Читать книгу The Unexpected Son - Shobhan Bantwal - Страница 10

Vinita closed her textbook and tossed it aside to gaze outside her window. It was a typical winter morning in Palgaum—foggy, nippy, and disinclined to welcome the sun. Warmth rarely arrived until late morning at this time of year. The dew that settled over the grass and shrubs lingered until noon.

She had her red cardigan on over her salwar-kameez, the one her mother had knitted years ago. It looked faded and thread-bare, but it was incredibly soft after innumerable washings. And it was still her favorite protection against the damp chill.

In a few minutes she’d have to stir out of her room, take a bath, eat something, and head for college. Her mother was already making breakfast for the family. The sounds of pots and pans clanging had started to emerge from the kitchen about twenty minutes ago—Mummy’s not-so-subtle wake-up call to the family.

Vinita wasn’t sure what her mother was preparing, but the aroma of phodnee—seasoning made of smoking oil with mustard and cumin seeds sputtering in it—was seeping in through the crack beneath her door. Visions of a hot breakfast with a steaming cup of tea usually made her stomach rumble. But today they didn’t.

Picking up the book, she tried to make sense out of the words on the page, but a minute later put it down again. Studying was becoming hard lately. Pressing her fingers to her eyes, she wondered why she was having such difficulty focusing on her studies. This had never happened to her before.

She’d spent the last couple of weeks in a haze. She mostly kept herself sequestered in her room, sitting at her old teakwood desk, a hand-me-down from Vishal’s college days. It even had his initials crudely carved in the corner: VBS.

But keeping herself glued to her desk wasn’t unusual. In fact her parents expected it of her. She had preliminary exams to study for—prelims as everyone called them. She was a good student and she hoped to maintain her grades. She was looking forward to earning her bachelor’s degree in two years. She had aspirations of graduating at the top of her class.

No second class would be tolerated in the Shelke family. Vishal had been a brilliant student, too. He had gone on to become a chartered accountant and had a promising job with a large financial corporation in Bombay. Academically she was expected to follow in his footsteps.

But the odd meeting with Som crept into her mind frequently, distracting her from her goal of becoming a statistician. And the fact that something that trivial could upset her steadfastness was annoying. She had no time for silly daydreams. And frankly, a drifter like Som Kori wasn’t worth one single minute of her time.

His behavior was odd, too. He’d asked her to call him Som, flirted with her, and claimed he wanted to be her friend, and yet he hadn’t even bothered to acknowledge her presence on campus. It was as if that chance encounter in the dark had never happened. Maybe it hadn’t meant anything to a man like him. Maybe he had feigned interest in her out of politeness. Maybe she was reading too much into a casual conversation. Maybe—

She gave a frustrated groan and shifted her fingers from her eyes to her temples. All that conjecture was giving her a headache.

Several times she’d observed him lounging as usual with his gang of five by the massive wrought-iron gate of the college compound. They called themselves The Sixers—all of them athletes with little or no interest in academics. A couple of them leaned against the gate while the others sat on the brick wall nearby, like Humpty Dumpty, legs dangling.

They all wore similar clothes that looked almost like uniforms—tight, bell-bottom pants that hugged their jock buttocks, and dark-colored shirts left open at the neck and a bit beyond to showcase their manly, hair-sprinkled chests. They blew rings of cigarette smoke, and through the gray haze watched the world, especially the girls, go by.

Theirs was a life of idle indulgence. Except when they played cricket. That was the one thing they excelled at—the only thing that got them moving at lightning speed.

When did they attend classes, if they did? Vinita sometimes wondered. How did they manage to stay in college if they kept failing courses? Did they have any ambitions in life beyond wandering around the campus, playing cricket, and letting life pass them by?

She more or less knew the answer. They were wealthy. Their fathers donated large sums of money to the small, privately run Shivraj College. With that kind of backing, the boys could get a dummy degree certificate without ever attending a class.

College was a playground to them—until they became too old to be students, and were eventually forced to join the family business, get married, and settle down. She knew of several playboys like them, who’d taken the slow, lackadaisical route to adulthood.

Som and his pals made loud remarks when girls walked in and out of the gate each day—remarks that were often crude and hurtful if a girl was heavy or short or ugly. They teased and taunted and jeered mercilessly. Sometimes they gave an appreciative whistle or comment if a girl was pretty or passably attractive. The in-betweens were usually ignored.

And Vinita was an in-between. She had no illusions about her appearance. Her nose was tip-tilted, her chin pointed, and her eyes too wide-set to be considered pretty. Overall, it was an ordinary face. It would have been nice if she’d inherited more of her mother’s features, including her attractive smile, but her father’s genes had won out.

Fortunately Papa wasn’t an ugly man, just plain. He was of average height, with square shoulders and a belly that had started to grow in the past few years. His hair was beginning to fall out, too, the bald spot expanding rapidly. Everything about him was average, and so Vinita was average, too: height, weight, color—all of it. On special occasions, with a touch of makeup, she bordered on pleasant. And she was middle-class, not like the rich girls who attracted certain types of boys.

Considering all that, it wasn’t a surprise that Som hadn’t followed up on his so-called offer of friendship. Pulling herself out of her disruptive thoughts, she sat up straight, then peeled her eyes open and picked up her textbook one more time.

She couldn’t let that man interfere with her studies, her plans. Her life. She wouldn’t.