Your Dreams Are Mine Now (2 page)

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A YEAR AGO . . .

One

That day marked the arrival of a new batch of students in Delhi University (DU). Just like the thousands of students in DU about to step into a brand new beginning, a whole new life was ready to welcome Rupali. And she was ready to embrace this life.

Rupali Sinha, an eighteen-year-old, confident, merit-list student from Patna, had made her parents proud. She had received an admission call from a top-ranked DU institute which was also her dream college. Even before she had taken her Class XII board exams, she had always dreamt of walking down the corridors of this college. She had been a bright student throughout her school life, but she knew that given the competition at the national level, it was going to be very difficult for her to make it to this institute. However, she had also believed that it was only difficult, not impossible. And with her sincerity and hard work, one day she would be there.

And so she was.

To pursue commerce from this college had been her biggest short-term goal. Except that now that she had achieved her goal, she couldn’t help but feel nervous and excited at the same time. After an overnight journey and spending a good part of the day on the train, she had arrived at the college hostel in the evening. It was not too dark yet. She was soon allocated a room and given the keys and direction to the room by the warden’s assistant.

It was room no. 107 on the ground floor. Rupali was relieved that she didn’t have to carry her bags upstairs. She walked through the slightly dark, quiet corridor and opened the door to her room. She placed her bags on the floor and looked around the room in the faint light that entered from behind the curtains.

She smiled. It was a sweet room. Large, spacious, an iron bed each against two facing walls, two almirahs and two study tables. She had been told that she would have to share the room. But since her soon-to-be roommate hadn’t arrived yet, she chose her side of the room. She then switched on the light and opened her suitcase to unpack. She took out that day’s newspaper from one of her bags and laid out the sheets on the shelves of the almirah. She only arranged the few things that she would need immediately. The rest of it she planned to arrange the next evening. She slowly pulled out a bedsheet and pillowcase that her mother had so lovingly packed from the pile of clothes in her suitcase. Next came a nightie, a towel, a couple of everyday clothes, and her toiletries which she began arranging in the almirah.

Intermittently, Rupali heard voices in the corridor. She stepped out of her room to check. She saw girls who, just like her, had just moved into the hostel with their luggage. If they happened to notice Rupali, she greeted them with a smile. And they smiled back and moved on to discover their respective rooms. Rupali stepped back into her room to resume her unpacking.

She ate the leftover fruits from her journey and didn’t feel hungry enough to go to the mess to eat. She left the exercise of stepping into the hostel mess to check out the place for the next day.

After arranging her room, Rupali thought about freshening up before going to bed and headed for the hostel washrooms.

As she washed her face and brushed her teeth she caught her reflection in the mirror and saw a tired-looking face with faint shadows under her eyes. She realized she had barely slept the night before leaving for the hostel. The emotional atmosphere at home and the excitement had kept her awake all night. She decided to get a good long sleep. After all, she wanted to wake up fresh for her first day at college. But when she lay on the bed, the thrill of going to college the next day kept her from dozing off. She kept tossing and turning.

When dreams take shape, sleep runs away.

The hostel bed added to Rupali’s anxiety. It felt different to her body and made her uncomfortable. In that sleepless state, she began to think of home and realized how far away she was from Patna; her hostel was going to be her new home in Delhi. Minutes later, when sleep had still not come to her, she recalled all that had happened in her life in the past forty-eight hours—how her proud father, who served as a travelling ticket inspector (TTI) in North Eastern Railways, had taken a day’s leave to perform a puja at home. It was to seek blessings from the Almighty, before Rupali left Patna to start college. How her caring mother, a homemaker, had made
sattu
and laddoos especially for her. As Rupali thought of her mother, she peered in the dark at the tiffin boxes which her mother had packed for her and which were now sitting on the table next to her bed. She reached out and ran her hand lovingly over them. She realized how in making them her mother had poured in all her love and care into them. She also thought of her younger brother, Tanmay, who had secretly cried all night before she was to leave for Delhi. She remembered how he had, wordlessly, given her a tight hug, probably for the first time in her life, at the Patna railway station, where her entire family had come to see her off.

This was the first time that Rupali was on her own, away from home. But she hadn’t yet started missing her family or her house. There was still some time for that to happen. Instead she was happy thinking about her parents, who, unlike many other parents in Patna, or for that matter, the whole of Bihar, had given their daughter the much-needed freedom. They had allowed her to go out all by herself, to a different city, to learn how to stand on her own feet. The night passed with many such thoughts interspersed with a feeling of anticipation for what the next day would bring. It was only in the early hours of dawn that sleep finally took over her tired body.

When the morning arrived, the phone alarm broke Rupali’s sleep. Through the thin curtains on the window on her right, sunlight made its way into her room. Even before she’d fully opened her eyes, Rupali slid her hand underneath the pillow and turned off the alarm. She took a moment before she got up. And when she did, she sat on her bed with her legs crossed, and folded her hands in prayer.

‘Shanti! Shanti! Shanti!’ she quickly whispered after which she opened her eyes again.

‘Finally, the day has arrived!’ she thought to herself in delight. She jumped out of bed and pulled apart the curtains. A broad smile took birth on her lips as the sun streamed through the window, flooding her room in abundant light.

