Like It Happened Yesterday (8 page)

‘… and that’s how the baby is conceived inside a female.’ She ended her lecture with that sensational line.

‘Wow, the female got pregnant and there wasn’t any mention of S–E–X. What was she producing—test-tube babies?’ I whispered to Sushil in deep frustration.

People behind me overheard me and laughed.

Ten more minutes were left for the bell to ring. This was
usually the time for the question-and-answer session. Counting in the sensitivity of the topic and the presence of students like Sushil, Bio Ma’am decided it would be wise not to ask the class any question. So she let the entire class review the chapter on their own.

Some of us looked at Sushil, pushing him to utilize the remaining time and ask one more question. He refused.

A few chits and pieces of chalk were hurled at him. He managed to save himself from a few, but not all. He looked back, grinned and said, ‘Bhak saala, main nahi puchhunga.’

‘Last try, Sushil! Make her say something dirty,’ someone in the crowd asked.

‘Yes! Yes! You can do it!’ everyone else cheered him on too, keeping their voices low. We treated him like he was our rock star.

All that flattery worked. Sushil agreed to give it a final try.

‘Ma’am, one doubt!’ Sushil said and raised his hand.

The boys looked at Sushil with great expectation. The girls wanted to run out of the class or hide themselves somewhere inside their bags. They looked really embarrassed. Bio Ma’am looked at her watch. She must have desperately wanted the bell to ring right then. But God was on our side.

‘Yes?’ She cleared her throat half-heartedly and agreed to listen to the question.

‘Ma’am, I am not clear on how the male sperm lands up in the female’s body,’ he asked her with an innocent look, as if he seriously didn’t know anything about it.

The entire class made a muffled ‘Hooo!’ sound in unison.

Now that was a checkmate. There was no way for Bio Ma’am to escape. She
had
to utter that word—‘sex’—which we had been wanting her to say since the beginning of the class.

The excitement in the class had at once reached the extreme. By now, the girls had come to terms with the fact that they didn’t have a choice but to adjust to the animal instincts of the boys. But Sushil’s direct question was still difficult to digest for them. A few of the backbenchers first thought about clapping on Sushil’s bravery, but changed their mind so that they could focus on what Ma’am was about to say.

Bio Ma’am looked uncomfortable and irritated with the question. She felt offended, but had no choice. She stood up angrily and asked the rest of the class, ‘Anyone else has any other question?’

There was a silence. No one dared to ask anything.

‘All right, then, I will answer Sushil’s question,’ she said, crossing her arms against her chest and walking into the aisle between the girls’ row and the boys’ row.

Sushil’s eyes were twinkling and focused on her.

Bio Ma’am spoke, ‘That happens when the male reproductive organ enters into the female reproductive organ.’

Now, that was the best line so far in the entire period! None of us said anything. But we enjoyed what we’d heard, hoping there would be more coming our way.

The teacher’s eyes were fixed on Sushil. She waited for
him to tell her if his doubt had been cleared. But Sushil didn’t say anything, so she continued to talk: ‘And this physical act between a male and a female is known as having sex! That’s what you wanted to hear?’

That was an ‘Aaahhhh’ moment for us. Three-fourth of the class would have achieved orgasm right at that sentence.

Bio Ma’am paused for a while and then resumed, ‘We all came from our parents in that way. And that’s how you too were born, Sushil. And, years from now, that’s how our next generation will take birth. And, years from now, that’s how your children will be born.’

She kept waiting for Sushil to acknowledge her answer, but Sushil, all of a sudden, had gone blank. He didn’t expect that sort of answer to come from a teacher. I think he was not even sure if Ma’am was through with her answer, or if there was anything else to be added. Exactly after ten seconds of peace, when Sushil was sure that Ma’am didn’t have anything further to say, he came up with a confused and funny response: ‘Oh, okay, okay!’

And he sat down. Our fun for that class had come to an end.

The bell rang. A unanimous moan of ‘Oh, nooo!’ went around the class. Bio Ma’am wrapped up her handbag, books and attendance register as the rest of us stared at her.

‘Complete the homework mentioned at the end of the chapter, and in the next class we will go through Chapter 11,’ she said before leaving.

