Chapter 5

'We will be together now,' said his father to Dhruv after he won Dhruv's custody.

Soon after, his father had to break into his fixed and recurring deposits to cope with the expenses of his alcohol problem. He wasn't doing a good job of bringing Dhruv up, either. Dhruv missed Mom like he missed a limb. In her absence he felt a constant nagging pain. She would come to see him every week, and then every alternate week, and then once a month.

'Why are you being so difficult?' Mom would ask on the monthly visits.

'Because you're not my mother any more.' Dhruv would pretend to watch Duck Tales and Swat Cats. Mom would switch off the television and he would snatch the remote from her. 'The remote is not yours any more!'

During these monthly visits, Dhruv's father would go missing and Mom would spend most of the time cleaning the house of empty soda and whisky bottles. And when Dad returned, it would end with a verbal duel between his parents about who had been the worse parent.

'Both of you!' Dhruv would shout from behind a locked door.

Mom would leave behind a toy, a hand-held video game, a CD player which Dad would smash and throw out with the trash. Dhruv did not mind. Sometimes Dhruv and his father would break those toys together.

The divorce proceedings and the custody battle were tedious and robbed Dhruv's father of most of his savings, and a good part of his mind. Dhruv had to leave school.

'If you don't send him to school, I'm going to take you to court,' Dhruv's mother threatened his father.

So Dhruv was put back in the school, no fee charged.

The first day was horrendous. Dhruv put up with the sniggering without breaking down. He walked the corridors like nothing had happened. His mother, now freshly married, looked more beautiful than before, even younger. She was made the vice principal of the school.

Dhruv would never leave his class. During lunch breaks, he would go to the end of the class and sit down on the floor, hidden from his mother's prying eyes. Sometimes his mother would keep lunch wrapped in an aluminium foil on his desk.

'What are you doing down there?' asked a girl one day while Dhruv fiddled with a fountain pen, shirt stained with little blue spots of Chelpark ink. Dhruv looked up to see the girl from his colony, the dalmatian, the one with the spotted skin, looking at him. 'Do you want to share my lunch?'

Dhruv shook his head.

'You won't get it if you touch me or share my food. Didn't you get the flyer that was never distributed?'

'I didn't say no because of that,' lied Dhruv.

Dhruv was hungry. His father would not wake up in time to help him get ready for school, or prepare lunch, or even drop him to the bus stop. He would, though, kiss him on his forehead every day at least once as they rushed to get dressed. 'I love you, and we are happy together,' his father would assert like a universal truth. But Dhruv wanted a lunch box and a clean uniform, too.

'Why do you sit here every day?'

'My mother is a teacher in the school and she comes looking for me with a lunch box. I sit here and wait for her to leave.'

'Where's the lunch box then?'

'I don't take it. She waits and she takes it back.'

The girl starts to laugh.

'What?'

'It reminds me of a ghost-woman from a Bollywood movie who wears a white saree and roams about with a candle in her hand.'

Dhruv frowned. 'She's not a ghost.'

'I'm sorry. I'm really sorry. I don't know why I said that,' the girl said. Dhruv went back to taking the pen apart. 'I heard your story. I don't see why anyone should talk about it. If you were in the US, you would be in the majority. Divorce rates are 54.8 per cent there.'

'How do you know that?'

'I have a computer at home. AMD 1.2 GB Thunderbird Athlon computer with 320 MB SDRAM, SoundBlaster Live Value, CD drive and a 12 GB hard disk. It's actually my brother's but I can use it after he's done. He only watches porn.'

'Porn?'

'It's just biology in action. Nothing something you would be interested in till you're thirteen.'

Dhruv's eyes widened. 'Can I see your computer? Do you have Wolfestien on it?'

'No,' Aranya lied. Dhruv's shoulders drooped.

'My parents are very strict,' she said. 'And no friends are allowed at my place. We have to serve them Coca-Cola if they come and Mom says it's expensive. Sometimes, my mother adds water to those glasses. No one can tell the difference.' Aranya continued, 'But you should tell people about the 54.8 per cent. They should talk about something else.'

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