The Letter

Scribbled in haste. Folded neatly into a square. Tucked underneath the desk lamp.

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It was late afternoon when Sam pried his tired eyes open. The hurricane had subsided by then and fluffy desiccated clouds peered in through the window. He didn’t get a lot of sleep the night before, but for once, he wasn’t staring at cobwebs stretched across the corners of the ceiling that desperately needed cleaning. He was with Meera. And they had made love like parched travelers in a flaming desert. He was half expecting to find her sleeping next to him; curled up in a ball, disarrayed locks strewn over her face with reckless abandon. But she was gone, leaving behind a hollow at the heart of an empty pillow; a hollow that had cradled her head through the night. Leaning against the headrest, he stared at the vacant half of the bed longingly for several static minutes. He was searching for remnants of her absent form in the contours of the soiled linen. He could tell how she had aligned her bent knee, how she had arched her back at an odd angle, and how her limb rested itself over her forehead out of sheer habit. Why did she leave without telling him? Had he done something to hurt her? Sam craved for a cup of steaming tea laced with a hint of cardamom. It never failed to cheer him up. It reminded him of the wintry Sunday mornings at Glendale, when he would hop down the chilly stone staircase in nothing but flimsy pajamas and threadbare socks, determined to make it for breakfast while the rest of the school slept underneath heavy cotton quilts. But sitting alone at the edge of the bed, the impetus slipped out of him. He dipped a teabag in a cup of boiling water instead, sipping out of it dispassionately. 

Sam walked up to the door of the balcony and looked around the room trying to put the pieces together. He noticed the shirt that he wore the day before, bunched up at the foot of the bed. It happened to be his favourite shirt. A date with Meera deserved some careful dressing. However, it still looked soaking wet. He probably wouldn’t be able to wear it again. Maybe he would preserve it for posterity, as a mark of a new beginning. 

He closed his eyes and tried to relive their time together. But it was all awfully blurry. The room was dark as night with the curtains drawn. Sam remembered how Meera had fought to keep the lights off, although he desperately wanted to see. She was strangely adamant and Sam had no choice but to relent. There was an irrational sense of urgency in her lovemaking. While he tried to smell her hair and taste the beads of sweat dripping down the nape of her neck, she bit his lips and clawed at his arms, digging tiny furrows down his back. It’s not that he didn’t like it. He just wasn’t prepared. She thrashed around like a caged animal, years of captivity propelling her towards liberation. Sam could hear her pounding heart, threatening to rip her breast apart. He frantically tried to hold her down lest she got hurt; lest she escaped. But what he didn’t know was that he was her freedom, and she was latching on to him for dear life. After hours of grappling in the dark, fervently holding on to each other, Meera finally gave up the fight and collapsed on her side, exhausted. For a moment he thought she was crying. Her breath echoed within the patchy damp walls.

Sam noticed a note, folded beneath the desk lamp. He didn’t remember seeing it there before. He put down his cup of bland tea and opened it. It was a letter from Meera. 

“Dear Sam,

Last night was a dream I didn’t want to wake up from. But I always knew it had to end, like all dreams do with the onset of dawn. Yesterday taught me that life wasn’t over when I thought I had breathed my last, years ago. You showed me that I was more than just a living corpse, rotting away from the core, and the stench that spilled out of my pores was hardly mine. With you, I felt like the one I used to be and caught a glimpse of the one I so wanted to become. And all of this in mere hours. I robbed you of a day, only to selfishly find myself, and for that I truly apologize. I’m sorry if I made you think that 'this' was more than that. But I cannot drag you into the whirlpool that is my life. So I’m leaving, in search of emancipation, to set things in order, treading the path that you opened for me, albeit unknowingly. You know how to love Sam, not just like a man, but as a person. You shouldn’t keep it bottled up within your stiff collars. Share it with the world, with hapless lost souls like me. Give them a reason to live, for God knows they’re waiting. I did not want to wake you and say goodbye. I was afraid of the finality that comes with it. So in the hope that our paths will cross someday I take your leave. Knowing you was a gift and I wish you all the happiness.

Love

Meera.”

Sam took his time to grasp what he was reading. It couldn’t really be the end, could it? The letters were neatly formed, all slanting to the right; sturdy and sure. There wasn’t a scratch in the entire page, which made him think, that she had composed this a million times before in her head. A day was too little time. He wanted so much more. He walked to the balcony and looked down at the street below. The hurricane had reduced the makeshift shops to a pile of rubble and tattered tarpaulin. He imagined Meera making her way through the midst of the wreckage, red slippers in hand, tousled hair thrown to the wind, not bothering to turn back once, while vast expanses of azure resonated with destiny’s derision.

