Blunts

Blunts

The first day of September saw me sitting behind my father’s old moped and riding 21 miles to get to my new university. It was hard work, balancing my new bucket in one hand, and my rolled-up cotton mattress in the other. I had my clothes neatly stuffed in my backpack. Another suitcase was wedged between my father’s legs in the front of the vehicle.

The journey was tedious, each bump on the road threatening to toss us and the whole endeavor off course. It was probably just as well that we were going only 10 miles an hour.

As we got to the gates, I saw a lot of students and their families milling around. A few mothers were sobbing as they said goodbye to their sons, while the fathers were jostling each other near the notice board, trying to read the list of assigned hostel rooms for their kids. While getting off my father’s bike, I had my first glimpse of him. He arrived in a gleaming white car, biggest I had ever seen. The car drew up majestically up the driveway, and stopped near the building entrance. I almost expected a bell boy to come running, and open the door for whoever was inside. He and his father got out at the same time. He was tall, almost 6ft. A graphic print T shirt and well fitted jeans clung to his lean body. A pair of sunglasses framed his face. His shoes reminded me vaguely of ones I had seen on some bill board or the other. He turned towards his father, who I assumed was a SomeBody. Dressed impeccably in a grey suit, and polished black shoes, his father had an air of urgency about him. He gestured to the driver and stood for a moment, taking in the scene. Then he strode in the direction of the notice board, making the journey in quick, long strides. “Excuse me”, he said curtly to the group gathered there. The group stopped their collective jostling and parted awkwardly to make way for him.

“Ooof” I squealed, as I felt a sharp pain on my side. Turning, I saw the object that was causing me so much discomfort. It was the back of an old suitcase, digging quietly into my ribs. Its owner was a large boy whose forehead was dripping with sweat. He was standing alone amidst a pile of luggage.  

“Sorry sorry, so sorry.” he mumbled, and tried to back away, promptly shoving his suitcase into a lady’s behind.

“Oh my god! Madam, I am so sorry, I didn’t mean to!” he said, his eyes popping behind his glasses. Now sweating profusely, he finally decided to keep his luggage down.

The lady gave us a dirty look and moved away. I felt a twinge of annoyance at having been included.

“But I didn’t mean to” he repeated, looking at me. He shuffled his slipper clad feet, like it was hard for him to balance on two feet.

I nodded at him.  <Is more interaction required?>

My father finished parking his bike and joined us.

“Oh hello! Have you made a new friend Raghav?” Before I could dissent, he turned to the boy and asked “What is your name? Which stream?”

“I’m Kumaraswamy, Ramalingam Kumaraswamy, Sir.”

“Hello Ramalingam Kumaraswamy Sir, I’m Raghav’s father.” my father replied, his eyes twinkling.  “And what is your rank, beta?”

“State rank 10 sir” he mumbled.

“Good, good, very good!” smiled my father. “Raghav got state rank 50. He is also here on scholarship! You two be good friends, ha? Birds of a feather. Isn’t it, Raghav?”

My mind rejected the idea vehemently, but I smiled outwardly and offered my hand to Ramalingam. I was hoping this was the first and last of our interactions. My mind was still on the boy I had just seen. I was hoping he would consider us birds of a feather.

--

It took a month or so to settle into the routine of the university. The canteen served breakfast starting at 7 am. They claimed to have a rotating menu, but everyone felt like they had been eating hard, stale idlis ever since they had arrived. Classes started at 9 am, and students were expected to attend each one of them. The lectures ended around 4 pm, post which everyone was free to do what they wanted. Most boys preferred going out of the university to nearby tea stalls for snacks and sneak in a cigarette or two. Smoking was banned at the university, which meant that most of the boys carried packs of mints and gum to make sure none of the hostel wardens got a whiff of what they were up to.

