Five Point Someone Read online

  “Wow, it’s the paper. Let me see it,” I said.

  “No. I know you guys. You’ll just start discussing it right now. I am keeping this with me until we wrap up and get out of here,” Ryan said.

  “What else needs to be done,” Alok said.

  “I have to put a fresh seal. Why do you think I brought the candle?” Ryan said.

  “Anyway, I think he’ll take another million hours to finish,” Alok said.

  “Hurry up, Ryan,” I said.

  “Shut up,” he said as he heated a fresh blob of wax on the candle. He looked like a craftsman intently at work.

  “Hey Hari, Cherian’s office has a phone,” Alok said.

  “Yes, it’s right there,” I said, pointing to the bookshelves where the instrument was kept.

  “Maybe I can just make a quick call from here,” Alok said.

  “Really? Don’t you want to wait and call from outside?”

  “It’ll get really late. Besides, I just need to check how Dad is. What else do we have to do now?”

  “Okay,” I shrugged.

  Alok stood up and went near the phone.

  “I think you have to dial nine to get an outside line,” I said.

  “Now what the heck are you guys doing? Can’t you just sit still,” Ryan scolded as he spooned molten wax from the fresh seal.

  “Just calling home for a minute. It is too much to wait for you to finish,” Alok said.

  “Can’t you call from outside,” Ryan said, “or you are too cheap to spend a buck.”

  “I just need a minute. You just pay attention to the seal,” Alok said as he dialled the number.

  He got through pretty soon, and it was clear that his mother had been waiting for Alok to call back. Alok hardly spoke, as his mother vented about her miserable life and the hapless fate of his didi.

  Ryan continued dabbing some fresh wax on the underside of the old seal. I tried to pass my time flipping through Ryan’s lube proposal. This is when the wires got ahead of us.

  I did not know this then, but this is how the insti phone system works. Each prof has a phone in the room that is part of the IIT network. One uses it mainly to dial internal campus numbers. To dial outside, the network connects to a few external lines. When nine is pressed, the internal phone requests an external line, and the campus telecom exchange switches the lines. A control switchboard in the telecom exchange does this automatically. The switchboard lights up a small red bulb for every engaged line. Every time one requests an external line, the light turns green. This control room is in the institute security office on the ground floor of the insti building. One night operator and a guard sit there at night, mostly gossiping and snoozing through their shift. So, a little red bulb lit up on one of the sixth floor phones, and then that red bulb turned green. What was Prof Cherian doing in his room this time of the night? the guard wondered. The operator had the option to listen in to the conversation if he wanted, and he did. This wasn’t Prof Cherian. It was a mother reciting the sad tale of her daughter to someone called Alok. The security guard opened his walkie talkie, and requested patrolling guards to check on Cherian’s room. The patrolling guard was joined by another guard as he walked up to the sixth floor.

  Unfortunately, like I said, we did not know all this then.

  “There are some comments given on some of the pages though,” I said.

  “All crap. Cherian just didn’t want to give this project a shot. I have demonstrated results of efficiency improvements. How could he close this because of no viability? That bastard, ouch!” A drop of wax fell on his fingers.

  “Don’t worry. You concentrate on the seal. And hurry up, Alok,” I said.

  The two guards came and stood outside our door. They must have been standing there for two minutes before they opened the door. A lit candle, melted wax, someone on the prof’s chair, a few strewn papers. The guards did not need to be too educated to figure it out.

  Alok dropped the phone from his hand as he froze. His poor mother must have felt the phone go dead again. Actually, we all went dead. I froze in my chair too, and I don’t know how, but Ryan figured out what to say first.

  “Oh, guard sahib. Hello, come in let me explain,” he said, trying to be as calm as possible.

  “Who are you?”

  “Guard sahib,” Ryan said as he stood up, almost ready to dash out if needed. Alok and I came up behind him as well, waiting for any sudden instructions.

  “Don’t come near us,” the guard said, “we are calling the prof now.”

  “Oh no guard sahib, listen to us,” Ryan said as he went near the door. It was clear we had to make a dash now.

  The guard picked up our intentions or something, or maybe he was just scared and stupid. He backed off, and shut us inside the office. We heard him bolt the door and tell his fellow guard to call the prof and the chief security officer. Ryan tried calling the guard again, but it was to no avail. There we were, three of us locked in Cherian’s office on the sixth floor at midnight.

  We didn’t say a word, we just looked at each other’s faces. We could do nothing but wait and wait and wait. The longest day of my life wouldn’t get over…

  19

  —

  The Longest Day of My Life IV

  I KIND OF WENT INSIDE MYSELF IN THAT SHORT SPAN OF time before Cherian’s office door opened again and sealed our fate, just sat quietly and ignored what Ryan and Alok said, that is if they did say anything. Future scenes erupted in my mind. By tomorrow morning, all profs, all students at Kumaon and other hostels would know about us. Caught stealing the major paper from Prof Cherian’s office, no less! Probably the insti director would also come on this special occasion. Cherian would get us all shot if he could, but either way he would definitely not go easy on us. What did they call it? Disciplinary Committee or Disco, for deciding the fate of the students who broke discipline. Suddenly, my five-point GPA seemed wonderful to me. If only I could pass out of this place with a simple job and this could all be over. But even keeping that GPA and passing out was not going to be easy now. Will Cherian soften if we grovelled? Should we just deny that we had come here to cheat? Should we just admit everything and apologize? Can we just rewind a few minutes and stop Alok from making that call? Could I just re-live this one day?

  These stupid questions darted about like rabbits inside my head. I took a deep breath; we just had to live through these moments.

  “Someone’s come,” Ryan said and we stood up. The bolt was opened and around ten people swarmed in. I recognized the two security guards and the chief security officer by their uniforms. The other guy with them was the telephone exchange operator, I knew since he wore an insti uniform. These morons with dull jobs were the heroes of the day.

  And then it was a couple of profs from the Mechanical Engineering department. Even Prof Veera was there. And of course, there was the man whose office we had temporarily occupied – Cherian. He stood there shocked, wondering how his office was broken into so cleanly. It was the Who’s Who of IIT, most of them in their pajamas. People get more pissed off if they are disturbed in their pajamas.

  The guard told everyone to come inside the room, keeping an eye on us as if we’d try to make a dash again.

  “You?” Cherian said, looking straight at me. He must have been wondering: his daughter in the morning and his office in the evening. I’d be pissed if someone screwed all over my life in one day.

  “What are you doing here?” Prof Veera said, probably aware of what we had been up to. The guard had told everyone what he had seen a million times; the candle, the seal and the major papers. Maybe Prof Veera was just giving us a chance to verbalize a good lie to get out of this.

  We said nothing, hoping silence would evaporate us.

  “Cheating, sir, stealing major paper. My boys caught them,” the security chief said, proud as if they had broken a CIA ring.

  “You were stealing the paper from my office? How did you get in?” Cherian asked me directly.