The Avatari by Raghu Srinivasan Page A

incredulously. ‘I should have known! Ochio scuro e capello biondo e il piu bello del mondo! Dark eyes and blonde hair – the most beautiful combination in the world!’
    Susan laughed and their conversation became more animated.
    ‘So what’s it going to be after MML?’ she asked him, using the common abbreviation for his course title, as the party began winding up.
    ‘History,’ he said shyly.
    But Susan could tell he had a plan – unlike most of the other students she had met who appeared to be just muddling along. ‘And what’s the big dissertation topic?’ she asked.
    ‘I’ll tell you if you have lunch with me next Saturday,’ David said with a grin.
    ‘You’re taking advantage of a sozzled girl!’ she protested with a smile, raising her beer mug.
    ‘Ach. If I was to take advantage of yer, it’d be tonight, lassie,’ he said in an exaggerated Scottish brogue.
    They both laughed uproariously and Jill, who was keeping an eye on her friend, looked at them and smiled. Susan had found herself a fellow bookworm.
    They became a classic Cambridge ‘couple’, going to the university events and socials together. They would sit at the same table in the library, punt on the Cam and walk around the ‘Back’. David would come to her races and watch the ‘bumps’, that curious form of race where the competing boats were separated by a length and a half at the start and the object of the race was to ‘bump’ into the boat ahead, thus eliminating it from the race. Both Susan and David came to know the other’s subject quite well. She was fascinated by David’s theory about Kublai Khan’s final resting place and they would often talk about it. While she was tolerant of his ignorance about her work, he tried hard to understand some of its nuances. He even did some extra reading to keep up with her. If they couldn’t be together more often, it was because David had to take on the responsibility of tutoring schoolboys to earn some extra money. While Antonia always sent her daughter money, David had nothing to fall back on, apart from his scholarship which barely covered his tuition.
    ‘You’re an expensive proposition, woman,’ he said, when Susan complained.
    She knew that David was saving for the gap year, when he planned to visit Florence after finishing his MML. Susan had already decided to accompany him.
    They spent their ‘gap’ in Europe and it was the loveliest time Susan had ever had. David found a lot of material for his dissertation while they were in Florence. On the way back home, they spent a week in Toulouse – Pierre Fermat’s city. The weather was bright and warm and they hired bicycles and rode happily and aimlessly through the city. On their last day there, they stopped for lunch at one of the cafés around the Fontaine de la Place Wilson. There, with the statue of the poet Pierre Gadoli and many other young couples interestedly looking on, David went down on one knee, took a small platinum band from his pocket and proposed to Susan. She had had an inkling he might; he had been acting strangely the last couple of days.
    ‘No,’ she told him, taking the ring and admiring it.
    ‘No? You can’t be serious?’ David’s tone was anxious.
    ‘I am yours, David, and you know it. But if you want to marry me, you’ll have to win me.’ She smiled at him, her voice mischievous, teasing.
    ‘Anything!’
    He meant it.
    ‘Get a First,’ she said.
    Getting a First was difficult; only fifteen percent of the students managed a First Class in their undergraduate course. Susan knew that if he worked hard, David would get one; and so would she. But the commitment and distraction of marriage was something that could get in the way. She knew David would understand.
    ‘That’s all?’ he asked incredulously. ‘Here I was thinking dragons and moats!’
    He was laughing now.
    ‘It’s not going to be easy, you dummy!’ she told him, her tone mock serious as she put the ring in her pocket, then