2 States - The Story Of My Marriage | Page 8

their notes. They gave me suspicious looks. ‘I only came to study,’ I said and walked out of the dorm fast. I don’t know why I felt the need to give an explanation.

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She came out of the research assistant’s room with her microeconomics quiz results. She walked past the queued up students toward me. By this time, everyone on campus knew of her friendship, or as someone would say, siblingship, with me. She wore denim shorts and a pink T-shirt, drawing extra long glances from the boys from engineering colleges. ‘B-plus, people say it is a good grade,’ she said, holding up her answer sheet. ‘Your shorts are too short,’ I said. ‘Show me your grade,’ she said, snatching my paper. ‘A minus, wow, you cracked an A-minus!’ I didn’t react. We walked back towards our dorms. ‘You cannot score more than me in economics, I don’t believe this,’ she said. ‘You are a mechanical engineer. I am a university gold medalist in the subject.’ ‘Show the medal to Prof Chatterjee,’ I said in a serious tone. ‘Hey, you OK?’ I kept quiet. ‘Anyway, I owe you a treat. Your numerical saved me. Are you hungry?’ I nodded. People who live in hostels are always hungry. ‘Let’s go to Rambhai,’ she said. ‘You are not coming to Rambhai like this,’ I said. ‘Like what?’ ‘Like in these shorts,’ I said. ‘Excuse me. Is it a Delhi thing or a Punjabi thing? Controlling what women wear?’ ‘It is a common sense thing. It is outside campus. People stare,’ I said.

‘Enough people stare within campus. I’m fine, let’s go,’ she said and walked towards the campus gates. ‘I don’t need a treat. It’s fine,’ I said, turning in the opposite direction towards my dorm. ‘Are you serious? You are not coming?’ she called from behind. I shook my head. ‘Up to you.’ I ignored her and continued to walk. ‘Are you going to come for the study session tonight?’ I shrugged to signify ‘whatever’. ‘Any dress code for me?’ she said. ‘You are not my girlfriend. Wear whatever. What do I care?’ I said.

We didn’t talk about the afternoon episode when I came to her room in the evening. She had changed into black track pants and an oversized full-sleeve black T-shirt. She was covered up enough to go for a walk in Afghanistan. I kind of missed her shorts, but I had brought it upon myself. I opened the marketing case that we had to prepare for the next day. ‘Nirdosh – nicotine-free-cigarettes,’ I read out the title. ‘Who the fuck wants that? I feel like a real smoke,’ she said. I gave her a dirty look. ‘What? Am I not allowed to use the F words? Or is it that I expressed a desire to smoke?’ ‘What are you trying to prove?’

‘Nothing. I want you to consider the possibility that women are intelligent human beings. And intelligent people don’t like to be told what to wear or do, especially when they are adults. Does that make any sense to you?’ ‘Don’t be over-smart,’ I said. ‘Don’t patronize me,’ she said. ‘There are other ways to attract attention than by wearing less clothes,’ I said. ‘I didn’t do it to attract attention. I wear shorts because I like to wear shorts.’ ‘Can we study?’ I opened the case again. We kept quiet for half an hour and immersed ourselves in our books. ‘I wasn’t trying to attract attention,’ she said again, looking up from her books. ‘It doesn’t matter to me,’ I said. ‘Are you jealous?’ ‘Are you kidding me?’ I slammed my book shut. ‘No, just checking. Let’s study.’ She turned back to her books, a smile on her face. I threw the pillow at her. She laughed and slammed it on my head. I realised this was the first contact sport I had played with her apart from shaking hands.

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We studied together every day for the next month. Even though I pretended to be fine with the ‘just friends’ thing, it was killing me. Every time I looked up from my books, I saw her face. Every time I saw her, I wanted to grab her face and kiss her. The only way I could focus was by imagining that Prof Chatterjee was in our room. Even outside the study sessions, it wasn’t easy. Every time I saw a guy talk to her or laugh with her, a hot flush started from my stomach and reached my face. Sometimes, she would tell me how funny some guy in section A was or how cute some guy in section B was and I wanted to go with a machine gun and shoot the respective guys in sections A and B. ‘What? They should go full on with the advertising campaign,