[she Saves Everybody's Ass.]

Freezing winter night, the rumour goes round it's three degrees or less, we tell each other and nod, for once in agreement with the Met department. Logic textbook tells me there is no agreeing with the Met department- they are not announcing propositions, but "facts". I snort, snuggle down.

Wix gravitates towards the bed to sit under the rezai, promising herself, promising us, making us promise her, that she won't fall asleep. TONS of syllabus left to do. No, actually, that's my pre-exam state- she needs to complete her revision of the last few articles.

The back door flings open with a clatter of rattling glass panes against time-tested wood. Well, perhaps not tested so much. Most people gingerly try to wiggle it open without being too obvious.
Heads jerk up, interested. Heck, anything this energetic is more interesting.

She comes in, furiously curly hair slightly flyaway around her head, Demands to learn logic. I quail at the proposition of teaching her. O-E is unfazed, coolly passing the buck onto me. She promptly forgets all about it though, goes on to a professor is a darling, that she’s heard the economics subsee course is harder for people who did c.b.s.e. till the twelfth, someone's been saying she's in love with a first year, what nonsense, a boy in class is such a lickass, her mother doesn't understand the accent in old Hollywood movies, the man selling strawberry icecream says 'breast' instead of 'burst', and that too Twice. She fills the room, her earrings dangle furiously in emphasis, she laughs loud, says she will go and study and leave us to it, she's disturbed enough people already.

And I have a sudden Vision. Of little spots of warmth in rooms at random along the corridor where she’s been, when all the decorations have been taken down and the excuses for partying [at any rate, I don’t see what’s fun in it, ya] are over, leaving just exams and cold and ceaseless hunger.

How am I to account for it ? Not quite Santa Claus; with a Mallu ass and hating it, and messing up even the logic paper [what she said, she’s right- you have to get an Award for being this stupid],-
and yet when strains of ‘Summertime’ come up to us in the dead of night, it’s her.