Sam felt like he was drowning in quicksand, plugging his nose and stifling his throat. He didn’t know what to do. He grabbed his phone and dialed the only number he knew by heart. He hadn’t called home in twenty years and he was certain that no one would answer. But he heard someone at the other end. Strangely it was a woman.

“Hello?”

Sam didn’t know what to say. He was expecting his dad’s gruff voice.

“Umm.. Sorry. This is Sam. Is this the Khanna residence?”

“Yes it is. Who’re you looking for?”

“I was wondering if Mr. Khanna was home. Never mind. It was a mistake.”

”No. He is. It’s just that he’s not well and no one has called in to check on him for years. So it was a little unexpected. Are you a friend of his?”

Sam was debating whether to tell her who he was. His dad probably hadn’t even mentioned that he existed. He must have remarried. Not that he cared. But he decided to tell the truth anyway.

“I’m his son. Sam… Samarth? He’s probably never mentioned me.”

The voice fell silent at the other end. He could almost hear the flurry of thoughts racing through her mind.

“Anyway it was nice talking to you ma’am”, he said. He couldn’t remember why he had called in the first place.

“Wait. I don’t know you, but that doesn’t matter. You’re his family. Would you mind coming down to visit him sometime? I know it’s not my place to ask you this, but Mr. Khanna doesn’t have a lot of time left, and meeting someone familiar might help him remember. I don’t know how far away you live, but I promise you won’t regret it.”

“Not to be rude ma’am, but how would you know anything about my regrets?” He couldn’t stand her tone of familiarity.

”I agree. I don’t. But I care about him. And he looked happy in the pictures with you. It’s obvious that I cannot force you. But please do consider it.”

A click at the end of the line and she was gone. Sam felt numb, floating in a bubble, looking for direction. His favourite shirt caught his eye again, all bunched up at the foot of the bed. He picked it up, wrung the muddy rainwater out of it and hung it to dry. 

The Goddess

Meera stood behind a row of restless relatives, fidgeting with her bangles, waiting for the bride. Her eleven year old self was drowning under layers of her mother’s heavily embroidered silk sari, the pleats threatening to fall apart any minute. She could sense the anticipation in the air. It made her fingertips tingle. Notun Bou, they called her. The new wife. 

Meera was barely two when her mother walked out of the house on an otherwise ordinary sultry afternoon, carrying a small bag stuffed with all her wedding jewellery, while she lay underneath the bed watching. She wanted to hold her back, but couldn’t call out to her as she was in the midst of a game of hide-and-seek and was afraid of being discovered. It was years later when her brother told her why she had left. Apparently her mother had a promise to keep - a promise she had made to another man; a promise far bigger than the one she had made to her children when they were born. Meera had never seen this man in her life, and since her mother never came back to the house, she assumed that he was captivatingly handsome, someone who had leapt straight out of a glossy magazine cover. Her grandmother, however, never believed that she had left for love. She thought her son’s wife was a witch. Daini, she used to call her. The new bride was supposed to take her place, and since Meera had been the only prominent female presence in the Roychowdhury household for the past decade, she wasn’t sure how to respond to this sudden and unseemly intrusion.

The house echoed with the sound of conch shells and fervent ululation as the bride made her way past the doorway. The women in the house rushed to welcome her with brass plates filled with trifles. They were supposed to be symbols of good luck and prosperity, but to Meera they meant nothing. She peered over shoulders, balancing herself painfully on her toes to catch a better glimpse of her new stepmother. She was barely in her twenties, and beside her father, she almost looked like a child. She was not very tall and was of slender built. Her face looked as if it was carved out of a betel leaf; her chin precise, almost to a point. Her skin was wheatish, and in the reflected incandescence of several flickering oil lamps she looked radiant. Her almond eyes were drawn out with kohl and her lips were pursed into a broken, tentative smile. While she stood there decked from head to toe in gold, twitching with uncertainty, her parting ablaze with a dash of vermillion, Meera realized she had never seen anyone more beautiful. People whispered audibly about how a Goddess had just made her way past the doors. If it wasn’t for a three year old child from her previous marriage, who followed her into the house clutching a ragdoll, they probably would not have hesitated to genuflect. While mother and daughter walked into the house amidst all the celebration, Meera retracted to a forgotten corner, grappling with her new found reality. She realized that she could never compete with divinity. Life as she knew it, changed in that moment. All she was left with was a raging inferno of hatred. 

