Love At Last

Douglas

"So, when the price of a commodity increases, demand decreases and supply... decreases or increases?" Anakha thought out loud, scratched her head and looked at her notes.

It was evening on the first day and Professor Paul had given them an assignment to be handed in the day after. He taught basic economics in the most boring way possible and more than once, mentioned (or rather, bragged about) his experiences in one of the most reputed companies in India. Zaara thought that he was intelligent and knew a lot of things. But strangely, she couldn't understand much of what he said. This, she guessed, was because he didn't know how to communicate it well to students.

Well, who was she to comment? Her short stint as a Spoken English teacher wasn't that good. Many of her students had left halfway through the course, either because they didn't understand what she taught or because they weren't interested. Finally there had been just one student remaining and she had indirectly coaxed her to stay by giving her sweet treats every lesson. She felt embarrassed, every time she thought about it. Ugh. Very mature.

"How's it going Zaara?" Anakha asked, without looking up from her assignment.

"Lost a lot of chocolates unnecessarily." Zaara said without thinking.

"Sorry?" Anakha looked up from her notes, confused.

"Uh... Nothing. I was just... er... thinking of something else. What was it you asked?" Zaara asked, somewhat embarrassed.

"Is it over? Your homework?" She asked again.

"Almost. One more topic to go."

"Same here. Why don't we go to the next room after we finish? We could get acquainted with them, you know."

"Yeah, sure."

After about an hour, they were in the next room which was same but a little less spacious than theirs, probably due to the fact that three beds were occupied and the fourth had all of their luggage piled on it. The girls seemed pretty hesitant to speak at first but after a while they wouldn't stop talking. They were a bunch of lively people.

Amelia was tall and thin and talked very fast. Minakshi was olive skinned, with brown eyes and was very pretty. Veda didn't talk much but smiled at every joke the others said. She was outside the room speaking on the phone.

"Guys, I think your other roommates have come." Veda said, cellphone in hand, to Zaara and Anakha, peeping through a gap in the door.

"Maybe we should give them time to settle in. Or should we meet them now?" Anakha looked at Zaara for an answer.

"If they are from our class, they'll have homework to do. So, let's meet them now and leave them alone to do their job." Zaara said.

"Okay." Anakha replied and turning to the others, she said, "People, we'll be back in a sec."

When they entered their room it was full of bags and an assortment of things. Now it looked as crowded as the other room. A girl with thick and long black hair had occupied the bed next to Zaara's. And on the other empty bed, a plump girl with big, beautiful eyes, sat in her pajamas. It seemed that the girl had already finished unpacking.

"Hi. I'm Zaara. And this is Anakha. What are you names?" Zaara held out her hand for both of them to shake, which they took, smiling.

The girl with long black hair said, "I'm Esther."

"Gayatri." Said the other.

"Are you both in our class?" Anakha asked, then added, "I'm sorry, since it's just the first day, I don't remember all the faces. So..."