What Maya Saw Page 3

  Maya nodded, took the cards and scampered inside the building before Mr Ranglani could hit his stride.

  Pine View prided itself on being a superior, strictly residential kind of building. So everybody was incensed when, about seven years ago, oily Mr Ranglani bought the ground-floor apartment and stuck a big, black-on-pink sign outside his window. ‘Relax Real Estate: You rest and relax, we work and find.’

  Over the years, Mr Ranglani had deflected threats, legal notices and rudeness with his unctuous smiles. For him, life was an endless sales pitch. ‘I find best houses for best people,’ he had whispered to Maya’s mother during a neighbour’s funeral last month. ‘Spritual houses for spritual people like youji. Pure vegetarian houses for pure vegetarian people. Party houses for partying crowd.’

  Maya disliked the black-on-pink sign. But more than that, she hated the daily chats that Mr Ranglani felt were his duty as a good neighbour.

  Maya was waiting for the lift when Mrs Mirpuri called out to her. ‘Once again our Maya is achieving great things,’ the neighbour exclaimed in a voice dripping with arsenic and envy. ‘You must share your secret with us sometime. Arrey, but you are looking so tired, Maya. Your eyes are puffy. Be careful not to get sunstroke with this running around in the heat. My grandmother always used to say that April sun is most dangerous. I am careful to keep my girls indoors in this weather. But then, they have very delicate, fair skin.’

  Mrs Anand bristled. And Maya rolled her puffy eyes.

  Her mother had obviously spent the morning tormenting neighbours and telling them about her incredible, brilliant, super-achieving daughter.

  Now it was up to Maya to live up to that incredible, brilliant, super-achieving image. Which meant sticking on at the Summer School. Or telling Mrs Anand about the girl with the horns.

  Maya chose the path of least resistance.

  So the next morning, she again found herself in the long corridors of St Paul’s with a Tupperware box of paneer-chapati rolls, a jumpy heart and hasty feet. She had slept fitfully. Her dreams had been full of dusty books and endless arcades. And a beautiful boy with troubled eyes.

  Feeling twitchy, Maya scurried towards Lecture Room 113. The handsome quadrangle drowsed in the stillness. Sunlight glinted off stained-glass panels. A basketball bounced to a steady beat. A fragment of song momentarily filled the empty space.

  Then Maya heard the tttk-tctt of high heels on stone. Fuelled by terror, she scuttled along, till a laughing voice called, ‘Maya, wait.’

  Maya turned and saw Lola teetering towards her. It was a slow teeter because Lola was wearing purple satin shoes with heels so long and spindly, they would make a pencil feel obese.

  ‘Are we like late?’ Lola panted when, with a final totter, she reached Maya. ‘It’s a totally long walk to the classroom. The entire college is empty. So I can’t understand why they’ve put us in the far, far corner. Don’t they have any sympathy for people like me for whom every step is like torture?’

  ‘Do the shoes hurt?’ Maya asked, gazing at the fairytale shoes that matched Lola’s slim purple-and-green striped dress.

  ‘Toes squashed to pulp,’ Lola replied cheerfully. ‘But aren’t they awesome? Worth all the pain and Bandaids. I got them online and saved like 800 bucks, so maybe I ended up with the wrong size? Did you do your homework?’

  Maya nodded and replied, ‘Sort of. It was a little vague.’

  Lola laughed. ‘It was totally vague. But I guess that’s the difference between school and college. You’re still in school, right? How old are you?’

  ‘Almost 15,’ Maya said. She hoped that her new friend with the satin shoes wouldn’t lose interest after knowing that Maya was so much younger. ‘What about you? Do you study at St Paul’s?’

  ‘I’m 16,’ Lola said, stopping to massage her ankle. ‘We’re in the middle of moving from Bangalore. I’ll be starting in the first year at St Paul’s after the summer holidays. It looks like an awesome place, doesn’t it? It’s got a rep for having like the coolest guys. And, of course, all the models and fashion designers are from here.’

  ‘Really?’ Maya asked with a spurt of interest. ‘I didn’t know that. Which models?’

  ‘Yesterday I saw that girl … you know the one with the streaked hair and pink skateboard who comes in that awesome glitter nailpolish ad?’

  Maya nodded enthusiastically.

  This was big news. Something to tell the girls at school. Something that would get her invited to a sleepover or dance party. ‘The girl in the tutu who blows bubbles and dances while she skateboards? She studies at St Paul’s?’

