher gave her an embarrassed smile and shrug. “The registrar told me that those are the rules,” that was the only answer she had.

Paritosh stopped in his tracks. Rupali’s office door was open as was expected of all the faculty members, unless they really needed the privacy. “What’s going on?” he couldn’t help asking.

Rupali got up looking flustered, while Meher was relieved, “Dr. Khanna. Good that you are here. I was about to suggest to Dr. Banerjee that you might be able to help.”

“That’s not needed Meher,” Rupali objected, “It’s a small amount. I will just pay for it myself.”

“What is the problem?” Paritosh patiently asked again.

Meher looked in confusion from Rupali to Paritosh and back. Should she talk or should she not?

“It’s okay, Meher,” Rupali saw her confusion and decided to relieve her, “I will discuss this with Dr. Khanna.”

“Cool,” she replied and went out.

Paritosh stayed and waited for Rupali to speak.

“There is this online service. I have used it earlier. It is like a social network for students and teachers. Makes the group work, class announcements and other such things really easy. I wanted to use it in my class. It’s just ten dollars a month. But it seems that for buying anything from the department’s budget, I need to get three competing quotes. It makes no sense whatsoever. It’s not a computer. Where am I even to find three people providing exactly this service? I thought I will just pay for it myself.”

Paritosh could not help smiling. He remembered his own initial days in India after returning from US. Getting his head around the bureaucracy of academic institutes hadn’t been easy. He identified with her frustration.

“There is a little privilege we poor professors get,” he told her, “It is hidden somewhere in the faculty manual and administrators will never remind you of it. But for every full credit course you teach in a semester, you can spend something like two thousand rupees a month on class activities. You should be able to expense it off under that head. The form is on the department’s intranet site.”

“Oh! That’s great. Thanks a lot.”

“Things make you regret coming back, don’t they?” he spoke more to himself than her, it appeared to Rupali.

“Do they?” she asked a question in reply, “But you have always put people in your life ahead of your professional ambitions, haven’t you?”

“Why did you come back?” he asked and then chided himself for continuing the conversation with her. He wasn’t supposed to do that. Not again!

“For the same reason that you had. For my mother… Dr. Khanna,” her eyes suddenly grew wide, as she screamed his name and almost jumped towards him. She held the door with one hand. Her other hand grabbed his to take it away from the door’s groove. All of it happened before he could blink and it took him some time to understand what was going on. The stopper had come out somehow and the door was getting shut due to the force of the air coming through the open window. He was still standing at the door, and his fingers were resting on the groove. If the door had shut, he would have been hurt. Badly!

Paritosh looked at Rupali who was examining his hands. She was panting. Not from the physical exercise definitely. That hadn’t been so hard. She was obviously distressed. “Are you hurt?” she asked.

That concern and care! He would fall for it again. “I am fine,” he mumbled and withdrew his hands. Then he abruptly turned and left.

He locked his office-door from inside. He wasn’t in the mental state to see anybody at that moment. He slumped on his chair and buried his head in his hands. What had fate planned for him? He wasn’t looking for anything happy in his life. He had taken his past disappointments, mistakes and hopelessness as granted. But why did they have to knock at his door again and again. Hadn’t the past been sufficient?

—

To be continued