CHAPTER-9
HALF-BLUSHING
Chapter Highlights…
“By the way, did the calculation mistake happen by mistake or did you do it on purpose?”, she enquired, shrinking her eyes. I turned back and chuckled at her.
“Of course, by mistake”, I acknowledged, handing the bluebook back to her. My palm happened to rub against hers as she grabbed her paper. It was just a sudden touch but my heart raced, within me, like the leopard running and exercising its arms in a dense jungle.
#########################################
Dhilip’s POV
“...This graph of demand and supply is the basic rule of Economics. Don’t forget the inputs and outputs of the cycle. Many of you have gone wrong there. Even if I wake you up in the middle of the night and question you, you must be in a position to give me the right answer, students”, lectured Natraja sir, inverting his lips and closing the attendance register. He had projected the last slide of a twenty-slide PowerPoint presentation. Our eyes were already heavy enough to keep yawning.
“I have corrected your internal papers and this was one point I wanted to mention”, he continued, in his drowsy tone. Fuck! What? The papers are ready already. Sameer and I shrugged at each other. We had our first internal assessment last week. Hmm, I couldn’t even see Rohini for an entire week. Wait, Dhilip, are you missing Rohini? What’s happening to me?
“Sir!”, called Dheeraj, chewing his bubblegum and raising his hand up.
“Yes, go on”, permitted Eco sir, disconnecting the projector cables and shutting his laptop down.
“How much did I secure?”, roared he, at which Rohini and Srithika turned back from the first bench and chuckled at each other. While Dheeraj shrugged at the professor, Sameer whispered, “Machan, does he feel he is a hero? How will sir…”
“Sure, Dheeraj. You have done well. Check your paper”, replied Nataraja. Sameer burst out a round of laughter at which Dheeraj frowned at me.
“What a swag reply!”, added Jacob, whispering in my ears from behind.
“Yuh, I haven’t totaled your scripts yet. Kareena, you are the CR, right? Can you?”, Natraja asked, placing the bundle on the empty first desk in the row beside Rohini’s. As Kareena nodded and stood up, the professor suggested, “Call someone along for help.” I raised my hand, stood up, and followed her to the row at the other end of our classroom.
“You can total and distribute the papers to the corresponding students then and there”, instructed Natraja, packing his laptop and beginning the roll call. Kareena and I divided the papers, flipped those pages, to sum up the marks on every page, and specified our calculated total in pencil on the front page of the bluebook. As I turned back to pass on the papers, Srithika too helped me circulate a few answer scripts.
“Forty-two”, said I, entering the same within a circle on a bluebook.
“Oh, is that the highest?”, Kareena enquired curiously. I chuckled and nodded. “Yep, so far I guess that's what I encountered.” I flipped to the very first page. Oooo, guess whose bluebook I just totaled? Yes yes, Rohini medam’s! I blushed as Kareena read out Rohini’s name from the first page. “T0009”, called I, turning back and looking into Rohini’s eyes, as I handed her script over to her.
“Dude, good job!”, acclaimed Kareena, at which Rohini smiled and thanked her. Medam, don’t go with Srithika. Clouds of thoughts pestered my mind as I saw her closing her fist, bulging her eyes, and hitting the desk, repeating Rohini’s high score. I wish I could forewarn Rohini.
I rolled my eyeballs hither and thither at her face as she skimmed and scanned through her paper. Srithika too was busy peeping into her bluebook and comparing her answers. I returned to totaling the other papers. We were at the final step of organizing the bluebooks of absentees and asking the others to return their answer sheets.
“Dhilip!”, I heard Rohini’s stern voice calling me from behind. I turned back only to catch her raised eyebrows at me.
I agree that love is unanticipated. I also agree that the identity of our lover is a true mystery
until we feel the love!
Following the same lines, one thus ends up falling for a bad partner-the wrong love. It's fine!
Making a wrong decision is common among ordinary homosapiens like you and me.
However, correcting our blunder and returning to our right love is a worthy question whose
answer may either be a ‘YES’ or a ‘NO’ or sometimes a combination of both! There is only one
superpower that can answer this query: ‘TIME’
“It's forty-eight, not forty-two. You somehow missed adding the marks on the last page”, she highlighted, handing her bluebook back to me. I scrutinized her paper again. I nodded and gestured a thumbs-up as I changed the total.
