Chapter 30: The Claiming
The job came not from the Dean's office, but from a footnote. Priya, unwilling to let the encounter fester in idleness, had spent the evening scouring the college's online portal. Buried in the announcements for the upcoming semester was a single line: "Department of Comparative Literature seeks guest lecturer for seminar series 'Narratives of Resistance,' two sessions weekly. Stipend basis. Apply to Head of Department, Dr. Iyer."
It was a crack in the door. She applied with a specificity that was itself a weapon—a proposed syllabus linking the rebellious poetry of the Bhakti movement to contemporary Dalit writing, a reading list that was both rigorous and radical. Dr. Iyer, a slight man with a quiet voice and eyes that missed nothing, interviewed her in his book-crammed office. They spoke of Tagore and Ambedkar for forty minutes. He offered her the position the next day.
"It's a start," she told Rohan over dinner that night, a simple meal of dal and bhindi she'd prepared in their modest kitchen. The window was open to the humid Pune night, the sounds of traffic and night vendors a distant symphony.
"But it's in his college," Rohan said, pushing peas around his plate. "That… person. He'll be around."
"He was around in Mumbai, too. Different names, same creature." She took a sip of water. "I am not here for him. I am here for the students, and for this." She gestured between them, at their shared table. "We do not cede ground, Rohan. We never have."
The Comparative Literature department was in an older, quieter wing, far from the administrative block. Her first seminar was in a sun-washed room with peeling green paint and ancient, solid desks. Twelve students looked back at her, a mix of curiosity and undergraduate apathy. For ninety minutes, she forgot about Arnav Pawar. She spoke of language as a site of struggle, of metaphors that could cage or liberate. She asked questions, listened to halting answers, and teased out insights. By the end, the apathy had burned away. Hands were raised. A debate about a line from a Namdeo Dhasal poem spilled into the hallway as the class ended.
It was in the cafeteria, two days later, that the ground shifted again.
The space was a cacophony of life. Steam rose from giant pots at the snack counter. Students hunched over laptops, shared bites of sandwiches, argued politics. Priya carried a tray with a cup of lemon tea, finding a small empty table near a pillar draped in the scent of jasmine from the courtyard.
She saw him first in her periphery—a disruption in the flow. Arnav moved through the crowded room with the lazy assurance of a shark, a couple of similarly dressed young men in his wake. They collected vada pav from the counter without queueing, the server immediately deferential. Arnav’s gaze swept the room, landed on her, and stuck.
He said something to his friends, who laughed. Then he sauntered over.
"Professor Sharma," he said, setting his plate down on her table uninvited. His friends lingered a few feet back, smirking. "I heard you got a little class. Teaching resistance, is it?" He took a large bite of his vada pav, talking as he chewed. "Very fitting."
Priya placed her teacup down on its saucer. The china made a precise clink. "It is a seminar series, yes."
"Must be a big change from Mumbai. Smaller pond. Fewer… protections." He leaned in, his voice dropping to a mock-confidential tone. "You know, my father built this college's new sports complex. He’s on the board of governors. People here are… grateful to him. They listen to him." He let the implication hang, then his eyes traveled over her again, lingering. "You should be grateful too. I could put in a word. Make your position more permanent. Maybe get you a proper office. Dean Naik listens to me."
The offer, wrapped in threat and salacious intent, was so blatant it was almost impressive in its vulgarity. Priya felt a clean, sharp anger, honed by a lifetime of navigating such implied bargains. She looked not at him, but at his friends, then back at him.
"Are you quite finished?" she asked, her voice carrying no heat, only a distant, academic curiosity. "Only, your food is getting cold, and my tea is getting warm. And I have no interest in your word, your father’s influence, or the state of Dean Naik's hearing."
His face tightened. The performative swagger hardened into something uglier. "You think you're too good? A fifty-year-old widow playing professor?"
"Fifty-five," she corrected him calmly, picking up her tea. "And I am not playing."
He straightened up, his jovial mask gone. "You'll regret this attitude, aunty. This is my city. You’re a guest here. A temporary one."
He picked up his plate and walked away, his friends following with one last, gloating look tossed over their shoulders. Priya’s hand was steady as she drank her tea, but her mind was racing, cold and clear. The cafeteria noise swirled around her, but in the eye of the storm, a decision solidified. Appealing to Dean Naik was useless. The system, as it stood here, was compromised. There was only one move that made sense, however dangerous.
She found the number on the college website, under ‘Board of Governors.’ Netaji Prakash Pawar. His office was in the city, not on campus.
Rohan, when she told him that evening, was horrified. "You’re going to him? That’s walking into the lion's den. He’s the source of the poison!"
"And sometimes," Priya said, buttoning a simple, elegant kurta, "you must apply the antidote directly to the source. He may be a lion, but I am not a lamb. I am a citizen. And his son is a liability to the name he is so proud of."
The Pawar office was in a refurbished colonial bungalow in the heart of Pune. It spoke of money, but of a specific kind—ostentatious yet trying for gravitas. Marble floors, garish chandeliers, oversized portraits of Netaji with various ministers. Priya waited in an anteroom on a stiff sofa, ignored by bustling assistants for forty-five minutes past her appointment time. It was a classic power play. She used the time to memorize the pattern in the marble.
Finally, she was shown in. Netaji Prakash Pawar was a bull of a man, with a thick neck and watchful eyes that took her in from behind a vast, empty desk. He did not stand.
"Professor Sharma," he said, his voice a low rumble. "You have taken the time of a very busy man. This is about my son."
It was not a question. So, the news had traveled. Good. "It is," she said, remaining standing. "He has, on two separate occasions, engaged in sexually harassing behavior and attempted to solicit favors from me using your name and influence as a threat. The latest instance was today, in the college cafeteria, in front of witnesses."
Pawar stared at her. He seemed less offended than deeply inconvenienced. "Arnav is a young man. High-spirited. He makes jokes. You are from a different generation, you misunderstand."
"It was not a joke. It was an explicit proposal of quid pro quo, wrapped in intimidation. I am detailing it to you, as his parent and as a governor of the institution where I am employed, so there is no misunderstanding." Her words were precise, drilled into the quiet room. "I will be filing a formal written complaint with the college's Internal Complaints Committee tomorrow, as per the Vishakha Guidelines. This meeting is a courtesy. To inform you that your son’s ‘high spirits’ are about to become a formal, legal, and public matter that will attach itself to your name."
For the first time, something shifted in his eyes. The placid, powerful dismissal fractured, replaced by a swift, calculating coldness. She had not come to plead. She had come to declare war.
"You are making a mistake," he said, his voice dropping even lower, a whisper of granite. "A widow, new to the city, picking a fight you cannot win. My son’s future is bright. Yours…" He let the sentence die, a deliberate, cruel omission.
"My future is my own concern," Priya said. "My character is my own. Your son's character, and by association yours, is about to become everyone's concern. The choice is simple: you control your son, or the law will attempt to. Good evening, Netaji."
She turned and walked out, her footsteps echoing in the marbled hall. She did not look back. She knew the stakes had just been raised to a terrifying height. She had thrown a stone not at a spoiled boy, but at a fortress. The silence that followed her out of the room felt heavier than any shouted threat. It was the sound of an enemy taking your measure, and finding, to his great annoyance, that you were not afraid.