Forbidden Passions

THE NEW GIRL
Darsha looked at the building in front of her. Yes this was the place where she was going to spent 4 years of her life .Her college. She had heard about ragging in college .One of the recent movies that she saw revolved round a girl who was raped and murdered by her seniors .That didn’t give her much confidence. She had made sure that she was wearing no makeup and some unattractive clothes. The last thing she wanted on her first day was to invite unwanted attention. As she moved to her class, she felt as though she was approaching her doom. It was a dark corridor. She wondered whether it was specially designed to suppress her screams for help when she was going to be attacked.
It was her first day in this college. She had got admission to this college after 2 months of spending her life in a girls' college. She liked to call it a jail than a college. She couldn't bunk classes there and the lack of male species was not something she was used to. Can’t live with 'em, can't live without 'em. She learned the truth in that quote during her brief stay in that college. So it was with much happiness that she had accepted the offer to join Bethan hills college (BHC). Besides being among the top engineering colleges in her state, it was a mixed college. Her lifelong wish of finding the perfect boyfriend could be fulfilled here. But as she walked towards her class, she felt uneasy. She was new to this place. She always had trouble adjusting to a new place, preferring the familiar settings.
As she walked through the dark corridor in search of her class, she saw something. It was shining. A sky blue glittering T-shirt was approaching her. But she couldn’t see who was wearing it. For a moment she thought she had entered the ghost house. Suddenly she saw a pair of eyes looking at her. On closer inspection she realized it was a guy. The T-shirt definitely gave him the spotlight but for all the wrong reasons. It wasn’t suiting him. She wondered whether he was one of the notorious seniors of this college. She fastened her pace to put as much as distance between her and that boy.
Finally she found her class and someone was teaching there. She placed herself in the first bench feeling like a lamb in a house of lions. She was always the back bencher at school who never used to write notes. That’s was why she couldn’t adjust to her old college where teachers expected them to study like robots. She had heard that in BHC students would bunk classes and enjoy their life to maximum. But as she looked around, she wondered whether she had come to the wrong place. The girl sitting beside her had given her a formal smile and asked her name. Then she went back to scribbling down some derivation in her notebook. As Darsha stared at the blackboard, the lecturer seemed to be writing down some equations. The class was silent. No one was taking any interest in her .Not even looking at her.
She wondered whether this was a mistake. Whether she should have stayed back at the girls’ college. Atleast she had friends there, friends who don’t listen to lectures, friends who don’t take down notes and ignore her, friends who talk to her. And now, here she was in a place where no one cared about her very existence. She felt suffocated. The girl besides her had introduced herself as Sonia. She seemed to be one of the geeks in class. She was short and had spectacles. (Darsha associated specs to geekiness) The other girl (Jennifer) next to her seemed to be looking at the board as though it was George Clooney. She was hanging on to every word that the lecturer was uttering. Oh god! What have I done? Darsha cursed herself for applying to this college. She could suddenly see herself as one of the geek girls who had nothing better to do than to study. As minutes dragged by, Darsha felt trapped in the new environment.
The first day at the new college was nothing short of nightmare. A girl named Yamuna accompanied by her friend came and introduced herself. Darsha managed a small smile at her. The others didn’t even bother to give her a second look. She hoped to be shifted to the other class since she knew some girls there. They had introduced themselves during the admission time. But it seemed like she was allotted to this class while the rest of the new students were given the other class. She felt everything was going against her. But it was the just the first day, so Darsha consoled herself. Maybe things would get better. Then she gazed at the geeky Sonia besides her. Maybe not....
As Darsha walked towards home, she remembered her friends in the old college. They had so much fun there. And yet she chose to leave them. She felt tears welling up in her eyes. She missed them already. All for the sake of bunking some classes and a slim chance of finding love. Was it worth the risk? Only time would tell.