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It was the last day of the autumn festivities and it was time for the Goddess to return home. Meera was cooped up in her room for the last ten days while the city lost itself in smoking dhunuchis and the rhythm of the dhak. It was not that she did not want to venture out into the streets flaunting her new clothes. But there was simply no point. No one noticed her anyway. They were too caught up in complimenting her stepmother and fussing over her wretched three-year old Mrin. Meera tried everything in her power to make them leave. She would deliberately skip lunch and complain to her father in the evening about how her stepmother intended to starve her. She would douse Mrin with water in the middle of the night, waking up her mother in the process. She would needlessly pick fights with her and later accuse her of name calling. She would even hide the infant’s feeding bottle; her helpless wailing comforted the sadist within her. But all her aggression wasted away in the face of her stepmother’s unwavering patience. It only made Meera weaker in the eyes of her father. So one day, she stopped bickering. Instead, she took refuge in passive resistance.

Every year, on the last day of the festival, Meera would visit the banks of the river to witness the immersion. It was a sort of Roychowdhury tradition. She did not want to go this time, but her father would hear nothing else. She did not speak to anyone on the way and once they reached, she stood alone on one side, avoiding eye contact with the rest. She was hoping someone would ask her what the matter was, but no one did. While she waited there, hundreds of people made their way down the slippery stairs of the embankment, carrying colossal clay images of the deity, precariously balanced on a few emaciated bamboo poles. With every concerted step, the Goddess would wobble, her ten outstretched arms waving in the wind, threatening to crush the lives out of the very people who had gathered around her to bid adieu. Meera felt someone tugging on her fingers. She looked down to see little Mrin standing next to her, with her arm raised. Her tiny eyes had deep-seated fear in them. In that moment, she felt oddly protective. She stopped battling her first instinct and squeezed her palm reassuringly. Mrin smiled widely, revealing all of her four milk teeth. Meera felt a heaviness leave her chest and she breathed in the cool autumn air once again. Together, they looked down the ghat, as the Goddess hit the river, the water making its way up the stairs. And as she sank helplessly, a horde of hungry street urchins climbed onto her breast and ripped the jewels off her neck. 

The Parasite

Sam stood there, swaddled by a soap-scented mist, peering into the mirror. He could hardly see a thing. It turned frostier by the minute, as layers of trapped vapour gathered against the surface of the glass, weaving a collage of droplets. Some were tiny specks that dotted the square, while others were heavier; their weight dragging them down, leaving behind lazy crystal trails. Someone was singing in the shower, oblivious to people waiting outside. His song was bereft of tune, but his fervor more than made up for it. Sam wiped the hazy mirror with his palm and flipped out a comb from his left pocket. He held it to the right, drawing his wet hair across the length of his forehead. Not a strand was out of place. He looked hard at his reflection, staring at himself at length, turning his head this way and that, crinkling his chin in disapproval. He thought he looked too juvenile, and decided to part his hair down the middle. The resulting symmetry only accentuated the shape of his ovoid head, which sadly wasn't his best feature. Flustered, he ran his hand through his hair carelessly, messing it up. He mulled over what to do next for a while, the decision growing increasingly impossible with every passing minute. He sighed and finally made up his mind to adhere to the disheveled look. Infact, the unkempt hair added an air of mystery to his rather boyish face.

He'd never spent so much time in front of the mirror before. The head of a fifteen year old is always awash with a host of trifles and 'hair' hardly makes for one of them. But he wanted to look fetching for Noor. She shouldn't have to feel embarrassed to be seen with him. He wondered if this is what they call love. Maybe it wasn't. But he liked her enough to put her before himself. He thought about all the movies he'd watched, where the man would bend down on his knees before his woman in the middle of a busy street, holding out a singular synthetically-red rose, while thousands bore silent witness to his proclamation of love. It appeared too saccharine on screen, and barely appealed to his teenage sensibilities. But now, it somehow all made sense. He wasn't a boy anymore. He noticed a few tiny strands on his chin, heralding the onset of manhood. He plucked them out with a tweezer, one by one. He couldn't wait to grow up.

