08-12-2025, 07:50 PM
Episode 9 – Euler’s Dream
Arjun woke with the taste of confusion still metallic on his tongue.
The night had been a fever of half-dreams: Meera on a brightly lit stage in a crimson bridal saree, Priya in a sherwani leaning in to whisper husband-lines against her ear, the audience roaring while Arjun sat trapped in the front row, unable to move, unable to shout. He had come twice in his sleep, sticky and ashamed, waking each time to the fan’s indifferent whirr and the echo of Priya’s teasing “I’ll pin them myself.”
By morning the jealousy had calcified into something colder: determination.
If Priya wanted to play husband on stage, fine.
He would become indispensable off it.
He reached college before the gates even opened, loitering under the neem tree until the watchman grumbled and let him in. First bench claimed, notebook open to a fresh page titled in bold: Plan to Top the Screening + Make Her Need Me.
Under it he wrote three columns:
Solve every booklet problem before Friday
Ask one brilliant doubt daily that no one else can answer
Offer to help with Olympiad logistics (charts, timers, anything that keeps me near her after 5:30)
He underlined the last line twice.
The bell rang. Students trickled in, gossip already thick as filter coffee.
“Macha, heard the drama script?” Vikram dropped into the seat beside him, eyes gleaming.
“Family comedy—saas-bahu fights, lost-and-found son, the works. And get this: Priya ma’am is playing the husband! Cross-dressing level max. Everyone’s losing it.”
Arjun’s pen dug into the paper hard enough to tear. “Who’s the wife?” he asked, voice flat.
“Still confirming, but everyone says Meera ma’am. Perfect casting, no? Shy bahu, loud hubby—comedy gold.”
Arjun forced a laugh that scbangd his throat. The day blurred until third period.
She walked in wearing navy-blue cotton today—simple, almost severe, the blouse high-necked with three-quarter sleeves, pallu pinned like armour. And yet the severity only sharpened the hunger. The fabric pulled across her breasts when she reached high to write the title:
Euler’s Formula & Complex Numbers
She began: “e^{iπ} + 1 = 0. Five fundamental constants in one elegant identity—perhaps the most beautiful equation in mathematics.”
Arjun heard none of it.
He was tracing imaginary lines: the navy cotton as the real axis, the hidden curve of her breast as the positive imaginary, the dip of her waist as negative imaginary. Every part he had seen - breast swell, navel, armpits, back plane, waist pinch were points on her complex plane. If he could just rotate them 90 degrees, magnify, translate, he would land exactly at the origin that was Meera herself.
He raised his hand before she finished the first example.
“Ma’am, if we treat the human form as a closed contour in the complex plane, could we use residue theorem to… quantify beauty?”
The class snickered. Vikram choked on water.
Meera’s eyebrows lifted, but her mouth curved , half amused, half impressed. “An… unconventional application, Arjun. Beauty isn’t analytic everywhere, I’m afraid. Too many essential singularities.”
She paused, then added softly, “But I like the imagination.”
The tiny praise lit him up like a Gaussian integer. He spent the rest of the period firing questions that danced on the edge of genius and madness—argument principles applied to emotions, branch cuts around forbidden thoughts—each one pulling her closer to his desk, her jasmine and chalk scent stronger with every lean-in. By the end she was laughing quietly, eyes bright.
“You’re in rare form today,” she said as the bell rang. “Save some for the workshop.”
The day dragged until 4 p.m.
Seminar hall. Same hundred-plus students, same yellow booklets.
Arjun attacked the problems like a man possessed. He finished the set in forty minutes, double-checked, then started crafting the perfect doubt—one that would force her to sit beside him for at least ten minutes.
He was circling the final flourish when the door opened again.
Priya, today in a maroon kurti that made her look like a firecracker with legs. She spotted Meera instantly and made a beeline, ignoring the sea of students.
“Decision time, wife,” she announced loudly enough for the first three rows to hear.
“Script reading tomorrow evening, auditorium, 5:30 sharp. I’ve already bribed Shetty sir with filter coffee—he’s agreed to direct. You’re not escaping.”