We quickly turned the pages of the textbook to see what was in Chapter 11.

Sushil looked back and whispered, ‘The next chapter is on Sexually Transmitted Diseases!’ He chuckled. ‘Condoms bhi hai us mein … page eighty-nine, line number seven.’

And the rest of us geared up for yet another round of wild expectations and fun.

One afternoon, during the recess hours, when I returned to the classroom to have a drink of water, I saw a group of boys gathered at the back of the class. Four of them were from my class, two were seniors and one was a junior who was well known in the school for all the wrong reasons. Together they were standing in a circle and looking at something. Curious to know what they were doing, I walked towards them.

As soon as they heard my footsteps, they looked at me and then at each other. Then they suddenly started to hide what they had all been looking at. I noticed them shuffling the pages of what appeared to be a magazine to me. There was loud and hurried whispering, which died down by the time I reached them. Now there was complete silence. This looked unusual.

Manoj and Sushil looked at me. The latter’s presence assured me that something suspicious was definitely going on there. I didn’t wait for long and addressed my question to Sushil: ‘Kya dekh raha hai tu?’ [What are you looking at?] With a smile on my lips, I waited for an interesting answer.

‘Abey kuch nahi, Sardaar. Aise hi timepass kar rahe hain,’ [Nothing much, buddy. We were just biding our time] he tried to dismiss my doubt.

But as I kept walking towards them, their body language became uncomfortable.

‘Sushil was narrating a non-veg joke. That’s all,’ said someone else from the group.

‘Really? Share it with me also, then,’ I chuckled.

By then I had reached quite close to them. I caught Manoj hiding something under the desk.

‘What are you hiding?’

‘Leave!’ shouted Devinder, who was our senior. He gave me an angry look.

But I wasn’t going to back off. ‘This is my classroom. Why should I leave?’ I shot back.

Incensed by my counter-argument, Devinder made his way towards me. He stared right into my eyes. I didn’t move away, and stared right back. This could result in a serious scuffle.

But Sushil intervened.

‘Don’t! He is a good friend,’ he said, stopping Devinder.

When everyone had cooled down, Sushil asked Manoj to ‘take that thing out’.

Manoj gave him a doubtful look. He raised his eyebrows and stared at the faces of the others. Sushil nodded.

Finally, Manoj slipped his hands out from underneath the desk. When I saw what he was holding, I could not believe my eyes. That moment of my life was officially tagged as My Introduction to the World of Dirty Magazines.

It was a Hindi magazine. The name on the cover read
Manohar Raatein
.

Just below the title, there was a photo of a woman lying on her belly on a cosy-looking bed. She wore barely anything. Her bare back was arched and ended in curves which were the centre of attraction in the photo. A translucent, black-colored stole ran between her lower back and her toned thighs—and that was the only piece of clothing on her. She had perched her chin on her right hand, with the little finger gently held inside her mouth. She was looking right into the camera with a mysterious smile.

‘Oh my God!’ I exclaimed, as my mouth fell open. I stared at it, amazed, for more than a minute.

Sushil looked at my expression and smiled. It didn’t bother me. After some more time, Sushil put his hand on my shoulder.

‘Kya ho gaya be?’ [What happened to you?] he laughed. The others joined him. The collective laughter distracted me from my reverie on those curves on the cover. And,
soon, I remembered that I was in the classroom! I looked at the entrance and swallowed the lump that had formed in my throat.

‘Don’t worry; no one will get to know. Enjoy!’ Sushil said. He still had his hand over my shoulder.

The little shyness in me had, by then, vanished. I adjusted my position in the circle to a place from where I could take a better look at the magazine.

Damn! She was sexy.

‘Should I flip the page now?’ asked Manoj, who was our man on the task.

Half of us answered yes, the other half said no. He waited for everyone to say yes, and, in the meantime, went ahead to mischievously run his fingers over that nude back in the picture.

Watching him do so, I felt disgusted. But a little later, for some reason, my disgust subsided. After a short while, I too wanted to run my fingers over that bare back.

‘Turn the page, now!’ shouted someone.

No one objected this time, and so Manoj turned the page.

‘Kaun laaya hai ye?’ I wanted to find out who had brought the magazine, when my eyes fell on the picture on the next page.

