Page 56 - Half Girlfriend

7

'A girl in the hostel?’ Ashu slapped my back.‘What a stud.’ My
hostel mates had come to my room. Fat Ashu sat on my bed, making it

creak like crazy. His back slap still hurt.
Ashu, Raman and Shailesh had become my core gang in Rudra.

Riya couldn't be with me all the time, and when she couldn’t, I hung
out with these guys.

'How did you find out?’I said.

'I can still smell the perfume,’ Raman said and sniffed like a
cartoon character. Everyone laughed.

All four of us came front Bihar or Jharkhand, and none of us were
the 'classy’ types you find in Stephen’s. For instance, nobody in

Stwphen's would say they watched Bhojpuri movies. We loved them.
We liked Hindi music, from Mohammed Rafi in the sixties to Pritam in

the here and now. We didn’t understand English music beyond one
song by Michael Jackson—‘Beat it’. Of course, we never admitted all

this to the rest of our classmates. We nodded our heads every time
someone mentioned a great English movie or brought a rock CD to

class. 'Yeah, yeah, cool,' we said.
'Nonsense. Riya and I came straight from the basketball court. No

perfume,’ I said.
'Even a girl’s sweat smells like perfume,’ Shailesh said. I threw the

basketball at his head. His rectangular-framed glasses flew to the floor.

He screamed and held his head in pain.
'You’re trying to kill me or what?’ he said. I placed Shailesh’s

spectacles back on his nose.
'Stop talking like that about Riya,’ I said.

'Oh my, protective and all,’ Shailesh said.
Among the four of us, Shailesh’s English was the best. Of course,

he preferred Hindi like the rest of us but he could pass off as a ‘real’
Stephanian when he spoke in English.

'So, are you guys in a relationship? Things seem to be escalating,’