Your Dreams Are Mine Now (10 page)

‘Aap ne mujhe pehle kabhi ye sab kyun nahi bataaya, didi?’
(Why didn’t you tell me all this before, didi?) he asked softly. He didn’t want to scare her away.

Raheema relaxed. Arjun’s gesture showed that he cared for her. Suddenly overwhelmed, she could not hold back her tears. In response to Arjun’s question, she only joined her hands. She wanted to say something, but she choked with tears.

Arjun, immediately held her hands and tried to console her. Rupali too got up and reached out to Raheema to help her control her emotions. She rubbed her back and asked her not to cry, and rather face this with strength.

Thankfully, there weren’t any other students at Shafi’s shop as by then the break was long over. The only people to notice the three of them were Shafi’s boys who worked at the teashop.

‘Yeh aap ki galti nahi hai, didi,’
(This is not your fault, didi) Arjun said.

Rupali added to it by reminding her that it was a courageous move on Raheema’s part that she had taken a stand to fight against Mahajan. ‘I am so proud of you,’ she said.

Arjun too agreed. Together they talked about how she probably had had no other choice but to sacrifice her life for the future of her daughter. Instead of letting Raheema feel guilty, the two of them tried to make her feel proud of the sacrifices she had made in her life.

When Raheema continued to sob, Rupali went behind her and took her in her arms.

Raheema looked up at Arjun, who was smiling. Raheema smiled through her tears.

That brought the much-needed closure. Arjun was impressed with Rupali’s simplicity and honesty.

Once they were more in control of their emotions they settled down to talk again. Rupali felt that it would be wiser for Arjun and her to talk in Raheema’s absence. Arjun agreed. He asked her if they could meet in the evening. Rupali thought for a bit and then agreed.

‘Great, so give me your cellphone number?’ he asked. ‘Uhh . . .’ Rupali hesitated. All of a sudden, the idea of sharing her mobile number with someone like Arjun bothered her. Why was he asking her to give him her mobile number? She wondered how to tackle this awkward situation. She hadn’t anticipated it. It happened so fast. She wasn’t even prepared to react to it. But how would she refuse?

Arjun seemed to have guessed her predicament. ‘I am not asking you to share your number. Just take mine, in case you need it before we meet to discuss this,’ he said with a smile.

How fast he had read her mind!
‘It’s not like that,’ she said embarrassedly. But Arjun didn’t respond. He dictated his number and Rupali saved it.

‘Shall we meet by 5.30 in the evening then?’ asked Arjun.

‘5.30 . . . hmm . . . alright. Shall I come here?’ Rupali asked. ‘This teashop will be closed in the evening, so we can meet somewhere else. I will see you outside your hostel.’

‘Oh! Where exactly outside the hostel?’

‘Let’s meet at the same place where you had planted that sapling.’

Eleven

‘Oh, look at that! Tiny tulsi flowers have blossomed on your plant,’ Arjun said while looking at the plant with great amusement. His hands on his waist, he bent down to get a closer look.

Rupali had never imagined such a pleasant reaction from Arjun towards her plant. More than a month and a half earlier, right at the same place, Arjun’s face had a different expression when he had first seen Rupali planting that tulsi sapling. She was delighted with this change in his attitude but did not say anything. After all, the disruption he had caused at the music club audition had painted a certain picture of Arjun in her mind. She couldn’t have changed it that quickly.

‘Yes, it took a while for this to happen,’ Rupali nodded. Rupali could have said more.

Perhaps Arjun felt so too. He waited for her to say more. But she didn’t. Instead, she continued to look at her plant with great affection.

Arjun suggested, ‘Let’s sit and talk then.’

‘Here on the lawns?’ she asked, raising her brows. Her hesitation was clear.

‘Too many people in the common room. We don’t want anyone to overhear our conversation. Right?’ asked Arjun.

With barely any choice left, Rupali had to agree.

‘Come on. It’s fine,’ Arjun insisted.

She felt uncomfortable sitting on the open lawns, in front of her own hostel, where other girls could see her in the company of a guy like Arjun, who was neither from her batch nor from her stream. While it wasn’t uncommon for boys and girls to sit on the hostel lawns, it was generally only couples who sat there. Other times, there were mixed groups of girls and boys. In this case, they were neither.
What would they think of her?
‘Will they cook up stories on seeing me with Arjun?’ she wondered and her thoughts made her uncomfortable.

