The Unforeseen Path

Chapter Eleven

College started and our schedules became really busy. Since it was the 12th grade, frequency of tuition was increased.

In college, Vikram the male prefect and the female prefect of our class Rehmat, were appointed as the Head Boy and Head Girl. Vikram started acting just like Percy Weasley from Harry Potter and that's how I started calling him 'Bighead Boy'.

That left the position of prefects in our class vacant and I was appointed as the new prefect. Purab Joshi was appointed as the new male prefect.

When our class teacher announced it in class, I couldn't have been more happier. I liked holding position of authority, no matter what names people called me. I also like that the male prefect was Purab. Purab and I had somehow formed a friendship that started last year.

It was the last physics practical of 11th grade. It was related to electric circuits. Dixit sir who was also our Physics practical teacher in college had explained us how to do it. There was a circuit diagram given.I was completely sure as to how to go about it.

Purab who was doing the practical with me said, "Pia, I don't think this is the connection we are suppose to make."

Me, being the know it all that I am, yelled at him and rudely said, "What I am telling you is right, Purab! We have to do it the way I am telling you to."

He won the fight. We tried doing his way and guess what? It did not work out. Then we tried it my way and it did. So I just gloated in front of him.

After the practical was done, I felt guilty for revealing my know-it-all-ness in front of a guy I barely knew, so I went and apologized.

"Its okay Pia, chill."

That's how we became friends. Over the course of summer, I saw him again at a coffee place. I went there with a friend of mine. That day I had, out of the blue, I decided to dress up a little. I had put on an animal print top with tight fitting jeans. I had even applied some make up. Purab was there with a friend.

He saw me and I noticed him checking me out from top to bottom. I could see that he liked what he saw. It didn't bother me. Being around the sleezeball, woman objectifying, teenage guys that I was around in my tuition, had made me understand to not take that interest seriously. Besides, after the Nikhil incident (that's what I called it in my mind), I had learned to smell creeps from a mile away. And Purab wasn't one.

Purab came up to me and said "Hey, Pia!" He told me how he was here after just watching a movie. He inquired how the studies were going on and then we parted ways.

In college, after he became Prefect, he looked at me with adoring eyes and said, "I'm glad that you're the prefect with me."

It made me happy that at least someone liked my company. Purab and I fell into conversations easily. Whenever we were given a mundane tasks like collecting notebooks , writing names of everyone according to roll numbers, it was nice having a buddy to them with.

He would often flirt with me. Call me cute. Pay attention to whatever it was that I was saying. And although I wasn't into him, it felt good. He was probably the first person who saw me more than a nerd.

Finally, I had made a guy friend on my own.

***

As I had become a prefect it had given me a free pass to bunk as many boring lectures I could. Especially our math lecture, where our professor would go on writing math problems on the black board, without turning her head to explain anything. Many a times we'd tell her that we are done, and can't go on anymore. She would still go on till we are all dead until its just our cadavers sittings behind the bench.

Being a prefect wasn't all fun. We had to attend boring meetings presided over by our college supervisor. Mohit, who had become the prefect of his class, too attended the meetings. Eshani, his best friend, was the female prefect. In their section, the most notorious and distruptive kids were made prefects. The rule only applied to guys as Eshani was the perfect prefect.

It made me happy that I would get to be around Mohit for a longer time. We would be doing college activities together and he'd be there. I could tease him all I want, all day long.

The prefect meeting was going on. Our supervisor asked Mohit to assign different activities for the fresher's party. When he faced me for assigning an activity, he called me 'Riya' instead of Pia.

I felt as if cold water was thrown all over me. It seemed as if when he was suffering from sudden amnesia. Was I so embarrassing that he couldn't even act as he knew me in front of his friends?

I hated him for this. I hated myself for being this vulnerable around him. I hated the fact that I didn't have anything to say to that. He got into my skin so easily. He made me feel like I could never be enough.

In tuition he did not talk to me these days, if I did not. Often, he would look right through me, like I wasn't sitting there, like I was completely invisible. Some days he wouldn't talk at all, then talk to me as if nothing happened.

He wasn't the only one though.

Mohit, Anjali, Zeenat, Myra, Sarika, Vikram and all the other guys formed a group in tuition and discussed everything. They behaved very exclusive, like others weren't there. All the other newbies had different groups of their own. Whatever happened, all the guys sticked together.

Myra started poking fun at me again. Sarika and Myra were sitting next to each. I entered class, Myra told Sarika "Look at Pia's plait, she looks like such a school girl." She whispered as if I couldn't hear her.It felt really humiliating as I was really conscious about my looks.

What Myra did hurt more because through the summer I had started regarding her as a friend. She had been so friendly with me, still was. Whenever she wasn't insulting me, she'd talk nicely to me. She'd even help me with stuff.

One day in summer, she was crying because of something that happened with her father and all of the girls had tried to comfort her. Seeing her vulnerable revealed a more humane side of her. I thought maybe she isn't as bad as I think she is.

Maybe this negativity was a poison of my creation and not hers. I didn't like the fact that I was corrupting my mind with negative things. I had to stop this madness of hating someone. I had to somehow set things right.

But the problem was, I didn't know what issues she had in her life that propelled her to make fun of people around her. But it really confused me. I kept falling for her friendship act.

All these things had taken deeper roots in me more than I had realized. I constantly thought how excluded I was feeling in classes these days. I never left the things that happened in class and came back. I would continue thinking about it at home, while I was studying. I would obsess about how I would get back at them.

Mostly I missed how my tuition had been my zone. How in the initial days I had fun in tuition. How I use to wait for college to get over and come to tuition.

Now in college everyone respected me. In tuition though everything had turned into a popularity game. And I wasn't fit enough to be a part of it.

It all became upside-down.