‘The writing was brilliant.’

‘And?’

I sighed. ‘I felt very bad for Humbert.’

He was laughing again. ‘Good.’

‘What is?’

‘Reading things all wrong.’

Was I irritated or thrilled, amused or intrigued? They cast a strange balance together, and my voice was steady, bereft of inflection, when I said, ‘Why do you never give straight answers?’

‘Good question.’

‘See!’

‘Have you watched Dead Poets Society?’

‘Nope. Should I?’

‘You should. Right away, in fact. What’s your email address?’

‘[email protected]’

‘That’s a ridiculous address. Aren’t you applying to colleges soon?’

It had not occurred to me how unprofessional that sounded. ‘Yeah. I need to change it, don’t I?’

‘Check your inbox in ten minutes. I’m sending you a link to Gmail and Dead Poets Society. Set up an account with your name in it—no frills—and then reward yourself with the movie.’

Disappointment washed over me. Was he going to go? ‘Are you going?’

‘Need to sleep, love. Have to make a flight in five hours.’

‘Oh, okay. Where to?’

‘New York.’

‘Fun!’

There was a long pause. I was about to check the line when he said, ‘Something like that. Good night, dear girl.’

Abuzz from the conversation, I went and turned on my computer. Eight minutes of Minesweeper later, I checked my inbox and found an email from Jay titled:

The straight answer is rarely ever the right one.

We listened to a lot of the soul wrenchers, a lot of Coldplay and the moments when it was just Axl and a bottle of scotch and his fingers turning the piano red. Paradoxes and repetitions; we learned the language, we learned their tongues. Shaggy-haired Jon Bon Jovi on his bed of nails, not alone but still lonely, and Chris Martin, his eyes so blue, never having been told it was easy, never having been told it would be this hard.

I’ll take you back to the start.

Stems

I was in the wrong classroom on my first day of school.

The teacher read through her register, and my name wasn’t called out. I raised my hand, squeaked out my name. She flipped through the register and told me that I was in the wrong room. Then she went out into the hallway and came in with a tall, thin senior and instructed her to get me to the KG-2 classroom.

The senior looked down at me, and I wanted to get to know her. But she was a senior, she was tall and thin and looked like she lived in Alipore. After leading me through what seem to be endless passages, she handed me over to another senior, a curly-haired girl with thick glasses. ‘Oi, I’m late for chem lab again. Take this one to KG-2.’