  ‘I guess so,’ Lola shrugged, as they stepped into the air-conditioned haven of 113. ‘Or at least she hangs out here. She was in the courtyard under that big tree where the cool crowd hangs out. I’ll show you at lunch today. Let’s sit there.’

  Maya followed Lola to seats in the middle of the class – very different from the discreet corner she would have chosen for herself. But having a friend with her made all the difference.

  There was no sign of Amara. Owais and Sanath hadn’t made the trek from the boys’ hostel, either. Maya felt a jab of disappointment. Though she would never admit it, seeing Sanath again was part of the reason she had returned to St Paul’s.

  Veda—the tubby girl with the confident voice—had again colonised the front row with her impressive array of stationery. She was wearing pink leggings and a denim jacket decorated with glittery stones. Just looking at it made Maya feel faint with heat. Veda’s desk was piled with three clunky, faded books. Her homework was printed out, stapled and labelled ‘Assignment 1’. And her face wore the alert, earnest expression of a lifelong teacher’s pet.

  Maya looked at her with mild dislike. And then felt guilty about her snap judgement. ‘That’s probably what people see when they look at me,’ she thought, remembering Radhika Rathod’s advice, ‘Don’t judge a book by its cover.’

  By the end of the morning session though, Maya had shed her guilt. Veda was easy to dislike. Her strident voice had interrupted Father D’Gama at least 25 times. She had an opinion a minute and began every sentence with, ‘In my opinion …’

  She shook her bobbed head pityingly if anybody else had another point of view. She dripped borrowed wisdom and quotable quotes. Stuff like, ‘Study the past if you would define the future.’

  Maya hoped fervently that she and Veda would never need to exchange more than an unsmiling ‘hi’. But that was asking for too much. It was just her luck that she had landed in the coolest college in Mumbai, only to spend her days with the uncoolest creature in the universe.

  Maya tried to concentrate on Father D’Gama. The priest looked tired and anxious, and Maya remembered the policemen of the previous day. But soon she was absorbed in the fascinating story of Afanasy Nikitin, a Russian merchant who had travelled to India in 1466. The merchant had landed on the palm-fringed Konkan coast near a village named Chaul.

  ‘Today, if you visit the Alibag area, you will drive past the houses and small shops of Chaul within minutes,’ said Father D’Gama. ‘But when Nikitin landed in India, the villages along the Konkan were packed with traders and ships from distant places. The lanes of Chaul and Dabhol resounded with exotic tongues. Next time you pass that way, do spend a few minutes imagining them as international ports crowded with businesses and travellers.’

  ‘Meanwhile, Bombay was a cluster of sleepy green islands – perhaps home to a few fisherfolk,’ Father D’Gama continued. ‘What we learn from this, of course, is that wherever we go, we are standing amidst the ghosts of cities and villages past. You are here to catch those shadows and pin them down.’

  Maya felt a shiver run down her spine.

  The rest of the class, though, was stirring restlessly. ‘Food, I need food,’ Lola wailed.

  Veda turned and glared, but Lola just responded with a sparkly smile. ‘Basically, I go a bit nuts when I’m hungry,’ she explained. ‘Epic. He’s finally stopping.’

  Veda rushed t
o waylay Father D’Gama. Everybody else rushed in the opposite direction, towards the canteen.

  Maya pulled out her tiffin box with the paneer-roti rolls and stood uncertainly at the door of the classroom. This was the moment she dreaded. She couldn’t go to the library. She was afraid to hang out alone in an empty quadrangle full of menacing gargoyles. She didn’t want to cling on to Lola. And she didn’t want to sit in the classroom and eat with bossy Veda, who was now arranging steel boxes with military precision.

  Then Lola waved at her, and Maya flushed with gratitude.

  ‘Come, let’s go to the canteen,’ Lola said, fluffing her hair. ‘I’m having a dosa today. You?’

  Maya held up her dabba.

  Lola was aghast. ‘Why’re you bringing lunch from home?’ she protested. ‘St Paul’s canteen is famous. It has 11 different types of dosa. And I haven’t yet counted, but at least 40 different juices and shakes. It’s where they shot Pyaar Story 2. It’s like historic.’

  Lola grabbed Maya’s arm and stumbled towards the canteen. All the way there, she kept up a cheerful monologue about sandwiches and noodles and Pyaar Story 2, only stopping to wave to various people.