THE BEGINNING
As Darsha made her way to her class the next day, she saw the glittering man again. Today he was wearing a glittering light green T-shirt. He would have been arrested by the fashion police if they spotted hm. He reminded her of the villains in movies, so she made a mental note to keep way from him. As she walked past him, she saw another boy walking towards her. On a closer look, she noticed he was walking peculiarly. As though there were thorns under his feet. She guessed this was the ‘cool guy walk’ but it looked quite funny. In the coming days she soon found out that Bethan hills was the home for many such peculiar personalities.
Darsha decided to sit in the first bench itself since it was the only place available besides the vacant second bench. Moreover, from the attitude that she received from her classmates, she didn’t feel she would be welcomed to any other seat. As Darsha made herself comfortable, Sonia gave her a smile. The smile reduced the geekiness written on her face and Darsha felt a ray of hope. That day two things happened.
1) Sonia started talking
2) Some new girls came to the class and occupied the vacant bench behind her
Suddenly the scene changed from a complete silence to absolute ruckus. The new girls introduced themselves as Menaka, Sushmita and Shyla .Sonia transformation from the silent geek to a talking devil was very rapid. Darsha soon found out that first impression about Sonia was nowhere near to the truth. She had a view about every boy in the class and was gave a running commendatory on every boy in the class. She was especially vocal about a boy named Justin and it was clear that she had been checking him out for some time. As Darsha gazed at Justin, she felt he was just an average guy. She turned her attentions to the other men but found none worth looking at.
As days passed by, Darsha started to analyze all her friends .Menaka seemed to be the noisy one. She was full of life, but the girl sitting beside her, Shyla seemed to be a monk .She spoke very less and seemed to be observing everyone. Sushmita on the other hand, had made friends with half the class within hours of entering the class. Sonia on the other hand had dual personality. To most people, she was the geeky silent girl that Darsha saw on the first day, but among friends she was an encyclopedia about love and boys. A perfect company for Darsha.
One day, while Darsha was checking out the men walking in front of her class, her eyes fell onto a tall fair and clean shaven man. He was so fair that he could pose as a model for that 'fair and handsome ' cream .Lust at first sight was probably the feeling that Darsha experienced at that moment. Darsha wondered whether she stood a chance with him. 'No you don’t’ Her inner voice told her. But fuck you inner voice, I want him. Darsha's heart and mind seemed to quite clear about what they wanted but the brain was giving lectures on '10 reasons why a man won’t love Darsha'
After a long fight the heart lost the battle and the brain looked smug. 'You can’t argue with the truth Darsha', the brain chanted inside her head. 'Yes and the truth is that you like that guy' .Another meek voice chanted inside her head. Suddenly Darsha felt Sonia's attention directed at someone. She didn’t need to look to know who was the object of her attention .When Darsha looked up, she saw Justin proving her guess right. As she looked around she found Jennifer also looking at Justin. It seemed like all the Christian girls had set their sight on the tall lad who in her opinion looked like a skeletal system. But Sonia didn’t agree to that. She argued that Justin was a handsome man and Darsha needed an eye-checkup.
The days rolled by very quickly. Darsha gathered that the name of the tall man who made her heart flutter was Sourav. Looking at him as he walked across her class became her favorite pastime. Darsha spent most of her time with Sonia and the rest of the time thinking about Sourav. During that time, Sonia set her sights on another Christian guy named Joseph. He was dark yet there was something attractive about him .It was indeed a shock to her and Jennifer that Justin was not a Christian. The growing closeness between him and Yamuna was the talk of the town those days. Since Darsha and Yamuna lived in nearby places, they became friends. Darsha knew that something was brewing between Yamuna and Justin.
A fortnight had passed after Darsha had joined BHC. She didn’t miss the old college anymore. Moreover she liked BHC more. (BHC or Sourav? her heart asked) She didn’t miss her friends anymore. She had found a new group of friends. BHC even had students’ political party units that conducted strikes for no reason. When the seniors were in the mood to go for a matinee they would create some reason and call strike. Darsha was surprised when some seniors asked her and the whole class to leave the college during a class hours. Sonia pushed a bemused Darsha out of the class explaining that this is how it is in BHC during a strike. Strikes and even police lathi charges became a part and parcel of their college life in the years to come.
Then one day, Sonia didn’t come to college since she was suffering from fever. Darsha who had spent most of her time with Sonia engaged herself in checking out all the guys in class. Menaka was the one siting besides her who showed almost no interest in men. Darsha wondered whether she liked women. Maybe she liked Shyla. They were quite the inseparable lovebirds these days. Darsha smiled to herself at the naughty thoughts. Suddenly she noticed Justin standing in front of her in a red T-shirt.
He reminded her of Sonia and her words 'look at him idiot, he is gorgeous!’. So Darsha started looking at him. He was really tall. More than six feet. A very lean man but not quite the skeletal system. Not fair as Sourav either (wait! are you comparing him with Sourav?!! her inner voice asked). He was wheatish and had wavy black hair. And big hands. Darsha wondered whether the myth about men having big hands were true. She blushed at the thought. His eyes were wide and sexy. Lucky Yamuna! Darsha muttered to herself. As she looked at him, Darsha was puzzled about why she hadn’t spotted Justin earlier .He was actually really hot. (Hotter than Saurav? an evil inner voice asked Darsha.) Darsha felt she needed to see a psychiatrist soon. She could hear too many inner voices that fought constantly. The following day, Darsha informed Sonia about her observations on Justin and concluded that he was indeed handsome. Sonia greeted her observation with ' I told you so' look.
It was dark everywhere. Darsha was running. Running as fast as she could. Someone was holding her left hand. She turned to see Saurav. He was running with her. Raindrops began to fall on her face. Suddenly it was early morning. They were still running. Now Justin was holding her right hand and running with her. She had to leave one of them. She didn’t know why. There was no time to think about it. She wanted to choose Saurav. But as she kept running, Saurav fell behind while Justin was pulling her ahead.
Suddenly Darsha opened her eyes. No rain No Justin No Saurav. It was a dream.NO! A bloody nightmare! She had read somewhere that dreams symbolized the needs of the sub-conscious mind. It seemed that her sub-conscious mind had made a choice.

(to be continued)