Mish' Fiction

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

Rupali smiled as she finished preparing for the first lecture she would deliver in her new role as the assistant professor in the institute. She had included the examples of algorithmic problems Paritosh had introduced them to in his first lecture of Algorithms all those years ago. The problems which looked simple enough, and yet if you tried to do them in a brute-force manner, the computers will take hundreds of years to do them. Those examples had piqued her curiosity immediately. And her fascination for Algorithms and Computer Science had seen no waning since then. While till then she had been unsure about her decision of joining engineering itself, after that she had done all possible courses in that area, worked outside the course work to enhance her understanding and knowledge and had gone to US to do her Ph. D. and post-doctorate after finishing B. Tech. She hoped that one of her lectures could someday make that kind of difference in a student’s life that Paritosh’ lecture had made to her all those years back.

—

Paritosh would have a tough time explaining to himself, and to anyone else passing by, what he was doing at the door of the classroom where a group of undergraduates were taking their first lessons in Algorithms. Thankfully the classroom was at the end of one of the numerous corridors in the building and unless somebody had to come to this classroom they were unlikely to pass by. And everyone who had to come to the class was already inside. A bunch of eighteen-year old boys, who made up most of the class, were unlikely to be late to the class of a beautiful young female professor. Word about the new professor must have gone around in the hostels. And the professor was also already inside the class, starting her lecture dot on time.

Unknown to Paritosh, she had felt nervous for a few moments when the clock had struck nine. As a graduate student and later as a post doctoral fellow at her university in the US, she had often taken tutorials and had occasionally lectured too. Public speaking had never been a challenge to her. The stage held no terrors. Still she was unnerved for a while. She felt an enormous responsibility on her shoulders – the responsibility of introducing a discipline of study to these fifty odd youngsters. If they developed interest, it would be her achievement. If they didn’t, it would be her failure. She realized that she had never admired her own professors as much in the past as she did at that moment. They had carried on their responsibilities with so much ease. She took in a deep breath and recalled the lecture that had taken place in the same classroom about nine years ago, when she had been on the other side. She tried to draw strength from the memory and greeted her students a cheery good morning.

A smile automatically formed on Paritosh’ lips as he heard her giving a sample problem to the students – the travelling salesman problem in computer science parlance, which she was explaining with milkman as an example. If he had to cover certain houses in different localities everyday with minimal travelling required and had to come back to his cowshed at the end of it, what would be the optimal route for him? “Something your milkman has probably figured out from experience,” she said. She had imitated the exact words he used when he taught that course. “Computers, however, are dumb creatures.” His smile turned to a grin as he heard her engage the class in calculations that showed how this simple-sounding problem will take a computer ridiculous amount of time to solve if the number of places to cover even became as big as twenty. “As humans, we can help the computers do much better with this and other problems. This course will, hopefully, equip you with some basic tools to do that.” Paritosh became aware of his stupid grin and turned solemn again. He also became conscious of how odd his standing near the door of the classroom was. He turned to leave when Rupali noticed something at the door. The feeling she got was eerily similar to what she had felt in the Computer Science lab six years ago. Somebody had been at the door overhearing, as Padma had congratulated her for winning the bet.

“What bet?” she had been surprised.

“Don’t be so modest. The bet of going on a date with Dr. Khanna, what else?”

“What the… No…” And she had felt someone passing by the door of the lab.

She had excused herself and rushed out. He had turned at the end of the corridor, but it surely was him. She had followed him to his office, not quite knowing what she’d do. But she had to do something. Apologize? Tell him that…

But his steely voice had left her speechless, “You had forgotten your notebook.” He had handed it to her. He must have come to the lab to return it.

“Sir, I…”

“Leave. Ms. Banerjee.”

She had trembled in fear and any attempts at trying to explain had been pre-empted by another “Leave. Now.” order from him.

“Excuse me,” she presently announced to the class absent-mindedly, “I will be back in a minute.” She got down from the podium and rushed to the door leaving her students whispering to each other about this inexplicable action of hers. She caught just a glimpse of him as he took the next turn and disappeared. Was he there? Was he overhearing her lecture? Why?

She couldn’t follow him this time. She had a class to teach. And what would she tell him even if she did follow him? She came back to the class and forced herself to concentrate on the task at hand.

—

Paritosh was determined now. He could not continue holding an old prank against her. It was his own vulnerability that had made it sting so much. She wasn’t responsible for it. As the HOD, he had professional responsibilities. He was supposed to mentor younger faculty members. He had to do that for her too. But he was thrown off balance once more as he walked into the conference room for the monthly departmental meeting. Rupali was already there and nobody else had come yet. “Hi,” he said awkwardly. But then took a deep breath and decided to make good of his resolve, “How are things?” He was satisfied by how he sounded this time.

