The White Rose

Sooraj Vignesh was panicking.

There were a lot of reasons why he should be panicking ,for starers he had to present a seminar the day after against the ill wishes of his staff advisor Ms Sandhya Sushwaram in the National Science Meet at their school,bloody bitch-he thought ,her ego that she's the end word in the world of chemistry was too much of a pain to bare. And if that wasn't enough his best friend Deepak had shortage of attendance ,67% attendance wasn't what was expected from a 11th standard student and his wasn't far behind either ,76% just crossing the cut off line .Thanks to his best friend Parvati ,If she hadn't insisted attending classes his attendance might have resulted resembling the marks he got in chemistry ode to his good relationship with Ms Sandhya . Deducting his marks for reasons like breathing loudly and looking happy. The Mummy Returns as he and Deepak used to mock her.

Parvati ,what would he do without her,his best friend. Pretty odd, he used to think how a girl like Parvati ended up as his best friend .He was the best in chemistry and she was in everything else. The school topper ,she was expected to bring the first rank in 12th board's which their school S't Josephs lost to Silver Hills the year before. She should be attending special classes which they had now,yet here she is helping him do his seminar on 'The fine Retrospects of Solids-A Chemical analysis'.

Sooraj Vignesh was sill panicking.

Not about the seminar, though he supposed that was on the back of his mind.
Not even about the fact that he had no clue whatsoever about The Second Round of the competition, though that was plenty daunting.

What was new and exceedingly hard for Sooraj to swallow was the fact that he didn’t have a partner to the upcoming Prom night. What made it worse was the fact that he wasn’t sure if the girl he wanted to ask would even go with him. He wasn’t sure if the girl in question had noticed him as a potential boyfriend.

He dreaded the thought of having her hesitantly tell him that she just didn’t think of him in ‘that way’. The would just be excruciating.

He tapped his pen against the side of the desk, his knee jostling up and down in agitation. Parvati glanced up at the black-haired boy, frowning in concern. They were supposed to be looking for a way to find the secret to get him pass the next day's seminar, the magical ‘clue’ to working out the exams,as he'd get a grace of 30 marks.
“Are you alright Sooraj?”

Sooraj shrugged. “Fine.” That was a lie of the highest order. And unfortunately for Sooraj, he was a terrible liar in front of her.
“We’ll work it out, Sooraj, I promise you,” Parvati assured him. “Just because you don’t know the key to understanding the concepts, doesn’t mean that we should give up.”

“It’s not that,” Sooraj replied without thought.

Parvati put down her book on Solid state structures, and gave Sooraj her full attention.

“What then?”

Sooraj hesitated. He looked around furtively to ensure that no one else would be able to over-hear. The library was almost deserted, and Deepak had left the research up to Sooraj and Parvati nearly an hour earlier. No one in their right minds wanted to spend a Saturday in the library unless it couldn’t be avoided. At least this way, it was quiet for Sooraj’s confession.

Parvati leaned forward in anticipation.

“How do you go about asking a girl on a date?” Sooraj asked.

Parvati tried to stop herself from laughing, but couldn’t contain a slight hysterical giggle at the question. She bit her lower lip and breathed in through her nose, trying desperately to compose herself. Sooraj was obviously struggling with this and if she laughed at him, she would definitely not be asked something this sensitive ever again.

“A date?” she repeated, trying to but a moment of time.

“To the Prom night,” Sooraj explained. “Apparently the Organizing committee Chairman have to take a partner to the Prom. And...well, I don’t know how to phrase the question without sounding like a compete dolt. Plus, she’s a little older than me, and I don’t want her to just see me as someone really naive.”

The bushy-haired brunette nodded contemplatively. Sooraj must have set his sights on Keerthi Sharma, the attractive Singer from second year. Parvati might not have particularly liked Keerthi, but Sooraj liked the girl, so obviously she must have had some redeeming qualities, even if Parvati couldn’t see them.

“Alright...well, there’s a few things you could do.”

Sooraj poised his pen over the blank paper, ready to receive instructions. Parvati tried not to break into laughter all over again.

“First...well, be romantic. Most girls like flowers. As long as they aren’t allergic to them of course. That could be a little embarrassing.”
Sooraj swallowed nervously. “Do you know that from personal experience?”

