Your Dreams Are Mine Now (7 page)

As the lady peon speedily walked out of the building, she looked here and there, as if hoping that no one had seen her. She was continuously wiping her tears. That’s when Rupali realized that she too had started crying. But hers were tears of relief. She wanted to stop that lady. She wanted to speak to her; get to know all that she had gone through. She knew she was making a compromise by being in that room with Prof. Mahajan. She wanted to help her. But perhaps that moment wasn’t right. Perhaps, she should give her some time, she thought.

And then, at the next moment, a thought struck her—the professor might also want to leave the building and might see her. In panic, she began to run and ran straight into a firm athletic body and a set of arms that tried to help her steady herself. At a sharp turn at the corner of the college block, she suddenly looked up and her eyes met a set of familiar eyes. He was the same senior who had questioned her about the plant.

‘S . . . sorry, I’m sorry,’ she blurted out as she came to a dead stop.

He looked up at her and then in every direction across the building, as if trying to figure out why she was running. But he didn’t ask her anything. Rupali moved away from him and gave a weak smile underneath her moist eyes. He didn’t respond. As she walked away fast, she could feel his stare on her back.

‘Who is this guy? Why is he always there whenever anything bad happens to me?’ she thought to herself.

Seven

It took Rupali nearly a week to trace that lady peon. She had been looking for her everywhere on the campus since the incident. She wanted to know if she was okay. She wanted to let her know that she was there for her but the lady seemed to have just disappeared. The problem was that without knowing her name or remembering any distinctive features about her, Rupali was having a tough time inquiring about her from the other peons on campus.

One day, she finally found her in the garden area of the campus, where she was busy cleaning. Rupali took a minute to verify if she was the one whom she had seen the other day. There were several other lady peons who wore the same dress but something told her that she was the same woman. When Rupali was somewhat certain, she walked towards her.

‘Didi,’ she said, addressing her as an elder sister.

In response, she looked up at Rupali questioningly.

Rupali looked at her face and into her eyes. All that she had witnessed a week before flashed through her mind. Swathed behind the poor peon’s innocent face, was the pain she had been going through. Rupali was sensitive enough to see that and sympathize with her.

‘Bolo madam ji?’
(Yes, madam?) the peon broke her thought process.

‘No need to call me madam. You can call me didi,’ Rupali said with a smile.

‘Ji didi,’
the peon acknowledged with a smile. Rupali was happy to see the smile on her face.

‘Kya naam hai aapka?’
(What’s your name?) Rupali asked her.

‘Ah . . . Raheema,’ she replied, wiping the sweat off her forehead.

Rupali, in turn, introduced herself. She then asked her if she ever came to the hostel building. Raheema replied that she seldom visited the hostel block, as her duties were limited to the college block only. But she did ask Rupali the reason for her query.

Not sure about how to initiate the difficult conversation, Rupali lied. She told her that she had been looking for a maid who could do the dusting in her room. It had been more than a month since she had moved into the hostel and now there were spider webs in the corners of the ceiling. She also mentioned about cleaning the cupboard tops and windowpanes and grills. Rupali said that she would like some help with it if possible and the helper would be able to earn something extra at the end of the day.

After knowing the reason, Raheema happily referred her friend to Rupali. She said that one of her friends who worked in the hostel mess also worked for the girls in the hostel after duty hours.

She asked Rupali for her room number so that she could send her friend to her room. Rupali felt a bit disappointed. She needed to talk to this lady and now she wouldn’t be able to. So when she was about to pick up her broom from the ground, Rupali held her arm and said, ‘No didi, that maid in the hostel doesn’t clean well. You come.’

Seeing the way Rupali had held her arm, Raheema felt something different. She wondered if cleaning her room was all that Rupali wanted from her. Yet, listening to Rupali’s persistent requests, she agreed to come to her hostel room, but only in the evening, once she had completed her day’s work.

Rupali told her that she was absolutely fine with it.

‘Don’t be scared, didi. You can speak freely with me,’ Rupali said.

It was evening, and as decided, Raheema was finally in Rupali’s room. Saloni had gone off to the basketball court. In her absence, Rupali felt comfortable holding a private conversation with the peon.

Rupali had made Raheema take her chair, while she herself sat on the bed. With her legs crossed and a cushion on her lap, Rupali was continuously persuading the lady to speak up.

‘Tell me please, don’t be scared,’ Rupali insisted one more time.

More than fifteen minutes had passed since Raheema had arrived, but she was not in a position to answer any of Rupali’s questions. She looked hesitant and Rupali could understand why. For Raheema, probably one of her worst fears had come true. Her dark secret was no more limited to herself. After all, someone had seen her in a compromising situation with a man, on the very campus where she worked. And that someone was sitting right in front of her and demanding an answer from her.

How does she face this someone? What all did she really see? Was it just as much as she had said—the professor forcing himself upon her? Would this someone ever understand her state of mind now, and more importantly then, when she was being molested? How is she, Raheema, any different from the other women who sell their bodies in return for money, which she had been doing in return for the favour that Mahajan had once done her?
Scores of such questions clouded her mind and she didn’t have an answer to any of them. Whatever it was, at that moment, she wasn’t prepared to hold any conversation with the girl who was privy to her life’s closely guarded secret. In her mind, she believed she was the culprit.

Rupali kept on insisting and trying to make her talk. But Raheema was lost in her fearful thoughts. The next time when she heard Rupali’s voice and became conscious of where she was, she wondered who all Rupali would have shared this with. For a while, she thought her job in the college had come to an end. The thought of how she would now earn a living and secure a future for her daughter had started bothering her. So she tried to defend her position, even though Rupali hadn’t accused her at all.