The athletic boys would head to the basketball court to shoot some hoops every evening, and ofcourse, he was one of them. His name was Gaurav Gupta and his father was the owner of Gupta Automotives, a national chain of automobile stores. Unlike me, he got admission into the university as his father was a trustee of the university, and was good friends with the dean of admissions. He was in my class, but so far he hadn’t made a move towards befriending me. He was generally hanging out with the other paid seat fellows. They regularly played basketball and would sneak out at night to go to the local bars for drinks. I’d never had any alcohol myself, and sometimes I wondered how it would feel to get drunk. I didn’t dare go buy any myself though. Plus, my allowance ensured that all I could afford was butter chicken at Sharma ka Dhaba when I got tired of mess food.  His room was two floors up from mine, so there was no way our paths would cross in the hostel.

As luck would have it, Ramalingam was only 3 doors down from my room. He turned out to be a bookworm, surprise, surprise! From the first day, he could be seen huffing to the library at 8 am. He dressed in bermuda shorts and beige shirts two sizes too tight. He oiled his hair every night, and smelt vaguely of coconut oil and mustard. He took his green bucket to the bathroom every morning, but came out looking exactly as he did while going in. He would mutter equations while he walked the corridors and was the first to ask doubts in classes. In the hierarchy of college social order, Kumaraswamy took great pains to ensure he was at the bottom. It was almost like a mission. Ofcourse, he got ragged longer than every other first year. He accepted his fate with the resignation of a man who had seen worse, determined not to let a little bullying come in the way of his class rank.

--

The day arrived when Gaurav finally took an interest in me. It was during Matlab, and he was at the workstation next to mine.

“This instrument seems to be broken.” he huffed, banging his book on the table. “I wrote the whole program, but the motor isn’t running.”

I looked over, and saw that he hadn’t connected the circuit properly.

“You need to reconnect the diodes on the circuit board. Then reboot the program. That might work. Try it and see.” I told him.

Gaurav glanced at my running motor and sighed.

“Okay!” he said. He proceeded to hold the top of the two diodes and pulling. The top came off in his hands, leaving the rest in the circuit board.

“Fuck me.” he exclaimed.

Eager to help, I leaned over. “Here, let me do it.” I picked up his board and used my soldering iron to heat up the wires, loosening them in the process. I then replaced them with fresh ones and reconnected the circuit.

“Now reboot your program, F5” I directed.

Gaurav did as told, and his motor came to life.

“Magic!” I grinned at him.

“For you, maybe” he rolled his eyes. “I just can’t get the hang of this stuff.”

“No no, I’m sure you can. You just have to look at the fundamen…!”

“Listen, can I ask you for a favour?” Gaurav interrupted.

“Sss..sure!”

“I am really bad at this, and looks like you are a genius. Is there any way you can -

“…help coach you?” I asked eagerly.

“… finish it for me?” he blinked.

“Oh.”

“Oh.”

“Well, I mean… if you think coaching can help” he looked doubtful.

“Ofcourse it can”

And so that evening I made my way to Gaurav’s room, happy to have found common ground with him. I knocked on the door.

“Come in!” someone yelled from inside.

I walked in, and stopped. 3 boys from a different stream were sitting in the room. One of them was in the centre and was busy emptying tobacco from a cigarette onto a piece of paper. A slight burnt smell hung about the room, making my nostrils twitch.

“Oh hey guys… this is…” Gaurav furrowed his eyebrows.

“… Raghav.” I completed the sentence for him.

“Yes, Raghav! Sorry dude, so bombed!” he grinned slowly. All three of them started laughing at the joke. I wasn’t sure what it was. They continued laughing for almost two minutes.

“Uhh… is this a bad time Gaurav? I thought we were going to study.”

Gaurav squinted up at me. His eyes were slightly red and unfocused.

“No… n..oo. It’s fine. We are just rolling a doob. Do you smoke?” he asked.

“Smoke cigarettes?” I wondered how to answer. I wanted to say yes, but I had never tried even one.

“No dude, blunts. Have you smoked them before?” said the boy at the end.

“Duuuude, weed bro! Have you never done any?” added the second boy.

“Umm… no.” I confessed.

“We have a noob over here!” the two boys high fived.

“Here dude, you can try your first joint with us.” The third boy finally looked up and offered what looked like a small rolled cigarette to me. It was handmade, you could tell. The seams were uneven, and it was not perfectly cylindrical.