  Some smiled back at Lola. Others looked baffled.

  A tall, blond man who looked a bit like the actor in Four Weddings and A Funeral—the name was on the tip of Maya’s tongue but it just wouldn’t come—looked alarmed. He clearly wasn’t used to unsteady strangers in purple satin shoes beaming at him without reason.

  ‘That’s that English professor,’ Lola whispered. ‘He’s like a big shot. From Oxford or Cambridge or somewhere.’

  ‘How do you know?’ Maya asked, her head whirling. ‘How’ve you got to know so many people in one day?’

  Lola chuckled but didn’t answer. She was too distracted by the smells of frying fat, squeezed citrus and heady coffee. ‘Yesterday, I had a Mexican Sandwich. It was gross. But I’m not giving up. I’m planning to try the Manchurian Sandwich next. You’ll have to keep me company. A sort of pact of friendship. No bond greater than that of munching a Manchurian together.’

  ‘That sounds quite deadly,’ Maya giggled as they stepped into the famous canteen. ‘Pyaar Story 3 with a tragic ending.’

  Lola snorted. ‘I knew it,’ she announced. ‘You’re really funny and wicked behind the good schoolgirl exterior. I can tell you are thinking rude thoughts when your mouth quirks. That’s what I like about you.’

  The St Paul’s canteen was a vast hall that opened out into a leafy courtyard. About six counters dispensed tea, juices, snacks and thalis. The rest of the space was crammed with functional metal tables and chairs. The clatter from the kitchen, the furniture and the cutlery echoed through the hall.

  Lola queued up at a counter, and emerged with a dosa on an orange plastic plate. ‘Love the plate,’ she smiled. ‘Come, let’s share a table with Clinton and Paramjit.’

  ‘Who?’ Maya asked, wondering why they couldn’t just sit by themselves. There were more than enough empty tables.

  But Lola had already marched to a table overlooking the courtyard. ‘Hi guys,’ she chirped at the two boys tackling plates heaped with fried rice. ‘Can we sit with you? This is Maya, by the way. Is the fried rice any good?’

  Clinton and Paramjit stopped shovelling the multicoloured rice into their mouths, nodded awkwardly and moved backpacks and laptops to make space. Both were gawky and bespectacled. One wore a t-shirt that stated ‘Algebra Rocks’. The other was wearing a t-shirt that declared, ‘Keep Calm and Be a Jedi’.

  Maya felt more relaxed. She was in the company of soulmates.

  Lola attacked her dosa and quizzed the boys. ‘Enjoying Summer School?’ she asked.

  ‘OK,’ said Algebra, shrugging and staring at his fried rice intently as if it held the secret of the universe.

  ‘Not bad,’ agreed Jedi.

  ‘You’re both from St Paul’s, right?’ Lola persisted. ‘I’m joining in summer. It seems a great place.’

  ‘Decent,’ said Jedi, adding a virulent red sauce to his already vivid rice.

  ‘Not bad,’ Algebra said, and started checking messages on his phone. ‘Canteen is cheap.’

  ‘What subjects are you—’

  Lola was interrupted by a deafening thump and shrieks of laughter from the courtyard. Maya looked through the window and spotted a bench that had collapsed. A group of girls and boys were standing around it, laughing stagily.

  ‘I thought the world had come to an end,’ someone squealed.

  ‘The sky is falling, the sky is falling,’ another declared.

  The entire canteen was watching the little drama outside.

  Maya spotted Amara and Owais near the fallen bench. Then she saw Sanath and her chest gave a big, fat whump.

  Sanath was chatting with a petite girl in an apple-green dress. Her brown hair was cut in feathery bangs. She looked cute and rather familiar.

  ‘That girl in the summer dress,’ Lola said, ‘She’s the one I was telling you about. The model. Isn’t she like pretty?’

  Maya was forced to agree. The girl was pretty in a fragile, helpless way. Her face was heart-shaped, her eyes fringed by fluttering lashes.

  The girl clutched Sanath’s arm in a helpless, cho-chweet manner.

  ‘I bet she lisps adorably,’ Maya thought, unable to look away as a pearly, lavender fingertip traced a pattern on Sanath’s shirt.

  Jealousy, Maya realised, tasted like bile. Sour and slimy green.

