It was exquisite.

Soft beams of light seeped in through the frosted glass, like water dripping from a corporation-tap. Reflecting on the milky-white tiles of the bathroom, the light strayed about the four congested walls in infinite loops of Brownian motion, making the bathroom fittings seem gothic in a bohemian glow. He wasn’t sure whether it was Brownian motion or not; physics was his Achilles ’ heel – precisely why the physics professor at the IIT coaching class chucked him out, four years ago. He smiled at the thought – he had come a long way since then.

“Why’re you smiling dude?”

Sujoy’s voice echoed – floating through the psychedelic notes of Floyd.

Pink Floyd is sex.

Being a virgin, he couldn’t be sure – but if his more experienced friends were to be trusted, yes it is. The songs did something to men (and women), or, why else would two (perfectly heterosexual) friends light up in their toilets?

Why else would he, of all people, decide to light up, at all?

CC Credits: Pratheesh Prakash

If there was anything about the world that he hated – it was the cigarette. He could stand alcohol – he hated the smell, but drunk dudes were fun. He didn’t mind those of his friends that smoked up, they went on to win quizzes and debates, despite acting weird at times. He even got himself to forgive his pedophile of his friend, who proudly publicized his ‘conquest’ of the teenaged cousin, amid glory – he would probably rot in hell. But the cigarette…

Heck, no.

It all started when he first caught his dad in the act. He was a toddler, back then and thought his father was doing some magic trick by ‘eating fire’. Confident of repeating his dad’s amazing feat – he tried ‘eating’ a rolled-up newspaper with the other end on fire. He didn’t get himself singed thanks to a vigilant mom who went on to counsel her child, rather unparliamentarily. At the end of a passionate ‘one to one’ – the child emerged with tears in his eyes, countless cane-marks on his thighs and a hatred for the ‘tiny burning cylinder’.

As he grew up, he learned how deadly ‘the burning cylinder’ was and realized how badly his father was addicted to it. The last thing he wanted was to lose his father to gruesome mouth/blood cancer . He even devised an ingenious way to force his father into kicking the habit. The very next day, his mom scampered onto the terrace, having heard his father breaking into a vicious coughing spree. He smugly looked on as his mom rubbed his teary-eyed father’s back;  tobacco when ingested with chilli powder gives interesting results, indeed.

From then on, his dad made it a point not to leave his Wills packets unattended.

Time sailed on, and life changed for the smartass pre-teen who now grew into a young man caught in a time-warp. Life just wasn’t happy-go-lucky any more. He flunked life’s tests, the same way he flunked despicably in exam. By the time he was 21, he had gotten himself beaten-up, was abandoned, lost his lady love and had gotten himself killed nearly-twice. Yet – he stayed himself clear of the ‘sutta’, which now even had a tribute-song of the same name to boot, all set to lure him.

At the end of the day, Pink Floyd won, where ‘Zeest  – the band’ lost.

Lip service from Sujoy didn’t hurt. There’s just one life (Sujoy was Christian and didn’t subscribe to rebirth) – why waste it depriving oneself of the many pleasures and possibilities it offers? Some pleasures may slow down life’s timer, but old-age is pain. Be a man.  Die in pleasure. Die happy. Die young.

Sujoy’s logic was undeniable.

He felt his body shiver as realization drove deep in. He had been through enough already. He had successfully repelled plenty of the worldly-vices (but fell prey to many others). Yet, life double-crossed him. Now the ball was in his court. His arms trembled – he even felt the world around him vibrate in resonance. Heck, he could even hear a buzz that grew louder in intensity with time – must be the resonance in action, he thought. The vein on his forehead twitched. Rivulets of sweat soiled his shirt. He stretched open his right arm (which was now trembling flailing incessantly). Revealing one of his classy smiles reserved for special occasions, Sujoy gingerly placed the Davidoff on our dude’s palm.

Davidoff Lights – It was slender and long. With great difficulty, he maneuvered his thumb, ring finger and little finger to push the cigarette between his index finger and the middle finger. He had half a mind to throw that despicable killing machine down and crush it with his feet. But…

“I… I gotto pee.”

The Forrest Gump moment.

“Be my guest.”

Sujoy ushered him into a ‘palatial’ restroom. Slamming the door behind him, our friend rushed inside. Opening the toilet seat, he lifted his right hand high in the air, and aimed the cigarette at the pot…

He had played the role of Chandrasekhar Azad in a school tableau – where he aimed a (fake) revolver at a group of attacking police officers. The cigarette was the sole bullet in our Azad’s revolver  – and a white ‘pot’ of cops silently returned the stare. Back then, the ten-second tableaux won him the first place, but that day, he ‘enacted’ the scene for good ten-minutes. Then, like Azad, he drove his ‘bullet’ into his head.

Into his mouth, rather.

A concerned Sujoy, forced the door open to see the newly-christened Azad gaze blankly back – donning an unlit cigarette between his lips.

