Tewari & Sons, 23, Chandni Chowk

Notes from the Past: Part 6

March 2006, Alchemy College, New Delhi

Khushi was sitting right next to the main entrance because that was the only available spot. With two days to go before the students went off on their study holidays for the university exams in the month of May, the library was buzzing with activity. From the academic overachievers to the ones who slacked through the year, every single student of Alchemy was cramming at the Bimal Patnaik Library. The head librarian and the four assistants all looked very stressed as the students with scant regard to the careful sorting and cataloguing kept pulling down books from one place and putting them back elsewhere. Unlike usual, the library was not silent today. In fact, there was a lot of chatter because of the group studying in progress. Khushi however preferred to study alone because she found that the less social she was, the quicker it was that she was able to wade through the syllabus. This sometimes made Preeto mad, who believed that every activity was a social one, including studying, as she sat together with a bunch of their classmates, giggling over Trigonometry and the English (Hons) boys who were at the next table.

While Alchemy College was somewhat better than say, colleges like Joseph's in gender distribution, but across most courses, the boys always outnumbered girls. Pretty significantly. Though her own Mathematics (Hons) course had a 60:40 boys to girls ratio, in most other disciplines, only less than a third of the students were girls. Except for some of the arts streams like English Literature, Sociology and Psychology. The English literature department had only about five percent boys. This trend continued year after year. It also as a rule attracted the geyser chala do bhaiya' crowd as Preeto liked to say. Khushi was not aware of the existence of this demographic, until Preeto had explained to her that these are girls who are so are rich that they have this one young, male household help who wait over them for everything, including switching on the geyser half an hour ahead of bath-time. Preeto always had something like this to say about people. The English honours boys were usually better than those across other disciplines, probably the good influence of being among so many women. They were better dressed, more polite and the most chikna' boys on campus. They were constantly surrounded by giggling girls, and were a source of both envy and derision among the other male students from the more gender segregated disciplines. The first year English honours batch had two boys, christened as Kishen and Kanhaiya by somebody owing to them being surrounded by girls all the time. And much to the chagrin of other boys, Kishen and Kanhiaya got a lot of attention from girls who were in other disciplines as well. Even Preeto, prone to being dismissive of almost all boys, had a soft spot for Kishen and Kanhaiya and hence the giggling.

Khushi's thoughts were interrupted when Abhishek Rai, a classmate of hers came and sat next to her and said, "Yaar, Khushi, yeh inverse of a matrix kara do mujhe na?"

Abhishek was the most popular boy in her class. He was not particularly smart, or good-looking or have any special talent, but he was the designated funny guy. Khushi was always reminded of Karthik, her New-Ons batchmate when she saw him. Of course in the last ten months, Abhishek and she had not spoken to each other even once. Until now that is. While Khushi was a little annoyed with him for interrupting her study-alone time, but she also felt a little validated that he had come to her for help with a maths problem. She had worked hard in the last few months, actively participating in class and working hard on all her assignments and she hoped that it would pay-off in the exams. So she opened her notebook and explained the problem to an attentive Abhishek. She didn't need to look in the direction of Preeto to know that she was throwing a stink-eye her way. Somehow this made her giggle. She also became aware that Arnav who was sitting two tables away from her was also looking at her. She always knew when someone was looking at her, or at least she thought that she did. This fanciful notion of hers sometimes made her get off one stop before her actual one while on a bus. She would rather walk than have a co-passenger subjecting her to too much scrutiny.