“No. My mother is allergic, and daddy tried to court her with roses. It didn’t go so well,” Parvati explained.

“If your mum’s allergic, does that mean you are too?” Sooraj asked curiously.
Parvati shook her head. “No, thank god. Anyway, flowers aren’t a bad way to go with most girls.”

Sooraj wrote down ‘flowers’ with a question mark beside it.

“I’ve seen some of the older boys giving girls Chocolates, so that could work too,” Parvati suggested.

Sooraj dutifully wrote it down.

“What if they’re allergic to Chocolate?” Sooraj asked.

Parvati smiled. “I doubt they would be.”

Sooraj sighed in relief. This was a lot more complicated than he’d expected.
“When do you plan on asking her?” Parvati asked.

Sooraj shook his head despondently. “I don’t know. Should I try and get her alone, so that if she does say no, I’m not going to be completely embarrassed? Or should I do it in public? Would she be less likely to say no in public?”
The giggling was trying to return, but Parvati carefully swallowed it down.
“Well, public would be better. It would show her that you weren’t afraid of rejection. Of course, it does put a bit of pressure on her to say ‘yes’. But, if she really doesn’t want to go with you, or she already has a date, then I’m certain she’d say ‘no’. Gently.”

Sooraj nodded. ‘Public’ was added onto his list.

“Do I have to lead up to the question itself? Should I make small talk first?” Sooraj asked.

Parvati shook her head emphatically. “Sooraj, you are terrible at small talk-you'll forget what to say. Don’t try it. You’ll stress yourself out. Straight to the point is best.”

Sooraj breathed in deeply, feeling a little more confident. “Alright. I’m going to do it. Tomorrow. Before the inauguration.”

“Good luck,” Parvati said sincerely.

Sooraj smiled, feeling much better about his next task.

Morning came slowly for Sooraj Vignesh. He hadn’t slept very well, his mind churning out ‘what if’ scenarios, and his brain was unable to shut off. Even when he had managed to fall asleep he’d been startled out of a dream where he’d been in the Ground, completely naked, surrounded by his laughing peers.

Needless to say, he’d dressed with the utmost caution, double and triple-checking to make certain that the zipper on his pants was firmly pulled up.

He’d woken early, gathering up the elements to set the scene. He’d written a letter, bought a rose, practiced his question nearly a hundred times. He wondered idly if he’d been muttering it in his sleep. He hoped not.

Arriving to the Seminar hall before even a single other student was there, he continued with his elaborate plan, leaving the note and the rose in place in front of a certain lady’s seat. He just hoped that she read the letter first.

Seating himself at the backside table, Sooraj sat, surprised by how calm he felt. He had a mission, he’d set the stage, and now all he had to do was to wait until the girl he intended to ask arrived.

Students began straggling into the Seminar Hall not even five minutes after Sooraj had sat down, his back to the table. The Professors began taking their seats as well. Finally the girl he’d been waiting for entered the Seminar hall. He told himself that he would'nt wait until the inauguration before he would pop the question. Deepak and Parvati took seats on either side of him, and he watched as Deepak spooned a large helping of scramble eggs from his lunch box.
“You’re up early Sooraj,” Deepak commented. “You were gone before I even woke up.”
“Couldn’t sleep,” Sooraj replied easily.

“Are you nervous Sooraj?” Parvati asked quietly, whispering so that Deepak couldn’t hear them.

“A little,” he replied.

“You’ll be fine. She’ll say yes, I promise you,” Parvati assured him.

“I hope so.”

“Did you decide how you’re going to ask?” she questioned.

Sooraj nodded and surreptitiously pointed to the Professor’s table. In front of Professor Sandhya Sushwaram, a single white rose in a vase in front of her. Parvati hadn’t even noticed before.

“A white rose?” Parvati asked. “For your date?”

Sooraj nodded. “I decided against the Chocolates. I got the rose this morning.”

Parvati was impressed with Sooraj’s attention to detail. She hadn’t been expecting much after the nerve-wrecked look on Sooraj’s face the previous evening.
“Why a white rose?” Parvati asked.