“By the way, did the calculation mistake happen by mistake or did you do it on purpose?”, she enquired, shrinking her eyes. I turned back and chuckled at her.
“Of course, by mistake”, I acknowledged, handing the bluebook back to her. My palm happened to rub against hers as she grabbed her paper. It was just a sudden touch but my heart raced, within me, like a leopard exercising in a dense jungle.
I felt my pupils dilating at Rohini swallowing her blush and struggling to control her smile as she conversed with her friend. I saw her in a half-blushing state for the first time. Oooo, the nerdy and ambitious girl blushes too! I didn’t know…Hmmm….Her curvy eyelashes made her look prettier when she felt shy.
Aye, why didn’t I notice Rohini back then? Throughout the lifetime I shared with her, destiny always brought us closer to each other. Cupid somehow made us converse and interact by bringing in a variety of incidents. Why didn’t I observe any of these signs back then? Every little sign of the great heavens appeared right in front of my eyes just to help me realize that my heavenly love was right under my nose. It's now that I have been reliving that I understand the significance of every little detail.
##################################################
It was a working Saturday. Sharp rays of the bright giant morning star, incident on the big glassy door covering the wall opposite to the door, left shadowy impressions hither and thither on Jodha Ma’am’s white sheet. Some students sat in groups and discussed while others ran restlessly from desk to desk in order to form teams.
“Awesome. Whom would you like to choose as your team leader?”, asked Jodha as soon as she entered our topic and gave our team number. Sameer and Kamla pointed at me. “Ok, Dhilip”, she said, tightening her bun and entering my name in the last column. As we headed towards the door with my laptop, Jodha gestured for a gang of girls occupying the third and fourth benches.
I stopped at the door and blushed to myself, looking at Rohini heading to the dais with Vaishnavi and a short yet elder classmate, Lilliput, and two others. I don’t know, the two besties used to tease her ‘Lilliput’ as they dined during lunch breaks.
“Oh my goodness!”, exclaimed Jodha, placing her left palm on the chest. Rohini shared a blank face with her team. The professor pressed her forehead with the left index finger. She pointed out, “Another team has chosen the same…oh okay I see…that team has chosen CPU scheduling for their mini project. But, yours is disk scheduling though. What’s your reference?”
Sexy! Telepathy, my favorite sign of love, worked between Rohini and me. I blushed as Rohini followed Jodha’s hand pointing at the doorstep. Rohini didn’t even notice who that team was. Hmmm, how I wish you at least bothered to see whose thoughts yours had coincided. She seemed to be least interested in matters of love.
A while later, as my fingers danced on the keyboard, I sat with my team. Our entire batch populated the Algo Design lab. Rohini sat with her team of five girls just behind my row. Sexy! Now, after five years, I happen to observe how close destiny always brought us together, certainly for a hidden reason, lasting for an entire lifetime which Rohini realized later while I never realized. I’m so dumb!
“So, shall I remove this statement and try again?”, asked Rohini, at which she received no response from her blank team busy with their mobiles. Vaishnavi nodded once in a while but was more curious to learn if the coding was successfully completed. Poor Rohini seemed to be talking to herself.
“Machan, first create an array…Add a pointer here…here line number sixty”, instructed Sameer, focusing on my screen while Kamla rested her chin on the palm and nodded at everything we uttered.
As I sat straight, as always, leaning my back entirely on the backrest and manipulating our codes, saving a version at the right checkpoints, I blushed and chuckled at Rohini’s weary and spectacled face glancing at me and my screen alternatively. She removed her glasses, closed her eyes, sighed, and massaged her brown face.
“Seventy percent is done!”, I declared, getting up and leaving the lab. Kareena threw her mouth open and insisted we should wait till Jodha ma’am returned so that we can present once and confirm before leaving. Sameer yawned and I chuckled, waving at our other friends and leaving. Hmm, how I wish I had teamed up with Rohini as well. I didn’t bid her adieu as well. She continued to remain a random classmate to me but I must have grasped those heavenly signs which were, perhaps, those of true love.
Will Dhilip cleverly catch those signs at least during this reliving journey?
Dear readers,
Thank you for following my series and reading the episode. Please rate it, write your review, give it a heart, and share it in your circle whenever you are free. Your voice matters a lot to me.