Meera flushed, tucking an imaginary strand behind her ear. “Priya, lower your voice. And I said I’d think.”
“You thought. Answer is yes.” Priya leaned in, voice dropping to a conspiratorial murmur but still audible to Arjun three metres away.
“I even convinced wardrobe aunty for a special costume - silk saree, low-waist dbang for the song sequence. You’ll look criminal. The boys will need oxygen.”
Meera swatted her arm, laughing despite herself. “You’re shameless.”
“And you love it. Say yes, Meera. For the kids. For… science.” Priya’s grin was pure mischief.
A long beat. Meera glanced around—landed on Arjun watching—and something in her softened. “Fine. Yes. But no low-waist nonsense.”
Priya whooped, threw both arms around Meera in a victorious hug that lasted two seconds too long, her palms sliding deliberately down Meera’s back before releasing.
“That’s my wife,” she declared to the room at large, then sauntered out.
The hall erupted in whistles and teasing. Meera’s cheeks were scarlet, but her eyes danced.
Arjun’s booklet trembled in his hands.
The doubt he had so carefully crafted dissolved into dust.
All he could see was tomorrow: Priya’s arms around Meera on stage, scripted touches, scripted lines dripping with subtext, the entire college watching what he could only thieve in glances.
He stayed till 5:30, solving nothing, hearing nothing except the echo of Priya’s “my wife” and Meera’s soft, laughing surrender.
When the session ended he walked home in a daze, the navy-blue saree and maroon kurti chasing each other across his vision like two complex conjugates - mirror images, drawn irresistibly together while he remained on the outside of the unit circle, approaching but never quite touching.
That night he didn’t touch himself.
He lay in the dark staring at the ceiling, heart thumping out an irregular rhythm, and for the first time felt something sharper than desire.
Fear.
Fear that the play would give Priya everything he wanted.
Fear that Meera might like being someone else’s wife, even if only on stage.
Tomorrow the rehearsals began.
And Arjun still hadn’t found a single residue that could cancel Priya out of the equation.
![[Image: 1765203369460.png]](https://i.ibb.co/MxChxLQM/1765203369460.png)
Arjun woke with the taste of confusion still metallic on his tongue.
The night had been a fever of half-dreams: Meera on a brightly lit stage in a crimson bridal saree, Priya in a sherwani leaning in to whisper husband-lines against her ear, the audience roaring while Arjun sat trapped in the front row, unable to move, unable to shout. He had come twice in his sleep, sticky and ashamed, waking each time to the fan’s indifferent whirr and the echo of Priya’s teasing “I’ll pin them myself.”
By morning the jealousy had calcified into something colder: determination.
If Priya wanted to play husband on stage, fine.
He would become indispensable off it.
He reached college before the gates even opened, loitering under the neem tree until the watchman grumbled and let him in. First bench claimed, notebook open to a fresh page titled in bold: Plan to Top the Screening + Make Her Need Me.
Under it he wrote three columns:
Solve every booklet problem before Friday
Ask one brilliant doubt daily that no one else can answer
Offer to help with Olympiad logistics (charts, timers, anything that keeps me near her after 5:30)
He underlined the last line twice.
The bell rang. Students trickled in, gossip already thick as filter coffee.
“Macha, heard the drama script?” Vikram dropped into the seat beside him, eyes gleaming.
“Family comedy—saas-bahu fights, lost-and-found son, the works. And get this: Priya ma’am is playing the husband! Cross-dressing level max. Everyone’s losing it.”
Arjun’s pen dug into the paper hard enough to tear. “Who’s the wife?” he asked, voice flat.
“Still confirming, but everyone says Meera ma’am. Perfect casting, no? Shy bahu, loud hubby—comedy gold.”
Arjun forced a laugh that scbangd his throat. The day blurred until third period.
She walked in wearing navy-blue cotton today—simple, almost severe, the blouse high-necked with three-quarter sleeves, pallu pinned like armour. And yet the severity only sharpened the hunger. The fabric pulled across her breasts when she reached high to write the title:
Euler’s Formula & Complex Numbers
She began: “e^{iπ} + 1 = 0. Five fundamental constants in one elegant identity—perhaps the most beautiful equation in mathematics.”
