Chapter 29: College
The college campus was a sprawling beast of old British-era stone and defiantly modern glass. Ancient banyan trees dripped aerial roots onto manicured lawns where students congregated in buzzing clusters, their backpacks bright splashes of color. Priya navigated the paved pathways in a crisp cotton saree, her professor’s dossier tucked under her arm. It felt both familiar and alien. The smell of cut grass and diesel from a generator was the same as her Mumbai college, but the light here in Pune was harsher, the shadows sharper.
Rohan had left for his own departmental orientation an hour before, his new shirt starched, his anxiety palpable. “You’re sure you don’t want me to come with you?” he’d asked for the third time over breakfast.
“To the HR office? They’ll think I’ve brought my bodyguard,” she’d said, tweaking his chin. “Go. Learn about your new kingdom.”
Now, standing before the administrative block, a four-story concrete edifice, she drew a slow breath. This wasn’t just a job. It was a foothold. A way to stay tethered to him, to have a purpose in this new city beyond the four walls of their apartment. To prove, perhaps only to herself, that the scar and its story were not the full definition of her.
The HR office was a vortex of bureaucratic languor. Ceiling fans churned warm air over piles of yellowing files. A clerk with impeccable hair and profound indifference took her dossier, flipped through it, and hummed. “Very impressive, Professor Sharma. But current hiring is frozen. The Vice-Chancellor’s office must approve any visiting or adjunct positions.”
“Frozen? The academic year is beginning,” Priya said, keeping her voice pleasant.
The clerk offered a thin smile. “Yes. Policy.” He pointed a pen toward the far end of the corridor. “You could try the Dean of Humanities, Dr. Naik. He has some discretionary power for guest lectures. His office is there. Third floor.”
She climbed the stairs, the marble steps worn smooth in the centers. The Dean’s office door was open. Inside, a man in his late forties sat behind a large desk, speaking loudly into the phone. “…yes, yes, absolutely. The cultural event will have full support. My word.” He saw Priya hovering at the door and waved her in without missing a beat in his conversation. He was sleek, with carefully styled hair and a watch that flashed under the tube light.
She sat in the visitor’s chair, examining the bookshelves—mostly untouched administrative manuals and framed awards. He finally hung up. “Yes, madam? How can I help?”
Priya introduced herself, presented her credentials again. “I understand there’s a hiring freeze, but I was hoping there might be a need for a visiting professor in Postcolonial Literature. My specialism is quite—”
He cut her off with another wave, his eyes scanning her dossier with a speed that suggested he wasn’t reading. “Sharma. Mumbai University. Good, good. The thing is, Professor, all courses are allocated. The roster is full.” He leaned back, lacing his fingers over his stomach. “But… we always need good people for special projects. Outreach. Community engagement. You understand.” His smile was avuncular, but his eyes were assessing, sliding from her face down to her hands clasped in her lap and back up. “We must be… flexible.”
The word hung in the stuffy air. Priya felt a familiar, cold pinpoint of recognition in her gut. It was a look, a tone, she’d encountered before, but never so bluntly at the doorstep of supposed sanctuary.
“My flexibility is academic, Dean Naik,” she said, her voice cooling several degrees. “I develop curricula and grade papers. Perhaps if there’s a formal process for applying when the freeze lifts—”
The door swung open before he could reply.
A young man strode in, maybe twenty-five, dressed in designer jeans and a tight black t-shirt that showed off a gym-built frame. He carried the casual arrogance of someone who owned the ground he walked on. “Mama said to give you this,” he said to Naik, dropping a sealed envelope on the desk. His accent was the clipped, affected English of the elite.
“Arnav, beta, not now,” Naik said, but his reprimand was soft, toothless.
Arnav’s gaze landed on Priya. It was a slow, deliberate scan. From her graying hair tied in a neat bun, down the line of her saree blouse, over her waist, resting on her legs before traveling back up. The scrutiny was so vulgar, so devoid of basic respect, that for a second Priya was too stunned to move.
“New faculty?” Arnav asked, a smirk playing on his lips. His eyes locked onto hers with a chilling possessiveness. “We must welcome you properly.”
Dean Naik gave a nervous, shallow laugh. “Professor Sharma is just exploring opportunities. Arnav is our… our star alumnus. And the son of Netaji Pawar.” The name was dropped like a stone. A local political heavyweight, a figure often in the newspaper for both philanthropy and pending corruption cases.
“I see,” Priya said, standing. The movement was swift. She gathered her dossier. “Thank you for your time, Dean Naik.” She turned to leave, her spine straight.
Arnav shifted, deliberately blocking her path to the door, not wholly, but enough that she would have to brush past him. He stood close. She could smell his cologne, sharp and woody, and beneath it, the sour tang of cigarettes. “Don’t run off,” he said, his voice lower now, for her alone. “Pune can be a lonely place for a new… aunty. I know all the good spots. Maybe I can show you around.” The word ‘aunty’ was stretched, laced with a perverse suggestion that twisted the respectful term into something cheap.
The cold pinpoint in her gut exploded into a white-hot fury. She looked past him, through him, as if he were a stain on the window. “Move,” she said. The word was flat, absolute, a command forged in decades of classroom authority.
It surprised him. His smirk faltered for a microsecond. Dean Naik half-rose from his chair. “Arnav, please.”
Arnav stepped aside with an exaggerated, mocking bow. “Of course. My mistake. We’ll see each other again, Professor. The campus is a small world.”
She walked out, her heels clicking a precise, steady rhythm on the corridor floor until she turned the corner. Then, in a deserted stairwell, she stopped. She leaned against the cool wall, her dossier clutched to her chest. Her breath came quick and shallow. The humiliation was a physical wash, hot then cold. It wasn’t the overture itself; it was its location. In a dean’s office. It was the knowledge that this boy, armed with his father’s name, polluted the very space meant for intellectual freedom. And it was the terrifying, clear understanding that if she wanted a place here, near Rohan, she might have to navigate a minefield of such men.
Rohan found her an hour later on a bench under a gulmohar tree, its branches bare of their fiery blossoms. She was staring at a line of ants traversing a crack in the pavement.
“How did it go?” he asked, sitting beside her, the enthusiasm of his own morning still lighting his face.
She didn’t answer immediately. She watched the ants, their purpose, their unity. “The Dean suggested I need to be ‘flexible’,” she said finally, her voice eerily calm. “And then the Netaji’s son came in. He suggested other things.”
Rohan went very still. The light drained from his eyes. “What did he say?”
Priya relayed it in a detached, clinical monotone: the look, the block, the word ‘aunty’, the invitation. When she finished, she turned to look at her son. His jaw was clenched so tight a muscle跳ed in his cheek. His hands were fists on his knees. She saw the rage trembling through him, the knight’s impulse to storm the castle.
She placed her hand over his fist. Her touch was cool. “No.”
“Mom—”
“No, Rohan. You will not go to that office. You will not confront that boy.” Her fingers tightened. “That is exactly what he wants. A scene. A drama. To prove his power. You have a job here. A career to start. You will not set fire to it on my first day.”
“So what? We just take it?” he hissed, his voice thick.
“I take it,” she corrected him. “I digest it. And then I decide what to do with it.” She looked back at the administrative block, a hard glint settling in her expressive eyes. “He thinks I am a lonely aunty. A victim waiting in a stairwell.” She stood up, straightening her saree. The vulnerability was gone, folded away, replaced by a formidable, chilling composure. “Let him think that. It will be his first mistake.”