Different schools have different ways of initiating new students. My post-graduate school had the tradition of hoaxes. Elaborate hoaxes played on the new batch over the first month of the academic year. The first month was the only time in the year when the whole senior batch unanimously agreed on something and worked together in perfect harmony. Each student acted brilliantly, each worthy of an Oscar. And I, who prided myself on being a sensible intelligent person, was made a complete fool.
I had known D from my days back in Calcutta. Actually, I had met D through her boy friend R, a good friend of a good friend. We had gone out a few times and I knew her sufficiently well to feel assured that I had at least one friend in the land far far away. Sure, I was a bit apprehensive. It had been a year since I had last met her. Besides, D and R had broken up a few months after she had left Calcutta. ‘She has found someone else’, a drunk R had told me bitterly. He must be completely irresistible, I had concluded. Even in an inebriated state R was one of the most handsome and suave men I had met.
So it was with mixed feelings of comfort, curiosity and apprehension that I renewed my acquaintanceship with D. (Though, staying in a hostel for the first time in my life, I would have been best friends with a cockroach if it meant that I could call someone a friend.) Coincidentally, D was in the same hostel as I was. Given enough opportunity to observe everyone she was friendly with, I still could not figure out who was the hunk, the reason for D and R’s break-up. And then a classmate told me. D was seeing X. Now, I had seen D and X hang around together all the time but the thought that X was the hunk had never crossed my mind. X was certainly sexy, but X was also small, thin, dark and a woman!
Whaaattttt!!! Can’t be, I told myself. I refused to believe anyone. How could it be? As more and more of my batchmates started whispering about the ‘lesbian couple’ I observed the two more closely. They did share a special smile. And they ALWAYS shut the door when they were alone in D’s room. Could it be true? Could it?
I finally accepted it when D took me aside one day and raised the issue herself. ‘Please don’t tell anyone back in Calcutta’, she begged. ‘It will absolutely kill my parents.’ I didn’t know what to say. A thousand questions played in my mind but all I did was nod my head solemnly. ‘I will never-ever tell anyone’ I assured her.
It rained that evening. The kind of rain that makes everything appear misty and romantic. Someone had put loud music in the hostel. And some of the senior students from other hostels started trooping in and dancing in our courtyard. We (the juniors), still not allowed to get too friendly with our seniors, watched from the doors of our rooms. I watched X as she moved sinuously in the dance of a seductress. She danced with her face raised and her eyes on D who stood on the first floor watching her, smiling the half-smile of a lover. They had eyes for no other. It was as though no one existed but them.
I was amazed. How? How does a girl discover that she is attracted to another girl? When does the moment of truth occur? Does it start from an accidental touch? Or perhaps, it is the need to actualise an intense feeling inside which comes not from sexual attraction but love. Does an impulsive hug create an awareness between the two? Does it happen when they’re watching a movie in the dark wrapped together in a blanket? How?
My questions remained unanswered till the end of month, when I realised that they were needless in the first place. It was all a big hoax and I had been the most gullible of them all. What with my sincere promises of never-ever telling anyone about it!
We still joke about the hoaxes when I meet up with my batchmates. The ones we played on our juniors and the ones that were played on us. The ‘lesbian couple’ hoax is still everyone’s favourite. But sometimes I remember that dance in the rain. D and X. Their faces are etched in my mind. Was it all just fool play? I shrug off the thought but I know that somewhere deep in recesses of my heart I want to dance in the rain for someone I love. And I want that someone to look at me the way D had looked at X. To smile the half-smile of the lover.
