In Prof Dr Piyush Roy’s Student City Part 5, a volatile night at a Pune B-School disc changes friendships, loyalties and emotional equations forever, as jealousy, attraction and insecurity erupt between Rahul, Anisha, Tammy and Avi amidst the reckless freedom of late-1990s campus life.

Recap Of Parts 1 To 4

Set in a Pune B-School at the turn of the millennium, Student City follows the emotional entanglements, ambitions and rivalries of a diverse MBA batch navigating friendship, attraction, class divides and identity. While charming flirt Rahul chases the fiercely independent Anisha, shy small-town Avi watches from the sidelines, caught between fascination and insecurity. Pam leads the anti-Rahul camp, tensions simmer between student groups, and glamorous Tammy gradually falls for Rahul during their successful academic collaborations. But Rahul’s flirtations, Tammy’s possessiveness and Anisha’s magnetic detachment steadily push their fragile equations toward emotional collapse.  

Read Student City Part 1

Read Student City Part 2

Read Student City Part 3

Read Student City Part 4

Saturday Night Fever And Silent Jealousies

‘Di di da da,’ sounded that familiar call to the rising ‘Saturday night’ fever, as the stormy duo got sizzling to the glares of a jealous Tammy. Spitting fire, as her eyes glowed in that extra shine of the rotating disc lights, I queried with a mock surprise, “You don’t dance?”

“I don’t feel like…,” she continued muttering a lethal ‘Rahul’s going to pay very dearly for this,’ to herself.

“Pardon me,” I interrupted.

“Oh, just shut up, Avi.” I kept quiet.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean it that way, but you see I am bored to death.”

“Me too… by the way your presentation today was really great. For once I really regretted my luck for not being your teammate.”

“You seem to have mastered the art of how to make a conversation seriously boring. Moreover, I hardly spoke, it was Rahul’s show all the way.”

“His capabilities are not unknown to anyone…” I left the comment dangling midway for her to gloat in that belated appreciation.

“Yes, behind every successful man there is a woman, who goes unnoticed, unheard and unappreciated.”

“So, you seem to be on a sacrificing mode…,” I had started opining, when she rudely interrupted, “Sacrifice my foot! For that unscrupulous flirt!”

Rahul and Anisha had just finished a whirl to the cheers of their swaying audience. As the others in our group continued the clapping, except me, Tammy too gave a politically correct mock clap, raising a toast their way, which went unacknowledged. Shaking, jostling, touching, holding, the blithe duo continued uplifting their dance to a magical experience that perhaps had to be seen to be believed. They looked good, happy and inviting. Only a dogged determination could stop one from being a part of that infectious frenzy or perhaps a few inhibitive fears of a slip, as in my case.

Could I match those steps, and if not, would I be laughed at? Dancing in public, this way would be a first-time endeavour for me, I revealed to myself, suddenly realising how I had skipped experiencing those abundant joys of naughty elasticity my body had been born equipped with. How come I had never done that before in those numerous marriage processions my family attended, in those boisterous school functions celebrating the little intra-school victories, during those restrained giveaways with my nine-to-five college buddies or just like that in moods of pure lonesome ecstasy, anytime ever. Not one of those born with the nimble foot, I consoled myself with a, ‘Well I too have USPs, exclusive to me. If dance wasn’t one of them, so what? Tammy too wasn’t into that prancing juggling either,’ I explained to myself, drawing consolation in her aloof company.

Tammy Explodes On The Dance Floor

“They make a lovely pair,” I pointed out to Tammy, quite casually, albeit expecting to kindle some fireworks in an otherwise sedate evening, going by our till-now eventless watching-by-the-aisle act.

Tammy straightened up, staggering under liquor’s addictive sway, her body shaking with a betrayed anger, swaying, tying the now-forgotten scarf round her waist with an aggressive firmness, she barged right in-between Rahul and Anisha, muttering a definite, “Rahul, let’s go!”

“So soon?” Rahul questioned. “The party’s just begun man. You chill at the drinks counter… Me and Anisha have hardly hit the floor,” he said, constantly giving that ‘I will take care of her,’ assured smile to an unruffled Anisha, who’d already resumed her dance in slow motion. That was Anisha, detached unless actively solicited, respecting everyone’s right to space and priorities.

