Harvey walked through the door, and sat down. He scanned the room, seeing if he knew anyone here. It seemed like he was alone for this lecture. He breathed a sigh of relief as he sat down, near the back of the room, and rummaged through his bag to gather his supplies for the class. Needless to say he was surprised when he felt a hand clamp down on his shoulder. Panicked, he looked up, and was relieved to see it was only Mandeep, impeccably dressed as always.
Mandeep laughed. “Apologies, I had no intent on scaring you.”
“Intent or not, you managed to do it anyway.” Grumbled Harvey. The sense of relief was short lived. He was trying to get away from these guys, not be around them 100% of the time. Maybe he could switch courses or something. He’d still have to live through it for now, he figured.
Mandeep was nothing if not polite. “Sorry once again. I’m delighted to see that you’re representing the Sikh Student Coalition outside of the society though.” He said, referring to the patka. Harvey silently cursed his luck, as Mandeep continued, “It’s also good to have another student I know in International Marketing. It’s a very useful subject for me, given my goals. I’d imagine you’re similar?”
Again, Harvey’s mind raced – this wasn’t a class on his schedule, yet here he was. He already planned on going to an advisor later in the day, so just lying to Mandeep and coming up with some excuse about it later would be easy though. “Uh, yeah. Getting my credits and all that, you know.” He said, giving a generic answer.
Mandeep didn’t seem very pleased at what Harvey said, only replying with “Ah, I see.” The judgement was blatant in his tone, almost like Harvey was being scrutinized. “Well, I hope you get a lot out of it. You’ll find it very useful, I’m sure.”
What was that supposed to mean? It was ominous, almost, how Mandeep said it. Harvey didn’t have much time to think it over though, as the professor garnered everyone’s attention, beginning the lecture. The professor was a middle aged white woman, who seemed eager and passionate about the subject. She also moved quickly, getting past the introduction phase and jumping right into a fast-paced lecture about the global economy.
Harvey was overwhelmed, trying to scribble everything down in his notebook as fast as he possibly could, but found himself lagging behind and leaving large blank sections for catch up after. Maybe Mandeep would share his notes with him after? Harvey looked over and caught a glimpse of Mandeep’s notes – or what would be Mandeep’s notes if he was taking any. It occurred to Harvey that just because Mandeep looked super serious and was the best dressed man in the room by far didn’t necessarily mean that he was a good student.
The professor continued her lecture, and with five minutes left of the class stopped and concluded. “Now, let me talk about the term project that you all have to do.” Was this on the syllabus? Harvey didn’t remember it from the beginning of the lecture. “It’s a partner project. The two of you are to complete a complete assessment on the net benefit of trade between goods of our country and one in the eastern world from a marketing perspective. We shall be going through tools on how to accomplish this analysis in the coming weeks, but you are expected to use the college’s resources to product a professional product, as commerce students.”
Fuck. If there was a partner project involved, Harvey was going to have a very hard time weaseling out of the class, especially if Mandeep had already taken a notice in him. His thoughts raced as he felt a gaze on him. He turned to Mandeep, seeing the well dressed Sikh man smiling at him, as he gave Harvey a head nod. Harvey smiled back, giving into the idea for now that they would be project partners. It was something he’d have to embrace for now, before gently letting him down later.
The professor said only a few more words before dismissing the class. Harvey started packing up his things, and tried to leave the class, but Mandeep managed to get ahold of him before he could make a quick escape. “Hey!” the turbaned man exclaimed, “Do you have a break for the time being before your next class?”
“Well, yes, theoretically,” replied Harvey, “But I have an appointment with an academic advisor that I really ought to be running to-”
“Ah, regrettable.” Said Mandeep. “I thought you’d find now would be the perfect opportunity to discuss things.”
Mandeep’s voice was commanding. Persuasive, even. It had an air about it that just made Harvey have to listen. “Discuss things?” he asked, falling for the hook to ask for more.
“Of course. The project. I was actually, um-” started Harvey, but Mandeep didn’t let him finish.
“So it’s obvious that we’re going to do India, but I wanted to start brainstorming already.” Mandeep said, starting to blather on as the two men walked to a common area. Harvey found himself listening intently to Mandeep’s ideas. As much as he wasn’t taking notes, he seemed to know the subject pretty well, or at least was convincing Harvey that he knew his stuff.
The two men sat down at the table and pulled out their notebooks to start talking about ideas. “What do you think, Harvey?” asked Mandeep, after the two finally settled.
“Well, I don’t actually know that much about India..” he said, feeling almost ashamed to say it in front of Mandeep.
“This isn’t the time to be modest, Harvey. We have a project to talk about, where our grade heavily depends on how we do. An early start would be beneficial to both of us. Why don’t you take a look at what I’ve written down? It’ll help us consolidate our ideas.” Mandeep asked, ripping the page of notes out of his book.
