“So, you are keeping up with your studies?” his father asked.
“Yes,” Prashant said. “More than keeping up. I’m leading my thermodynamics class.”
“Very good, beta,” his father said, putting both hands in the air, as if in surrender. “I was always very good at that subject.”
“Yes, I know, Dad. That’s why you told me you would ‘hold your head in shame’ if I got anything less than an A.”
“Well, it’s true,” his mother said. His father shot her a grumpy look. They had clearly fought about something in the car, but her sunny disposition persisted.
“Have you made some fun friends?” she asked. “Can we meet them?”
“It’s a busy time of day, actually. People are usually leaving class right now and studying before dinner.” It was five thirty, and he wanted to get them to a restaurant for a quick meal before stuffing them back into the car. He didn’t want them to meet any of his fledgling friends—and he certainly wanted as little opportunity as possible for them to come across Kavita Bansal. He could imagine how much his mother would dote on her.
He took them to Zorba’s Brother, a Greek diner that was cheap and reliable. He was obsessed with their falafel sandwich, a warm and mushy flavor-bomb that acted as everything from a study snack to a dinner feast. His whole family was vegetarian, so this was a great option: a gathering of slightly spiced vegetables and chickpeas and bread.
“So, Mom, what’s new?” he ventured. “You look great.”
She brightened at this, pulled a strand of hair behind her ear. “Why, thank you, beta. Everything is fine. Work is the same. Been going to temple more often. Are you going to temple here?”
“There’s an Indian group that I visit from time to time,” he lied. It wasn’t like his family was all that religious, but he felt a sudden urge to profess duty to the gods and to his parents.
“What do you discuss?” his father asked. He had taken on that demeanor he usually had when he was enjoying his food: quietude tempered with dipping sauces. Tzatziki, baba ganoush, hummus, and hot sauce gleamed joyfully on his plate.
“Oh, just various passages from Gita and all that.” Could they tell he was lying? His father’s insistent chewing and his mother’s small sips of Diet Coke betrayed nothing.
“How is work with you, Dad?” he asked. Perhaps they could connect on some science-related topic, though his father didn’t intercede in his studies all that much. People probably assumed that he had been instructed expertly by his father through the years, but he had just been a smart guy who understood math and science easily. The connection between him and his father was osmotic.
“I tell you, some of these students are so lazy,” his father said. “All they want is partial credit. No one wants to get everything right. They just want to do the bare minimum and get out.” The way his father pronounced “bare minimum”—beer meeneemoom—made him sound like some small bird. God, his parents were so weird. Maybe it was seeing them after this short but intense stretch of preppy living that made them seem so peculiar. He felt a quick and delicious sense of having become a full snob. He had been biding his time, waiting to be clear of high school, before he could assert his own snobby tendencies. He was Indian, after all. Although his parents were decidedly more reserved and, frankly, less rich than their friends (a college professor and a receptionist were not, say, an engineer and a doctor), they had been in the company of many wealthy families, and this had taught Prashant what to revere when it came to social superiority. Looking out the window of this restaurant, he saw the Gothic structures and sturdy gates of the university and felt a distance growing between himself and his parents. This riveted him.
To his surprise, they didn’t seem all that upset when he told them that he needed to get back to his dorm and start on his homework. His mother still bore that bemused look on her face; his father was already in his PTSD-like post-meal state, quasi-catatonic and rubbing his paunch as if he were keeping a bag of rubies in it. They hugged him good-bye. His father rolled down both front windows as they pulled away, waving one hand out of his window as his mother waved both of hers out of the passenger side. After their departure, he found himself walking past his dorm and in the direction of the Student Center. He really did need to get back to work, but he felt restless and thought that a coffee might do the trick. What he was denying, at least till he was halfway to the building, was that he was inventing tasks around campus in the hope that he would come across Kavita. It was a compact campus, and with the trees lifting themselves regally over his head, the sun now descending and the light in the sky purple and important, he felt the likelihood of running into her was high because there were only so many places she could go. She could be in the library or finishing up food in the dining hall, but the Student Center seemed like the most logical place.
He wasn’t sure what he would do once he found her. They still hadn’t spoken since the samosa study break, and he had avoided liking any of her posts on Facebook or Instagram because the thought of overstepping his bounds even further was bloodcurdling. He should just turn around now and wait to run into her naturally, but then again, didn’t college students stock up on coffee all the time? What was so bad about stopping to get a cup postdinner? He had to stop second-guessing everything. Girls wanted a guy who was assertive, who made decisions and stuck to them and didn’t question his own intentions.