Sam didn't know how the day ended up slipping out from between his fingers. He would stare outside the window for hours. Mr. Ward's animated reenactments of the Sepoy Mutiny of 1857 couldn't restrain his restless mind from wandering out into the open. A couple of crows had been patiently building a nest, laying one twig at a time, in the mighty redwood tree that stood tall just outside the classroom. You could almost reach its branches if you leaned out far enough. There were half a dozen eggs in it, he noticed. One of them strangely stood out from the pack. It had a greenish hue like the others. However, the speckled pattern on its surface looked oddly foreign; they were smaller, less clustered. There were times when a koel would visit the nest when the parents were away, forever circumspect. She would stare at that lonely egg wistfully, singing out little bird lullabies to it. She never overstayed. She knew it was one of the last times that she would see her baby. The crows would never leave the nest unattended, once the eggs hatch. Would the nestling ever recognize its mother? Would it ever get to learn her song? Sam wondered if birds felt love like humans. Maybe they understood it better.

Rishi nudged Sam from behind. It broke his trance, and he looked over his shoulder. Rishi held out a folded note for him.

"Give it to her. When you meet her that is."

And he went back to scribbling hearts at the back of his notebook. Sam opened the note, hiding it under the desk. It was meant for Noor. It said something about how he couldn't think of anything but her, and wanted nothing more but to spend some time with her after class. Sam felt a sudden rush of guilt, and stashed the note deep down his pocket. This was not the first time that Rishi wrote to Noor. He knew that Sam had grown to be friends with her over summer, and couldn't be more thrilled, for now he had a medium of reaching out to her and communicate his true emotions. He would compose childish letters on ruled pages torn out hastily from his diary, and trusted Sam to be his emissary. He never questioned him about Noor's reaction to them. He never asked him if she wrote back. He was certain that Sam would tell him if there was anything worth telling. They were friends after all, and by definition, they had no secrets.

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The discordant bell concluded another long school day, and a swarm of boys spilled out into the corridors. Sam was waiting for the arrival of this very moment, and he didn't waste anymore energy on idle small talk. Truth be told, boys his age bored him. They were mostly immature, discussing inane, puerile subjects of no possible consequence for the greater part of the day. They were loud, intrusive and didn't know the first thing about invigorating conversation. They hardly read. They couldn't care less for the arts. They bickered over football teams. They talked about browsing through pornography on the internet when their parents weren't looking. Sam was painfully aware of who he was, and he felt lost in a crowd of confused children.

"Don't forget to give it to her." Rishi called out from the distance.

Sam nodded without looking back. He tried not to think about the letter. He made his way past a myriad irrelevant faces, down the corridor and headed toward the school grounds. He was walking as fast as his legs could carry him. This was his hour of escape. This was when he felt alive. He noticed Noor standing in the distance, leaning over her easel. Sam could feel himself grinning foolishly. She was perfect, he thought. Her tresses were rolled in a bunch behind her head, a pencil holding them together. She had paint all over her skirt. Her hands were blue from the ocean on her canvas. She smelled distinctly of turpentine.

"I'm here", he said, calling out from behind her.

Startled, she turned back. The pencil fell out of her hair, and unbridled cascades came rushing down her neck up to the small of her back. She ran her hand clumsily in an effort to brush away the locks from her forehead. It left a dash of blue behind.

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It was almost after dinner, and Sam realized that he should head back to his room. He kissed Noor goodnight, and walked past the neatly trimmed hedges which smelt of dew. It was his birthday the next day, and he was expecting a huge congregation in his dorm that night. There would be bottles of alcohol smuggled in through bribed kitchen staff. There would be customary rolls of marijuana. There would be singing in loud whispers followed by traditional birthday hazing rituals. He wished Noor could be there to join in the festivities. He tiptoed past a snoring guard and crept into his dorm. The hallway seemed awfully quiet. Sam was half expecting an army of boys to jump out from the shadows when he saw someone sitting at the base of the winding staircase. It was Rishi. He was sitting with his head hung low, clutching a bundle of letters. Sam stopped in his steps.

"Rishi, is it you?," he called out.

Rishi looked up. His eyes were red from crying. There was anger brewing in them. His face was ashen with disgust. Sam's worst fears had come true.

"Where were you?" he said, his voice cracking from the strain.

Sam couldn't bring himself to reply. He felt his stomach churning inside of him. He struggled to breathe. He mumbled incoherently.

