It was a bad day.

My boyfriend nagged me into bunking class and Prof. Mehta had pulled me up. Then she ordered me to show this new guy around the college before waddling away to her next lecture.

He stood there, looming well over six feet, staring off into the distance.

I said, “okay, come on, yaar.”

Where do I start with this towering silence?

“You’re new....just joined?” 

“Yes”………Still not looking at me.

Silly slob……I’m cute and I know it.

At least my skin tight, almost-falling-off-designer-torn-and-faded jeans should have had the usual effect.

“Okay this is the canteen, that’s the Science block…….” And so it went till I had wasted almost my whole free hour on a conducted tour of the Institute.

Not much reaction……some weirdo, I thought. Then he turned around and looked me in the eyes. “Thank you”.

His eyes, O my God…..I thought his pupils looked strange, horizontal not round…what stuff is this guy on? These days around campus, you never know.

He blinked and I saw they were just dilated very much in spite of the bright sun…..sexy, light brown eyes with a touch of green too……hey! Asha stop that, I warned myself.

You’re hooked and booked……Nithin will kill you if you stray.

The new guy had deep pockets, paid willingly for endless chai-bhajjia or Pepsi and vada rounds in the canteen, collecting popularity and lots of pals quickly. Nobody ragged him. That height, Hrithik Roshan physique and deadly eyes dried up any of that. And he had girls swooning all over the place, of course. 

Days later, he sat unusually alone under a campus tree. 
I strolled up swinging my slim hips that extra bit, and asked “so how’s it going, yaar?”

Tawny eyes clashed with mine.

“Good.”

“You top the class in everything and nobody sees you taking notes or anything.

Genius, huh?”

“You could say that…….” He smiled and my heart almost stopped.

Wow! Lazy lips over perfect teeth.

He yawned and stretched, flinging his arms up and muscles rippled like crazy.

“Hey, which gym do you go to…you work out regularly, right?”

Tugging his tight T-shirt down, he named an expensive foreign-franchised health club.

Then he said,

“Let’s have dinner today at that new place; the food is great there.”

My jaw dropped……

“Come on. I won’t eat you up, you know”, he rumbled with laughter, raising goose-bumps on my arms.

I was thrilled but ……my standard thought…….Nithin will kill me.

He said, “Nithin won’t mind. I’ve said goodbye to him and just want to say bye to you too.”

How the heck did he know what I was thinking?

Anyway, I am an opportunist so I said okay.

“You’re leaving? You’ve just been here for days.”

“Will explain all that at dinner so hang on……..yaar”. It seemed like he tasted the word on his tongue.

Sitting opposite him in the softly lit restaurant heightened the mystery radiating from this guy.

He’d ordered wine …..Mom and Dad had never let me taste the stuff though they dispensed it freely to guests at home…. “you’re too young” …..who did they think they were fooling!

An expensive lip-smacking meal later, he walked me back to the PG place I shared with two other girls near the Institute.

“Okay, now for the goodbyes…..you welcomed me here (what the heck…. did he mean the campus tour??) and I have to say this before I go.”

He looked away, searching for a phrase…..

“Back to where I came from. Those are the rules we go by.”

What is this guy saying……… what rules and who’s ‘we’?

“I’m coming to that” he smiled…..reading my mind as the thought formed.

“I have lived out a few days of punishment, to feel things that plague your Earth……corruption, wars, pollution, dying rivers and oceans, toxic waste, garbage all over the place and more” …what is all this about….my heart thudded frantically…this guy has to be a psycho of some sort.

“No. I’m not.....a psycho, I mean.”

He never used my name ever and he always knew what I was thinking…?

“Yeah, I can read thoughts and can change them if I want to. Your Nithin will not remember or absorb anything about my date with you because I have reprogrammed his brain. Where I come from we don’t talk, we hear each other’s thoughts. We evolved differently from you…..preserving Nature and ourselves with care and discipline. There is no concept of religion or sin with us. Only rules to protect Nature. Our idea of ‘fun’ is very different from yours, nothing gets destroyed or used wantonly…….I am one of the very, very few who broke a rule”.

 He searched again for words like trying to explain something to a retard … “let’s say something like cutting down a tree here…..a major crime there…..so I was sent here for a few days.All the stuff, like your old fashioned money and clothes and this body? Arranged automatically…….easily done with our powers and your negligence…this money of yours talks loud enough to drown all queries.

And topping the class was no big deal….our know-how in everything is way, way above yours. I absorbed your language within ten of seconds of my molecules reassembling here….sorry, I mean arriving here. ”

By now, I had stopped breathing altogether.

“Just take a few deep breaths and keep listening,” he drawled….. “My time is almost up.”

Some giggling floated down to us from the windows of my flat; sure enough, my roomies eaves-dropping and watching us avidly.

“They too will not recall this.”

His magnetic eyes flicked up and back.

Silence, no more giggling sounds.

“Anyway, my punishment was to be sent to hell till I learnt, all over again. Your planet is our hell….. we don’t ever die and rot like all of you do. We learn how not to behave and return to continue on our planet. I spent nights absorbing the good and bad that exists all over this planet to relearn what I needed to. Believe me, I have now suffered enough.

There is still a lot of beauty and goodness here though how long that will last is up to all of you.

You…..I like you……and those almost-falling-off-designer-torn-and-faded jeans”.

So he had picked up on that, too….he laughed huskily like leaves rustling in the wind.

You will remember because I will not wipe your memory out……but nobody will believe you so it’s okay.”

May Nature’s power be with you…..”

He vanished…….one minute Hrithikly solid in front of me and the next, not fading, but splitting into tinier and tinier squares and dissolving into the darkness.

I went up to my flat thinking, of the people that go missing and are never found again…..some of them must be those, like him…

My pals were very normal and uncurious...... their memories had definitely been reprogrammed or they would have been all over me.

Before sliding into  sleep, I remembered those eyes again……I had been right the first time….. long horizontal, slit-like pupils had stared at me before he did that unbelievable vanishing act.

He or it or whatever, was right. 

Nobody would believe me………..