Sooraj flushed, a little embarrassed. Parvati was instantly even more curious than she had been a moment before.

“I couldn’t sleep very well last night, and Deepak has a ton of books on Love and Dating tips. I was flipping through the books about flowers, and...did you know that flowers have different meanings?”

Parvati nodded. She had read that somewhere before. She wondered if perhaps her mother had ever said that to her before. She remembered from somewhere that white roses were significant for many reasons. And they were used by a vast number of people in wedding bouquets.

“A new true love. A pureness to that love. I...I thought it was particularly fitting,” Sooraj admitted. He scowled boyishly. “And if you tell anyone I said that, I’ll kill you.”

Parvati laughed in delight. Just when Sooraj was beginning to surprise her, he reminded her that he was, first and foremost, a boy.
“Why does Professor Sandhya Sushwaram have it?” Parvati asked, trying to veer the topic onto safer pastures.She dreaded whether this wasn't what he meant by a little older.

“You said make it public, right?” Sooraj asked.

“But why does 'The Mummy Returns' have it? I mean of all students in this college you are her least favorite ,even the birds around here knows it”.

That was justified just then ,as a fleet of pigeons passed by the window who almost murmured like “Told you so” the way Parvati would, when she was right about something. And that happened quite too often rather.

“I walk up to the Professor’s table, take the rose, and then I’ll give it to......”.
“WHAT” He was cut off from completing the rest of the sentence,by Parvati's loud snort ,ignoring the heads turning her way she still gave him a raised eyebrow.
“I mean I want all amends with her,err...if that goes right then nothing could go wrong again,well can they”,he decorated the answer with a faint smile.

“So what's the plan”,She wanted to make sure he had a plan AT LEAST.

“I walk up to the Professor’s table, take the rose, and then I’ll give it to the girl I’m going to marry. Er...take to the Prom.”

Parvati sat in stunned silence, unable to believe the slip of tongue that had come from Sooraj’s mouth. Even Deepak, nearly oblivious to everything but his food had tuned in when Sooraj had said the word ‘marry’.

“Who’re you marrying?!” Deepak exclaimed.

Several heads turned their way curiously. Sooraj gave a grin before standing up, and walking towards the front of the Hall.

Deepak looked to Parvati, wondering if she had any answers to the chaos that Sooraj had laid at their feet. Parvati was still gaping, in open-mouthed wonder at what Sooraj had said.

The students began watching the famed Boy-Who-Wrote as he strode confidently up to the Professors table. He stopped in front of Professor Sandhya Sushwaram and asked a simple question.

“May I?”

Professor Sandhya Sushwaram smiled indulgently. She folded up the letter that had been left at her table and gestured to the rose. “Be my guest.”

Sooraj smiled at the Professor and thanked her, not only for holding onto the rose for him, but for protecting the fragile bud with an ‘Everlasting Spell’ that would keep the bud in bloom for the next one hundred years, in his memory.

Sooraj took hold of the thorn less stem, and began making the trek back through the aisle between first years and third years. He breathed in deeply, gathering his courage.

Parvati was still astounded by Sooraj’s slip of the word ‘marry’. Deepak was furrowing his brow in confusion. More than one or two girls were looking at him hopefully.

The bushy haired girl looked even more confused when Sooraj walked right past Keerthi Sharma without even stopping.

Sooraj came to rest directly in front of her.

“Parvati, will you do me the great honour of attending the Prom night with me?”
She stared at him in complete and utter confusion, certain that Sooraj had been about to ask Keerthi, astounded that he would want to marry Keerthi, and now...now, Sooraj was asking her. He held the rose out to her, and Parvati could hear his voice in her head.

‘I’ll give it to the girl I’m going to marry.’
Parvati nodded sharply. “I would love to.”
She took the rose from Sooraj’s shaking hand, and stared at the boy who had once again managed to completely surprise her.
Sooraj smiled, and shyly kissed her hand.

The rapt students in the Seminar hall burst into raucous cheering. Parvati and Sooraj just stared at each other, letting the feelings between them ricochet back and forth, the intensity of the moment adding to the sweetness of emotion.

“I hope you give me that answer again in a few years,” Sooraj said.

Parvati smiled brightly. “I would love to.”