‘Are you sure Shafi’s teashop is shut?’ she asked again. Arjun didn’t immediately answer that one. He looked at her face as if deriving some sort of pleasure out of her helplessness.

‘You like Shafi’s tea that much?’ he chuckled.

Rupali first nodded and when she realized he was making fun of her, she shook her head.

That made Arjun laugh. Rupali smiled, embarrassed by her foolishness.

‘Yes, it is closed. I checked on my way here. But don’t worry, if you are uncomfortable, you can invite your roommate. Raheema didi told me that she is aware of the whole thing. Maybe you will feel more secure if she is around.’

So he knew what she was thinking about!
This realization embarrassed Rupali even more. ‘Oh no, that’s not an issue!’ she blurted. But when she sat down, she texted Saloni to come and join her on the lawns.

‘You are a brave girl!’ Arjun complimented her as they started talking. ‘Not many boys would have had the courage to do what you have done, that too against someone like Mahajan.’

‘Well, to be honest, I actually fear Mahajan,’ she spoke slowly. ‘I was scared of stepping inside his cabin and was even more scared when he came and stood by my side, before he . . .’ she left that sentence incomplete.

Through Raheema, Arjun already knew that Mahajan had slapped Rupali. He didn’t need Rupali to complete her sentence.

‘I understand. In fact, that’s why I said that you are a brave girl,’ Arjun said. Rupali looked at him. ‘You see, being brave doesn’t mean the lack of fear. It means overcoming your fears. You overcame your fear to challenge someone like Mahajan. More importantly, you did so not for yourself, but for someone else. That is being really strong.’

Rupali felt good. She knew that what she had been doing was right, but no one till then had said the same.

She said, ‘There is something else as well that I want to say.’

‘Yes?’

Rupali took a deep breath. ‘To some extent I’m scared of you, too,’ she confessed.

And just after she’d said that, she wondered if it had been the right thing to do. Suddenly, her own words had made her feel uncomfortable again. She felt a strange sense of vulnerability because she was sitting next to the person she was scared of and telling him that she was sacred of him!

‘Wha…what? You are scared of me?’ Arjun asked, surprised. ‘And all because I asked you questions about your plant?’

‘Not just that episode, but primarily for what happened on the day of the music club audition.’

‘Wait a minute. You were inside the class that evening? Are you a part of the music club?’

‘Yes.’

‘Oh God!’ Arjun exclaimed and looked up at the sky. None of them realized then how the whole discussion had switched from brainstorming about Raheema’s case to discussing personal matters.

‘And you believe that . . . Oh God! No . . . No . . . No . . .’ Arjun started but then stopped.

Rupali kept looking at him.

‘So you are scared of me because you believe I broke and disrupted your set-up?’ he repeated.

‘I was scared of the whole mob and you were one among them,’ Rupali said.

‘Okay, I can completely understand how you must have judged me. But the problem is with your interpretation.’

‘Why?’

Arjun took a moment and then asked her, ‘Did you see me breaking anything or hitting anyone?’

Rupali remembered that she had seen him standing outside the class. She remembered seeing him standing with his arms folded across his chest.

‘No.’

‘I am glad you said that,’ Arjun said. ‘Look, I don’t know what you will think about me when I tell you this, but hear me out. Yes, those were my party’s members. Yes, my party members vandalized the set-up. But that doesn’t mean I wanted to do the same. I had protested against any sort of violence. You would have certainly seen me at the venue. But you would not have observed my late arrival. When I heard from one of our volunteers that a few party members had gone to disrupt the audition, I ran to stop them from hitting anyone. But unfortunately, by the time I arrived, it was too late. The damage was done.’

‘Really? But I saw you standing outside the room. It appeared to me that all that had happened within the class, had happened under your command!’

‘Perhaps then you failed to see the look of helplessness on my face,’ Arjun said with a hint of a smile.

‘Oh!’ Rupali uttered. She realized how the truth could be so different from her own interpretation of it. Arjun appeared honest to her. She believed what she had heard; she didn’t want to inquire any further. As she heard Arjun out, her mind was continuously working on building up a new image of Arjun, which if not positive, was definitely neutral and far better than the previous negative one. Her thoughts were broken by the beeping of her cellphone. She picked up the mobile to read an SMS. It was from Saloni.

