When a Lawyer Falls in Love (8 page)

‘You know, Caroline and I have been having problems…,’ said Vyas, his tone getting serious.

Problems? The girl herself was a problem, thought Ankur. It was sick. There were too many love stories happening at the same time. There were bound to be problems.

‘Caroline has this annoying male cousin…,’ Annoying. Now that was a word that Ankur was familiar with. He could hardly wait to launch into his own tale about the annoying Rohit.

The two young lawyers were sitting at their wooden desks in class and Vyas was telling Ankur of his sad love life. Vyas usually never did that. This had to be serious.

‘Caroline keeps going out for coffee with this guy Vincent… whom she calls her
cousin
,’ said a visibly irritated Vyas.

‘Then tell her not to,’ said Ankur assertively, not sure whether he ought to sound sympathetic or angry.

‘I have. But she says I’m being stupid,’ Vyas replied dejectedly.

Now this was something new. A girl who breaks into the boys’ hostel and comes climbing drainpipes has finally found something she calls stupid. The girl was making progress. It called for a celebration.

‘As a boyfriend, I guess you have the right…,’ Ankur was wisely counselling, when Sonali appeared.

‘Rohit and I have to do this assignment…may I please xerox your notes?’

Did she say xerox? No lady, there are certain things a gentleman can’t allow, especially when requested for, for a scoundrel.

‘Xerox, yeah of course!’ is what Ankur heard himself say, his chubby cheeks flushing. This was the first time after that pencil jabbing session that Sonali had actually come up to talk to him. He would let her xerox his notes. But he needed to photocopy his brain first. He was fast losing it.

‘I don’t believe you actually gave her your notes,’ Vyas said, his expression, a degree more pained than what it had been when Ankur had seen it last.

‘You are such a lovesick puppy,’ Vyas declared with a tired smile. Well, welcome to the club, was all that the dazed Ankur wanted to say.

Sixteen

From September to December each year, there were a series of competitions and quizzes held in all the colleges that surrounded the
All Idiots of the Universe
. Ankur had managed to drag Vyas with him to all of them. Vyas willingly followed, with a slightly apologetic smile. With a dominating girlfriend ordering him around for almost half a decade, Vyas was used to being bossed around. Souvik meanwhile took part in literary activities of a different kind. Poetry writing was something that he did in his free time. Apart from singing, playing the guitar and thinking of Jaishree, of course.

Yet, unlike his other hobbies, poetry allowed Souvik to think specifically of Jaishree as he penned his verses chewing his pen cap. After several hours of practice, he had finally composed a poem, which could be shown to that lovely poetry in motion.

After the trip to the exhibition, Souvik felt certain that Jaishree would at least pause to read his poem. Whether she chose to make a paper plane out of it later, would hardly matter, as long as the doe shaped eyes gave his poem a glance. And him a chance. Even his thoughts had begun to rhyme. It was amazing!

Souvik soon set about to write the poem of his life, but his initial attempts were disastrous. Yet, an hour of vigorous scribbling later, Souvik had produced his self-declared masterpiece and took it to the library where he knew Jaishree would be.

‘Thwack!’ Souvik almost visualised the slap, which he was, in all probability, about to receive. Jaishree was seated in the library, her pretty head bent over a law textbook, taking down notes.

Souvik consoled himself that the gods above were on his side. Inside the library, with ‘Silence’ boards put up in every conceivable corner, it was unlikely that Jaishree would break the rule and produce a high decibel slap.

Besides, even if she did, at least there wouldn’t be a very large audience to witness the event. The library always had a very low percentage of humanity. Anything would be better than being snubbed on campus.

Souvik cautiously walked up to the girl whose long plait had managed to lasso his brain and jerk it right out of his skull. What Souvik was about to do was potentially dangerous. It could jeopardise forever a half decade long friendship, or even worse, permanently activate female tear glands. This last was a real possibility considering this was Jaishree. Yet love is blind, and Souvik was out to prove it.

‘Er…hi! How’s life?’ asked Souvik as he came and occupied the chair opposite Jaishree. Even as he said this, Souvik was filled with an alarming sense of deja-vu. People talk of pick up lines, Souvik had a standard opening line.

Jaishree raised her kohl lined eyes and smiled. She actually smiled! Souvik simply couldn’t help breaking into a wide grin. Was it legal to dance in the library?

After that day’s fiasco, Souvik had not actually spoken to Jaishree. Not that Jaishree spoke much in the first place. Yet Souvik for the past two weeks had been nervously uncomfortable around Jaishree as if the two had had a fight.

‘Er…I just wanted to give you this,’ Souvik said and placed a card in a white cover on her book. Then he quickly got up and left. That was the nice thing about libraries, one could simply do away with courtesies just by whispering hoarsely.

Jaishree opened the cover of the card. Inside was a glossy picture of a cherubic baby wearing an oversize cap and smiling gaily into the camera. Within the card was a three stanza poem written in a very neat and highly stylised handwriting. The poem read:

In life if one is fortunate one knows,
Beauty of both body and mind,
And in the little I’ve seen of the world,
That’s the rarest blend one can find.

I’m just one of your many admirers,
And you’ll meet others along the way,
Whose life you’ll touch in a manner,
More than words can say!

So here’s a heartfelt blessing,
That may you attain every dream, however high,
And though I don’t know much of astrology, I predict,
Your husband will be one lucky guy!

Jaishree blushed when she read the last sentence. Souvik always managed to make her creamy complexion turn a beetroot red. Jaishree gently placed the card back in its cover and tried to get back to law. But the Bharatanatyam dancer’s mind had already begun to do ballet.

‘I still haven’t understood this whole graveyard thing. You guys actually met in a graveyard?’ Souvik was asking his friends hanging about the canteen.

