Free Your Dreams Are Mine Now by Ravinder Singh Page A

what had just occurred. In the shock of that moment, she got down on her knees in front of Prof. Mahajan and begged him to pardon her. She cried in front of the professor, pleading that Rupali was just a kid.
    Mahajan didn’t bother to respond or even look at Raheema. He knew whom he had to break down. He knew who his real enemy was.
    When Rupali got back on her feet, she pulled Raheema away from Mahajan, stopping her from pleading in front of him.
    She looked back at the professor.
    ‘Go tell the principal now!’ Mahajan retorted, picked up his belongings and left.

Nine
    ‘Haven’t you understood it yet? The principal won’t care enough for it. That dog has slapped you on one cheek, the principal will do so on the other. What will you do then?’
    That was Saloni and they were discussing the matter in their room. She was annoyed when she came to know of Rupali’s call for action and what had happened in Mahajan’s cabin that afternoon. Initially, Rupali had known that Saloni wouldn’t understand what she wanted to do, so she didn’t want to tell her anything. But she could not lie to her for so long either, especially when Saloni had noticed that one side of her face and her ear were red.
    ‘Are you even listening to what I am saying? You are not going to do anything. Alright?’ said Saloni. ‘Look at me. You have come here all the way from Patna to study. Don’t get into all this. It’s not good for you in any way.’
    When she didn’t hear even a word from her roommate she confronted her. ‘Am I making any sense to you?’ She raised Rupali’s chin and wanted her to respond.
    Rupali calmly nodded, only to avoid a debate with her roommate. Saloni too knew that Rupali wasn’t buying her argument. She was already extremely disappointed to know what had happened to Rupali. Her roommate’s cold reaction to her advice was making her more frustrated.
    Saloni’s anger was justified. She cared for Rupali and was worried about her; her future; her studies. In her mind, Rupali was the best human she had ever come across and she didn’t want to see her ruining her life for someone else. Every time she looked at her red face, in her mind she imagined Prof. Mahajan slapping her best friend. And this was tearing her apart.
    A silent Rupali sat on her chair, reflecting upon the course of events in Mahajan’s cabin. She was wondering what she was going to do next. One thing was sure in her mind—there was no going back. She was also concerned that Raheema must not retract from her position and must continue to fight this battle that the two of them had begun.
    In her anger Saloni walked restlessly in her room. She couldn’t contain herself, ‘I’m extremely angry with that bastard for having treated you so badly!’ she said angrily.
    ‘You hate him because he slapped me. I hate him for what he has been doing to Raheema,’ Rupali said calmly, wondering if it made sense to her roommate.
    ‘Raheema! Raheema! Raheema! Why are you so bothered about her?’ Saloni shouted in despair.
    ‘Had it been you instead of Raheema, would you have said the same thing?’ Rupali countered her friend.
    One half of Saloni’s mind wanted to respond to that. The other half wanted to understand the gravity of the situation. When she tried to answer that, she realized that she was at a loss for words.
    Rupali said again, ‘Or had it been my mother in Raheema’s place, should I have let the matter be even then?’
    ‘But that’s not the case at the moment, right? It isn’t your mother. It is the peon whom you hardly knew till a week back,’ Saloni argued back but only for the sake of arguing. She knew that she had already lost the argument. She couldn’t answer Rupali’s previous question.
    ‘Yes, today there is one peon. Tomorrow, there will be two more and they will be asked to compromise or be ready to be thrown out of the system. Do you know the same peon had told me that two years back, there was a student just like