Mish' Fiction

Rupali wiped her tears and suppressed her moans as she turned in the bed again. If it hadn’t been for the bet disaster, he’d still have shooed her away. Because it was wrong in his books. Was that any consolation though? Were her choices always to be restricted between two painful options?

—

“Paritosh had come today,” Mouli informed Rupali when she came back from her office.

“Dr. Khanna? Why?”

“Just to give me company.”

“Did you get your afternoon nap?”

“Yes,” she smiled, “He had already asked me my routine the other day and had come before the time for my nap. He will come again tomorrow.”

“Okay…” Rupali was confused. Why would he do that? Why wouldn’t he tell her if he was planning to meet her mother?

“He is a nice man.”

Yes. That he was. And it was his nicety that was her undoing. He had a led lonely, unfulfilled life. Many professors in those circumstances were known to take their frustrations out on students. They’d fail half the class at their whim. Not Paritosh. He was aloof, he was professional, he appeared strict to everyone other than Rupali. But he was not harsh, he was not bitter. He had been nice to his unreasonable mother. He was nice to his mentally disturbed wife. He was nice to the security guard of the department. Rupali could figure out that the jacket and watch he wore once belonged to Paritosh. He had never shouted at an administrative staff. He was nice, heart-wrenchingly nice, to her. Now he was being nice to her mother. As a young faculty member, she was often saddled with a lot of non-academic, administrative work. So, getting away during office hours and working from home was often not possible for her. Paritosh had more freedom, despite his administrative duties as the HOD. And he had done the perfect favour to her. She worried about her mother when she couldn’t be with her. He had decided to give her company. She could be at peace. On her mother’s count at least.

But on his count? There could be no peace for her there. She couldn’t move on. And she couldn’t tell him. He thought it was wrong. If he had been a frustrated teacher, who was unfairly harsh to his students, if he had been mistreated his wife instead of caring for her, if he had been unscrupulous and had tried to take advantage of her – an emotionally vulnerable, young student, if he had begrudged her an old misunderstanding and had created problems for her as her boss, which he very easily could, if he had done any of this, if he hadn’t been this nice man he was, if he hadn’t helped her in her most tumultuous times despite thinking that she had played him for a bet, she would have been able to move on. She might never have fallen for him in the first place.

But that was not the case. He was a nice man. And she had fallen so hard for this sad, lonely, but nice man there was no getting up for her.

She remembered the time from her student life, when there was a tussle between administration and students about the rules guiding student’s behaviour on the campus. Several biggies in the administration felt that the students were given too much of freedom. They wanted to curb the hours in which they go out of the hostels or campus. Students were vehemently against such rules.

Rupali was surprised when in one of her meetings he had brought up the issue. “So, who is winning? Students or the administration?” He had asked somewhat playfully.

“Why? Are you acting as a spy?” she had also replied in jest.

“Spy? For whom?”

“For the administration, who else?”

“Ah! You presume that I side with them.”

“Don’t you?” As someone who had obeyed his parents all his life, whether it was in the decisions related to his career, or his marriage, she didn’t think he would have very liberal views about how youngsters should be treated.

“The problem with our administrators is that they start seeing themselves as parents, instead of teachers. And Indian parents are obsessive about controlling the lives of their kids. Their intentions are usually honourable, but not necessarily right.”

“What are the honourable, but wrong intentions?” she had been intrigued.

“They are terrified about the outcomes of uninformed actions. What if they make a mistake, they keep asking. Our parents and our administrators. Point is, how else would one grow, if not by experimenting? This shielding, this care becomes stifling very soon.”

“Wow! None of us were thinking so logically about it. If we did, we’d have a better chance in succeeding against the administration.”

“Then do so.”

“Yes. Of course. But I must say, you would make one cool father, Dr. Khanna.”

The smile on his face had been sad and for a moment, his eyes had looked lost. Was he thinking about the baby they had lost? He only talked about the incident from Amrit’s point of view, what it did to her. But what about him?

