“Ha,” she said, and looked away with an expression that bordered on bitterness. It was shocking to him to see her make such a face. She usually seemed unflappable, incapable of being wounded.
He pressed on, not sure how he had just offended her. “I’m just saying, you are so smart and funny and … charming. I’d want a person like that to be my president.”
This was embarrassingly earnest, and she reacted accordingly. She made a caring frown, then touched his forearm reassuringly in a way that had become like a lifesaving elixir. “You are so sweet. I appreciate it. I guess I’m just nervous, is all. The thing is,” and she leaned in, somewhat comically but also seriously, “I want to win really badly.”
They both laughed, but he could see that she had an undeniable wish to win. It was the thing that most students at this school had in common. Even though he considered himself more reserved than most guys here, he knew that he still possessed a constant desire to succeed, to be the best in his class, to justify his presence here by collecting impressive accomplishments. It wasn’t enough to get into a great school; you had to continually and handily prove that you belonged there more than everyone else. As with most things in his life, he found something very Indian about all of this, but the other students, regardless of background, seemed to believe it just as firmly. Were Indians really more successful than other people, or had that been a lie, a cultural red herring that his parents had used to make him get good grades growing up? He looked now at Kavita Bansal and didn’t quite know the answer. She was the ultimate Indian American, but perhaps her success had nothing to do with her ethnicity and everything to do with her unique intelligence.
“The only thing I’ve ever won are chemistry awards,” he said. “And those weren’t national or anything. They were just at my high school. Though I did make National Honor Society, of course.”
“You know, I didn’t,” she said. His jaw fell open in genuine shock. “No, really, I didn’t. I’m sometimes not the best test-taker. I get nervous.”
“You must have done well on your SATs and ACTs and all that,” he said.
“Well, yeah.”
“You got a perfect score, didn’t you?”
“No!” She was obviously lying.
“Swear on this bite of samosa that you didn’t get a perfect score on your SATs.” He held out his last bit of pastry.
“Fine,” she said, rolling her eyes.
Then, the awkward moment that was bound to mar their otherwise great interaction occurred: via the many Indian weddings he had attended, in which newly anointed husbands smeared an inaugural bite of cake on their brides’ faces, he assumed that he would feed her this bite. Meanwhile, she thought she would pluck it from his hand and pop it in her mouth. What ensued was their hands colliding, the samosa somersaulting in the air and landing on the ground. Prashant could have sworn that it had made an actual THUD, but that would have been impossible. He bent down to pick the piece off the floor, then stood up with it. For a split second, he thought that she would eat it anyway, which was mental. He placed it back on his plate, then tried to resume the conversation.
It was the type of awkward encounter that not even Kavita Bansal’s affability could erase, and the rest of their conversation was stilted. The Hindi class was raised again, he remembered, though there didn’t seem to be any firm commentary on it one way or the other. Soon enough, Kavita was off to socialize with others. To make her rounds. Prashant lingered by the now-emptied table for a bit, thinking that she may circle back to him or at least give him reassuring nods from her various posts around the room, but it became clear after a certain point that this was not going to happen. He deposited his paper plate in the large gray trash can, a mess of roof-like trays and sewage-like dashes of chutney. He turned and scanned for her once more. He locked eyes with her, but her wave good-bye was perfunctory. When he got back to his room, he buried his face in his pillow.
At least he had gotten some quality time in with her, but he replayed the samosa moment in his mind and kept cringing. The one good thing was that the study break had made him tired, and he fell asleep fully clothed, abstaining from self-flagellation for one night.
*
He had to give them credit: his parents had more or less heeded his directions not to smother him, so their impending visit was justified. (Less justified: the fact that his parents insisted on driving the seven hours to see him only so that they could have dinner for an evening, then spend another seven hours driving home.) Aside from those awkward phone calls from his mother, Prashant had been relatively free from their inspection. Like some futuristic robot putting up a force field, he had enabled every possible Facebook firewall to prevent his mother from seeing his pictures, even though they weren’t particularly damning. There were various snippets of pastel shirts and red Solo cups of beer and the occasional appearance of cleavage and tan legs. Of course, there was also Prashant teetering with drink and the occasional drag or toke. However, the university seemed to transform its bacchanalia into something acceptable and almost bolstering. Prashant had come to see it as a place where people simply got shit done. The difference between students at Princeton and students at party schools, he thought, was that students here got in their partying, doing damage to their brain cells and campus shrubbery in equal part, but the next morning there they were, sprawled over their library books—clean-shaven or ponytails neat—glistening and peppery. This was how he wished to present himself to his parents: glinting and clean and sanitized.
He thanked the Lord yet again that he had no roommate, especially when he saw his parents come bustling in. They examined his room as if they were auditing him, and his mother was, yet again, trying to dress half her age. She had on a loose-fitting pink blouse, tight white slacks, and sandals. Immediately, he noticed that there was something different about her. She had trouble concealing her thoughts—something that he had always seen in her “group of aunties.” They assessed each other as if they had a superpower that rendered their faces unreadable, but you couldn’t have read their judgments more clearly if they were scribbled across their foreheads with a Sharpie. He remembered seeing Seema Auntie examine his mother’s hair across the room, and from the way that Seema Auntie’s jaw tugged downward, it was as if someone had actually put the hair in her mouth. Here, in his room, his mother’s face bore a smirk, but there was a lightness around her eyes. She seemed content, and for a moment, Prashant was hurt. He had taken some solace in his mother’s addled state, the thought that his absence may have caused her pain. Instead, she seemed to be doing just fine. Better than fine. He wondered what was up.
His father sat on his bed while his mother leaned against his desk.