‘In basketball court. Will catch u in n hr darling. Muah :
_*
’

Even though his explanation cleared her perception of Arjun, she was still not completely comfortable with him. She felt it would have been better if Saloni could have joined them. But, at the same time, she was now more in control of the situation.

‘So when did you join the club?’ Arjun asked.

‘Hmm?’ Rupali was lost in her thoughts.

‘Club. The music club,’ he clarified.

‘Oh! I joined last month only,’ she replied.

‘You sing?’

‘Yes,’ she said. Rupali realized from his tone that he wasn’t very happy to know that she was in the music club. ‘Why? What happened?’ Arjun took a deep breath and was about to say something, when Rupali spoke, ‘Your party has some old issue with the club, right?’

‘Well, unfortunately that is the case. We have some unsettled business.’

Rupali didn’t like what Arjun said. It bothered her. She knew of the ‘unsettled business’ as Tenzing had already told her about it. So she understood where Arjun was coming from. Even though she wanted to change Arjun’s opinion about this matter, she didn’t want to get into that discussion at the moment.

‘I only hope that you don’t settle your unsettled business by hurting them,’ she said and then immediately corrected herself, ‘I mean us.’

Arjun looked into her eyes, ‘Don’t worry, we don’t hurt people. No one will hurt you.’ Then he changed the topic and asked Rupali to brief him about Raheema’s case from where they had left off at Shafi’s teashop.

Rupali talked about all the things she couldn’t have spoken about in Raheema’s presence. At times, Arjun asked questions which Rupali answered in detail.

After Rupali had said all that she had to say, she asked him, ‘How do we go further from here?’

‘Mahajan is a beast. Are you sure you want to do something about it?’ he asked bluntly to understand Rupali’s commitment.

‘Earlier it was about Raheema alone. Now that he has slapped me, I have one more reason to take this up,’ she said with quiet determination. ‘However, I want to know why you want to help us on this.’

‘I too have more than one reason. I treat Raheema like a sister . . .’

‘What if it was someone else in her place, then?’

‘I was coming to that. As I said, I have more than one reason. The primary reason is Mahajan.’

She waited for him to explain.

‘Mahajan is like a cancer in our college system. A lot of wrong things are flourishing in this university—the back-door admission of a few students, the upsurge in the demand to increase reservation quotas. It is all Mahajan’s doing. He has a strong hold on this university and the political backing of the party in power in the campus as well as in the state.’

Unable to connect the dots, Rupali spoke, ‘I am not sure if I get it. How does that concern you?’

‘I am talking about corruption. Mahajan is corrupt and powerful, now more than ever. Teaching accounts in this college is just a facade. Behind this veil of teaching, he fulfils his personal interests. He makes money by giving admission to those students who are low on merit but belong to highly influential families. He uses the various quotas like OBC and SC/ST to his benefit. From getting fake caste certificates for students, to making them eligible to use the respective quotas, he gets everything done for them.

‘Apart from college donations, a separate donation reaches his home for such exclusive work. When you ask why I am concerned, my answer is—I am the victim of this quota system that was illegally used by Mahajan. Two years back, I was the first person on the Commerce admission waitlist. I never made it to my preferred stream but was made to settle for Arts. The reason being, my seat was traded to admit a bureaucrat’s son whose Class XII percentage was way lower than mine; all this in the name of bullshit quota!’

‘Oh God!’ exclaimed Rupali in disbelief. ‘But why didn’t the higher authorities take some action against him? Are they corrupt too?’

‘Not everyone. But some definitely are. But not being corrupt doesn’t mean they are against corruption either,’ Arjun replied.

‘Now what does that mean?’

Arjun explained, ‘The real problem is, those who aren’t corrupt themselves, don’t always fight against corruption. Because they fear that if they raise their voices, they will lose their jobs. Even though such transaction happens under their noses, and they keep their mouths shut. And why would they fight, when they already know the outcome! Corruption didn’t take birth in this university. We were introduced to it by the system outside this campus. You see, the college is funded by the government. So if a politician in power wants to have his say and admit a particular student, how would a top college official refuse? And when this wish comes along with cash, why would they? That’s where the system gives birth to parasites like Mahajan, who master the art of selling merit for money.’