“Look at me Rahul, at least when you are talking to me. That bitch is not your date for the night,” Tammy insisted. “Come let’s go home, I’m drunk and not feeling well,” she said, grabbing refuge in his shaky hold.

Rahul could see another guy, coming close to the now singly swaying Anisha, with a smile and an invitation equipped with a charmer’s profile. He couldn’t let one of ‘our’ girls, go to an outsider; his manhood rebelled.

“Tammy, behave yourself. Even I am drunk, but I have not lost my senses. Please go back and sit, will you?”

“Will I? No, I won’t!” she shouted, loud enough to silence the immediate pandemonium.

“Ever since we entered the disc, you have been prancing around with every other female on the floor except me; abandoning me to that damned corner. What the hell do you think about yourself? You think, you did a favour by getting me along?”

“Calm down Tammy,” Rahul tried muttering between his teeth with a suppressed vexation, “Please don’t make a scene!”

Public Meltdown And Emotional Reckoning

“I am making a scene. Look who’s talking,” she went straight into the middle of the floor, to garner some more sympathisers for her wronged-woman status. “You come to me, only to get your tough works done, flirt with me in private as and when it suits your needs, but when it comes to any show of belonging in public, you behave as if I never existed. You, pathological ditcher…”

Her shrieks had by now effectively started intermingling with her tears, complimenting the overall impact, simultaneously leading to its due cacophonous crescendo. Lest something dramatic happened, as a worried Anisha was about to try pacifying her to save our other college mates from being boycotted by the disc management, with a harassed-looking Rahul trying to gather himself to drag Tammy out, I moved in with an air of acquired confidence.

Bidding the victims of commotion to carry on with their dirty dancing, I led Tammy out of what I deduced to be a mutually suffocating atmosphere. If love meant being the last couple to remain on the dance floor, Tammy’s wasn’t destined for that honour that day. Her protest-less following did surprise me, but it worked a lot in softening Rahul’s metro-boy bias against small-town me. He remained eternally grateful for that impromptu act of saving him from an embarrassment he knew not how to tackle, never realising that the kindling of the showdown too was courtesy me.

  

Avi’s Awakening In The Midst Of Chaos

It wasn’t Rahul’s fault alone. Thrown into a new environment, it’s human tendency to look for a support, a help, a confidante, and when one is as charming and empathetic as Rahul, emotional slips are bound to happen. Rahul was given to treating his girls royally. When in mood he could even pamper a beggar to princedom, however miasmic the evolving imagery. Tammy had assumed Rahul’s normal affections to be the beginning of the romance of her life, but when he went ahead for greener pastures, on her refusal to join in for the game, she didn’t hesitate from creating the commotion of their life. The fact that it bought some scope of action, to my otherwise boring evening, was purely incidental, rather a lucky turn of far-reaching consequences that suddenly propelled me into the thick of things from the status of an also-present non-entity. The class started viewing me with increased respect coming from a proven act of mature crisis handling. I realised, talking whispers is not the specialty of women alone, and when the guys chip in, they either create a hero or banish a zero to ignominy. Who cared, my rising stars were already on the road to ascendancy.

On the way back to our rented homes, I had to contend with Tammy’s expletives-laced ‘expose’ of Rahul and gang, revolving round their ‘so-called’ double standards and meanness, boiling down to even deriding comments on the vital statistics of a few, wondering how did she manage all that data in so short a time. However, the crown of the object of her hatred was reserved to be bestowed on Anisha. Surprisingly, I didn’t sober her on her diatribe, passively endorsing her ire against the glam couple of our class.

Jealousy, was I succumbing to thee? I let myself be human, for the time being. But that feeling of distrust and hate that laid its seedling in Tammy that day, festered with the passage of time to dangerous proportions. More of that later, because for the moment, I would prefer enjoying every bit of my act of the ultimate agony mentor, with Tammy tucked close, drowning all sorrows in the sinews of her saviour-of-the-moment – Me! Were women really that vulnerable, or did I have a softer side to me, appealing enough to make them drop their guard enough, to lay bare their inner turmoil? That too consequent to my first-ever heart-to-heart talk with a girl in my life, so far.

I was in a state of appalled awe, suddenly awakened to my tremendous mischief value!!!

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