Quantum Of Resistance

Layer Upon Layer

Avni lay on her bed, her back cushioned by the soft mattress of her bed, her eyes looking into the ceiling of her hostel room. The light from her bed lamp, cast it's shadows on the ceiling , making strange patterns in varying shades of grey. Avni raised her hand and placed in over the light emerging from the lamp. The yellow light coming from the lam, turned her skin translucent and now her hand glowed red.

She smiled. As a child she found it magical whenever this happened. "Look, I am glowing red... like the sun..." she would beam to her father.

"No kutti, when light passes through your body, the red blood cells inside your body absorb all the other colours in the light and so you only see, red coming through...." her father would reply.

Still, she would find it wondrous and flip her hand up and down several times, endlessly fascinated by the tint of red. 

Avni sat up with a jolt. "Open your eyes Avni...." "You only know how to experiment on science, you don't know how to apply it to life around you..." the voice of the professor seemed to echo in her hostel room.

Avni got out of bed and changed into comfortable clothing, which was jeans and a oversized t-shirt. It felt over sized as she had lost some m are weight in the last few months. With zero focus on herself, her diet or health, she had been working at the quarks, at understanding how and why they are form the most basic building blocks of everything in this world. But why did Prof say that? 

"Open your eyes Avni?" his words swam all around her. Avni turned all around, finding his words haunting her, calling her, rousing in her a restlessness to seek. Seek what? seek how? seek when?

She needed to him, there and then. If was way past mid night, just as she tugged at her handbag, which was hung on a coat stand, there was humble of thunder in the air. Avni stopped for a few seconds, hesitating if she should venture out to the remote RCASR or not. But curiosity overpowered her. She had to and go and NOW.

She made up her mind and stepped out with an umbrella in her hands. It was too late for taxis. besides she could easily walk, her hostel was in not far from the campus. The only issue would be, the campus would be extremely quite and lonely, in the middle of the night. Most researchers would be locked up in their labs or back in the dorms, catching up on their sleep. it was not really a safe time to venture out, but she did not care. 

What did she need to open her eyes to? What was it that the Prof could see and not she? What qualified him to treat her like she was groping in the dark, what qualified him to act like he had all the answers? who exactly did he think he was? the questions tore through. She wanted to scream at him, she wanted to fight him, she wanted to prove him wrong, for he had reduced her to a mass of trembling tears, without so much as raising a finger on her.

What was it about his presence that made her so nervous? what was it about him, that made her surrender to his ......

In her blind fury at the professor, Avni stomped the empty road towards the RCASR compass. She dis not realise when the huge downpour had begun, she did not realise that rain was lashing at her from all sides. All she knew was this rage, this explosion of energy inside of her to grab at the professor and demand answers from him. She wanted to know, she needed to know and he better give her some answers.

As she smashed angryl in the water that was running down the road, a group of 3 men took shelter under the shade of a night time tea stall.  The stall had closed but the outstretched shade of the shack could offer some protection.They did not particularly look like researchers and she was quite a distance away from the campus. They must have been commuters who took shelter at the tea shack from the rain. 

Avni marched oblivious to the ogles of the men, who stood looking to their left and right. There was not  a soul on the street except this beautiful girl, walking down the road, lost in though. The men , looked at each other.