Now that his own love life was finally headed in some direction, Souvik had a renewed interest in love stories in general. Yet Vyas was hardly interested. After all, his love story that had begun in a graveyard had quite logically become a horror story.

‘I don’t know…,’ Vyas said sighing loudly and adding more carbon dioxide to the place. ‘Maybe I shouldn’t have met Caroline in the first place.’ Now that was a profound statement. Ankur actually stopped munching on his bhelpuri to listen.

‘I wouldn’t have wanted to meet her, if I was in your place,’ Pavan declared thinking he was being very funny. Yet looking at Vyas’s tragic expression, he was forced to hastily amend his sentence by saying, ‘I mean, in a graveyard… why would anyone want to date someone from there?’ This line rather involuntarily sounded funny and Souvik smiled. Yet Ankur had the vague feeling that his roommate’s relationship was about to be buried forever.

‘I mean…we’ve fought before…but never over a third person,’ said Vyas, lifting his spoon in a tragic slow motion. When people are sad, they automatically become a little theatrical.

‘You should meet up and discuss this,’ Souvik reasoned.

‘But what exactly is the problem?’ asked Ankur.

‘It’s her cheesy, cheap cousin! This guy “Vincent” from Dubai, keeps buying her gifts, taking her out and playfully touching her all over…,’ Vyas said as he angrily jabbed his spring roll with a fork. ‘And yes he happens to be a Malayali whom they forgot to ship to the “Gelf”.’

Souvik smiled and turned to look at Pavan who seemed oblivious as he was busy creating bubbles in his cola. ‘See, getting worked up is no solution,’ Ankur consoled, assuming the tone his own mother used each time Ankur would vehemently declare that he was giving up law.

‘That day when “three” of us went out together, people assumed they were a couple and I was her brother!’ Vyas fumed and Pavan involuntarily giggled. Pulling a straight face Pavan justified, ‘In the south, cousins are allowed to marry.’

‘That’s just the point. Caroline’s family loves Vincent, and so does she,’ Vyas said his tone agitated, like he was about to cry. ‘Listen…,’ Souvik spoke gently patting Vyas. ‘This cousin has come down after so long, maybe they’re just hanging out and catching up…’

‘I always thought she wasn’t right for you…maybe you should dump her,’ said Ankur, perhaps for the first time voicing his heartfelt opinion.

‘Listen, let him decide. Give it time Vyas,’ advised Souvik. He was using the word ‘listen’ a lot.

‘This too shall pass…,’ announced Pavan, Zen like. The Samurai movies he had spent the summer watching had definitely had their side effects.

Ankur was impressed. The good-natured Malayali had, for once, said something very sensible to brighten the ‘admos-fear’ that had hung over the ‘bo-eez’.

Seventeen

The lawyers were unusually excited one evening. It wasn’t over a case being fought in the Supreme Court, but over a VJ hunt being held by a music channel.

Ankur never considered himself a singer. In fact he was convinced that forget courtship, if he ever sang to his girl during their honeymoon, she’d make the lawyer himself draft divorce papers.

Souvik felt differently. He arrived at the venue of the VJ hunt and kept strumming his guitar till he was asked to stop. It was a VJ hunt, he was politely reminded, and singing was not exactly a requisite. The lawyer then tried to use his debating skills with the organisers and yielded only when told he would have to face the music instead. Ever since penning that near love letter to Jaishree, Souvik was convinced that he was destined to do great things in his life.

They say if a certain raga is sung at a certain pitch, it produces rain. Vyas could do that with any song. Not that it would invite the rain gods, but would certainly have people running helter-skelter for cover. Strangely enough, Vyas had managed to charm the judges, though his dress sense, he was told, was a decade behind time.

But one tricky question towards the end had him in knots. He was asked to name the sexiest object he knew. The bald judge with a French beard specified with a naughty grin that it didn’t have to be a sex toy. Vyas smiled, embarrassed. He had never seen a sex toy, leave alone attempting to name one before a hall full of noisy teenage participants.

‘The sexiest object for me is…,’ he said taking the microphone, ‘…umm… an ice cream.’ Vyas suddenly had trouble framing a complete sentence. An amused titter ran through the audience. Vyas was standing on a makeshift stage with bright orange light bouncing off the bridge of his oily nose. It was afternoon time and he was in the banquet hall of a plush hotel in front of a panel of celebrity judges. Vyas simply couldn’t have chosen a more elite venue or audience to embarrass himself.

‘Why an ice cream?’ asked the female judge with golden brown hair.

‘An ice cream…since…err…it’s sexy…it has multipurpose uses, you know,’ Vyas replied smiling with a naughty glint in his eyes. Caroline’s constant company had some practical uses. Vyas could actually crack a perverted joke with ease.

‘That is wicked!’ the female judge with long red nails declared, cackling into the mike. The bald ear stud wearing judge who sat next to her wasn’t as amused. Probably he was her boyfriend or he was just plain jealous of her peroxide mane. Or wig. Or whatever. He took the mike and jocularly declared, ‘You are a very bad guy…and bad guys never win!’

Ankur had always liked his teeth. They were all square and glinted uniformly each time he scrubbed them with pungent tooth powder. If there was one thing in his anatomy that he took good care of, it was his teeth. As a kid, Ankur would hold a solemn burial ceremony each time he lost one of his milk teeth. A welcome party would follow, with the first traces of his new tooth. That’s probably why his teeth served him well, accentuating the smile on his chubby face.

Even if he got tongue-tied and brain dead around a certain Sonali Shah, on stage, Ankur Palekar was a different person. He had learnt early, the art of public speaking, punctuating his speeches with smiles. Ankur knew that even if he was not sure of what he was saying, if only he could smile at the appropriate moments, he could get by. After all some people had made a career out ofit.