Charulata will not leave me alone. She calls ten, twelve times a day and sends messages with random guys to my hostel room. “Can we meet”? Her notes fills the trash can next to my bed. Jaan? Are you there? Sometimes she doesn’t even write a word in the notes sent — They are just blank, but I know it’s her. She stands outside the window for as long as five minutes as she passes by, staring. I know she thinks she can get to me again. As for me, I am trying harder than I ever have before to stay away from her. Sometimes she calls in the hostel phone middle of the night — The shrill ringing in the corridor fills the halls and I instinctively know it’s her, and my legs reach reflexively to walk outside the room to get it, but I’ve always snapped out of it just enough to stop myself before it’s too late. I’m scared and terribly lonely, but I keep telling myself that anything is better than descending back into hell with this girl.
That cold fall day when I returned to A.V College after my visit downtown with Charulata, I felt jelly-legged, drugged. She winked as I got out of the bus and said she’d call me soon, and I had a pretty good idea that for her, soon meant days. I felt like a different person as I climbed the stairs to my room. I would forever be a boy who had went back kneeling to the girl who had called him a poor penniless f***er and that was after she snagged him away from her best friend and roommate with lies.
There was a folded note pinned to my door, my name written in the bold, black strokes of Parul’s fountain pen; I took a deep breath as I grabbed it.
“Meet me at the dhaba at seven”. It was unsigned.
I checked my watch. It was nearly seven. I had been out with Charulata since noon. My world was completely turned upside down, and I didn’t know what to do. My pockets were empty, and my face felt swollen. I wanted to run away. For the first time since leaving home to go to college, I wanted to call my parents and ask them to come pick me up and take me back to Bombay. On some level, I knew I was in way over my head, that the events of the previous weeks were beyond my understanding. But I was nineteen, and I felt too old to ask for help. I had made a mess of things, and now I had to pay the price.
I walked to the dhaba. Through the window, I could see Parul at our usual corner table. She was leaning on an elbow, her hair practically falling into her chai. I tried to read her face, the way she was holding herself, but she seemed purposely blank, affectless.
“Hi,” I said softly, sliding across the table from her.
She just sat there and looked at me, her usual little smile playing around the corners of her mouth.
I felt like sliding through the floor.
“Say something,” I pleaded.
She shook her head slowly from side to side.
“I’m so sorry,” I said. “I never meant for this to happen.”
Silence.
“She tricked me,” I went on. “I met her again because I thought she wanted to talk about you.”
“Have you done anything with her?” her voice was uncharacteristically shrill, and it was the only thing that gave her away. Other than that voice, she was the picture of languor.
I squeezed my eyes shut.
“No,” I answered, “I have never even kissed her but I did go out with her today.”
She pushed back her chair from the table, and I was afraid she was going to leave.
“Parul, she disgusted me,” I said quickly. “I was completely grossed out.”
She stopped, that familiar, amused glint returning to her eyes.
“Really?,” she said.
“I swear to you, it will never happen again.”
In the weeks that followed, I kept my word to Parul. I didn’t answer my phone, and I left my dorm through the back entrance in case Charulata was waiting on me. I told no one — not my other friends, certainly not my parents. Parul allowed me back into her life; we never talked about it. It was as if it had never happened.
Then one afternoon Parul invited me to her twenty-first birthday party, which was going to be held at the dorm room off campus from where she lived with her senior class roommate and Charulata.
“Oh, Parul, I can’t possibly go,” I told her.
“Why not?”
“I don’t think I should see Charulata.”
“She won’t be there,” she replied. “she’s going to be away to Pune to visit her parents.”
The night of Parul’s birthday party I took a rattling government bus to the rooms in upper downtown Sangamner. The bus dropped me off the highway and I walked the rest of the distance as I made my way up the front walk to the warmly lit red-brick house that, despite my having visited that neighborhood of homes, impressed me with its sprawling elegance. I peeked through the open front door, and saw Charulata standing there, her back to me.
I could have run back to the bus stop and taken the next bus home. No one had seen me. But instead, shivering, I pushed the door open and walked inside. Parul rushed over to me, drink in hand. she looked particularly beautiful, her hair gleaming in the candlelit foyer.
“Try this,” she said, handing me the glass. “It’s a Sherry.”
“What are you doing?” I whispered. “You told me she wouldn’t be here.”
She smiled at me and wafted away, leaving me standing there.
I got drunker that night than I ever had before. The two plastic cups of Sherry tasted delicious; it was a pinkish-red drink, and I didn’t know it was a fairly potent strain of wine. I quickly downed the first one, then asked for another. I kept circling the room, staying at a distance from Charulata. I knew she was staring at me, but I wouldn’t look back. I drifted in and out of conversations with other guests but all I could think about was Parul. Clearly, she had tricked me into coming to this party. She had known Charulata would be here all along. But why? I felt like a pawn in some elaborate game, and it infuriated me.
Close to midnight, Charulata gathered everyone together and made an announcement.
“If you’ll all follow me,” she said, “I have something to show you.”
The whole crowd moved outside, around the back of the house, to the small sized garden and open area. With a flourish, Charulata opened the nearest door. A shiny black second hand scooty was parked outside.
“For the stunning Parul, from all of us on her twenty-first birthday,” she announced. Parul clapped her hands and laughed with delight.
She looked at me then, out of the corner of her eye. What did she want? Was she testing me? I felt like slapping her.
Charulata caught up with me as everyone trooped back into the house. It was the first time she and I had spoken since she dropped me off at the dorm that afternoon almost a month earlier.Her other roommate was walking just ahead of us, in a group. She was even more gorgeous than Parul, and seemed, at 1.30 am , still stunning and glamorous.
She bent down and whispered in my ear.
“You look really handsome in this black shirt”
I felt my legs wobble, a wave of heat. In my semi sodden, confused state, Charulata was suddenly appealing. She was Lordess of the Manor, bestower of shiny bikes, a benign glamorous figure.
“If you call me, I will call you back,” I said, turning to her. In the dark of the night, I saw her eyes shining, and a flash of white teeth.
“Well now, that’s finally good to hear Z,” she replied.
That night, I was too tired to take the bus back which had long left anyway, and Parul insisted I sleep over. I told her we had to talk, but I was yawning and slurring my words, and when I tried to focus my eyes, I felt nauseated. She made up the bed in the hall room, and as soon as my head hit the pillow, I passed out. I dreamt terrible dreams — dreams unlike any I’d had before or since. I saw Charulata Talkar sitting on a toilet on the other end of the room from me, legs spread, a steady stream of urine splashing over into the bowl and out of it, slowly filling the room, drowning me as I tried to swim away to survive.
When I awoke with a start, I saw her walking through the corridor in the dim shadows of dawn, wearing a blue silken blouse and black heels.
I pretended to be asleep until I was sure she was gone.
