Sunday Short Story By Deeptak Koley

The Lecturer

I was never good at English but this guy Shakespeare with his crooked English used to always fascinate me. This was not because his plays were great or the stories that the Christian English teacher used to tell us about him were intriguing to me, but because sometimes he wrote such things that really made me doubt whether he was a writer or an astrologer. Such was his power of prediction and looking into the future that hundreds of years later, they seem to come true. One such moment was when he said that the world is a stage.
The world is indeed a stage, I mean look around and all you see is drama. No not the drama that the cultural group of our society led by the now balding railway officer from Block D does on the makeshift stage during festivals; what I am talking about is real drama. Take for example the drama in the gossip of the aunties of our society and the juicy stories that flow out of their “kitty parties” that are served grandly to my mother by our maid. I will be, honest I don’t mind the stories. They are quite enjoyable and though I pretend to play games while they talk in their animated tone, I quietly listen taking note of what goes on in and around the society. For example, the story of how the new lady had not rented but had bought the 2 kamra flat from the cranky old Parsi man who had settled with his son in Ontario and how the scantly bearded lanky boy who lived with her was not her son or nephew but was actually her lover. My mom was quick to dismiss the story but the lady with her dilated eyes and excited hand gestures made her point based on what she had heard so intimidatingly that not only mom but even I nodded in agreement to shut her up and allow her complete washing the utensils. The lady led a very secluded life even in the flat, the tainted windows would be shut most of the time and the curtains were drawn and no one in the society, not even the sociable wife of the railway had any clue about her. I had seen the lanky guy a couple of times. He was probably a year or two older than me and was lanky but athletic. He had long black hair that grew down to his neck and bangs that fell over his face with a scanty beard and a thin moustache. He looked shabby in his oversized jerseys and half-pants and slippers. I had seen him on his way to the market behind our colony a couple of times. The entire mystery about the lady and the young boy created a drama that was very entertaining throughout the months of lockdown.
Another drama unfolded the day our classes in University began. There was a certain guy in our department who had quit his engineering degree mid-way and shifted to management to start all over again and no, that wasn’t the entire drama. From the very first day, it seemed like he had shifted courses only to disturb a certain lecturer who taught us accounts for that was the only class we heard him speak in his rough voice as he quarrelled and fought with the professor over the most trivial things, spending a whole lot of class time in the drama. Though we all secretly enjoyed seeing the face of the middle-aged lecturer turn red in anger while the guy chuckled off, but we never shied away from criticizing the guy for the way he treated the professor. “How can he do it to such a respected and esteemed professor” the class CR had once asked in the small virtual group of 5 members that we had to discuss class notes and occasionally have a nice time. The guy was a matter of constant speculation amongst us students, rightfully for his odd behaviour and when I came to know that he was the lanky guy from our neighbourhood, my excitement knew no bounds. I texted “SOS” and made a conference call discussing how when we were asked to turn on the camera, I recognized his lanky long face and bangs. On learning of this new development, my friends decided that I must “investigate” further and try to find who is the lady and what he does.
This wasn’t a very hard job for me as they lived on the block just opposite my window. All I had to keep my eye open. “They will leave it open someday” I used to tell myself. And the day finally came in the form of a load shedding in our colony. A heavy torrential rain hand in hand with her best friend the thunderstorm had wreaked havoc in the city and had taken down several transformers including ours. The window of their air-conditioned room was finally open and I could make out the white bed sheet of the room and a small figure that probably was the lanky guy lying in front of a black laptop that contrasted the white tone of the room. We had the finance class in the last period. I glanced outside to see the guy sit up. He went about with his tomfoolery while the lecturer in her pink apparel kept shouting at him through the small one-inch by one-inch screen. As the class ended, I rolled my chair to the window and I stared out into their window. A figure in pink walked into the room from the blind end and picked up a pillow and threw it at the guy who caught it with his feet. I pulled out my phone and tried to zoom in through the camera. It was the lecturer! She looked back and hurriedly tried to close the window, but she wasn’t too fast. My phone made a computerized snap sound. I examined the picture; her face wasn’t visible but her pepper salt pixie hair as well as the sleeves of her pink dress. I hurriedly forwarded the picture to the group and proceeded to call my friends.