Wednesday Blues - PART II

Mrs. Sen, with her thorough professionalism was well known for her tendency to divide her students as they were promoted to class XII on the basis of their intelligence as to the ones who would make it to the IITs, the others who would make their way into the less prestigious institutes and still others who would switch over to the humanities streams after the boards were over. Anoushka was an above average student in school and Mrs. Sen’s having categorized her into the so called ‘middle’ category did not please her much. She convinced Mrs. Sen into changing her timings allowing her to come for the Wednesday evening classes, which comprised the so-called ‘intelligent’ batch. It was a fact though that Abhishek too came on Wednesdays but this, she did not know.
The first few days of-course they behaved as if they hardly knew each other. They had met just once earlier and that too hadn’t been an acquaintance of sorts. Then one of those days turned out to be her birthday, and he wished her ever so smilingly and shook hands. One day when he was sitting beside her and saying something to the girls who were sitting to her left she soon learned that he studied in the school that was pretty adjacent to her own. When she told him that, he smiled and said, “I know so many people from your school ! How come I don’t know you?”
“How do I know?” said Anoushka.
“Yeah!” he said. “I know Nita, Ronny, Asha, Disha, Priya, Siddhi”, he declared almost sardonically. “They happen to be my fan-club, you know that?” “And you are the latest to join in”, he smirked.
Anoushka wasn’t entertained. “Fan club?”, she repeated annoyingly. She at once knew that he was one of those guys who thought no end of themselves. She immediately withdrew and stopped speaking to him for a while.
Then one day when they were having a debate competition in school she spotted him with some of his friends . They had come over as spectators for the event and she saw him taking one of the seats in the back row. He hadn’t noticed her she thought.
They had a class that evening. She arrived in a pair of beige cargos and a melon tinted cropped top. They were running short of stools that day. It was eventually decided that they would have to share. The girls would have to share their seats with the guys in front and as Anoushka adjusted into a rather uncomfortable position that lay midway between two stools she felt a whiff of warm wind behind her ear that caused her closely cropped hair to fly in a direction antagonistic to gravity. She shuddered for a moment. It was Abhishek on her right, smelling heavily of Axe Voodoo who had just whispered something into her right ear. There he sat sharing half his seat with hers and giving what she felt, was a wry smile. Well she could not help noticing that their thighs touched, even so for a microsecond, or was it more than that ? There were goose bumps on her inner arms, after all she was straight from a girls convent, and one of those demure females, who had never had any close male friends.

“What did you just say?” she asked.
“Me?” “Well I was just asking, if you were comfortable !" . She could still feel the warmth of his breath behind her right ear and a shiver crept down her spine.
“Oh I sure am!” she immediately answered, checking herself.
“You people had this debate in school today……not much of a success huh?” he asked.
“Oh no! No one participated this year actually because of the boards; the juniors just managed it somehow.”
He turned when one of the boys called him from behind. They were talking about the latest Mumbai flick in town. He turned again to face her. “You saw Taal”, he asked.
“Nope”.
“You must be hating her, I mean Aishwarya. All girls hate her”, he concluded with an air that seemed to proclaim that he had preconceived and resolute notions about the opposite sex. He stressed on the word her as he said those words. She didn’t know what he meant. “I don’t hate her”, she replied musingly.
“ You don’t?” he asked. “Then you are not a girl” he blazoned out, grinning at the same time.
“Very funny!” She smiled as she shooed him off with her huge exercise book.
One of those days she asked him for his school question papers and he brought it next day as dutifully as would a boy in primary school. “But I want it this week itself ; we’ll be getting our answer scripts next week so….”. She assured him of sending them to him through Siddhi who went in his school bus. Siddhi was one of those anorexic class twelves who had the boys in the neighbouring schools go ga-ga as would one say to her ‘charisma’.
The next day when Anoushka came to class she found the boys teasing him about Siddhi. Not that it made much of a difference to her she smiled at him. He turned his face and almost made a grimace. She felt a pang of pain and wondered why. Was it jealousy ? Did she feel threatened by Siddhi ?
He was unusually seated or that she felt for he had taken one of the seats at the back. “I prefer being a backbencher”, he stated stridently. Then Roshni came in and sat beside him. She was one of those giggly females who were his ‘fans’ as he proclaimed, rather short and stocky and by no means attractive.
“Did you get your papers?” Anoushka asked him.
“Which ones?”
“The ones that you gave me”, she said with not even the slightest hint of impatience.
“If someone suddenly asks you in the blue what papers, what are you supposed to understand?” he snapped. He asserted himself so very majestically causing the female beside him (Roshni ofcourse) to break into peals of assorted giggles and laughs and heaven only knew what else. It irked Anoushka just as it would have irked anybody else. She was no doubt egoistic but never had any boy slighted her in this manner.
“ I’ll slap you!”, she snapped back at him. “Did I overreact?” she thought to herself. But it was too late, she could no longer take back her words.

“Ha Ha !!!You will ??”, he peeved her further. Mrs. Sen just stepped in, to start the day’s lessons and the argument stopped then and there. They avoided looking at each other throughout those two hours. She hated him.
Next week they had their usual classes. Anoushka had arrived in a navy blue vest with a sequined -V- neck and white parallels. He came in a good five minutes later and sat by her side. He wore a grey full-sleeved jersey and smelt of what he generally did, Axe.

“Looking good!”, he complimented her, as if nothing had happened. “And sign this.”
“Thanks!”, she put in. “But what’s this?”
“It’s a teacher’s day card. It’s for Ma’am.”
“Oh sure!”, she chimed in. She put in her signature and he signed below her. They were talking again normally that day.
“Was he genuinely apologetic?” she thought as the class ended that day and he escorted her to her car. But now it hardly mattered. She did not even remember that she hated him a week back. (to be continued...)