There was only one thing he was not nice towards. Feelings. Hers, and his own! Knowingly, or unknowingly, he tortured them, punished them. Ruthlessly.

—

There was a small open space in front of her house. The boundary around it was a low one and anyone walking on the road could have seen her or jumped in. But the campus was a secure place. There was nothing to be afraid of even late at night. She paced up and down in front of her house. A few minutes later, she saw someone walking down the road. While it wouldn’t have been surprising near student hostels, it was a rare sight in the faculty quarters for someone to be out so late at night. Who was it? And whosoever it was, given the direction he was coming from, he wasn’t returning from outside or from an office in the campus. He was coming out of his or someone else’s house. For a moment she wondered if she’d discover some scandalous story of an extra-marital affair. But as the distant figure came closer, she realized that nothing like that was going to happen. Most certainly, it was Dr. Khanna. Should she stay there and risk getting noticed by him? Or should she go inside the house? But why the hell was he out on the road at this hour? Her curiosity got the better of her, and she decided to stay. She, in fact, waited for him near the gate of her house. His strides were long and it didn’t take him much time to reach there. He stopped in his tracks when he saw someone standing at the gate of her house. He feared an intruder initially, but was soon able to make out that it was Rupali herself. She was looking at him. He thought for a moment. Then instead of going further down the road, he came to her.

“Rupali. What are you doing here?”

She chuckled slightly, “You are forgetting that you are standing at the gate of my house. I should be the one asking this.”

“Still. It is quite late. Past midnight. Why aren’t you sleeping?”

“Same to you.”

He sighed, “Mrs. Banerjee is fine?”

“You have met her yourself today.”

“Of course. But I got worried when I saw you awake. I wondered if something went wrong since then…”

“No. She is fine. I was unable to sleep and was tired of tossing and turning in the bed. So, decided to come out and get some fresh air.”

He smiled, “And I was tired of even getting the fresh air near my house. So, I decided to take a walk down the road.”

“Why don’t you come in?” She started opening the gate.

“At this hour?” he was hesitant.

“Well!” What harm could it do?

“Okay,” he acquiesced.

“Let’s not go inside. We can sit here and continue getting some fresh air,” he said when she made to open the door of the house.

“Okay.”

They sat down on the steps leading to the open verandah. It was a surreal experience. It was a cool and dark night. The moon hadn’t risen yet. The only source of light was street lamps. They were not in the direct sight. So, only the silhouettes of the things around them could be made out.

“There is a beautiful, peaceful world we see here, Rupali,” he spoke after a while, “But it would be impossible to recreate it in the morning. It would be difficult to even imagine, then, that the world could be like this. This world can only exist at night, in darkness, in dreams…  It slips away when the sun rises and the real world wakes up. And we can do nothing about it.”

“We can’t?” she asked, her voice sounding dreamy.

“No. Because it is that world, which feeds us, which supports us and with which we live and grow. We can do without this world, but not that. What we have to aspire for is finding peace and happiness in that world.”

“And when that is not possible, can’t we just steal some time away from the night and live in this world? Even if in the morning, we have to return to the world that feeds us?”

“If we did that, we’d lose sleep and be tired in the morning,” a hint of amusement had slipped into his voice.

“We can compensate with an afternoon nap,” she also replied in the same vein.

He let out a small laugh; then asked, “You don’t have a class tomorrow, right?”

“No. And you?”

“Me neither.”

“Great.”

They fell silent again. Paritosh leaned against the wall after a while for support.

“Rupali. Get up,” the next thing she remembered was Paritosh waking her up. She had fallen asleep on his knees. But he wasn’t acting panicked or scandalized. She also got up calmly as if it was the most natural thing for her to do. Sleeping on his knees! “It’s almost three in the morning. I will leave. Close the gate behind me, then go inside and sleep in your bed. Okay?”

—

To be continued