It’s been almost a whole week that Raag hasn’t called or emailed since our mind-boggling, soul-shattering two phone calls. The very thing that I wished earlier is indeed happening. Yet, here I am, unhappy and restless. I am utterly incapable of thinking of anything but Raag. It is like he is right there by my side every single day, walking and talking. My brain repeats his words over and over again like an endless for loop.
Now you remember programming language.
Observing the nautical twilight of the early morning sky, changing its colors from dark blue to orange, to light blue, over the horizon has become my daily dawn ritual. It is an hour of pondering over unspoken thoughts.
Sneakily looking at Raag’s picture has become my guilty pleasure. Somehow my ears crave for those heart-melting chuckles, that husky voice, that smooth tone. This feeling is anew.
Raag did say that we would talk more. The level of sincerity he showed, I refuse to believe that he simply did not remember to call me. Not possible!
My mother is anxious too, and a bit suspicious of my recent lifestyle change, for there hasn’t been a day when she didn’t have to keep a tap on me for getting up and ready on time. Moreover, lately, she is being dramatic.
We are sort of playing hide and seek. I get ready and start for college while my mother is busy with cooking. I come back and eat as fast as I can while she makes warm rotis, Indian bread.
My father has been a huge help in saving me from my mother’s rapid-fire round ever since Raag’s last call. He seems to be more than happy that the arrangement is not working out with a half-Punjabi boy.
I wish I could be happy along with my father. The human mind is irrational at times. Ironically, I want my mother to be happy and not my father, for this specific event of my life.
I believe what I am going through is called waiting in vain. God, just one more time, I want to hear that mesmerizing voice. I want to be reminded of my rights, and choices, and freedom, and all those possibilities that Raag enlightened me with.
Every dawn rises with the budding hopes and expectations of hearing that husky, polite voice…and ends in disappointment.
The hour of deep contemplation over his words and expectations of his call is over.
Sadly, I walk back inside the bedroom and begin to get ready for my college for I have a Java programming lab which I am painfully trying to avoid.
Raag should at least call me to enlighten me on some of the programming fundamentals. I sigh and shake my head at the silly idea as I get my clothes out of the cabinet and head for the bathroom.
After methodically taking a shower, I put on my old rugged jeans, gray T-shirt, and pink pullover sweater, tie my wayward hair in a high ponytail, pick up my traditional long red side bag that has a glass patchwork on it, and head downstairs. Of course, not before catching a few glimpses of my looks in the bathroom mirror, something that I never cared for until recently.
My bus journey to the college passes in bliss as I get a seat without much struggle and listen to Radio Mirchi in the background. Now in a humongous classroom full of sixty students, I stare at the blackboard and also at the cute-looking south Indian teacher dressed in a black shalwar kamiz.
People do like black! Don’t they? How come I never noticed before?
I try to keep my focus while she blabbers about “exception handling.” My life at the moment looks like one significant programmatic error, and she is explaining exceptions. Really! I feel as if somebody has planted a well-thought-out bug in my brain that cannot be handled by any right logical way. A miracle is what I need. Or, an intelligent programmer! Raag Purohit, to be precise.
This class is particularly difficult for me due to my utter lack of interest, and those couple of phone calls which introduced a significant anomaly in my well-written algorithm.
Focus. What’s up with you and all these programming metaphors? You seem to have learned a lot of it in as little as two calls.
I pull my focus back to the class, fluttering that blurry stare. I notice, for no particular reason or maybe for a specific reason, the boys are overzealous and attempting all sorts of tricks to keep the cute teacher entertained, which in a way is working out in my favor. It would be horrible if she finds out about my blank stares.
However, she is preoccupied enough with questions from boys; she hardly has time to check on girls. Some of them are all very busy discussing the most important topics of their life including a hot new librarian, lab bunks, and submissions, while some front-row girls are absorbed in solving the problem described on the wall. Nothing is out of the ordinary.
“What’s wrong?” a childlike voice chimes from my right side.
Anjali Kothari, nickname Anju—looking gorgeous as usual in her cute little white T-shirt and pink knee-length ruffled skirt.
Anju is probably four feet tall, tiny like a bird. She looks more like my sister’s age. The minute I feel I am short, I look at her, and suddenly I turn into a giant. She is my childhood best friend as well as the one and only witness of all of my life crises. Somehow, we got lucky enough to get admission in the same college.
“Tell me, no!” she insists in a low-pitched but firm voice. In a colloquial sense, we occasionally use the word no—but that doesn’t necessarily mean no. It is used for okay, or for emphasizing.
“What?” I sound irritated and pretend to look at the blackboard with a frown. I try to rummage through my mind to find a starting point.
“Please. It’s written all over your face.” Anju keeps her head down to the paper and keeps copying from another file onto hers. If there is one person so audacious to do one class’s assignment in the other, it is one hundred percent her. I wonder what she would answer if the professor caught her.
Again, focus.
Frustrated at myself, I open the college bag and sneakily get Raag’s picture out and hand it to her saying, “This…is the problem.” Then I put my head on my folded hands over the bench. “Raag Purohit.”
“Did he say yes?” Anju sounds intrigued and excited. She was off the whole last week busy attending her cousin’s wedding, so we did not get any time to catch up on my quarter-life crisis.
“No…” I keep my head down in frustration.
“You said no to him?” she asks.
“No…” I look up at her. She is staring at the picture with a smile. “Stop staring! Look at the board,” I scold.
“He looks good by the way.” She teases me by gently pushing my shoulder with hers.
“He does,” I murmur thoughtfully, and the bell rings. That’s a relief. As other girls and boys start to disperse, I rest my head on her shoulder, and now we are both staring at the picture of this handsome man in black. Oh, I could keep looking at his picture all day long. Inwardly, I sigh.
“Then what is the problem?” Anju asks after we both take a moment to stare at Raag’s mesmerizing picture.
I pull my head back up off her shoulder, take the picture, hide it back into the book, and start packing. I growl, saying, “I don’t know!”
“Let’s bunk the lab and go for the canteen.” Anju wants to know it all, and I want to share it all. Her small dark black eyes gleam with excitement, annoying my core. Usually, she comes up with some real solutions. I won’t say they work all the time. At least something is better than nothing.
We walk out of the class and traverse tile-laden corridors and foyers with high ceilings and sand-filled ground. Since the college building is relatively new, construction is still going on in various parts of the building.