When a Lawyer Falls in Love (16 page)

‘But…my father is very keen on the boy,’ Jaishree said urgently to Souvik who simply could not wipe the grin off his face. ‘But you love me don’t you?’ asked Souvik again, more for himself.

‘Yeah but…,’ Jaishree answered again, mildly annoyed and worried.

‘Then we will work things out…I promise,’ he calmly reasoned. Jaishree didn’t seem too reassured and Souvik had to hastily ask, ‘But they don’t intend getting you married during your final year, do they?’

‘No but I just might get engaged,’ Jaishree answered both sulking and sad. Now Souvik was really worried. ‘Listen, I’m not going to let that happen…you somehow put off the engagement for a year. We are getting married first thing after college.’

Jaishree was silent again. Perplexed. And shocked. Souvik had just confessed his feelings for her and in his third sentence, had proposed marriage. Souvik was himself aware of the discomfort he was causing Jaishree. But his mind was already preoccupied with just how he would pull the whole thing off. It was going to be very tough. After all this was a wedding they were talking about. Not a college festival.

Thirty-One

‘How is Sonali Shah?’ Pavan asked playfully one morning purposely rhyming her name with ‘Mona Lisa’. Ankur looked up and smiled. Pavan Nair used to sit next to Ankur in class these days, more since Ankur would resemble a homosapien more closely than the others. Souvik had all of a sudden transformed into a zombie, mechanically doing his work, while his sharp mind planned other things. Vyas had always belonged to an undetermined species from whom Pavan would rather be spared gushing monologues about Caroline. So that left Pavan only with Ankur and Ankur only with Pavan, whichever way one might choose to look at it.

‘Sonali is fine,’ Ankur said nodding. Ankur and Sonali were finally back to being normal.

‘Can I bite you?’ asked an unusually bold and playful Sonali one morning. It was clear that she was tired of the sulking game.

‘Sonali don’t act mad!’ Ankur had snapped irritated and determined to remain angry.

‘Don’t call me mad, okay?’ Sonali retorted in mock indignation in a childlike voice.

‘If you call me mad, I’ll really come and bite you. Then even you’ll turn mad!!’ The cute female lawyer rather logically explained. Ankur was forced to smile.

‘If one looked at you, nobody would believe that you gave that impressive speech on astrology that day,’ Ankur said in perhaps the longest sentence he had spoken to her in a long time.

‘Mister, don’t call it a speech or I’ll screech!’ Sonali said and giggled. Ankur thought that he could well do some screeching. But he could see that Sonali was genuinely making an effort to patch up.

‘Screech huh? I can see that your vocabulary is increasing,’ Ankur said smiling in an effort to be funny.

‘See, it’s simple,’ Sonali said taking his arm. ‘Earlier I used to learn my language and spellings from you, but ever since a certain Aries guy has been ignoring me, I’m being forced to spend all my spare time reading.’

‘So what do you read?’ Ankur asked casually in an effort to keep the conversation going. He had chosen to ignore the
ignoring
word in her sentence.

‘You know Anks, I’ve been reading a lot on spirituality these days. Deepak Chopra, Sri Parmahamsa Yogananda and books on reiki and the human aura.’

‘Have you read Dr Brian Weiss’s
Many Lives, Many Masters?
’Ankur butted in and asked.

‘No but I’ve read Robin Sharma’s...’

‘Or Antonie de Saint-Exupery’s
The Little Prince
or...’

‘Okay stop showing off!’ Sonali cut in again in mock anger and childlike indignation. Ankur laughed and kicked a wayside pebble. The two young lawyers were walking back to their respective hostels after they had finished with their classes for the day.

The freshly laid dark grey campus road stretched before them and Ankur wished he had a cycle. The final year hostel students most often only had two wheelers. Ankur could probably catch hold of a junior’s bicycle. Or probably simply ask for a lift from one.

Ankur smiled to himself. He wondered how it would look if Vyas were to ride a cycle with Ankur balancing his stocky frame on the slender rod just below the handle bars. Ankur sure had one fertile imagination. In fact, so did Sonali. Just that she was imagining an entirely different thing.

‘They say the human aura can be photographed with a Krebian Camera. I’ve been practicing a certain technique…

now I can feel people’s auras,’ Sonali said and as an afterthought added, ‘Rohit had a slightly diseased aura.’ Ankur had parted with Rohit on a rather friendly note, but hearing Sonali mention Rohit somehow made Ankur’s healing heart hurt again.

Sonali also realised this and she hastily changed the topic. ‘Ankur I was just wondering, if the two of us could have sugar cane juice from the stall just outside campus?’ Ankur hesitated for a second but then he smiled. He had just been asked out. That too, by Sonali Shah. Of course he would go. If nothing else, at least for the breezy stroll.

The humble sugar cane vendor with his single cane threshing machine did brisk business, with the unemployed law students ensuring him steady employment. Sipping the chilled sugar cane juice Ankur was glad he was still in college. And alive! He had his whole life ahead of him. And Sonali was now by his side. Life was beautiful!

Thirty-Two

Sponsors. Sponsors. Sponsors. The word buzzed around Ankur’s perfectly round head. The AIU College was one of the best law colleges in the country and a brand in itself. Yet the whole task of calling up companies and endlessly keeping his cell phone pressed to his ears made the fledging lawyer want to file a law suit against anything that remotely resembled a phone.

Besides, the college was abuzz with activity. Dance rehearsals, inviting outstation colleges and arranging for different celebrities to sing, dance or lecture accordingly and alternately ensured that nobody had time to even pretend to be of any help.

Ankur decided that he suddenly liked the exam season better, but Vyas had no such doubts. On the pretext of negotiating with the prospective sponsors he would sneak out of the campus to meet Caroline, with whom he would hold negotiations of a different kind!

