The 3 Mistakes Of My Life (12 page)

The University Bookstore in Navrangpura was a temple for all muggers in the

city. Nearly all customers were sleep deprived, overzealous students who'd never

have enough of quantum physics or calculus. They don't provide statistics, but I

am sure anyone who clears the engineering and medical entrance exams in the

city has visited the bookstore.

The middle-aged shopkeeper looked at Vidya through his glasses. She was

probably the best looking customer to visit that month. Students who prepared

for medical entrance don't exactly wear coloured lip gloss.

'Ahem, excuse me,' I said as the shopkeeper scanned Vidya up and down.

'Govind beta, so nice to see you,' he said. One good way old people get away

with leching is by branding you their son or daughter. He knew my name ever

since I scored a hundred in the board exam. In the newspaper interview I had

recommended his shop. He displayed the cutting for two years after that. I still

get a twenty-five per cent discount on every purchase.

'You have organic chemistry by L.G.Wade?' I said. I would have done more

small talk, but I wanted to avoid talking about Vidya. In fact, I didn't even want

him to look at Vidya.

'Well, yes,' the shopkeeper said, taken aback by my abruptness.

'Chemistry book, red and white balls on the cover,' he screamed .it one of his

five assistants.

'This is a good book,' I said as I tapped the cover and gave it to Vidya. 'Other

organic chemistry books have too much to memorise. This one explains the

principles.'

Vidya took the book in her hand. Her red nail polish was the same colour as

the atoms on the cover.

'Flip through it, see if you like it,' I said.

She turned a few pages. The shopkeeper raised an eyebrow. He was asking me

about the girl. See this is the reason why people think Ahmedabad is a small

town despite the multiplexes. It is the mentality of the people.

'Student, I take tuitions,' I whispered to satisfy his curiosity lest he gave up

sleeping for the rest of his life. He nodded his head in approval.
Why do these old

people poke their nose in our affairs so much? Like, would we care if he hung out

with three grandmas?

'If you say it is good, I am fine,' she said, finishing her scan. 'Good, and in

physics, have you ever read Resnick and Halliday?'

'Oh, I saw that book at my friend's place once. Just the table of contents

depressed me. It's too hi-fi for me.'

'What is this "hi-fi"? It is in your course, you have to study it,' I said, my voice

stern.

'Don't they have some guides or something?' she said, totally ignoring my

comment.

'Guides are a short cut. They solve a certain number of problems. You need to

understand the concepts.'

The shopkeeper brought out the orange and black cover Resnick and Halliday.

Yes, the cover was scary and dull at the same time, something possible only in

physics books.

'I won't understand it. But if you want to, let's buy it,' Vidya agreed.

'Of course, you will understand it. And uncle, for maths do you have M.L.

Khanna?'

I could see his displeasure in me calling him uncle, but someone needed to

remind him.

'Maths Khanna,' the shopkeeper shouted. His assistants pulled out the yellow

and black tome. Now if Resnick and Halliday is scary, M.L. Khanna is the

Exorcist. I haven't seen a thicker book and every page is filled with the hardest

maths problems in the world. It was amusing that a person with a friendly name

like M.L Khanna could do this to the students of our country.

'What is this?' Vidya said and tried to lift the book with her left hand. She

couldn't. She used both hands and finally took it six inches off the ground. 'No,

seriously, what is this? An assault weapon?'

'It covers every topic,' I said and measured the thickness with the fingers of my

right hand, the four fingers fell short.

She held her hand sideways over mine to assist.

'Six, it is six fingers thick,' she said softly.

I pulled my hand out, lest uncle raise his eyebrows again, or worst case join his

hand to ours to check the thickness.

'Don't worry, for the medical entrance you only have to study a few topics,' I

reassured her.

We paid for the books and came out of the shop.

We walked on the Navrangpura main road. My new shop was two hundred

metres away. I had the urge to go see it.

'Now what?' she said.

'Nothing, let's go home,' I said and looked for an auto. 'You are a big bore,

aren't you?' she said. 'Excuse me?' I said.

'Dairy Den is round the corner. I'm hungry,' she said.

'I am starving. Seriously, I am famished.' She kept a hand on her stomach. She

wore three rings, each with different designs and tiny, multi-coloured stones.

I took the least visible seat in Dairy Den. Sure, no one from our gossip-loving

pol came to this hip teen joint, but one could never be too careful. If a supplier

saw me at Dairy Den, I would be like any other trendy young boy in Ahmedabad.

I would never get a good price for cricket balls.

I felt hungry too. But I couldn't match the drama-queen in histrionics. She

ordered a Den's special pizza, which had every topping available in Dairy Den's

kitchen. All dishes were vegetarian, as preferred by Ambavadis.

'These books look really advanced,' she said, pointing to the plastic bag.

'They are MSc books,' I said.

She raised her eyebrows. 'Can someone explain to me why seventeen-year-olds

are made to read MSc books in this country?'

I shrugged. I had no answers for lazy students.

The pizza arrived. We kept quiet and started eating it. I looked at her. She tied

her hair, so that it would not fall on the pizza and touch the cheese. She kept her

dupatta away from the table and on the chair. The great thing about girls is that

even during pauses in the conversation you can look at them and not get bored.

She looked sideways as she became conscious of two boys on a faraway table

staring at her. It wasn't surprising, considering she was the best looking girl in

Dairy Den by a huge margin. Why are there so few pretty girls? Why hadn't

evolution figured it out that men liked pretty women and turned them all out that

way?