Arjun heard none of it.
He was tracing imaginary lines: the navy cotton as the real axis, the hidden curve of her breast as the positive imaginary, the dip of her waist as negative imaginary. Every part he had seen - breast swell, navel, armpits, back plane, waist pinch were points on her complex plane. If he could just rotate them 90 degrees, magnify, translate, he would land exactly at the origin that was Meera herself.
He raised his hand before she finished the first example.
“Ma’am, if we treat the human form as a closed contour in the complex plane, could we use residue theorem to… quantify beauty?”
The class snickered. Vikram choked on water.
Meera’s eyebrows lifted, but her mouth curved , half amused, half impressed. “An… unconventional application, Arjun. Beauty isn’t analytic everywhere, I’m afraid. Too many essential singularities.”
She paused, then added softly, “But I like the imagination.”
The tiny praise lit him up like a Gaussian integer. He spent the rest of the period firing questions that danced on the edge of genius and madness—argument principles applied to emotions, branch cuts around forbidden thoughts—each one pulling her closer to his desk, her jasmine and chalk scent stronger with every lean-in. By the end she was laughing quietly, eyes bright.
“You’re in rare form today,” she said as the bell rang. “Save some for the workshop.”
The day dragged until 4 p.m.
Seminar hall. Same hundred-plus students, same yellow booklets.
Arjun attacked the problems like a man possessed. He finished the set in forty minutes, double-checked, then started crafting the perfect doubt—one that would force her to sit beside him for at least ten minutes.
He was circling the final flourish when the door opened again.
Priya, today in a maroon kurti that made her look like a firecracker with legs. She spotted Meera instantly and made a beeline, ignoring the sea of students.
“Decision time, wife,” she announced loudly enough for the first three rows to hear.
“Script reading tomorrow evening, auditorium, 5:30 sharp. I’ve already bribed Shetty sir with filter coffee—he’s agreed to direct. You’re not escaping.”
Meera flushed, tucking an imaginary strand behind her ear. “Priya, lower your voice. And I said I’d think.”
“You thought. Answer is yes.” Priya leaned in, voice dropping to a conspiratorial murmur but still audible to Arjun three metres away.
“I even convinced wardrobe aunty for a special costume - silk saree, low-waist dbang for the song sequence. You’ll look criminal. The boys will need oxygen.”
Meera swatted her arm, laughing despite herself. “You’re shameless.”
“And you love it. Say yes, Meera. For the kids. For… science.” Priya’s grin was pure mischief.
A long beat. Meera glanced around—landed on Arjun watching—and something in her softened. “Fine. Yes. But no low-waist nonsense.”
Priya whooped, threw both arms around Meera in a victorious hug that lasted two seconds too long, her palms sliding deliberately down Meera’s back before releasing.
“That’s my wife,” she declared to the room at large, then sauntered out.
The hall erupted in whistles and teasing. Meera’s cheeks were scarlet, but her eyes danced.
Arjun’s booklet trembled in his hands.
The doubt he had so carefully crafted dissolved into dust.
All he could see was tomorrow: Priya’s arms around Meera on stage, scripted touches, scripted lines dripping with subtext, the entire college watching what he could only thieve in glances.
He stayed till 5:30, solving nothing, hearing nothing except the echo of Priya’s “my wife” and Meera’s soft, laughing surrender.
When the session ended he walked home in a daze, the navy-blue saree and maroon kurti chasing each other across his vision like two complex conjugates - mirror images, drawn irresistibly together while he remained on the outside of the unit circle, approaching but never quite touching.
That night he didn’t touch himself.
He lay in the dark staring at the ceiling, heart thumping out an irregular rhythm, and for the first time felt something sharper than desire.
Fear.
Fear that the play would give Priya everything he wanted.
Fear that Meera might like being someone else’s wife, even if only on stage.
Tomorrow the rehearsals began.
And Arjun still hadn’t found a single residue that could cancel Priya out of the equation.
![[+]](https://xossipy.com/themes/sharepoint/collapse_collapsed.png)