Dark Secrets

BOOK II [ THE PAST]

1

AJMER

Yuvansh was furious like never before. He knew his mother had packed , after a long time, his favourite lunch for school recess. He opened his tiffin box to find just one strand of delicious maggi noodles in the form of a smiley. It would have been  beeter if someone had just eaten it all, but the prankster left that 'smiley' as a taunt and that was galling. Yuvansh knew exactly who the prankster  was .

A few hours later , with a hunger roaring inside him,he stood by a small lane, his bicycle parked by the side. This was the lane that his tormentor and target took every day to reach home at around this time. "Today she will get it for me ", he thought . As a girl swerved into the lane on her bicycle,Yuvansh almost leaped on her.

"Dimpy ki bachhi! I won't spare you."

She let go of her bicycle to scuffle with him.He could have hit her when she ruthlessely yanked his hair, but he didn't.Taking the advantage of the fact Yuvansh wouldn't ever strike her no matter how angry he was with her,Dimpy clawed him mercilessly and then pushed him away. While he tried to recover his balance , she scampered to her house at the end of the lane. The scratches hurt as Yuvansh ran behind her.

Dimpy and Yuvansh , being neighbours, hadgrown up together. As much as they were each othre's bestfriend , they were each others arch nemesis as well. Together, they were infamous in the entire locality as devils on the rampage. There was not a single sweet shop in the locality that had not been pranked for free delicacies.Their notoriety was such that, for sometime now, whenever they popped into any of those shops, a peace offering of the day's special was given to each of them as" mooh dikhai", or in other words, just for showing up. Although Dimpy was a year younger to Yuvansh , they behaved like contemporaries- so much so that the difference in their genders has also blurred. They never thought of themselves as boy and girl- only as a gang of two.

This wasn't the first time that Dimpy had hijacked Yuvi's lunch . The last time was around , she had given a sound thrashing by her mother after Yuvi had complained bitterly. But Dimpy had her reasons for  her larency. Why wouldn't Yuvi share with her the jokes that he shared with his guy friends? This would seem like the silliest reason ever ,but not for Dimpy. If her priority was Yuvi, then his priority ought to be her and it was imperative that he be completely open with her . It got her goat to be excluded from his boys- only club. Whenever he shut her out , she would wonder ,why? am I too dumb to understand the joke ? And now she had found a way to avenge herself for the innumerable snubs. 

Dimpy rushed home and command Kancha- cheena, her pet dog , not to allow Yuvi into the house. Kancha- cheena was a stray that Dimpy had adopted as a pup.Over the years ,Kancha -cheena had turned into her fiercely loyal companion. When Yuvi approached the threshold to Dimpy's house, Kancha-cheena growled , bared her teeth menacingly and then let loose a volley of shrill barks at him. Yuvi stopped at the door and hollered, "I'll take care of you!" before he retreated from the furious canine, rubbing at the vicious scratches on his neck and arm. Both their bicycles still lay on their side on the road outside the house. Yuvi punctured both the tyres of Dimpy's bicycle,picked up his own and rode home without a care in the world.

As soon as he got home, Yuvi bathed and changed out of his clothes before applying anti-septic cream on the livid scratches. He had his meal and took a quick power nap. When he awoke, he cycled to his tuition class with his books.

At the tuition , it was the usual scene. Their mathematics teacher gave them some problems to slove and retreated inside to slove some problems that seemed to have his wife as a key component. Her squeals and moans made the boys snigger. One of the boys, a mischief-maker called suryansh , produced something from his pocket . The sniggers subsided into awed silence as they watched Suryansh unfold the poster on the table. It was a centrefold from a playboy magazine featuring a well-endowed nude. Their eyes bulged just looking at it, however Yuvi felt too shy to even approach the table. The tittering started again. Yuvi distanced himself slightly from the group . 

"What's up with you?" Suryansh asked, noticing Yuvi's discomfort.

"it's someone's naked picture. What's there to giggle about? Yuvi retorted.

"Not someone . A nude girl. Why ? Do you see a nude girl every day ? Suryansh sneered while the others chortled .Yuvi didnt know what more to say, so he remained silent.

Suryansh teased him after the tutions as well, but Yuvi paid no heed to his baiting and rode home. His inner frustration at his inability to retaliate against Suryansh transmogrified into a rant at his mother, Kanchan Singh Thakur, in the kitchen when he saw her preparing his most hated vegetable-bitter gourd-for dinner.

"Can't I have Maggi for dinner ?" he carped.

"Maggi for breakfast, Maggi for dinner.Get married to Maggi , why dont you?" snapped his exasperated mother." Now go and change . Papa wants to talk to you over dinner . Don't be late."

Yuvi pulled a face and took the stairs two at a time to his room.Under his breath, he cursed Dimpy,Suryansh and the world at large . He dropped his trousers before going for a shower and then froze. A sparkling nose stud bounded towards him from the other end of the room and now lay at his feet.Yuvi whipped around, appalled to see a girl standing by his wardrobe. She was in full Indian bridal wear and looked as breath-taking as an incomplete symphony .

"Sorry to have commandeered your room like this," she said softly .

"Who are you?" Yuvi somehow managed to find his voice, yanking up his troousers in one swift movement.

"Dhruv is your cousin , right?"

Yuvansh nodded.

"I'm his girlfriend . Shreshtha Srivastava . And trust me , I did'nt see a thing!" she said the last part ineffectively suppressing gurgling laughter.

But Yuvansh did see something . Something he had never seen before in his life. Ever.