I hesitated.

“Come on bro, try it!”

I looked at Gaurav, who shrugged at me. “Try it once, see if you like it.” he said, offering me a lighter.

“What if the warden comes by?”

“The warden won’t come now, he does his rounds at 11.”

“Come on, you can blow the smoke out of the window. Nobody will know. Plus we have this.” the second boy shook a can of local deodorant in my direction and smirked. His lips curled into a smile. “It’s the one the warden uses, he won’t be able to tell the difference.”

“Gaurav your friend is a pussy!” one of the boys sniggered. All three of them looked at me, waiting.

“Fine” I said, “Give it here.”

I stretched to take the blunt and the lighter. “It’s all part of college experience.” I thought to myself. “What’s the worse that could happen?” I’d read that it was impossible to OD on weed, unless you had some 50 kilos of it at once. Which was impossible for an elephant, let alone me. I lit up the blunt and took a drag. Almost immediately, I started to cough. Smoke went up my mouth and nostrils, making my eyes water. It tasted funny, like a slightly decaying herb.

The boys laughed

“Once more! Once more!” they chanted. I brought the blunt back to my lips and took another drag, this time pacing it slowly, so that I could control the amount of smoke I inhale. No use. I choked and coughed once more. I could feel a hot, dry feeling at the back of my mouth and throat.

“Wa-water!” I asked. Someone tossed me a bottle. “Catch” I took three or four gulps and forced a calm expression on my face.

“That was strong.” I told Gaurav.

“Ya man… this stuff is a bit spiked. You can tell.” I nodded in agreement, as if I knew that all along. I passed the joint along to the boy next to me, who took a couple of drags and passed it to Gaurav. In silence, we finished the first one. My fingers were starting to tingle, and I realized I had been looking at the same spot for sometime.

“Gaurav, we need to roll another.”

“Look at Raghav, he seems blown!”

I turned to look at them. It took me approximately 3 minutes to register what they were all saying.

“Yeah, but I can’t roll man! You do it.” Gaurav was saying.

“Not me, I rolled the first one.”

“Make Raghav do it. Newbies roll!”

Someone thrust the paper and weed at me.

“What am I supposed to do?” I asked the room at large.

“You need to clean it, remove the stems and the seeds, then crush it into a fine powder. After that mix it with tobacco and roll it into a joint.”

“Okay…” I looked doubtfully at the stuff in my hands. Slowly, I proceeded to carry out their directions. I removed every last seed and every last stem. I rolled a small, neat joint and held it up to the room.

“Is this fine?” I asked.

One of the boys whistled.

“Wow, you are a natural!”

“Yeah dude, that looks tight.”

Beaming, I turned to hand the joint to Gaurav.

“It’s official, you are our new rolling buddy!” said Gaurav.

I smiled. Finally, buddies.

…

After the first time, we started to hang out a in Gaurav’s room every night. I preferred his cosy room to my spartan one. Gaurav’s mother had taken great pains to ensure her boy was comfortable. She sent him a regular supply of snacks and chocolates and other goodies. As I got to know Gaurav better, I found out that he had finished his schooling at an international school. He even had a girlfriend in school. He used to holiday in Spain and Italy and his family had homes in 3 different countries. My family still lives in a rented apartment, I had thought to myself when he referred to his summer house. Still, for a rich kid, Gaurav seemed fairly down to earth. He was constantly requesting my help on his assignments, which I was happy to provide. Sometimes I would help his friends as well. Each night, I would roll them joints and we would smoke either in the room or on the building terrace. One evening, as I was returning back to my room I ran into Kumaraswamy in the corridor.

“Where are you coming from?” he asked me abruptly. He narrowed his eyes and pursed his lips. “I don’t see you around here anymore.

“Nowhere that concerns you!” I replied, taken aback at his tone.

“I know you keep going to meet that Gaurav. You should know better.”

“What do you mean?” I snapped, annoyed at this accusation.

“He isn’t like us. He doesn’t care about his future. Why do you want to be like him?”

“Kumaraswamy, it’s none of your business who I am friends with.”