Sujoy flashed his ‘classy smile’ the second time, that day.

Soon, Sujoy’s Nokia 5130 Xpressmusic acquired position beside the shaving mirror – duly playing ‘High Hopes’ from Floyd. He shoved a bucket aside and sat on a chair brought from the dining room, while his friend made himself comfortable on the toilet seat. Sujoy conjured a lighter from nowhere and flicked it. The reddish-orange flame swayed like a belly dancer on trip.

“Let’s light up together, shall we?” Sujoy winked. Our friend bent down with Sujoy, aiming his cigarette to the flame. “Carefully man, A forest fire’s the last thing I want,” Sujoy took a dig his friend’s perennially-unkempt hair. Our man barely noticed the snide comment. His eyes were transfixed at the tip of his cigarette – which now made contact with the flame. The edge of the cigarette smouldered in an eerie glow. Tobacco and nicotine burned.

A moment late to notice Sujoy withdraw his lit cigarette, our friend pulled his head back. He looked up at Sujay, who seemed to be sucking the cigarette like a kid enjoying his frooti. A couple of seconds later, he withdrew the cigarette from his mouth and blew out a long trail of smoke. Having inhaled some of the smoke, he coughed badly – he loathed the very smell of cigarette smoke – it always made him cough. He wondered how it would be when he had the real thing.

Noticing his friend eyeing him quizzically, Sujay played teacher. “Look, first inhale through your mouth, as if the cigarette were a straw,” he took a drag. After blowing a (longer) trail of smoke, he clarified: “Then, inhale through your nose – the smoke has to get to the lungs. Otherwise, you’d be ‘mouthfagging’ which is the smoker’s equivalent of masturbation. You don’t wanna do that, do you? Now blow out the smoke, like what I just did. Try!”

Now our dude nearly had a heart-attack – he was so sure he had one, cause he hadn’t seen his heart beat this fast till date. Nevertheless, he mustered all courage, and took a deep drag at the cigarette, closing his eyes, half expecting himself to collapse due to a long bout of coughs. Having trapped the ‘smoke’ inside him, he opened his eyes.

“Now, inhale,” our friend followed Sujoy’s instructions and took a deep breath. He was so sure he’d cough away for the rest of the day, just because of this single drag.

Turns out that he didn’t.

As he inhaled, he felt something happen to him – a peculiar sensation took hold of his head. It wasn’t a bad feeling. On the contrary, he felt real good – a ‘ring of pleasure’ formed around his forehead, around his eyebrows. He felt slightly dizzy and elated.

Our buddy had the first ‘high’ of his life.

“Dude, you’re a bag of surprises – I expected you to lay writhing on the floor. But, look at you right on the first drag itself! Awesome man!  ‘High’-five,” the Barney fan in Sujoy lifted his left palm, but never got the return five.

Meanwhile our friend took another drag. And another. And another. As soon as this cigarette got over, he lit up another one.  He went on to smoke six cigarettes in a row, until he felt like vomiting – he felt as if some virus had infected his entire system, starting from his throat. He stood up, only to find that he couldn’t balance himself properly – he felt so ‘high’ that he thought his head hit the ceiling, only to realize the pointlessness of that PJ he just made up and smile involuntarily.

The sick feeling was at its peak, as he dumped his sixth cigarette into the closet. He thought he’d vomit any moment – smoking was indeed a bad idea. The high felt good, but the ‘hangover’ wasn’t quite appealing. He drunk six glasses of water, and had his second breakfast for the day from Sujoy’s place. Only then did the tendency to puke pass.

As he bade good bye to Sujoy, he renewed his pact  – he wouldn’t touch another cigarette for the rest of his life. Ever.

*****************************************************************************************************

The protagonist of this story died of lung cancer, thirty six years later. He was a chain smoker, known to smoke at least three packets a day. He’s survived today  by his wife and two children. The man spent the last few years of his life in deep agony. Yet, he regularly used to sneak away for a secret puff. “I won’t touch another cigarette,ever,” he promised to his wife moments before he passed away.

The staff nurse found two packets of cigarettes and a lighter from the man’s clothes, later that day.

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My blissful sleep was rudely disturbed by the ear-piercing “chirp” of the calling bell. My bedroom’s upstairs, and located right adjacent to the calling bells. Yep, you heard (or rather read) it right – ‘B-E-L-L-S’. There are a total of three calling bells at my place, two of which are ‘strategically’ placed above my bedroom-door. There’s this obnoxiously-loud bell that chirps (well, literally, if the sound(noise) emanated a cuckoo is “chirp”) at a few hundred decibels. Now, our chirping bell has its switch at the staircase and it successfully serves its purpose – to rudely shake me up from my slumber! The bell is the last arrow in mom’s quiver to get me downstairs. She’d press the switch for minutes on end, until my tympanum explodes to smithereens. Needless to say,  the arrow was spot-on.

