The wave of hatred that rose inside him for his father couldn't be calmed. If earlier, he was merely displeased at his father's lesser involvement in his life, his absence did not bother him at all now. For he felt that Mallik Sr deserved his brutal end; in fact, anyone who subjected his mother to such humiliation deserved to die. As the lump resurfaced in his throat remembering his mother and tears threatened to break their threshold, Arnav Singh Raizada stood still for a moment, turning his face to the wall and waiting for the crowd of students to jostle past him.
The morning assembly had just got over and soon Arnav was quietly walking towards his class, alone for the seventh day running. The first week back to school after his parents' death was supposed to have distracted him, as his Nani had insisted it would. But it had become a distraction of a different kind altogether; he didn't need be a genius to figure out the fake sympathetic looks, the half hearted handshakes of condolence. The most glaring facet of the interaction with every one of them was the omnipresent trail of scandalous whispers that followed him everywhere he went.
It seemed the whole school already knew about the ill-famed reputation of his father's extra marital affairs. The senior boys who gave him high fives and called him champ and buddy now were regarding him coolly as if he was a social pariah. The girls who fawned over him now kept a wary distance, some of them even going to the extent of muttering "like father, like son". His own class mates, the ones who licked his soles to be in his golden club were nowhere to be seen. And so, just like that from being the golden boy of the school, he was now being touted as the black sheep.
It'll be fine, I don't need these losers as it is, he tried to convince himself, albeit unsuccessfully. Nothing identifies fair-weather "friends" as quickly as a catastrophe hitting one's personal life. For him, however, the word friendship had lost all its meaning in the process.
Arnav kept on walking alone, trying really hard to ignore the gaping hole of loneliness he felt inside him.
*
"So, so, so!" Lavanya could no longer control her excitement. "Did you do it? Did you write the letter?" she whispered to Khushi who was standing in front of her.
"Shhh!" Khushi hissed back.
"Fine, don't tell me. After all who am I to you?" Lavanya said in a hurt voice. Khushi rolled her eyes. Lavanya had a flair for the melodramatic.
"Can't we talk about it later?" Khushi retorted, feeling uncomfortably aware that they were the only two having a whispered conversation amidst the hundreds of students standing around them for the morning assembly.
"Oh chuck it. It's just the principal farting on the mic," Lavanya meant for her words to be quiet, but just then a Prefect walked up from behind her.
"Excuse me? Please fall out and stand at the end of the line," the Prefect said sternly and left. Khushi turned around and watched wide eyed as Lavanya sullenly walked to the back to join the other defaulters. Khushi sighed. This girl will be the death of me! She quietly followed Lavanya to the line of defaulters too.
Lavanya stared at Khushi with ill-concealed shock as to why she had joined her. "You are my best friend. That is who you are to me," Khushi replied. Lavanya beamed a huge smile at Khushi and tightly held her hand. Khushi smiled back.
"Yes I wrote the letter," Khushi went on. "But I replaced the stupid code they gave us with a nick name so that it seems a little personal." Lavanya cleared her throat.
"Ahem, personal eh?" she said in a teasing voice. Khushi narrowed her eyes.
"Oh just shut up, will you?" she retorted angrily to Lavanya's silent giggles and stood in attention for the national anthem.
*
Arnav stared at the envelope that had been placed moments before on his desk by the class monitor. He had been rendered speechless with the realisation that he was one of the few in his class who had actually received the letter. He could feel hushed conversations breaking around him, clearly gossiping about him. He glanced diagonally to see a classmate rip open the similar looking envelope even he had received. A group of boys immediately huddled around, all of them trying to read it together.
A nudge on his left made him turn his face.
"Aren't you going to open it Arnav?" his friend asked, quietly pointing towards the letter sitting innocently on his desk.
Arnav's gazed back at it, as if silently debating what to do with it. He looked at the crowd of eager faces all around him. Then he suddenly got up, grabbed the letter and ran out of the class not stopping till he reached the boys lavatory at the end of the corridor. As he locked himself into one of the cubicles the autosensing light flickered on the ceiling. He closed the lid of the pot and gingerly sat down still clutching the envelope tightly in his hands. After a long moment, he gently ripped one of the edges and eased the paper enclosed within.
With trembling hands he unfolded the light pink paper.
Hello!
This is very strange as I've never done anything like this before. I don't even know if you are going to read this or just dump it in the trash but I really wanted to try this.
If you are reading this, then I'm really glad. It means you have taken your first step towards me J
I know you must be having a lot of friends and you probably don't need any new ones. But if you feel like talking about something, anything... that you can't talk to your friends, you can share it with me. I don't know if you'll write back, but I hope you will.
-Jalebi
PS- I know we are supposed to refer to each other as the reference numbers they have allotted to us, but those numbers are just so weird. So I've picked an alias for myself.
Arnav Singh Raizada didn't realise when tears had started flowing down his cherubic cheeks while he was reading the letter. He gently wiped them off by his sleeve and then reread the letter not hearing the bell that declared the end of the school day. His eyes kept running over and over on the three lines and an overwhelming sense of sadness engulfed him.
I know you must be having a lot of friends and you probably don't need any new ones. But if you feel like talking about something, anything... that you can't talk to your friends, you can share it with me. I don't know if you'll write back, but I hope you will.
Writer's note: I've realised that off late a lot of new readers have joined in. Thank you so much for liking this story. So like I said, the story basically starts from here. The first letter that Khushi has written to Arnav has reached him. Hopefully it now makes sense as to why he cried when he read the letter 😊
Uhm, I know the length of the chapters is something few people are slightly peeved about, but I can assure it will slowly increase. Bear with me.
Oh and I'm converting this into a FF now. 😉
FEEDBACK people!
cheers!
PS -If you want to be sent a PM for this, please add me as a buddy AND drop me a PM/scrap telling me you are following this story. Makes it more organized for me. thanks!
Mannat Har Khushi Paane Ki
Cricket
10