“Fine Sir.”

“Among colleagues we are on a first-name basis here,” he replied with a smile.

She wasn’t sure how she should take that. Was he trying to imply something? A break off from the past? Was he being sarcastic? Or was she just reading too much into the situation.

She looked at him and felt that his smile was genuine. She relaxed. “Old habits die hard, Sir.” It was funny. It came so naturally in the US to address her teachers by their names. But back in India, it was difficult. And changing habits was even more difficult. When she had called him ‘Sir’ or ‘Dr. Khanna’ as a student, how could she suddenly start calling him by his first name? She had cringed in the class, when the students had addressed her as Ma’am. Probably she should insist early on that the students address her by her first name. Once habituated, it would be difficult to get them to behave otherwise.

“How did the first lecture go?” he asked.

Her heart skipped a beat. He had been there. Was he looking for something specific in her answer? “I imitated you,” she replied, “I think that saved my day.”

He laughed. It wasn’t without reason that he had been so enamoured with her wit all those years back? That hadn’t changed in her. Something else had though. What was it? He couldn’t put his fingers on it.

His laughter gave Rupali some hope. He wasn’t as bitter as he had been back then. May be, just may be, sometime soon, he’d let her apologize. She didn’t dare hope for anything more. Although if…

Meher walked in next apologizing profusely for the delay and soon the rest of the faculty members and staff were in the room too.  It was the monthly administrative meeting and initial agenda items were operational ones around general and library budget, new machine requirements in the lab, resolving conflicts in the time table for the semester, discussion on the number of new students coming in and ensuring facilities for them etc. Since it was the first meeting of the semester, the number of agenda items was particularly large. But as the newest and youngest member, Rupali didn’t have much to contribute on them. In fact, most people didn’t have anything to say. Things were decided beforehand and it was only formal ratification that happened in these meetings. After these were out of the way, it was the time to formally introduce the new joinees to the staff. Paritosh delegated the task of introducing new administrative staff to Meher. Rupali was the only faculty who had joined in that semester. After Meher was done, he introduced Rupali himself.

—

To be continued

“Good morning, Dr. Khanna,” Rupali managed to greet Paritosh even as her cheeks turned red and hot. Thankfully Meher, the chief administrator, had decided not to stay on after realizing that Rupali and Paritosh knew each other already. Otherwise the awkwardness and the strange tension that filled Paritosh’ office at that moment would not have escaped her.

“Dr. Banerjee,” Paritosh’ face might not have looked as flushed as Rupali’s. But his mind was as flustered as hers. He decided to come back to the institute after six years and one new person who joined the department that semester and came on the same day as his joining back had to be Rupali Banerjee!

‘Leave. Ms. Banerjee,’ some memories from past echoed in her mind. It was the same room. It was the same two people. “Rupali. Please Sir,” she could not help requesting and she sounded so miserable that Paritosh regretted being so cold to her. Despite what had happened…

“Right,” he mumbled, “Welcome to the institute. Welcome back, rather. It feels great to see the students coming back as faculty.” He managed to speak out his welcoming remark, but his delivery had obviously been lacking. If he could not avoid this situation altogether, he would have liked to be prepared better for it. But as it happened, he had joined that morning itself and had been given the details of the new recruit barely fifteen minutes back. He hadn’t had the time to overcome his shock.

And Rupali had gotten even less time than he had. She had felt a chill run down her spine, when Meher had taken that turn in the department building to take her to meet the HOD. “Dr. Rao sits in room no. 204?” she had asked trying to sound as calm as possible.

“Dr. Rao? No. We are going to meet Dr. Khanna. Dr. Rao has left. Dr. Khanna has joined this morning as the new HOD. He was with the institute even earlier. I wasn’t here then. When he came back, he requested for, and was given, his old office.”

“Dr. Paritosh Khanna?” Rupali had been alarmed.

“Yes. You know him?”

“I did several courses under him, when I was a student here,” she hoped her voice was not sinking, “He was my guide for the final year project too.”

“Ohh!! What a coincidence that you should come back to join on the same day. And this makes my job easier. Here is his office,” the door was open as expected, “Good morning Dr. Khanna. I believe you already know Dr. Rupali Banerjee. So, I’ll leave the two of your to do your formalities. Dr. Banerjee, I will be in the admin office. Once you are done you can come back for the rest of the paperwork.”