The morning view outside her window was beautiful. Situated in the extreme west, her hostel offered her a view of the entire campus that spread in the east. Over the rally of trees, at a distance, she could see the giant clock on the terrace tower of the red-brick college block. And just outside her window, at the entrance of her hostel, there was a huge lawn. She could see the shrubs marking the periphery of it. In every corner of the lawn, there were more than a dozen plants with multicoloured flowers blossoming on them. Butterflies fluttered from one flower to another. A female gardener was busy watering the plants. Rupali was happy she’d got a room with a view. She loved the greenery and nature. She started humming a few lines from her favourite Hindi song as she picked up her things to go to the common bathrooms to get dressed.

‘Hi! Are you from first year too?’ Rupali excitedly asked the girls at the common washbasin bay, most of whom were busy brushing their teeth. Unlike the previous evening, there were many girls in the hostel that day. Some of them reciprocated Rupali’s enthusiasm as they nodded vigorously with toothpaste frothing in their mouths.

Interestingly, Rupali’s simple ‘Hi’ had broken the ice with quite a few girls who were too shy to initiate a conversation with the others till then. Soon the ‘Hi’ grew into a series of conversations as well as a few cross-conversations. This instantly put Rupali at the centre of every discussion that was taking place around her to the background noises of toilets flushing on the left and tap water running in the bathrooms on their right.

From introducing each other to becoming acquaintances and, from that, to discover new friends, things quickly changed into a happy chatter at various washbasins on various floors of that hostel that morning.

Unlike others, Rupali was very quick with her morning chores. She wasn’t confused about what she was going to wear on her first day to college. As a matter of fact, she had already kept aside all that she was to wear—a white churidar, a pink kameez along with a white dupatta. She matched her attire with the white sandals that she had chosen for herself when her father had taken her out for shopping. She put on her pink earrings and the bangles that her brother, Tanmay, had bought for her with his pocket money. A dainty watch on her left wrist and a touch of her favourite light-pink lipstick completed her look.

Just as she was about to step out, a rhythmic tick-tack of high heels from the far end of the corridor came to a dead stop outside her room. Then there was a knock at the door.

Rupali opened the door.

There stood a girl in skin-tight blue denims and black stilettos. She was wearing a loose off-shoulder light grey T-shirt that showed off the straps of the black tank top she was wearing under it. Her sunglasses hid her eyes but exhibited her style quotient. Her jaws moved in a rhythm as she continued to chew gum.

Two

As Rupali looked on, the young girl in front of her took off her sunglasses to say ‘Hi!’ and introduce herself.

‘I am Saloni! Saloni Chadda! If you have been allotted this room, then I am your roommate!’ She raced through her sentence.

‘Oh hi! I am Rupali. Come on in.’ Rupali offered her hand.

Saloni happily took her hand and gave her a hug.

Rupali noticed an old man who’d come and stood behind Saloni. He gestured to Saloni who said, ‘
Hanji kaka, idhar andar rakh do,’
asking him to keep her luggage near the vacant bed on the other side of the room.

Rupali looked shocked. She could not help but wonder what the old man was doing inside a girls’ hostel. As if reading her thoughts Saloni gave a short laugh and explained that he was her driver and had accompanied her to drop her luggage.

‘Oh, that’s okay,’ Rupali said.

As soon as the driver left, the two of them spent a few minutes getting to know each other. Saloni told Rupali that she might not be staying back at the hostel every day since she was from Noida. And even though she didn’t need to stay at the hostel, she’d chosen it to get privacy from her family.

Rupali was again shocked at what this girl told her. She would have loved it if her family lived around Delhi and if she didn’t have to stay at the hostel by herself. From Saloni’s clothes and behaviour Rupali could make out that she belonged to a rich family.

‘She looks like a pampered child. Her father’s influence must have got her this room. Otherwise in a scenario where hostel rooms are in short supply for students from other states, someone from the NCR wouldn’t have managed to get one,’ Rupali thought.

‘Alright then, I am going to catch up with my friends in college. I will see you in the evening!’ Saloni said and turned to leave.

‘
Arey, arey
wait! Even I am about to leave,’ Rupali said and rushed to grab her tiffin box. She picked two laddoos and offered one to Saloni.

Saloni looked at it and blew a balloon out of the gum she was chewing. When it burst in her mouth, she said,
‘Muh mein chewing gum hai, agli baar kha loongi
.
’
(I am chewing gum. I’ll take it next time.)

Rupali stood watching as Saloni left. She wondered if in the coming days the two of them would get along well with each other.

Then she looked at her watch and realized that she was getting late for the orientation programme. She placed the extra laddoo back in her tiffin box and ate the other one.

After a last-minute struggle with the door lock of her room, Rupali walked into the corridors of her hostel. As she passed by, she overheard girls in various groups chatting among themselves. She smiled at a few but didn’t stop to talk with anyone. She didn’t want to be late for the principal’s welcome speech at the orientation venue.

With a bag hanging across her right shoulder, she walked down the paved path in between the green lawns outside her hostel. A little ahead, she passed through the line of tall ashoka trees. She looked all around her and appreciated the greenery on campus. She was happy that she had got a chance to live in such a surrounding for a few years. But as she neared the college block, with every step, her anxieties increased. It was a new beginning for her academic career.

Right in front of her stood the college in all its red-brick glory. Her eyes gleamed at the sight. She sighed. Her first day in DU had finally begun. The whole campus had been transformed into a celebration zone. It was nothing less than a festival and that too, not just for the first year students, but also for their seniors who played host to the new batch.

At the small eateries near the campus’s main entrance, various students had gathered to grab a quick bite of sandwiches and other snacks. Some among them were sipping tea. Unlike the hostel, which was calm and quiet, the college block was bustling with noise. Loud conversations and laughter from various directions had given a lively energy to the campus. A majority of the hullabaloo came from the senior camps.