"Were you screwing her? Were you screwing my girl?", Rishi said, slowly forming the words, his voice rising. He flung the letters at Sam's crumbling face. They fell around him noisily, like a pack of cards.

"She wasn't yours. She didn't even know you." he said, averting his eyes.

"Ofcourse. And you made sure that she never did." Rishi stood up and walked towards him. His steps were small and measured. Sam knew he was going to hurt him. He was prepared. Infact he was glad that he did not have to lie to him anymore. He shut his eyes in anticipation.

But nothing happened. He opened his eyes to see Rishi leaving. He wished that he had hurt him. That way he would have had paid his dues. Bruises heal with time, the marks fade away. Its the unresolved that rattle the sturdiest foundations, widen the crevices and wreak havoc.

Rishi stopped and turned around to look at him one last time. He looked a lot older in that moment. His face was marred with disappointment.

"I thought you were different, Sam. But you turned out just like the rest of them. An ungrateful parasite." he said.

The note from the morning was still nestled deep in his pocket. It pricked him like a pesky needle.

The Aftermath

It was still dark when Meera forced her eyes open. She could have lain in bed for another couple of hours if she wanted to, but a voice inside her said that it was time to leave. She looked at the clock. It was four in the morning. Her husband would most likely be home soon. She turned to her left to see Sam sleeping by her side, his forehead devoid of wrinkles, his lips curled into a wry unconscious smile. He was probably dreaming of the ocean. Meera imagined him sitting alone by the waterfront, looking out into the endless stretch of blue tranquility that lay ahead of him, while gentle waves kissed his toes, and whispered goodbye as they melted into the sea. She looked at his boyish face long and hard, hoping to partake of that moment of bliss. But that fleeting felicity was his and his alone. She, on the other hand, had been singularly left out. 

Meera sat on the edge of the bed, looking around the room. She could tell that a man lived there. There were clothes strewn across the room, some hanging from the handles of chairs, and some crumpled in a heap on the floor. Leather shoes were paired with rubber sandals and socks were nowhere to be found. The desk had typed sheets of paper scattered all over, with no binders, no labels, and no semblance of organization. She spotted the end of her embroidered kurta peeking from underneath the stashes of paper. She wondered how it found its way to the desk, let alone be buried beneath the rubble. But it strangely didn’t seem out of place. She realized that there were no pictures on the wall. There were no framed faces peering at her, feigning familiarity. Maybe he never loved anyone enough to cling onto them. Or maybe it was just men. 

She looked at the clock again. It had only been fifteen minutes, but it almost felt like an hour. She decided to take a shower. She tried to wrap the sheet around her in an effort to leave the bed, but couldn’t. Sam was holding onto it in a death grasp. She muttered under her breath and let go of the sheet. She couldn’t afford to wake him up. After all, he looked too peaceful. Meera stood up and looked at her side of the bed. The soiled linen traced angular patterns mimicking her body – an exoskeleton reminding her of the previous night. She felt tainted and couldn’t look at it anymore. She tiptoed across and made her way to the bathroom.

Meera tried finding her way, but couldn’t see a thing inside. The geography of the room was unknown to her and the darkness wasn’t helping. She was careful to close the bathroom door behind her and switched on the light, albeit reluctantly. She found herself standing by the sink facing a mirror. She looked at the woman staring back at her, but she was unrecognizable. Her eyes were still blurry from sleep and an extended period of darkness. She squinted straight ahead, making sure that it was her she was looking at. The image had her hair in tangles. Her eyes were deep set, with shadowy circles running under them. She thought it was smudged remnants of kohl from the day before. She tried erasing them with her fingers forcefully, but they wouldn’t go. They were adamant. She stretched her arm to the side, tapping the skin beneath her elbow. The muscles were no longer as firm, and they bounced more than she would have liked. She looked down at her stomach and caressed her stretch marks longingly. There was a stitched up dent on the side, which had once been a gaping wound. And suddenly she felt violated. She looked away from the mirror and covered her breasts in shame. 

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Meera had been walking for the past hour, and she had almost reached home. The hurricane had ravaged the city and had left a deathly calm behind. There were no birds in sight. People were still holed up in their houses, some secure, sleeping peacefully in their bedrooms and some trapped under a pile of debris, afraid to start afresh. There were giant uprooted trees, stretched across the breadth of the road, resting on dented roofs and shattered windshields. Makeshift shops had been obliterated, their unsuspecting owners still on their way, harboring false hopes for a day of good business. The devastation was palpable. Meera waded in a bubble of indifference, making her way through vast stretches of human wasteland that lay on either side, her mind wandering off into the distance. 

