1.1 | Under The Clear Summer Sky | ✓

20 | her insecurities

It was a pleasant Sunday evening in August. The students had finished their midterm papers and were celebrating. In contrast, the teachers' suffering period had begun. Correction of papers were the part of the job that teachers hated the most.

Anu and Vineet sat in his living room, correcting their respective papers. Vineet had invited Anu for dinner, as was the routine they had fallen into. They had decided to sit together and give each other company, as they corrected papers.

"Whose are you on?" Anu ask, scrutinizing on the spelling of 'success' by a student. "Sana's." was the response.

"How has she done?"

Vineet nodded, looking a little impressed. "She has done pretty well. She's-" He wrote the score on the first page of the answer sheet and placed it away. "scoring 23 out of 25."

Anu looked up from her paper. "That's pretty good."

"How has she done in English?"

"Fairly well. It's as much as I expected. 73 out of 80."

Vineet nodded.

The next paper was Shrest's. After correcting a few pages, Vineet sighed. Anu shot him a questioning glance. 

"He's hasn't done well."

Anu slowly sat up. "What's wrong?"

"Shrest hasn't done well. He has gotten only 2 of the MCQ questions right."

Anu blinked. "Only two?"

Vineet shifted through the pages. "He hasn't attempted the last section. It was for 5 marks. He's losing 15 marks already."

Anu leaned on the table. "Is he attentive in class?"

Vineet nodded.

"Has he come forward with doubts to you?"

"He hardly talks to me, Anu."

Anu paused. She wanted to prod at the reason but didn't want to intrude in something that wasn't her business.

"Has your mom arranged for a tutor for him?"

He shook his head. "She's asking me to help him out. She says why should she pay for someone else when I'm there."

He let out another sigh. "When I ask him if he needs help, he just ignores me. I don't know what to do."

Vineet pulled out his glasses and rubbed his forehead. "I need to go have a talk with him, later. I think I'll go tomorrow."

After a few minutes, he put his glasses back on and continued correcting the paper. Anu returned to her paper, reflecting on all that Vineet had revealed to her. She finished correcting Shrest's paper. "He has done pretty well in English. 76 on 80!" Anu announced, proudly.

Vineet sighed, feigning sadness. "Are you rubbing it in my face?"

Anu, who had only been trying to uplift his mood, froze. "Wait, no, that's not what-"

Vineet stood up, slowly. "I'll go check on the soup." He let out a sigh and turned away, still feigning sadness.

"He's such a drama queen." Anu mumbled to herself. She received two notifications on her phone.

The first was an email from a publishing company.

"I'm sorry to say that our editors have decided to pass on your book for publishing. We wish you luck on your writing endeavors." 

Anu stared at that. She had already seen the same statement being emailed to her by many publishers. Her eyebrows crunched, she bit her lip. She couldn't tear up at another person's house.

She checked the other notification.

"Hey, Anu. As you know, my marriage is tomorrow. I need to come early tomorrow to help me with the dressing up. You okay with it?"

It was a message from her cousin, Vidhi. Another dismal reminder that Anu was pathetically single. Anu glanced up at the light coming from the kitchen. Was her friendship with Vineet going to go anywhere romantically?

"Dinner's ready." Vineet emerged and placed the utensils on the table. Anu jumped up, trying to fix her expression and look fine. But, she had underestimated how observant Vineet was. He had watched her for the first few minutes of dinner.

"What's wrong?"

"Hm? Nothing?"

"No, you look down. What happened? The dinner isn't good?"

"No! It's really good, that's not it." She sighed, pushing around the peas on her plate with a spoon. "I think I told you that I'm trying to get this book I wrote published."

"Yeah."

"Well...I've been rejected countless times now. I'm thinking of giving up."

He continued watching her.

Anu quietly continued eating her dinner. They were silent, afterwards.

After dinner, Anu decided to correct a few more papers before going back to her apartment. Vineet's house had practically become her second house.

Vineet had pulled out his laptop and was browsing on it. All of a sudden, he called her and asked her to scoot closer to him.

"What's up?"

"Look at this." He shifted the screen of the laptop towards her. "There are ways to publish your writing online. To me, it looks like you'll actually have more benefits than traditional publishing."

Anu peered at it. 

"What do you think?"

Anu nodded, "I'll research this."

"If you publish online, I'll forward it to everyone I know and support it." He moved back the laptop to it's original position. 

Anu gazed at him. Her nose twitched. "But you haven't even read my writing. What if my writing is bad?"

"Nothing you do can be that bad."

Anu stared down at her lap, looking utterly discouraged. Countless rejections did have an effect on her although she liked to pretend it didn't.

Vineet smiled, softly. "I'll support whatever you do. I've read some of your writing back when we were young. It was really good. Just have a little more belief in yourself."

Anu didn't tell it out loud  but her crush on Vineet increased exponentially on that day.

✿

word count: 916 words