Chapter 2

When dreams take shape, sleep runs away.

The hostel bed added to Rupali’s anxiety. It felt different to her body and made her uncomfortable. In

that sleepless state, she began to think of home and realized how far away she was from Patna; her

hostel was going to be her new home in Delhi. Minutes later, when sleep had still not come to her, she

recalled all that had happened in her life in the past forty-eight hours—how her proud father, who

served as a travelling ticket inspector (TTI) in North Eastern Railways, had taken a day’s leave to

perform a puja at home. It was to seek blessings from the Almighty, before Rupali left Patna to start

college. How her caring mother, a homemaker, had made sattu and laddoos especially for her. As Rupali

thought of her mother, she peered in the dark at the tiffin boxes which her mother had packed for her

and which were now sitting on the table next to her bed. She reached out and ran her hand lovingly over

them. She realized how in making them her mother had poured in all her love and care into them. She

also thought of her younger brother, Tanmay, who had secretly cried all night before she was to leave

for Delhi. She remembered how he had, wordlessly, given her a tight hug, probably for the first time in

her life, at the Patna railway station, where her entire family had come to see her off.

This was the first time that Rupali was on her own, away from home. But she hadn’t yet started

missing her family or her house. There was still some time for that to happen. Instead she was happy

thinking about her parents, who, unlike many other parents in Patna, or for that matter, the whole of

Bihar, had given their daughter the much-needed freedom. They had allowed her to go out all by

herself, to a different city, to learn how to stand on her own feet. The night passed with many such

thoughts interspersed with a feeling of anticipation for what the next day would bring. It was only in the

early hours of dawn that sleep finally took over her tired body.

When the morning arrived, the phone alarm broke Rupali’s sleep. Through the thin curtains on the

window on her right, sunlight made its way into her room. Even before she’d fully opened her eyes,

Rupali slid her hand underneath the pillow and turned off the alarm. She took a moment before she got

up. And when she did, she sat on her bed with her legs crossed, and folded her hands in prayer.

‘Shanti! Shanti! Shanti!’she quickly whispered after which she opened her eyes again.

‘Finally, the day has arrived!’ she thought to herself in delight. She jumped out of bed and pulled

apart the curtains. A broad smile took birth on her lips as the sun streamed through the window,

flooding her room in abundant light.

The morning view outside her window was beautiful. Situated in the extreme west, her hostel offered

her a view of the entire campus that spread in the east. Over the rally of trees, at a distance, she could

see the giant clock on the terrace tower of the red-brick college block. And just outside her window, at

the entrance of her hostel, there was a huge lawn. She could see the shrubs marking the periphery of it.

In every corner of the lawn, there were more than a dozen plants with multicoloured flowers blossoming

on them. Butterflies fluttered from one flower to another. A female gardener was busy watering the

plants. Rupali was happy she’d got a room with a view. She loved the greenery and nature. She started

humming a few lines from her favourite Hindi song as she picked up her things to go to the common

bathrooms to get dressed.

‘Hi! Are you from first year too?’ Rupali excitedly asked the girls at the common washbasin bay,

most of whom were busy brushing their teeth. Unlike the previous evening, there were many girls in the

hostel that day. Some of them reciprocated Rupali’s enthusiasm as they nodded vigorously with

toothpaste frothing in their mouths.

Interestingly, Rupali’s simple ‘Hi’ had broken the ice with quite a few girls who were too shy to

initiate a conversation with the others till then. Soon the ‘Hi’ grew into a series of conversations as well

as a few cross-conversations. This instantly put Rupali at the centre of every discussion that was taking

place around her to the background noises of toilets flushing on the left and tap water running in the

bathrooms on their right.

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