CHAPTER-3
LOCKED
Chapter Highlights…
“Do you remember how we used to frequently talk and work together for PD?”, she asked.
I nodded readily.
“After that semester, our interactions reduced. Since then, I have missed you a lot. That's when I realized that…I love you. I love you very much, Dhilip”, she proposed to me.
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Dhilip’s POV
What’s wrong with me? I couldn’t open my eyes. Neither could I succeed in moving my hands and legs. Fuck! What’s bothering my back from partitioning itself from the bed? Holy heavens, why can’t I control my own body? Has my body lost its ruling mechanism into the small pothole?
Wait, am I admitted to a hospital? Does all of this mean that I’m lying flat on the bed?
Purpose, purpose, and purpose. That's the only word I heard. Why is everyone yelling the very word over and over, at me? Mom, Dad, I’m just here beside you. I can hear you but can’t acknowledge. Pity my lips! Why do I feel as if they are stuck to each other as if my upper lip was glued to the lower one using an adhesive extracted from dextrin?!
Aye, Dhilip, what’s the purpose of your life? Find out and wake up, earlier than the sunset or sunrise…I wonder if it's the evening or early morning right now! Ooooo! What is my purpose, my Mother Earth? Please help this poor Dhilip guy.
Hmmmm….Hmmm….Hmmm…I’m blanker than the neat and tidy whiteboard when the high-school Math teacher calls a backbencher to solve a Trigonometry problem. What the fuck is my purpose? Why the fuck should I care to stay alive after learning about my girlfriend? My life has always been materialistic….
“Yes!Yes! I finally managed to open my eyes! Sexy!”, exclaimed I, as I flew in a white suit and red tie.
“But, where am I? Mom! Dad! Bhaiya! Bhabhi! Raakesh!”, I called out to everyone I knew but spotted none around; there was hardly a little hummingbird or a static truck around. There was nothing except pitch darkness surrounding me. I looked up and shrank my eyes at the bright white light emerging from the pink sky. I fell into a coffee brown-colored cardboard box.
“Wasn’t it a long box?”, I wondered, at the elongated Chinese lights, hung from the ceiling. “At Least it seemed like one, from the top view’s perspective! What’s this weird universe? Is it even a part of the real world?...”
“Dhilip! Hear me with utmost attention!”, announced a divine female voice from above. I looked up through the doors on either side of the ceiling.
“Sexy! Who are you?”, I chuckled, shrinking my eyes once again, but lesser than the last time, as the radiation began taking baby steps to fade away.
A great round of laughter was the only response that I received.
“Hey, wait. Why have you locked me here? I’ll report you to the cops…”
She roared a louder round of laughter, this time. My meek and hesitant eyes rolled hither and thither at my universe filled with darkness all around and a lovely garden of pink and red roses constituting the sky.
“Wait, am I dead?”, I asked, with a drop of a tear rolling down my cheeks.
“Not at all, son. Your time hasn’t come yet. Don’t worry, you are alive. And yes, my son, you will be locked up here until you find the purpose of your life. As you set the right steps toward the discovery, the darkness around you will slowly disappear. One fine day, you will find yourself surrounded entirely by the lovely garden you see above in the sky. The box will open itself and let you out so that you return to your life. Now, it's your turn to decide if you want a heavenly love life or suffer cursing Priya in the hell-like coma life. Goodbye! My blessings always stay with a gem like you! Remember that the doors won’t open until you find the purpose of your life.”
As the doors slid towards each other, the heavenly light too disappeared. I rubbed my palms, breathing hard and nodding to myself, as the divine voice echoed within me. I frowned at the tubular lights fixed to the ceiling as I hurried from one extreme corner to the other, hearing my own footsteps aloud, along the elongated and narrow enclosed surface.
“Love a girl who longs for your limitlessly true love. She is your right love, bro.” I froze exactly in the middle of the tiny hallway as soon as Raakesh’s words at the bar struck my mind like a flash drawn on the night sky during a thunderstorm.
“No way, Dhilip”, I consoled myself. “Priya isn’t the end. She isn’t my true love, that's all. But, do I know a girl who has ever longed for my love, whose journey of love started with mine and wishes to end with mine? Have I ever crossed paths with my true love already?”
