(A6) Chapter 6 Fire
When Naavika was taking bath, she received a call over her mobile.
“Naavika, are you free for some time? I wish to explain what happened? That will ease my conscience. Please. I am feeling guilty that I hurt such a nice person.” She remained quiet as Hitesh begged her to listen.
Telling him that she was in the bathroom would make him say “OK, then I’ll call later”, and he might call when she was sitting near her mother. The better thing was to be done with him while she was in the privacy of her own room.
She said in a stern voice, “Look Hitesh, I have nothing to do with you. Perhaps you have formed a wrong impression about me. Whatever you did today was despicable, and I am not interested in any explanations. Nor would I like to be on talking terms with you from now on.”
“I just want you to hear me out,” Hitesh persisted. “The whole thing acquired a different meaning from the way it happened. It was not my intention at all. I want you to believe me that it was pure accident. I wanted to explain then and there, but there was a crowd of students when we came out of the room. And you walked angrily away. I didn’t get the opportunity to talk. Now I am disturbed. I am feeling guilty. I want to make amends. I want you to understand me. I want you to know the truth.”
“What truth are you talking of? You suddenly barge into the class room when I am sitting alone. And you hold my face in your hands before I can realise what is happening and then touch my lips with yours! And now you wish to explain? What is there to explain? We have not even been talking much to each other. For my part, I don’t take you as any better than an acquaintance. And you dare to behave with me as one would behave with a cheap girl who goes around giving fun to others! How dare you do this with me?”
Hitesh’s voice which had been imploring, begging and weak with guilt, suddenly became firm and strong. It was as if he had been taken over by someone else — someone who was clear about what he felt, thought and wanted. He said in a firm and resolute voice, “Naavi, I have been in love with you for many months now. Today when I saw you sitting alone, something moved me to make a confession of my love to you. Perhaps you are yet to begin to understand the language of love and mistook it for cheap physicality.”
He kept the phone, while Naavika waited to hear further. Next moment, she heard the engaged tone and knew that he had hung up. She looked at her mobile as if to get visible confirmation that the phone had been disconnected. She felt stunned and immobile for a moment. The sudden conviction in Hitesh’s voice overpowered her. She didn’t know how to react. She desperately wanted to know what was going on in his mind after he had hung up. Was he still thinking of her? Or was his last sentence a statement of her closing his heart to her? She hoped that the phone had disconnected and that he had not hung up. She wished that he would ring again.
She never thought Hitesh impressive. Like all girls, Naavika liked boys whose personality traits most resembled her father’s. She liked those who were calm and had their emotions under their control. Hitesh was highly impulsive. He was unpredictable. She had noticed that he would often sit at a distance when she was sitting in the canteen and would keep looking at her. But the moment she looked at him, he would turn his eyes away. She would conclude that the meeting of their gaze was just a coincident. She was not even remotely suspicious of the feelings he harboured for her. Today forenoon, when students had gone out of classes and were standing scattered here and there listening to the smoking hot speech from the union secretary about the atrocities of the teachers, she kept sitting in the class room, face towards the wall and reading quietly from a library-book. At that time, she suddenly felt someone holding her face in his hands and lifted her eyes to see who it was. Straight ahead, just a foot from her face, she saw Hitesh’s face with an expression she had never seen on a man’s face. Before she could react, he moved forward and lightly brushed his lips on hers, and left. Rage surged in her body and she came out of the room. She looked around and saw huge crowds of boys and girls, forming up a procession. Many were shouting slogans of “Down!Down!” Nobody seemed to be in a mood to listen to a tale of molestation. She was in no mind to accompany the procession. So, she caught an auto and came home. At home, she saw the door locked. That rattled her, and she virtually shouted at her mother in the mobile phone, asking where she was.
By the time she went to take bath, she had decided to forget the occurrence as an unpleasant experience that had taken place in the privacy of a room. She knew that talking it out would make it the talk of the college and spoil her name. Hitesh’s voice over the phone now brought back her anger, as she felt provoked at the thought that he had the audacity to ring her up after his gross misbehaviour. She wanted to give him a dressing down. But the sudden change in his tone before he disconnected, mellowed her attitude. She recalled the expression on his face when it was just a few inches from hers. The memory of the first ever brush with male lips filled up her mind. She realised that no one had ever called her Naavi. It sounded so good, so warm and so full of love.
She wished that he should ring up again and resume his apology. She wished he should say he was overcome by an emotion. That he would never do such a thing again. That whatever happened was not because he took her lightly or that he thought she was one with whom one could take liberties.
The phone bell rang again. She said “Hello” and waited for Hitesh’s voice from the other side. Milind spoke. He said, “Naavika, the college has been closed for ten days.”
She didn’t like the news of the college being closed. Something within her yearned to go to the college. Then she saw a reflection of her face in the water on the floor of the bathroom. She saw her lips and it occurred to her that they had undergone a change from when she saw them last. This brought warmth to her lips which soon changed into heat and the heat gradually spread to her face and then to the rest of her body. She looked at her naked body, as if she was seeing it for the first time. Lines from a poem she had read in a magazine came to her mind:
When girl becomes woman,
The cells in her body change.
She pulsates with a rhythm
She hardly understands.
And when he comes
And touches with his fire
She barely can control….