“I thought you didn’t take notes during the lecture?” asked Harvey, confused as to what he was being handed.
“Not many, our professor was going very quick. I did manage to write some things down, though.”
Harvey looked at the paper, but couldn’t recognize the writing on it at all. He pulled it closer to his face, and saw that it was in some kind of.. script, that he didn’t recognize. Certainly not anything from the Latin alphabet he was used to. He pulled it even closer to his face, trying to make out the glyphs, but as he did, he felt a strong pull of the paper towards his head.
Alarmed, Harvey tried to pull down with his hands, but it was no use. The paper was strong, holding together perfectly instead of showing and ripping or folding, as it was yanked out of his hands, remarkably not leaving any cuts on his skin. Harvey suddenly gained full awareness of what was going on, as the paper grew longer, and thicker, the fabric gaining strength and resilience.
He was duped! Maybe Mandeep knew about what was going on, given how damn insistent he was. It had made Harvey forget entirely about trying to change classes. As he felt a tightness start to wrap around his head, he tried to cling to those thoughts. This was wrong! But as the once paper, now cloth, wrapped around Harvey’s head, it started to wring out his memory like a sponge.
The blue lines of the loose-leaf paper became thicker as the white became more brilliant, forming stripes of equal length across the fabric. The text became a more generic font, evidently printed instead of being Mandeep’s handwriting, as the scrawled gained meaning, changing from scribbled notes about the project to statements about love, peace, and hope. If he looked in a mirror, Harvey would be able to read the Gurmukhi script effortlessly. With the Dastar turban complete on Harvey’s head, the transformation began to overtake the rest of his body.
His face was completely blank and thoughtless as it started to change and contort. His skin tone took on a chestnut hue as his features grew larger. Thicker, pink lips, larger eyes with beautiful brown irises, and a prominent nose, hooked downward. His cheekbones rose higher on his face, as thick, dense, stubble quickly filled in below them, growing a pointed and styled beard like Mandeep’s. To appear extra prominent, his mustache hairs grew longer and wax appeared in them as he, entirely unaware, pulled his hands up and expertly styled a prominent mustache without even looking in the mirror.
Like with the last time Harvey became Harpinder, his clothing became much fancier this time. His shirt became a brilliant white button up, with a plain blue suit jacket, the same baby-blue hue as that of his turban, wrapped around his body. His pants changed color to the same as the suit jacket as they became a finer and more expensive material than the denim they were, his underwear becoming silkier and fancier as well underneath. His socks pulled up his legs as they became a fancy pair of sheer dress socks, comfortable under his soles, and his sneakers became a nice pair of brown leather dress shoes, recently polished and reflecting the ceiling light.
As the man sitting across from Mandeep started to come to, his body started to change physically. His posture became more upright as he felt a surge of confidence turning his brain back on. As he sat straighter, he literally grew in height to a very respectable 6’8”. What he didn’t do though was fill out very much. No one would call him skinny, but he wasn’t particularly noteworthy in muscularity or weight.
As Harpinder returned from whatever daze he had been in, his resting facial features set in. His eyes were slightly squinted and his lips were in a slight frown. He looked like a very serious man, which was true, as he was here to take full advantage of the opportunity that the college gave him to become a proper businessman. He looked at his project partner, Mandeep, who seemed to be awaiting his response. Something small in the back of Harpinder’s head told him that he shouldn’t trust the dapper man across from him, but he shooed that thought away. They were kindred spirits.
“Apologies, I forget what we were going on about.” Said Harpinder in a very thick accent.
Mandeep had no issues understanding his words, however. “You were telling me about your experiences in India and how you can use them for this project. It’s very helpful to have a partner who has personal knowledge in this realm.”
Harpinder smiled. “Of course. My parents are very involved in global trade, so while I was living there, I learned a lot from them.” As he tried to recall examples, Harpinder couldn’t really come up with anything off the top of his head, but it was like his mouth was speaking ahead of his brain. He talked about various examples of projects his parents worked on, and as he spoke them he could vividly remember everything that had happened.
It was about 20 minutes of back and forth before Mandeep seemed content. “Excellent!” he said. “I believe we have an enormous start to our project. We are going to get an A+ in this International Business course for certain!”
Harpinder laughed. He had always been a high achiever, it was something his parents had taught him. But with courses like International Business and Introduction to Cultural Studies, this semester would especially be a breeze. “Agreed. I’m lucky to have a partner who knows so much.”
“As am I,” agreed Mandeep. “Here. Come with me. I’ve something to show you. It’s important.”
Harpinder nodded as the two men packed their things away, and Mandeep lead him out of the building.