The Great Indian College Romance

17. Dissipate

I had hundreds upon hundreds of unread text messages from just about anybody who could get my number. I had deactivated my Instagram account the moment I had gotten home. I had thought I had the strength to look at those posts again but I was wrong. 

One glance at the account and I was done with the social networking app. 

Thankfully no one was home to question my getting home early. Both mum and papa were at work. I figured if they actually did ask me why I was home early I could just say that I didn't have practice because there were no upcoming competitions. Seemed plausible enough. 

So that is what I did. When they found me home early for the next three days I just told them I didn't have to stay. They had gotten used to my getting home late since I often stayed late or went out with friends. 

There was no way I could tell my parents about what was happening. 

I mean out of both I was closest to my mother but that didn't mean I spent hours telling her about every single detail of my life. Sure she remained updated about the general ongoing stuff in my life but that was the extent of her insight. Like I'd mentioned, they were both not great conversationalists. They were pretty occupied on the professional front. 

Besides, getting them involved would only make things messier. I would deal with all of this when I had gathered myself back up. 

I had gotten good at pretending to be completely fine so dinner time wasn't anything out of the ordinary. 

Smriti had been giving me constant updates on the situation and I would reply to her occasionally. 

The account was taken down on the second day but the creator remained unknown. Red Wagon had issued a statement on their official Instagram page requesting people to report and block the account and not circulate false rumours about me, their talented junior and an upright member of Rhapsody who had won laurels for the college. 

Like that mattered to whoever had gone to such lengths. 

Vahni had been strangely quiet but it was probably because Smriti kept her updated. I still hadn't talked to anybody but her since the whole RedWagonSlut debacle. I felt a little guilty about worrying everybody else but I honestly did not have it in me to do anything about it. 

***

The morning of the fourth day I got a text message from Smriti that read:

Call me ASAP. Very Important. 

I decided it must have been important enough for her to text me this since she had been very mindful of my needing space. 

She answered almost instantly. 

"Hi Smriti," I said.

"Hi Meera, how are you doing?" she asked in the same gentle tone she had used three days ago. 

"I'm fine," 

"I am so sorry to bother you with this but if it were something we could handle ourselves, we wouldn't have bothered you at all. So Nirav took the matter to the college's Internal Complaints Committee and registered it under cyberbullying. All of us have given our statements. They just need your statement to move forward."

"Smriti I am grateful for everything you have done but I just don't think I am up for that." I sighed. 

Going back to college when the incident was so fresh in everybody's mind seemed too much. The account had been taken down but I am sure there was a huge archive of screenshots.