KP saw my uneasiness, and said, “Sit down. Don’t think I’ll eat you up.” She had very deep but small eyes, a wide mouth and a rather odd shaped nose. But she was very good looking altogether. Or so I thought then (I was just sixteen and a half years old then). When she looked at me, I was almost hypnotized.
I sat down and put a magazine in front of my face. I was sitting rather far from her, but she seemed to reach me through her eyes. I was almost compelled to lower the magazine, and peeped at her. She was staring at me, and laughed out aloud. She had a very loud and ringing laugh. “Haven’t you ever seen a woman in the nude, baby?”
I felt hot. What utter rot, I thought, there’s no need of seeing anyone in nude. I didn’t answer but kept looking at her face. She got up, drew a chair near to mine and sat down, totally unaware of her body being exposed from anywhere. I don’t know why I began to feel afraid. But I kept looking at her, in her eyes. She leaned back comfortably and said, “I am sorry for disturbing your peace of mind, but I can’t wear a sari for long.”
I suggested that she might wear something else from next day. She looked at me very awkwardly, but didn’t say anything. We asked each other’s name and last college. I was wary when I heard that she was from La Martinere’s, because the usual response from my “Bhartiya Balika Vidyalaya” was of scorn and contempt. She seemed OK with it. I warmed up to her when she went on chatting about the college and about the libraries and teachers. Soon we began to laugh heartily and listen sympathetically. She put on her sari, and asked me to help. But I was too shy for that. She told me she measured “36-26-36” and laughed very loudly when I blushed. She told me that she was 21 years of age, that she wanted to meet me again tomorrow at noon.
I went home, feeling elated. I had someone to talk to, now, even though she was a bit too modern for my taste. She was fascinating in the way she stared at me. I was afraid of her, but even more afraid of losing her.
We began meeting everyday in lunchtime, and in free periods. She was also fond of walking, and we simply roamed about the college campus without getting tired. She detested going to the library, and so did I. We even started bunking classes, and enjoyed ourselves in the grounds, lying under the trees and watching flowers and birds. I began to feel worthwhile after six months of solitary confinement.
KP - she told me - was the daughter of a very wealthy father, who was a sort of a small king in his small estate. He was worth almost five crores or so in property and cash, and that was excluding her family jewelry and her mother’s inheritance. Her father had studied in a public school, and she had one brother done the same, and was now studying in the university. She told me that her mother was the only daughter of a very rich priest of one the temples in South India - a mahant - and that her yearly income, since her father’s death, from that source was itself a fortune. KP’s brother was now the mahant, there being no male descendent, and he was the one who would now preside over the famous Rathayatra. KP was from a strict and orthodox Brahmin family of bees biswas, whatever that was...
I was very respectful in listening to all this. KP asked about my family, and I didn’t know what to say. I told her that my father was in the Secretariat, and he was nothing to boast of. She said unexpectedly, “What would those who sleep on the bed of thorns understand about the miseries of the bed of flowers.”
I was surprised, and became afraid of her again, because she was staring at me very intensely.
Then one day she took me up into the debate room, which was the only empty room in the Students’ Center. She told me that day very seriously. “Look, these are my family’s photographs.” I found her father very much the typical Indian zamindar, with six Alsatians near him, with huge and frightening moustaches, dressed in some kind of a royal garb. Her mother was beautiful in an Old World sense. Others were also quite respectable. I said, “You have a great family,” whereupon she began...
I often wonder whether I will ever meet anyone with a stranger history and more peculiar whims than KP. KP came to me as an answer to my prayers and yearning for a friend - for someone to talk to. I was sitting alone in the Day Scholars’ Room last September, when KP came in a sari and bolted the doors. I stood up but she said keep sitting and proceeded to pull off her sari. This being done, she lay down on the bed and made herself comfortable. I was scandalized by the whole process, and said that I’d like to get out. I didn’t even know her name. To me, she was just another girl in the English Literature class, and she was lying half dressed in front of me!
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