Now Daksh is sitting on the beanbag next to me and is impressed with how quickly Gaurav picked up the game.
‘Beginners don’t get these tricks so easily. You saw what Gaurav did there? It’s Elastico, takes very quick reflexes,’ Daksh tells me.
‘My brother’s stupid. Anything that he can do, I respect it less.’
‘C’mon,’ Daksh protests. ‘There’s an entire industry being built around e-sports. Many seventeen-year-olds in the West have earned a fortune playing games. In India, it’s going to be huge in the coming years.’
‘My parents will gouge his eyes out before they let him play a video game,’ I counter. ‘Both he and I are meant to become fat rats in the rat race. Alternative careers and passions are not for us.’
‘And SRCC is the first hurdle in the rat race?’
‘Exactly,’ I answer. ‘The placements will ensure we don’t have money problems again. If you compare it, the average placement at SRCC is far better than even the good ones in any other college. If Vicky and I fail to get into SRCC, it would be another three years of slogging to clear the next hurdle. The struggle will go on.’
He nods, but I don’t think he gets it. I don’t expect a guy who thinks playing video games is a legitimate career choice would know what difference the right college can make in the lives of people like us.
Daksh checks his phone—the third time in the past twenty minutes. I would like to live in a world where my biggest concern is that my girlfriend is not texting me back, where my sister’s not getting the right flavour of ice cream and where my parents are getting mocked for having sex. But despite all this, I don’t resent Daksh. It’s quite the opposite. Never had I imagined that someone would tell me he had a crush on me and I wouldn’t find it creepy. I have wondered if it’s because he’s handsome . . . or because he has a sister who he dotes on . . . or because he’s nice. I can’t place it.
Over the years, I have received chits in my bags with scribbled love confessions, I have been told of crushes, my name’s written along with other girls’ names in boys’ washrooms . . . but no one has ever told me to my face they have a crush on me as respectfully as Daksh did.
He’s the opposite of creepy. When he trains his eyes on me, it’s like standing on the beach, the warmth of the morning sun slowly bathing you. He’s rich but not obnoxious, just the kind of rich I want to be. And every now and then, my mind reminds me of his razor-sharp nose or his defined jawline or the softness of his eyes. And then, sometimes, I inspect Daksh’s confession of his crush in my mind. It warms my insides. There’s a way he talks that makes me feel looked at, like I’m important, like I matter. It’s the spotlight he shines on me. And it makes me feel horrible. It reminds me of what Vicky says about other girls in our school. The ones with short skirts. The ones who used to hang out with boys near the washrooms.
‘That kind of girl.’
‘Still no text?’ I ask him, wondering how he must make Sameeksha feel if he can make me, a random stranger, so wanted. And then I wonder how I would feel if Vicky went ahead and told a girl he had a crush on her. Not nice.
He shakes his head. ‘She will . . . sooner or later.’
‘She’s in college?’
‘First year, Philosophy Honours. But she wants to move to the UK to study English. She’s trying, let’s see.’
‘How cute that you guys can do courses like English and philosophy without worrying about the jobs you will get after them.’
He frowns. I worry if my constant haranguing about his richness would put him off.
He says, ‘Yaar, what can I say? It’s true that our future plans will not implode if we get one question wrong. To get 100 per cent in all four subjects to get into a college . . . it’s just . . . crazy . . . it’s a bad education system.’
‘I’m not blaming you, by the way,’ I clarify. ‘It’s strange that most of our lives is just chance. It’s luck. Must be fun, though, living in Dubai.’
He laughs, some of the colour coming back to his face. ‘Ummm . . . I was about to say it’s okay, it’s not special, but you will judge me, so let me recalibrate. Umm . . . so . . . it’s amazing compared to India. Less traffic, no bribes, things work, no one cheats, everything is air-conditioned, it’s super safe. It’s like a shopping mall. You hardly ever complain in a shopping mall.’
‘But?’
‘I never said there was a but.’
‘It felt like there was a but . . .’
He gives in. ‘But Mumma says there’s no culture. Everything is man-made, artificial.’
I roll my eyes. ‘Give me comfort over culture any day. Anyway, everything is man-made, artificial. The oldest temples and mosques in India are man-made. Two hundred years later, they will call Burj Khalifa a monument. It’s a matter of time.’
He looks at his phone again.
‘I need to go to the market real quick,’ he says. ‘Do you want to come?’
I want to go wherever he goes. It’s absolutely wrong. A part of me tells me that this is what the holiday is about: to experience new things. So what if the experience is to be in the company of this charming guy who thinks gaming is cool, that Philosophy Honours is a legitimate career path and talks about how education systems should be fair. But another part of them reminds me of the slippery slope. Vicky doesn’t know of Daksh’s existence. Not that there’s anything to tell him. I have not lied to him, not explicitly, just not told him. But telling him isn’t smart. Vicky doesn’t like me talking to other guys, like I don’t like him talking to other girls. And this is literally the worst time to fight over something that’s nothing. Daksh has a crush on me, not vice versa. To me . . . he’s . . . in Daksh’s words, a frog pinned on the table to be dissected. Just that he’s not a frog, but a prince, a naïve prince who’s gorgeous to look at and adds to the scenery of the holiday. My internal monologue makes me . . . not like myself.
‘That kind of girl.’