A rose flower appeared near my feet. I bent, grabbed it, and blushed alone. I brought it nearer and massaged a petal to blush more. I moved my eyeballs a little up, as I sought to investigate my own life!
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It was the 5th of January in the year 2022. The third wave of COVID-19 had struck India. I, in a red T-shirt upon a black jeans pant, stood, leaning against the wall, just outside a building. There was a large banner announcing, ‘MSA College Of Engineering & Management’, along with the corresponding local pin code of Bangalore city, stuck to the glassy building within the campus premises.
“Hurry up, Dhilip, please machan”, said a voice, loud enough to burst his own larynx, over the call. “What if the state prepones the lockdown? Anyway, all our other plans failed. Let's at least have this lunch party…”
“Yes yes, sure, machan. But the lockdown starts tomorrow, right? 6th Jan 2022?...”, I asked, yelling a little to overcome the foggy modulation added to my voice, due to the presence of my face mask. It was a strict rule by the University to wear masks while attending our semester exams.
Oh, Ghosh! Our batch had returned to offline mode, which kickstarted with the last internal assessment. Yahoo! I completed my seventh semester today! It's incredible to note that I came to college and wrote my last exam two years ago! The pandemic era made my super senior, senior, and my very batch both weird and unique!
“Machan, cases are spiking like the demand for cryptocurrencies in the contemporary era. What if the Government imposes a sudden lockdown? I don’t know if our gang of twenty besties can even dine once before we end our college lives…”
“Yes yes”, I agreed, nodding along. “I won't ruin our plan. Just a matter of five minutes, da. Need to meet a friend…”
“Friend? Ohhhh, who is this new entry? We are your besties, da…”
I giggled to myself. “I know, machan. Trust me, I will leave exactly at…” He read a half past twelve on his smartphone. “At 12:45. Fine?”
“Come on, machan. That's fifteen minutes not another five minutes! You have already delayed us for almost an hour now. You’ve been waiting for this friend of yours since 11:45 AM today. What is he? The CM’s nephew?”
“Chill da, Keshava. For sure, we will have this lunch party…”
“Machan, all our friends are here. Our entire gang finished their exams early, as usual. All of us have been waiting for you. Who is more important? You must choose between those who wait for you and those who make you wait”
“Ok, machan. I guess she is stuck with her exam…”
“Ohhhkay, now I get why you don’t mind waiting. Machan, ‘she’? Who, your girlfriend?”
“Nah! I don’t have one. You know I’m single, right?”
“Whatever, if it's a girl, then she may keep you waiting forever. But, how come you didn’t mind standing there for forty-five minutes? Oh, I really doubt such a long waiting time. Do you have feelings for her? Ohooo!”
“What the fuck!”, I exclaimed, clarifying, “No, da. Just an old friend.”
“Machan, think, think it over. You’ve been waiting for the past three-fourth hour and you say there is nothing in your heart. A layman won’t believe this. I’m your bestie.”
I chuckled, denying Keshav once again. “Fine, see you in Pranav’s car.”
“I think you haven’t realized it yet. If I were you, I wouldn’t have waited for so long, for a random girl like her…”
“Bye!”
“Ohoo where will you manage to escape?...”
I hung up, chuckling to myself. I knew that I didn’t like her more than a usual friend.
It was the last day of the semester exams, at least for my branch of Computer Technology(CT). The other branches had their last exams including two labs postponed to a date far after a month from then. It was due to the sudden return of the talk of the town: The CoronaVirus.
Some students, including a few of my classmates, protested against the scheme of online classes and offline exams. What a weird combination! Did online semester classes for full-time degree courses like Engineering ever exist before the pandemic of the 21st century? I wonder if we'll ever return perfectly to our good old normal lives. Technologies update, but, this time, our lifestyles have updated with time! We're lazy to commute after experiencing the pros of online workstyle. Online forever!?!
Anyway, the only consequence was the postponement of the offline exam dates. Universities are smart enough to understand the ease of online exams. Who doesn’t want their students to struggle like the warrior with scalpels at the operating theater before gifting them with their dream degrees?!