She reached her apartment and waited for her husband to return. He might want to have some tea, she thought. She walked into the kitchen, and set some water to boil. She looked out of the window blankly. The sun was up now, and she realized she had some piled up laundry to take care off. She walked out of the kitchen, heading towards her bedroom to change, when she heard the doorbell. She stilled smelled of Sam and wanted to change first, but her visitor seemed impatient, going at the doorbell relentlessly. She roughly ironed out the creases in her shirt with her palm and opened the door. Her husband was standing there. His eyes were red. He smelt conspicuously of cheap alcohol. 

“Tea?” she said, with forced animation. 

He looked away and stumbled into the house. He muttered incoherently and Meera took it for a yes. The boiling water spilled all over the stove. It hissed like a serpent as it made its way to the floor. 

Forbidden Fruit

Sam sat there, ensconced in a cloud of stale smoke and with every round of marijuana, he lost count of the passing minutes. He had a tinge of a headache, the kind that makes one smile without reason. He felt an invisible hand, grasping his head and lifting him above the ground, high enough to see his own human form slouched on the desk below. It was as if his body was not his own anymore, and his shoulders felt awfully light. There was a certain twisted relief in absolute submission; a secret freedom in servile dependence.

He remembered being summoned to a classroom near the terrace a couple of hours after dinner, when the last of the wakeful eyes had drooped, heavy with fatigue. It was a call from the school ‘elite’, and when it came to the popular clique, exhaustion wasn’t an option. He tiptoed up the dark staircase, down the winding hallway, and crept through the deceptively open window at the end of it. The room was pitch black, and Sam couldn’t see a step in front of him except for the glowing ends of a bunch of cigarettes, a few feet away. It took a few minutes of getting used to and before long, the residual light streaming in through the open windows revealed a handful of smoky silhouettes. They were all hunched in a circle, making every effort to blend in with the darkness that surrounded them. The forbidden nature of their activity demanded them to be discreet, and addiction was surely not an excuse to get caught.

“Join us sir. It’s about time.” Rishi whispered out to him from somewhere. 

He followed the voice without question. He could tell that he was happy to see him, even from his whisper. Rishi handed out a burning roll to him. Sam nestled the stub between his practiced fingers and breathed in like a pro. The light at the end flickered briefly from the lengthy drag. The smoke hardly made him cough. The momentary burning in the throat was a fraction of what it used to feel like. Rishi looked at him with a sense of pride and adult satisfaction. He knew he had taught him well. 

This was not the first time that Sam was invited to join the ‘Royal Secret Society’ in their nightly trysts. They met once every two days, in the same cramped classroom near the terrace. Very few people frequented that room through the day, and if they left the windows open through the night, the leftover smoke made its way out silently, without raising a hair, carrying their adolescent secrets with it. It was a privilege to be invited to join the circle, and Rishi handpicked its members personally. They smoked weed, talked about the logistics of sex, exchanged rare rock ballads and dispelled myths about masturbation being unhealthy. Not everyone deserved to be included in these clandestine meetings, and whatever knowledge was imparted in that room was a gift. It was said that one entered the society as a boy, only to leave it as a man; enlightened and ready to take on the world. As a part of an elaborate induction ritual, members were sworn into secrecy and they were not allowed to discuss anything that went on during their meetings. If word went around that someone was disloyal, he was called out, stripped off his privileges, and subjected to months of public humiliation, so much so, that he would rue the day he had foolishly gossiped. 

Sam still couldn’t believe that he was sitting there, an equal part of the famed coterie. His initial days of torment didn’t seem too distant. Even after they had shared their first smoke and burnt their childish follies that cold night, Rishi took his time before he acknowledged Sam in full view.  He would continue to test his patience and mock him in front of everyone, as if nothing had transpired between them. Sam convinced himself that Rishi could never be his friend, and the slightest possibility was only a product of naivety. He tried not to think about it, but Rishi’s recurrent efforts at harassment made it incredibly hard for him to continue. And one day, it all stopped. Just like that. Rishi was a whole new person. It was as if an angel had kissed him on the forehead the night before. Sam was no longer ridiculed, and Rishi stood up for him every time someone dared to ridicule him. The tables of fate had been turned, and for once he was sitting on the other side, jeering at some new abandoned, unsuspecting freshman. Strangely, he liked raising the derisive finger. 