As final year students now, this was their last chance to participate in a college festival. Hence the otherwise absconding elements in class also decided to chip in. Pavan Nair, normally, would rather slink back home and munch tangy banana chips. Yet now he was actively involved in organising of all things, a Salsa dance workshop. Souvik and Jaishree also managed to synchronise their lives through dance rehearsals and quite naturally, he was more keen on showing his hospitality to Jaishree than to the outstation colleges, of which he was in charge.

Sonali meanwhile was busy sending to the printer corrected copies of the ‘Daily Schedule’ that would be distributed as pamphlets. Just as she was coordinating her own wardrobe for the four day fest with as much if not more precision!

There was of course a ‘Control Room’ wherein things were mostly out of control! Ankur and a couple of other guys would literally camp out in the rather cramped room that was cluttered with paraphernalia that could only be found during a college festival. Erecting a make shift stage at the centre of the stadium, arranging flood lights, and carting along a video camera to record the insanity were some of the things the juniors were in charge of. Dozing off on chairs within the control room, playing referee in potential yelling matches, and sharing hot pizza, a clipping of which was shown on the giant screen during the fest, were some of the other things that kept the lawyers deeply engaged.

A frenzied tizzy that kept everybody busy had swept over the college and a mood of anticipation filled the air. Mad, bad and sad, however the preparations were, one thing was clear, everyone could hardly wait for the fest to begin!

Thirty-Three

‘Caroline is getting engaged,’ Vyas announced with a deadpan expression the next evening when they were sitting in Ankur’s room. Ankur who was busy copying an assignment stopped for a second. It was a reaction similar to the one two years ago, when he had heard some rattling from the cupboard.

‘She is getting engaged to her cousin and moving to Dubai,’ Vyas said in a monotone, as if reading the news bulletin. Ankur closed his book and got up from his desk to come and sit next to Vyas. Ankur knew he ought to console his friend, but he had a strong urge to congratulate him instead. Knowing Caroline, she would already be on her way to terrorising the underworld in Dubai. Frankly, Ankur was happy for his friend, though he had the good sense of not airing his views then.

Vyas, meanwhile, got up from the edge of the bed where he had been sitting, and began pacing the floor. Ankur wanted to say something but somewhere at the back of his mind, he knew that the heaviest moments need the lightest touch. Vyas slowly came and sat onAnkur’s desk, and then, without a trigger, started laughing uncontrollably.

It had begun as a slow sad laugh, but half a minute later it went full throttle. Ankur was scared. But Vyas kept laughing like the members of the early morning laughter clubs.

Ankur got up quickly and sat next to Vyas patting his arm. It was more to reassure himself than Vyas in the face of such an obvious display of hysteria. But Vyas continued to laugh until even Ankur felt like joining in. Perhaps the comic situation of informing others about his girlfriend’s impending engagement is what amused Vyas most. Or perhaps, as Ankur was beginning to believe, Vyas’s laughter was one out of sheer relief!

‘So Caroline is going to Dubai huh?! I’m sure she’ll miss her graveyard,’ said Ankur, attempting to be funny to join in the laughter. Vyas kept laughing. Encouraged, Ankur continued, ‘She honestly was scary. Caroline ought to wear a Halloween costume for her wedding?’ Ankur said laughing even louder.

Vyas went quiet at the mention of ‘wedding’. Then it started again. But this time, even as he laughed, two fat drops rolled down simultaneously from the corner of each eye.

Just watching his best friend like that, Ankur almost felt a stab of physical pain. As he put his arm around Vyas in a masculine embrace, Ankur suddenly realised how much easier was it to accompany Vyas to graveyards, than to see him like this.

Asmile is priceless. And Ankur would do anything to bring back the smile on Vyas’s face.

Thirty-Four

‘If all was left to women, there would be no civilisation; only candle light dinners,’ The elocution topic was announced amid much hooting from the primarily male audience. Debates and JAM sessions at AIU College had to be seen to be believed. Every year a hall full of students managed to create new records in perversion!

The college festival was officially for four days only, though a day prior to the inauguration, Ankur had to stand at the crowded railway station with a placard in hand. Like a displaced Statue of Liberty. Outstation colleges had to be escorted to the campus in the rickety buses hired for the occasion. Then arrangements for their stay within the hostel had to be made. But finally, that part of the ordeal was over. The college festival had officially begun!

‘IT’S LEGAL’ kick started with a lengthy formal speech by the Dean, which everyone in the audience wanted kick-stopped! The opening ceremony was an excuse for the Dean not to close his mouth. The old Dean went on and on about the history and geography of the college and the fidgety audience could hardly wait for a change in subject.

The students of the college had perfected the art of giving a consistent glassy stare, but those from outstation colleges felt a little differently. The engineers in the hall seemed more interested in engineering a device that could air lift the bald Dean and deposit him outside the institute gates. The lawyers from other colleges pretended not to look too bored as the Dean made full use of his freedom of speech. The ceremony was taking place in the plush air-conditioned auditorium whose padded seats were designed to absorb the steady monologue of the Dean and other chief guests on stage.

Those outside the auditorium followed their single point agenda of living it up!

There were crowds surging between the wide semicircle of food and game stalls with a juke box playing blaring music to a dancing crowd going berserk!

Songs were being requested for, remixed songs were being played, and several unwanted elements who ought to have been requested to stay out of a college festival found a chance to rub shoulders with the students. Aseedy looking character approached Jaishree and persistently asked if she wanted to star in a ‘pitcher’. Souvik counter questioned the shady ‘filuum’ producer if he wanted to be carted out of the campus. If need be, neatly arranged in an earthen pitcher. This could technically be very well possible given that there were pottery workshops which Jaishree and her dainty hands were to participate in shortly.