Sexy! Pity the students whose last exam alone got postponed. Imagine the pain of studying a single subject throughout a span of thirty days. Oooo! I wonder how my friends in the CS department will do it! All the best, guys! Meanwhile, I’m glad that I’m done.
We wanted to celebrate. We, of course, deserved a great party with pomp and show, as if a business tycoon threw one, to pat their company, for a large turnover, crossing a trillion dollars way beyond the set target! Jackpot! But, who was Jack? Fuck, I don’t know. I said it because I’ve heard many saying it. Chuck! Nothing.
At last, the students couldn’t escape their dreadful experiences. However, I, as an enthusiastic pupil, enjoyed burning calories learning, revising, and writing out the essentials on my answer sheet, good enough to fetch my degree with distinction. We still have the last semester left. I heard most of my seniors calling it lightweight for it hardly included more than two theory subjects and had absolutely zero labs.
My mobile vibrated. I grabbed it from my pants pocket. I received a message from Rohini.
“Hi, I’m done with my exam. Are you still in college?”
“Yes yes, come near the bakery”, I replied.
She texted back a ‘yes’.
I think she must be rushing downstairs then. No hurries, bruh! I’m standing here. The lock screen displayed 12:40 exactly in the center.
I wonder why she suddenly texted me the day before. The last night, when she texted me and requested if we could meet, I told her that I doubted it, due to my lunch party plan. The last time we were in good and regular touch was back in December 2020, almost a year ago from then. We used to work together, to handle a lot of tasks, for the PD(Programming Databases) subject during our fifth semester, after which, we texted once in blue moon. Since then, I used to text her only for a necessary formal conversation.
Recently, when I asked her how long she would take, she reassured me that our conversation won’t exceed a span of five minutes. When I told her, in that case, it was chill, she played around, startling me that it may go on for longer, as well.
Fuck! What’s the matter? What happened? I hope things are going fine in her life. Anyways, why did she want to meet me?
My mobile beeped with a new notification.
“I’m here, standing behind you!”, she had texted.
My spine stood straight as I had bent a little, till then, just to relax. I am not suffering from arthritis, silly you! I turned back to find Rohini in a dark blue kurta upon saffron leggings. She had worn the typical surgical mask. She removed her square-shaped tiny spectacles. Her dry and dark brown skin, above the mask, was the only visible facial area.
We waved at each other.
“Hi, Dhilip! How are you?”
“I’m good.”
Neither did I greet her with a ‘Hi’ nor did I ask her if she was well. What a gentleman am I! Hardly did I know, back at that moment, that she had come, to make my day special. Let me continue to narrate what happened.
“So, how were your exams?”
“Yes, they went well.” I nodded.
What the fuck! I treated her like an interviewer. Not my fault! Hardly did I know that she had something unthinkable and unexpected in store.
“What plans after B.Tech? Startup or work in a company or Masters or what?”, she asked, chuckling along.
Ooo, now I got it. Perhaps, she wanted career guidance. I thought so, back then, when this question popped out. But, she failed my imaginative powers.
“I’m planning for my Master's degree. Writing GATE this year.”
“Wow! Nice to know!”, she complimented, asking, “Are you preparing on your own or have you joined some classes outside?”
“Own prep…”
She nodded.
I wondered what on Earth she wished to talk to me about. Both of us were good at studies, both theoretically and practically. Wait, did she want to work on a personal project with me? Has she come here to discuss its problem statement, scope, and approach? I was curious, for no reason.
It was the first time Rohini had texted to meet me in person. Yes, we were classmates back during our offline classes before the outbreak of the pandemic. But, why did she want to meet me after my last examination and just before the lockdown? I gave up. I stopped guessing anymore.
“Do you remember how we used to frequently talk and work together for PD?”, she asked.
I nodded readily. The cloth mask I wore concealed my smile.
“After that semester, our interactions reduced. Since then, I missed you a lot. That's when I realized that…I love you. I love you very much, Dhilip”, she proposed to me.
What will be Dhilip's reply to Rohini?
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