“Friends.” He snorted. “Just because you do their work for them, doesn’t mean you are friends with them.”

“Like you’d know!” I could feel my cheeks flush with anger.

“And you smell funny.” His gaze was steady, accusing.

“Yeah well… bit rich coming from a guy who bathes in mustard oil.” The words were out of my mouth before I could stop them.

Kumaraswamy looked like I had slapped him across the face. He turned and walked away without a word.

My anger was fading, and a pit was forming in my stomach. I should not have said that to him.

…

Weeks passed, with Kumaraswamy actively ignoring me whenever he saw me. Which wasn’t often, thankfully. We saw each other in class, but as I sat in the back row with Gaurav, this meant the most I saw of Kumaraswamy was the back of his head. Midterms were fast approaching, and an air of dismay hung about our classes as we realized how much we had slacked through the semester. It didn’t help that Kumaraswamy was constantly reminding lecturers to give us tests, and asking for extra work. The whole class was starting to get annoyed at the additional workload. Some even threatened to beat Kumaraswamy up, as a favor to the rest.

Gaurav was especially on edge. He had barely scraped through his previous two tests, and now had realized that he was far behind everyone else on all his assignments. He looked darkly over at Kumaraswamy, whose hand was up in the air again.

“Sir, what about the next assignment? Will you give that to us now? We really should cover it before the exams.”

“Yes, I agree Kumaraswamy. I will email that to everyone tonight.” The lecturer replied, packing up his bags. The bell rang to signal the end of the lecture, and the class started

Gaurav got up, and went up to Kumaraswamy.

“What is your problem dude? Can’t you do your own work?”

Kumaraswamy looked up from his notes.

“I am doing my own work.” he replied.

“No, you keep showing off, trying to be the teacher’s pet huh? Suck up little nerd.”

“Excuse me?” Kumaraswamy looked appalled. “Some of us just want to do well Gaurav, not just scrape through.”

“Oh is that so?”

“Yes, that’s so. Now if you’ll excuse me.” With that, Kumaraswamy gathered his belongings and waddled out of the room.

“What an ass!” Gaurav turned to me, snarling. I had never seen him this angry before. “I’ll get him back for this.”

“It’s okay, just leave it.” I told him, alarmed at the look of fury on his face. “It’s not worth it.”

“Yeah, you’d think so, wouldn’t you? You’re a nerd yourself!” he fumed at me.

“Hey! That’s not fair.” I protested.

“Whatever” he beckoned to his two buddies and they left the room, leaving me behind.

I was puzzled, but decided to go back to my room to study alone.

…

The day of the mid terms arrived. Gaurav still hadn’t spoken to me. I woke up with a sense of unease. I went in for breakfast and sat by myself in the corner. Gaurav and his friends trooped in, and didn’t even spare me a glance. They made for the back of the room, and huddled together. This didn’t bode right. Why weren’t they cramming for the exam like the rest of the students?

Kumaraswamy walked in, balancing his breakfast tray in one hand, a book in the other. He sat on a table, his nose buried inside his book. Two of Gaurav’s friends walked over and sat on either side of Kumaraswamy. One of them tapped him on the shoulder, and pointed to a page in the book. He seemed to be asking him a question. Kumaraswamy started answering, and was soon in full steam. The other guy slowly put his hand in his pocket, and removed a small vial of liquid. He proceeded to empty it’s contents in Kumaraswamy’s sambhar. I was alarmed, and started to get up.

“Sit down.” Gaurav appeared behind me.

“What? What are you doing to him?”

“Nothing, just a little something to put him in his place. It won’t hurt him.” Gaurav smiled wryly.

“But Gaurav, today is the exam!”

“Oh come on! Where’s your sense of fun? We are just messing with the little shit.” Gaurav looked at me questioningly.

I was at a loss for words. There was a moment’s silence, then Gaurav broke it. “You want to study together tonight? Been a while.”

Reluctantly, I nodded. I was still a bit uneasy, but atleast this meant Gaurav was talking to me again.

“Come, finish this tripe they call breakfast, and we can go to the hall together. You are in for a treat!”