A South Indian girl in a tight black blouse yanked us up to the next level of excitement.

Everyone sighed: ‘Aaaaah!’

The woman’s small blouse had tiny sleeves and a deep
neckline. There were hooks running down the front of the blouse, but only the two lowest hooks had been fastened. The upper part of the blouse had been left unhooked, revealing what the woman was wearing inside. The voluptuousness of her figure was revolting against the constricting piece of cloth. It was as if her body was trying to break away and set itself free. Below her waistline, with her left hand, she had hitched up her skirt over her thighs.

‘Sushil laaya hai,’ Manoj replied, as he tried to pull the magazine closer to him in order to take a better look.

‘Every page you turn now, she is going to throw away one piece of cloth.’

I don’t know who said that. But that statement put us into so much excitement that we were quickly out of patience and started snatching at the magazine among ourselves.

‘Why are you pulling?’ all of us shouted at each other; but not a single one of us was willing to let go! The picture of one naked girl had brought out our animal instincts.

‘Abey, idhar kar!’

‘Give it to me!’

‘Oh, come on!’

‘Abey, phatt jayegi magazine!’ [Hey, the magazine will tear!]

We’d got ourselves into a chaotic, screaming mess.

Soon, Devinder flung into action. He took advantage of his seniority and brought the situation under control. First,
he shouted everyone down. Then, he suggested circulating the magazine among us in the round-robin fashion, so that everyone got a fair chance to look at the pictures.

We all agreed to the suggestion. But, the very next moment, we got into a quarrel over who should be the first one to avail of that opportunity.

Devinder had an answer to that as well. He chose himself for this privilege. The rest of us unhappily allowed him to go ahead.

‘Now you are only seeing the pictures, but read the stories from this magazine also! Mast hai!’ [They’re fantastic!] Sushil advised me, as I awaited my turn.

‘Really?’

‘After reading them, you will have to head straight to the bathroom,’ he chuckled.

Unable to understand what he meant, I asked, ‘Why would I need to go to the bathroom?’

A few of the other guys broke into laughter.

‘Abey, baccha hai ye abhi!’ [Hey, he’s still a kid!] someone said. Devinder was laughing too, as he handed over the magazine to the person next in queue.

I wanted to remind him of his age, and, more importantly, the fact that he was still in school, because he had failed several classes.

‘Haven’t you done it, ever?’ Sushil asked me inquisitively.

By then, the magazine had arrived in my hands. I didn’t care what Sushil’s question meant. I was just excited that it
was finally my turn to look at the magazine. But, before I could go through the picture carefully and closely, the peon outside the principal’s office started ringing the bell. I cursed him in my head.

I was worried that people would walk in any time, and that killed my excitement. I didn’t want to rush through the magazine. I didn’t want to ruin the pleasure of watching a dark-complexioned girl of about twenty-five years slowly taking off her clothes with every turn of the page. I wanted to savour it, slowly. So I closed it and half-heartedly handed it back to Sushil.

For the rest of the day that naked girl danced in my head. When the Maths Sir drew a triangle, I drew a triangle as well; and, along with it, I also drew the sketch of that girl in the corner of the page. When he was teaching how to apply the rules of trigonometry in order to find out the length of the shadow of the tree, when the height of the tree and the angle of sunrays was given, I was busy colouring her blouse and skirt.

I elbowed Sushil, who sat next to me, to show him my creativity. He was busy taking notes. So I elbowed him again. He looked at me.

The painter in me looked at him, and, with great pride, pointed out to him my freshly drawn Mona Lisa. He looked at her and smiled. He spent some time examining my artwork, and then did a little touch-up himself. He made the cleavage a bit deeper, looked back at me and winked.

‘Perfect!’ I whispered, admiring his talent and superior knowledge of the subject. The next moment, the two of us broke into quiet laughter.

At 4 p.m., when school ended, I approached Sushil to have a private conversation. I wanted to borrow his magazine. I thought I was smart to think of going through it in the privacy of my home.

It turned out that I was the last one in the group to have that conversation with Sushil. He had already promised to lend his magazine to everyone for the next few days. He gave me a date which was eight days later.