“What’re you thinking about? Please don’t tell me it has anything to do with tomorrow’s midterm”, laughed Rishi. 

Sam woke up from some sort of a trance. Infact he wasn’t thinking at all. He was busy trying to flesh out the patterns that the smoke trails traced in his brain. The foggy serpents coiled around his head, mapping contours down his spine stealthily. It was as if the world had come to a halt; there was comfort in its listlessness. Midterms were barely tangible. 

“Nothing really. I totally forgot about tomorrow”, he said.

“That’s my boy!” said Rishi, resting a congratulatory arm around his shoulder. “Midterms are stupid. This is real.”

Sam nodded in agreement. His tongue felt heavy.

“I wanted to tell you something. But you have to promise not to tell anyone”, whispered Rishi.

Sam looked at him, half listening. “Absolutely. You can trust me”, he said in a tone of absent reassurance. 

‘I think I like someone.”

“Really? Who is it? Is it a boy?” Sam lowered his voice at the end, not knowing what to expect.

Rishi laughed. “No it’s not a boy stupid. You think I’m a faggot?”

“Of course not. Sorry. I’m a bit wasted. Who is it?”

“Her name’s Noor. She’s the gardener’s daughter.”

“Wow. Congratulations! So, does she know?”

“No she doesn’t. I mean, not yet. I haven’t spoken to her.”

“Ever? So how do you know you like her?” asked Sam curiously. 

“You just know these things. You’ll know when it’s your time.”

Sam felt embarrassed having asked that. Of course you’ll know.

“So when are you going to tell her?” his voice ringing with excitement.

Rishi smiled wryly. “I’m working on it”, he said.

                                               ……………………………..

It was just another regular Sunday morning. Midterms were over, and most of the boys had gone home for the holidays. Sam never wanted to leave Glenwood. He was happier here. Sometimes he couldn’t remember what his father looked like. He never came to meet him. How was he doing? Maybe he’d married again. Maybe he had new children now, running around the house and drumming empty cereal bowls with metal spoons. Maybe he joined their impromptu orchestra, spontaneously breaking into song. Sam remembered him having a baritone to die for, but the last time he had heard him sing seemed like a distant memory. Maybe he doesn’t love Sam anymore. Maybe his efforts at building a new life had reduced his past to a few forgotten pictures, stashed away amidst a pile of nameless envelopes. 

Sam looked out into the distance; the silence in the corridor was refreshing. He noticed someone sitting at the end of the hallway, almost hiding behind the last pillar. He wasn’t expecting anyone there. As far as he knew, everyone had gone home except for Mr. Bentley and a few members of the staff. He walked towards her, curiosity egging him on. He stopped himself a few feet away from the bend, trying to figure out who she was from a distance. She was sitting there with an open sketchbook, unperturbed. She was drawing a boat. Each deft stroke breathed life into the thatched hood of the dinghy. She made it seem ridiculously simple. 

“How long will you be standing there?” she said, barely looking up.

Sam was startled. He didn’t realize how long he was staring at her. He felt the blood rush to his face. He said nothing.

“My name’s Noor.”

Sam knew who she was. “So you are the gardener’s daughter, right?”

Noor didn’t expect him to know her. She looked up, surprised. Her long wavy hair covered half her almond-shaped face. There was an inexplicable mystery in her eye. 

“I am. But how did you know?” she asked.

Sam didn’t have a good answer. Honesty was definitely out of bounds. He decided to be noncommittal instead. 

“I’ve been here long enough. You get to know people.”

“Sure you do. You can sit if you want.”

Sam hesitated for a moment. What if Rishi saw them? But he wasn’t doing anything. It was just harmless conversation. Either way Rishi had gone home. Maybe it would be easier for him to talk to her, if she befriended Sam. He felt his guilt leaving him. There was no need to overthink this. 

“Why not.” 

Sam went and sat next to her. He was careful not to sit too close.

“So what’re you drawing?” he asked.

“A boat. I love boats.”

“Me too,” he added simply.

In his mind, he raced back to the time when he would spend hours drawing boats, scribbling on scrap paper with wax crayons, unaware of the world around him. They danced on waves, bobbed in brimming tubs, lazed in puddles of filthy rainwater, sailing from one utopian island to another. They had hope; a hope to unearth new continents, a hope to find happiness, a hope to carry on.