We proceeded to the hall, and for a while I forgot all about Kumaraswamy. I was busy rereading a list of equations I had drawn up. The bell rung, signaling the start time for the exam. We entered the hall together and went up to our assigned seats.

Kumaraswamy’s was next in the roll call after me, which meant he would be seated behind me. I fiddled with my calculator, and checked the number of pens I was carrying. The seat behind me was empty. The second bell rung, still no sign of Kumaraswamy.  The teacher started distributing the papers.

“Maybe he had to go to the loo” I thought to myself, knowing in my heart this couldn’t be true.

If anyone knew Kumaraswamy, they would know he would always be first in line to get inside an exam hall.

“Alright students, you may begin.” The teacher announced.

With one last look at the door, I started my exam, hoping Kumaraswamy made a miraculous entry. No such luck.

The exam got over, and I walked out of the hall, my head full of the questions I had just solved. I wanted to go find Kumaraswamy, see if he was okay.

I hurried over to Kumaraswamy’s room. I knocked, but no one answered. 

“Kumaraswamy, I know you are in there, open up!” 

I heard a muffled thump followed by shuffling of feet. Kumaraswamy opened the door, looking more haggard than usual. He walked back over to his bed, and slumped in. The room smelt slightly musty. Books were scattered all over the place. The bedsheet was untidy and his blanked draped over to the floor. A mug stood on his desk, with remains of tea inside it.

I looked at Kumaraswamy. He looked pale, a small line of sweat on his upper lip.

“What is happening to me?” he croaked.

“Nothing, you must have fallen sick.” I said, feeling horrid.

Kumaraswamy looked up at me, his eyes starting to well up.

“I have three brothers.” He mumbled.

“What?”

“I have three brothers.” Kumaraswamy spoke louder.

“Oh” I didn’t know how to respond to that.

“We don’t have any money” he continued. “My father passed away when I was 4, and my Ma brought us all up. She works as a cashier at a store. My brothers didn’t finish school, they work in a local mechanic shop in our town.” he continued. “I had to study night and day to get my scholarship, because there is no way I could study here otherwise. Ma wouldn’t be able to afford it. She couldn’t even take a day off to drop me here on the first day. I had to come alone.”

I suddenly remembered seeing him on the first day. I had assumed his parents were somewhere about.

“I can’t afford to fail exams.”

I nodded. I didn’t know how to comfort him, and I didn’t have the courage to confess to him either. Racked with guilt, I decided to go confront Gaurav.

“It’s okay, you rest. You’ll be fine. Call me if you need anything.” I said, as I was leaving.

…

I found Gaurav in his room, holding up his question paper, and looking worried. His two friends crouched about him.

“Hey!” he looked up “Can I check my answers with yours?”

I frowned at him.

“Why didn’t Kumaraswamy come to the exam? What did you guys do?”

“What – oh! I forgot about him. Yeah, he didn’t… so what? Forget about him. Can I check my answers against yours?”

“That was cruel Gaurav, you can’t try to make him fail an exam like that.”

“Really? Because I think I just did.” Gaurav raised an eyebrow.

“You should apologise to him, and confess.”

Gaurav’s look of worry was replaced by amusement. “Apologise to that guy? You must be joking.”

“I’m serious, that wasn’t cool. You guys need to set it right.”

Gaurav snorted. “Yeah right, I’m not doing anything to help that beige coloured band aid.”

The other two laughed.

“If you won’t, I will.”

“Oh yeah, what will you do?” Gaurav smirked. 

“I’ll tell the department head what you did.”

“Yeah? And who is going to believe you? The Dean? We will just say you did it.” He continued smiling.

I felt a flash of anger.

“Come on, forget that guy. It’s just one exam, no one will care.Who knows, maybe he will also stop being so serious from now on.” he said smoothly.

“Relax dude, why don’t we just chill? Tell you what…you can help me study for the next exam if you want. Or make us a couple joints. I need a break. This exam was a killer.”

I looked at Gaurav, comfortably lounging in his bed.

“Okay.” I said, and reached out for the weed.