When she decided to speak up, she only denied all that Rupali had said. She told Rupali that nothing like that had happened and that she might have confused her with some other peon. But her only problem was that her face and body language didn’t support her statement. She couldn’t look into Rupali’s eyes when she spoke. On the contrary, her face had turned red. And she started stammering. At one point, when she could not communicate any further, she wanted to run away. She wanted to run out of that room, that hostel, that very campus. She wished her running away could undo everything.

In a state of panic, she tried to get up from her chair, but Rupali comforted and consoled her. Then, suddenly, she couldn’t take it any more and tried to rush out of the room. Rupali jumped out of her bed and held her arms. Raheema’s skin felt ice-cold. She was shivering.

Rupali could not think of any other way to stop her, so she hugged her tightly.

‘Please let me help you, didi
. . .
’ she pleaded.

Perhaps it was the soothing sound of her voice or the warmth of her body that comforted Raheema. That one moment broke the ice between them. Raheema could not hold back her emotions any longer. She cried her heart out. She gave voice to her emotions when she screamed loudly in Rupali’s room. Her unbearable pain gushed out of her eyes. Rupali allowed her to vent her feelings. She continued to hold her body close to her chest and in the tight grip of her arms. She kept rubbing her back gently, allowing her to lighten her heavy heart. For some time, neither of them spoke.

A bit later, Rupali offered Raheema a glass of water. When the two of them sat back again, Rupali was all ears.

‘Didi,’ she said, clearing her throat. She was finally talking now.

Rupali kept looking at her moist eyes when Raheema started narrating her story.

Raheema was in her late thirties. Yet, for her shapely body and appealing facial features, she made an attractive female in the clan of other lady peons on campus. Rupali had realized this when, earlier in the day, she happened to take a closer look at her. She was a widow and a mother of a fifteen-year-old daughter. She lived in the nearby slums where most of the residents were from her minority community. Years back, she used to work as a domestic help in a few houses, where she would clean utensils and do other household chores. But when, three years back, her husband died of cancer, she had no other option but to look for a better job. On the one hand, she had to run her household and on the other, she had to take care of her daughter’s education. Like her, she didn’t want her daughter, too, to clean utensils. She had dreamt of a good life for her daughter.

Much before tobacco made Raheema’s husband bed-ridden and finally took his life, he used to work as a gardener in the same college. Someone in her community had asked Raheema to see if she could get some work in the college as a replacement for her husband. That’s when she had arrived on this campus looking for work.

But getting work, even as a replacement for her husband, wasn’t easy. Someone else had filled the vacancy that her husband’s absence had created. For days, Raheema moved from one facility office to another, from one security guard to another. At the end of two weeks of useless running and pleading in front of every person, including students, faculty members, the administrative staff and even the security guards, she met Prof. Mahajan.

He had noticed her, probably for the third time, outside the administrative block. Raheema had been standing there for the whole day in anticipation of meeting the facilities manager, who unfortunately, was not even present in his office that day.

Late in the afternoon, Mahajan had stopped by and asked Raheema why she had been standing outside that block for the whole day. She felt obliged that someone of his stature had stopped to listen to her. Raheema told him her story.

Mahajan was a man of great influence. So to get Raheema a peon’s job on campus was only the matter of one phone call for him. When Mahajan had told Raheema that she could come to work from the very next day, she could not believe what she had heard. And when it was clear to her, she thanked him scores of times. Back then there were tears of happiness in her eyes.

He was her angel and she would remember him in her prayers—she had said while leaving that day.

Unfortunately, it only took two more weeks for Raheema’s angel to transform into a devil. The unexpected had unfolded when Mahajan had specifically asked Raheema to clean his cabin on a holiday, when there was no other faculty member or student in the college block.

Betrayal hurts the most when it comes from the one who you always remembered in your prayers.

It wasn’t just Mahajan’s hands that clung to her bare waist, but the breaking of her faith in the man whom she treated as her messiah. That night Raheema could not sleep.

In the coming days, Mahajan became bolder. When Raheema stopped at one moment and could not say anything further, Rupali held her hands between her palms.

‘Why haven’t you reported him to the higher authorities?’ she asked her.

In response, Raheema clarified that Mahajan was too big a man for her to take on. He had too much of influence and he was used to getting his way. Nothing was going to happen to him but for sure she would lose her job.

It was extremely distressing for Rupali to know that in order to get a better life for her daughter, Raheema had to sacrifice her life, her modesty.

‘But this has to end!’ Rupali said firmly.

It was easier said than done. Rupali kept thinking about how she could stop all this and expose the ill deeds of Prof. Mahajan. She was aware that she couldn’t live in Rome and fight with the Pope. But then because of the kind of person she was, she couldn’t have turned a blind eye to what was happening on campus either. After all, she too had to face Prof. Mahajan. How would she continue to be in his class, in his proximity, when she knew him to be the beast that he was? Moreover, Raheema may not be the only victim, she thought.

She knew that Raheema wouldn’t agree to expose Mahajan. She already looked too scared to even take his name in front of her. So how should she go about this, then? All such thoughts occupied her mind when, suddenly, there was a knock on the door.

Raheema immediately got up from her chair. Quickly, she wiped her eyes and tucked a few loose strands of her hair behind her ear. She adjusted her sari and was about to leave when Rupali said, ‘Relax! Let me check, you don’t worry,’ and went ahead to open the door.