"Marjoon, do u think you can lend me a pen?"
A whistle blew outside, the sky was darkening. in the West, an orange glow blurred into the red bricks of the three storeyed school building.
marjoon didn't switch on the light. There was a comfort in the the orangy aura that Davian had this dusk. It made him more human, more like himself. Marjoon was afraid that brightness sparked doubts and questions and anxiety and curiosity in Davian. Doubts that made the teachers teach beyond the last bell, curiosity that gave Davian the strained double-humped forehead inspite of being the top-scorer of the batch. Marjoon wanted Davian this way, silent, pleading, in a dark corridor.
Marjoon was never as comfortable with Davian around. In this dying light he had caught Davian away from being the good boy that he was. Davian was there in this dark corridor in this dusk, the azaan for the maghrib prayers was long called, and from the mosque barely twenty metres away by the bird's flight they could hear "aameen" dissolving into the evening stillness, the "meen" puffing itself against the fainting aura of Davian.
"Sure."
Marjoon didn't have a pen with him. But he didn't want to let Davian fade out blot out against that darkness. He wanted Davian there, till the prayers ended and the men dispersed and they wondered where Davian was. They will surely notice his absence too, bit there was nothing new about it. He missed prayers, forgot homeworks, made faces, slept through classes, blew off bulbs with fifty paise coins; while Davian was first to the mosque, first in the class, cleared doubts and walked eagerly, in the limelight with a pointed forehead.
"Let me see, your pen"
"well... but isn't it dark here?"
"Isn't iit beautiful that way?"
"I don't get you"
"I want to write what others shouldn't see."
"What is it?"
"Why will I tell you?"
"Well, shouldn't I known what use my pen is put to?"
I know you are not exactly my friend. But can I call you my dear? My dear, I want to die. But what would that mean? The prayers can go on without me, the classes will. My bed will be occupied by another, and since I die on the corridor, no room will be haunted.
My dear, do not think I'm cruel, honestly I am not. My dear, can I kiss you once. I know you don't like me that well. It's true I too do not like you that well. But...when I see you alone, in the dark corridors, in the corners of classrooms kneeling down making faces at the seated yea-sayers, when I see you stealing even the Holy Book and covering them with newspapers and appropriating them to escape from having to kneel down at six in the morning and then to have to miss breakfast, when I see you, jumping from ledge to the wall to the open paddy field outside the high walls of our hostel...I felt how beautiful it should be o be you, to be uncaring about all these,
my dear, I am not cruel, but I want me to be missed and you to be caring and missing something in life. Let me kiss you and die.
"Oh, if it's too much to ask for, I'm leaving. I don't want your pen".
Davian faded out in that dark corridor. The lights went on and there was Marjoon. On the other end was the Warden. He had a cane in his hand.
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