She checked her phone for any new SMSs. She didn't need to as her phone

beeped louder than a fire alarm everytime there was one. She pulled back her

sleeve and lifted a slice of pizza. She used her fingers to lift the strands of cheese

that had fallen out and placed them back on the slice. Finally she took a bite.

'So, what's up?' she broke the silence. 'Are we allowed to talk about anything

apart from science subjects?'

'Of course,' I said. I glared at the boys at the other table. They didn't notice me.

'We are not that far apart in age. We could be friends, you know,' she said.

'Well,' I said, 'tough, isn't it?'

'Tough? Give me one reason why?'

'I will give you four - (1) I am your teacher (2) you are my best friend's sister (3)

you are younger than me, and (4) you are a girl.'

I felt stupid stating my reasons in bullet points. There is a reason why nerds

can't impress girls. They don't know how to talk.

She laughed at me rather than with me.

'Sorry for the list. Can't get numbers out of my system,' I said.

She laughed. 'It tells me something. You have thought it out. That means, you

have considered a potential friendship.'

I remained silent.

'I am kidding,' she said and tapped my hand. She had this habit of soothing

people by touching them. With normal people it would've been ok, but with sick

people like me, female touches excite more than soothe. I felt the urge to look at

her face again. I turned determinedly to the pizza instead.

'But seriously, you should have a backup friend,' she said.

'Backup what?'

'You, Ish and Omi are really close. Like you have known each other since you

were sperm.'

My mouth fell open at her last word. Vidya was supposed to be Ish's little sister

who played with dolls. Where did she learn to talk like that?

'Sorry, I meant Ish and Omi are your best friends. But if you have to bitch ...

oops, rant about them, who do you do it with?' 'I don't need to rant about my

friends,' I said. 'C'mon, are they perfect?' 'No one is perfect.'

'Like Garima and I are really close. We talk twice a day. But sometimes she

ignores me, or talks to me like I am some naive small town girl. I hate it, but she

is still my best friend.'

'And?' I said. Girls talk in circles. Like an algebra problem, it takes a few steps

to get them to the point.

'And, talking about it to you, venting, like this, makes me feel better. And I can

forgive her. So, even though she is a much closer friend of mine, you became a

backup friend.'

If she applied as much brain in maths, no one could stop her from becoming a

surgeon. But Vidya who could micro-analyse relationships for hours, would not

open M.L. Khanna to save her life.

'So, c'mon, what's the one rant you have about your best friends?'

'My friends are my business partners, too. So it's complicated,' I paused.

'Sometimes I don't think they understand business. Or may be they do, but they

don't understand the passion I bring to it.'

She nodded. I loved that nod. For once, someone had nodded at something I

felt so deeply about.

'How?' she egged me on.

Over the last few scraps of pizza, I told her everything. I told her about our

shop, and how I managed everything. How I had expanded the business to offer

tuitions and coaching. I told her about Ish's irritating habit of giving discounts to

kids and Omi's dumbness in anything remotely connected to numbers. And

finally, I told her about my dream - to get out of the old city and have a new shop

in an air-conditioned mall, i

'Navrangpura,' she said, 'near here?'

'Yes,' I said, as my chest expanded four inches.

She saw the glitter in my eyes, as I could see it reflected in hers.

'Good you never did engineering. Though 1 am sure you would have got in,' she

said.

'I can't see myself in an office. And leaving mom and her business alone was

not an option.'

I had opened up more than I ever had to anyone in my life. This wasn't right, I

chided myself. I mentally repeated the four reasons and poked the pile of books.

'More than me, you need to be friends with these books,' I said and asked for

the bill.



'Coming,' a girl responded as Ishaan rang the bell of our supplier's home. We

had come to purchase new bats and get old ones repaired.

Saira, supplier Pandit-ji's eighteen-year-old daughter, opened the door.

'Papa is getting dressed, you can wait in the garage,' she said, handing us the

key to Pandit-ji's warehouse store. We went to the garage and sat on wooden

stools. Ish dumped the bats for repair on the floor.

The Pandit Sports Goods Suppliers was located in Ellis Bridge. The owner,

Giriraj Pandit, had his one-room house right next to it
.
Until five years ago, he

owned a large bat factory in Kashmir. That was before he was kicked out of his

hometown by militants who gave him the choice of saving his neck or his factory.

Today be felt blessed being a small supplier in Ahmedabad with his family still

alive.

'Kashmiris are so fair complexioned,' I said to make innocuous conversation.

'You like her,' Ish grinned.

Are you nuts?'

'Fair-complexioned, eh?' Ish began to laugh.

'Govind bhai, my best customer,' Pandit-ji said as he came into the warehouse,

fresh after a bath. He offered us green almonds. It is nice to be a buyer in

business. Everybody welcomes you.

'We need six bats, and these need repairs,' I said.

'Take a dozen Govind bhai,' he said and opened a wooden trunk, the India-

Australia series is coming, demand will be good.'

'Not in the old city,' I said.

He opened the wooden trunk and took out a bat wrapped in plastic. He opened

the bat. It smelled of fresh willow. Sometimes hat makers used artificial fragrance

to make new bats smell good, hut Pandit-ji was the real deal.

Ish examined the bat. He went to the box and checked the other bats for cracks

and chips.

'The best of the lot for you Govind bhai,' Pandit-ji smiled heartily.

'How much,' I said.

'Three hundred.'

'Joking?'

'Never,' he swore.

'Two hundred fifty,' I said, 'last and final.'

'Govind bhai, it is a bit tough right now. My cousin's family has arrived from

Kashmir, they've lost everything. I have five more mouths to feed until he finds a

job and place.'

'They are all living in that room?' Ish was curious.