  Lola was busy gathering information. ‘Isn’t that girl in the green dress a model?’ she quizzed Clinton and Paramjit, who had demolished their mountains of rice and were getting ready to leave. ‘And I’ve definitely seen that guy in the yellow t-shirt. Is he on TV? Are they in the Summer School too? I haven’t noticed them in class.’

  Jedi shrugged. But Algebra nodded. ‘That girl’s in an ad or something,’ he said laconically.

  ‘And that guy in the tight yellow t-shirt?’ Lola persisted. ‘Is he a model too?’

  ‘No,’ Jedi said. ‘He’s the heir to the evil empire. He’s Pratik Purohit.’

  Maya looked up with instant interest. The Purohit family owned Parampara Industries, an immense octopus, with tentacles everywhere. The company was incredibly successful. That, in turn, made Pratik Purohit a big, big deal.

  Pratik Purohit was only 19, but he was in the news all the time. Not always for very salubrious reasons.

  Maya’s father worked for Parampara Industries, which made Pratik his boss of sorts. Yuck.

  But then, half the world worked for Parampara Industries. Which made Pratik Purohit boss of sorts of half the world.

  Watching the short, cocky figure, Maya felt gross. Pratik was talking on his mobile and had draped a possessive, wandering arm around a girl in a tight crimson dress and startling green eyes.

  It was clear that he fancied the girl with the green eyes. Equally, he fancied himself.

  ‘Does Pratik Purohit attend St Paul’s?’ Maya asked.

  Algebra scoffed. ‘Don’t you read Page 3? He studies in some big university in the US. Those types usually do. But he’s often here because he’s chasing some babe or the other. Probably that girl in the red dress.’

  ‘She has amazing green eyes. But she’s not exactly a girl, is she?’ Lola remarked. ‘She looks older. Like in her late 20s or something. A bit out of place in the college.’

  Jedi waved a dismissive hand. ‘Don’t think she’s a student at St Paul’s. But no way to know, really. That bunch is too high and mighty to bother with us or with classes. I was really psyched to see Owais in class yesterday.’

  Lola stole one more look at the banyan tree crowd. ‘So they aren’t all in the Summer School?’ she demanded. ‘That’s sad. They are so … so decorative.’

  ‘That’s the party crowd,’ Algebra snorted. ‘They don’t do classes. They party.’

  ‘The Dark Force,’ Jedi added cryptically, as they strolled off.

  Maya and Lola lingered over their lunch and watched the s
cene in the courtyard. There was lots of posing and preening under the banyan tree. Pratik Purohit was relating a long story to an appreciative, nodding audience. Only the girl-woman with green eyes seemed distracted. She was looking past Pratik towards Sanath with an intent expression.

  ‘Don’t tell me she also likes Sanath,’ Maya thought. ‘Not that it makes a difference – he seems nicely hooked, booked and cooked by that model.’

  The Girl Who was Probably a Model was now taking selfies with Sanath. She clapped gaily after each picture. Sanath didn’t look quite as thrilled with life, but then cool boys probably didn’t clap and squeal.

  Pratik Purohit finished his story, and the audience dispersed. Pratik stood up, lit a cigarette, tossed his crumpled packet on the courtyard floor and slouched into the canteen. On the way, he barrelled into one of the canteen boys clearing tea glasses. He snarled, pushing past so roughly that a glass fell and shattered.

  Maya stared, riveted and repelled. ‘What a creep,’ she whispered. ‘I hate people who litter. And are rude to helpless waiters. St Paul’s should ban him.’

  ‘Ya sure. That would be a bit like banning the Prime Minister,’ Lola grimaced. ‘Gosh, do you think Amara and Owais are a couple?’

  Maya peered through the canteen window at Amara and Owais, who had joined the girl with the green eyes and crimson dress. Amara was speaking with a tense expression, but her companions seemed bored and indifferent.

  Suddenly, Amara leapt up from the bench and pushed the glossy curls away from her face. She dug the toe of her right boot into the ground and violently scraped something onto the dirt floor.

  Lola stood up to spy more effectively. ‘Weird,’ she muttered. ‘She drew three lines. Like … like … you know, cricket stumps. Like 111.’

  ‘Three lines …’ Maya echoed blankly, and then looked away quickly as Amara swung around and stormed away with a forbidding expression. Across the smudgy glass and courtyard, Maya could feel the heat of her fury.