I had never ever waited that desperately for anything else.
Never, ever!

That evening, after I came back from school, I lied to my mother that I was not feeling well. It was my excuse for not going to the tuition classes.

Mom gripped my hand in her palms and then touched my forehead. She wanted to verify if I had fever. There wasn’t any.

‘It’s a bad headache, Mom. I might be coming down with something,’ I said.

‘Have a Disprin after you finish your bread and butter, and then take rest,’ she advised me concernedly, and put a tablet on my plate along with half a glass of water.

Every evening, my parents would go to the gurdwara to offer their evening prayers. That’s when a lot of other people also came to the gurdwara. It usually took them an hour before they got back. In a while, my brother too left for his tuition classes.

I flushed the Disprin down the kitchen washbasin, locked the main door of our house and headed straight for my bed. I piled up two pillows under my head, after which I grabbed my schoolbag, which was lying in the other corner of the bed.

It was time for me to enjoy
Manohar Raatein
.

My happy hour had just begun. I was euphoric about this private entertainment I had planned for myself. It didn’t take me long to submerge myself in the world of pleasure. I returned to the page where that dark-complexioned girl had made her seductive entry.

I zoomed in to take a closer look at her poised body, her tight blouse and her hitched-up skirt. I observed the body parts that were visible. I imagined the ones that were not.

For some reason, I was in love with her blouse, maybe because it had little to hide and a lot to reveal. On the top of all this, her naughty smile was driving me crazy. I flipped through the pages with great expectation. I knew what to expect next, yet I wanted to be surprised.

On the next page she had moved into a bathroom. There was a mirror behind her showing off her shapely back. I was
already seeing her front. The washbasin behind her had a lot of toiletries. A bathtub, on her right, perfectly filled in the scene.

This time, those last two hooks had also fallen open. The blouse hung limply on her body. A pair of black lacy straps ran down her shoulders, revealing a lot of net in front, in between the folds of her open blouse.

My body had started reacting to those visuals. I felt different. I felt as if I wanted to disconnect from the rest of the world and enjoy what I was busy doing. I didn’t want to be bothered about anything else in that moment. I just focused on that girl.

I moved my fingers over her picture and circled her belly button. I wanted to feel her in person. The mere imagination was so much fun.

She still hitched her skirt up with her hand, but the posture of her legs had changed this time. Her legs were crossed and her body had tilted sideways. The skirt had slipped further down. A black elastic band peeked from above her waist. It was too sexy to be missed.

Each time the camera had aimed at the girl, she had looked straight into it. Her eyes revealed confidence—a notorious one! I imagined that I wasn’t only imagining. And that she was actually looking at me. That she was smiling, knowing what was happening to me. I was getting hard and this different kind of feeling was just irresistible. I turned the page.

Those black straps had now slipped off her shoulders and were down to her elbows. She had allowed that to happen. The blouse was already on the floor. For the very first time in my life I was looking at a topless woman. It didn’t matter if she was only in the photograph.

I rolled around in my bed to change my position. I lay on my stomach, rested my chin on the pillow and held the magazine in front of my eyes. I pulled the blanket from the edge of the bed, rolled it up and sandwiched it in between my legs. It was an exceedingly sensual moment for me to observe her vital parts left unclothed. I spent a lot of time just observing the skin and the shape.

The next half an hour was full of a few more sensual visuals that aroused erotic feelings within me. As I progressed, I felt as if she was hypnotizing me. I enjoyed her company on every page.

By the last page, she had run out of all her clothes. To me, she looked her best then. Her young, poised body was partly submerged in bathtub water. Her right leg loosely hung outside the tub, and a tiny stream of water dripped down her leg on to the floor.

I was looking at a fully naked woman, in the most erotic posture, offering me the best possible view of the most important parts of her body.

But then, something strange happened with me. Those erotic feelings had turned into some sort of a black hole and were trying to suck me into them! It was difficult to
understand what I was feeling at that moment. I found myself in the extremes of pleasure, from where it was hard to come back. I felt as if a lot of anxiety had concentrated somewhere in me, and that I would explode because of it! I was badly in need of giving vent to what I had contained within me. I felt uncomfortable. I wanted to calm down.