Free Part-Time Devdaas... by Rugved Mondkar

slitting my heart.
    “Stop it!” I yelled.
    “Why? What’s bothering you? You claim to be so much in love with her, but within three months, even you have started making out with random girls. Why won’t she be doing it? Can’t you see that she has forgotten you?” 
    “You know what, it is probably because of this blunt attitude of yours you couldn’t find anyone good to be with. You are an asshole, so obviously, you attract the same kind of girls.”
    As soon as I completed my sentence, Raghu landed a mighty punch on my left cheek, knocking me on the ground. I clutched the sand and got up in rage, but gave up the thought of hitting back the instant I realised whom I was about to hit.
    “Just go fuck yourself, loser!” he screamed at me.
    “That’s exactly what I’m going to do. You two are dead for me,” I screamed dabbing my bleeding lip with my sleeve. “I curse the day I met you two.”
    “Poncho, enough is enough!” Shashank ordered.
    “Fuck you!” I said and left the beach, with Raghu still yelling and abusing me. Three hours later, I was on the flight back to Mumbai. The new year had started, and I had lost some more people I loved. But at that moment, I really didn’t care.

T he day you admit yourself as an engineering student, you solemnly sign on the warrant of persecution and agree that you’ll, without any objection, allow your mind and soul to be sodomised by the atrocious demands and treatments bestowed upon you by the professors, who feel righteous to vent their personal and professional vexations by bullying you at every possible opportunity. There are students who bear the blisters with smiles and mirthfully show it off. But since I was thrown into this black hole with my hands and legs chained to a tetra pod, my mouth occasionally blared out my frustrations at the professors.
    One such incident cost me the afternoon of 31 December and I was holed up in the cementing lab that resembled a rat-infested cave. I could see orgasmic pleasure beaming from our professor Miss Mary Mathews’ face when she asked me to rewrite the whole semester’s experiments.
    Ms Mathews looked like the ugly step sister of Cinderella. A round, grey-coloured face, her oil soaked hair tied with a rubber band while a moustache similar to that of a boy going through puberty adorned her upper lip. She had a manly voice and spoke flawless English with a heavy South Indian accent.
    Whenever my phone vibrated, she looked up from her files and raised an eyebrow which almost touched her hairline. It was five in the evening and Raghu had been calling me for the past four hours. I pushed the phone in my pocket to avoid anymore stinking looks from Ms Mathews and got back to wasting ink and paper. An hour later, the phone began vibrating again; after a few minutes of enjoying the vibration in my pocket, I pulled the phone out. Seventeen missed calls! All of them from Hrida. I felt a sudden rush of blood in my body. I simply stuffed all my files in my sack and ran out of the lab, leaving Ms Mathews screaming behind me.

    I started my bike and throttled it out of college. At a safe distance away from the college and Miss Mathews, I stopped and dialled Hrida’s number. My heart began to pound.
    “Hi...” she said.
    “Hi... you called?” I asked adjusting the rearview mirror to see my face.
    “Yes...” her voice filled with controlled eagerness.
    “Why?”
    “How are you?”
    “I’m good...” I said resting my elbows on the fuel tank my face still visible in the mirror.
    “I called to tell you that I’m done.”
    “Done with what?”
    “Done with being pissed at you.”
    “Hmm...” I saw a smile grow into grin in the mirror. “I love you,” I said after controlling myself for a while.
    “Thank you,” she said. Who the hell on this planet replies to an I love you with a thank you ? But she had scared me enough in the past eleven days, so I kept my trap shut.
    “When can we meet?” I asked.
    “What’s