“Yeah,” Rupali had mumbled and had entered the room with her hot, red, flushed cheeks.

“Good morning, Dr. Khanna,” she had greeted him.

Presently she replied to his inadequately warm welcome, “Thanks. Pleasure is mine. I didn’t know you had come back. Dr. Rao had signed my offer letter…”

“It was a spur of the moment decision. Dr. Rao decided to leave. The director reached out to me and I just decided to… I had no idea about your decision either.”

Had they known about each other’s decision, would they have changed their own?

“You couldn’t have.”

“Why don’t you sit down?” Paritosh was finally gaining some of his composure back. Rupali realized only then that both of them were standing till then.

She didn’t stop to think if it was appropriate before she spoke, “I think I should get back to Meher. Apparently there is at least a day’s worth of paperwork.”

Normally, as HOD Paritosh would spend more time in the introductory meeting with a new faculty member. Rupali’s reluctance towards further conversation was unprofessional, but he wasn’t complaining. He wanted to step away and have sometime to himself to absorb the situation as much as she did.

“Okay. If you have any issues in settling down, feel free to reach out.”

“Sure Sir.” Nobody could have said ‘sure’ with such want of surety.

—

Rupali thought for a moment every time she signed a paper that day. Should she withdraw? There was still time. Some other institutes would still honour their job offers to her. She had chosen this offer because it was one of the best institutes in India, it was her dear alma mater, she could stay close to her mother, probably convince her to live with her and she had been sure that Dr. Khanna was not here. Everything else was still valid. But…

But by the end of the tiring and boring day of filling up and signing papers, she had decided that she wouldn’t go away. This was fate’s way of giving her a chance. A chance to make amends. She wasn’t sure she would be able to make any good of the chance. But she wouldn’t refuse it. Not unless she got any hints that he wanted her to…

Paritosh himself had a lot of paperwork to do. However, for him it was familiar work. Hence Meher had just left the papers with him. It took him a lot of effort to go through the motion of filling and signing the forms. He wondered every few minutes if he should just leave it there and go back to Delhi. They wouldn’t refuse to take him back. That much was always ensured with his professional reputation in his field.

But why should he do that? What will it achieve? It wasn’t like he was angry with her. Even if there was any bitterness in the beginning, over the years it had withered away. All that was left was a dull, but constant ache. And his mind had told him again and again that it wasn’t her fault. She was a young student. Playing a prank was natural for her. It was idiotic on his part to fall for it. And it was outright wrong for him to have those feelings. If someone was responsible for his humiliation, it was he himself. No. He wasn’t angry at her. He was angry at himself. When the anger wasn’t directed at her, her presence should not make things any worse for him, should it? Then, how would it matter if he stayed or went back? He might as well stay. He would stay. He would not go back. Not unless his presence continued to be uncomfortable for her… Like it was that morning.

—

“Dr. Khanna,” Meher came to his office the next morning, “You need to sign these papers as Dr. Banerjee’s boss before I can file them.” She handed him the paper.

He signed them and handed her his own papers, “Will you take care of getting mine signed by the director?”

“Sure Sir.”

“And Meher?”

“Yes Sir?”

“Rupali… I mean Dr. Banerjee is all settled?”

“I think so, Sir. She has been a student here. I’m sure everything is familiar and known to her. Your meeting with her was fairly short. I guess you already know everything about her.” Meher’s smile was bright. But it failed to bring any cheer to Paritosh.

“Yes. Indeed,” he replied tentatively wondering if that was the right response.

Meher didn’t show any untoward reaction to his reply.  So, it must have been fine, he decided. Why was he so overworked about it?

“Oh! And Dr. Khanna. I forgot to give you this. Here is a copy of department’s time table for the semester. It starts from Monday, of course.”

“Thanks Meher.”

Paritosh looked at the timetable after Meher left. Rupali would be teaching Algorithms to second year undergraduates. He had taught her that course. He remembered very well. It was one of the first departmental courses the students of Computer Science took. And it was in that course that he had noticed Rupali for the first time. One of those rare students, who always attended all the classes, although he hadn’t made attendance compulsory in his course. And ever curious. She asked intelligent questions. Nothing pleases a teacher more than a worthy and intelligent student. She had pleased him in that course. And in the other advanced courses she had done under him. And while organizing the technical festival of the institute where he was one of the advisors. And in her final year project. And then… Paritosh jerked himself out of that chain of thoughts. He didn’t want to think about her. And about that…

—

To be continued