Exasperated at having missed-out my afternoon-nap, I grouchily hobbled down to mom. It was about five thirty in the evening; my tummy grumbled and mouth watered as my biological clock sounded its alarm. Coffee time! The mental reverie of expected evening snacks brought me back to the high. Only to be thoroughly disappointed - we’d run out of milk and I was instructed to go get milk from the friendly-neighborhood grocer. Worse, mom wouldn’t pay me! If I wanted coffee, I’d have to get milk with my own money – mom rambled on about responsibility. I shrugged; Mom wins hands-down. I fished a hundred rupee note out of my jeans pocket and trudged out in pursuit of my evening snack.

I didn’t quite notice it until I opened the door. I was too preoccupied with my thoughts to bother. But then, it was so obvious, and I did notice it, albeit late:

A pigeon rested atop our Maruti! :O

Quite a sight, it was. A pigeon is not the first thing you expect to see on top of your car, especially when you’re still hung over with a two-hour nap. (Inception? I momentarily searched for my totem! ) It wasn’t one of those pretty-pigeons that you see in period movies. Mostly dark, its wings and beak were the only white parts of its body. Cliche talks about snow-white pigeons that delivered letters proclaiming love. But cliches were a far cry for our friend; she could barely fly. Dark pupils stared at me from its orange eyeballs, as it hobbled atop the car to catch a glimpse of me. The pigeon wasn’t magnificent, but it had its elegance.

Unable to suppress my awe, I gingerly moved towards the car. The pigeon had noticed my presence, and it moved away from me with quick, stuttering jumps. But I was too fast for it. I rested my body on the Maruti’s side-glass and reached out to the pigeon with both arms. The bird made no move to flutter its wings. Curiously enough, it ceased the unsteady hobble and paused the stuttering motion. It stood still and stared at my eyes, as I stared back. I gradually edged my hand forward and patted the tiny bird on its head. It didn’t move a feather, evidently hurt. It looked tired and it could certainly not fly. I reached out further and reached the pigeon with my palm, gradually lifting it. It was shuddering now, rocking its tired claws hither-thither. A part of it wanted to fly away, it was probably scared of me – for all it new, I could well be a predator. Sensing its fear, I eased the grip and moved slowly to my veranda, and rested it upon the concrete-granite platform by the side. I removed my hands from the bird. It still didn’t move a muscle. With its innocent eyes examining the red-granite floor and the plants behind it, it peered around the new environs. It walked about in tiny steps, nay, jumps. The bird seemed to trust me with its life, its body made no rapid movements. It looked calm, and there was no visible external damage to be seen. I first assumed that its wings must’ve been clipped or something, but no – the pigeon was about to fall as it missed a step near the edge of the platform – it fluttered its wings in full bloom and got itself back to position. I was both intrigued and endeared.

Taking care not to disturb the bird out of its idyll, I rushed into the kitchen and brought mom out to the veranda.Incensed that I hadn’t purchased the milk, she didn’t believe me at first, but I cajoled her out, and made her see the pigeon for herself. She was a tad too endeared than I was. The motherly affection took over; before I knew it, she was back with a few grains of rice which were carefully doled out to the birdie. But our chic was gracious enough not to accept the offering; it moved away from the grains, the tiny tummy was probably full. In the meantime, neighbours were informed and soon my verandah was a makeshift-menagerie. Dad,  who announced his arrival from work with a groan, dog tired, dumped his files to join the commotion. The pigeon was a mini-miracle that couldn’t be missed.

Soon, speculations were high in the air. How (or why) did the bird came over? Why isn’t the bird eating?  Is its tummy full? Why is it greyish-black and not white?  All questions were left unanswered. Some consensus was conjured-up on the arrival-reason though. The ‘injured-hurt’ theory (dad used some logic to put his point forward) won hands-down, beating ‘divine intervention’ (mom’s idea) and joblessness (yours truly). Neighbours were equally ecstatic about our visitor. They took turns to touch and caress the bird. The kids were super-excited – Aravind, a third grader, pulled its wings, scaring our bird into a momentary frenzy, in turn making its captor cry. It took a chocolate to pause the tears of the little ornithologist; he maintained the theory that the bird ‘bit’ him despite the lack of visual proof. The bird peered back at us, inwardly smiling at all the hullabaloo.

It was 7 PM, when the neighbours had left and I finally went out and bought the milk, an hour and a half out of schedule; not that I was complaining. I was pleasantly surprised when I returned, The bird-that-would-not-eat was now belligerently-pecking at the grains it once ignored! It was still seated atop the veranda-platform. I tiptoed close to it and watched. No sooner did I approach it, the incessant pecking halted, and the bird turned to me. So birds value their privacy! Interesting. I shrugged, delivered the groceries, and ran back to the drawing-room window to check  Li’l Ms. Pigeon out.  As expected, she was eating to her heart’s content in our absence. I called my parents and showed them the phenomenon.

All of us were beginning to love our uninvited guest who was turning out to be a bag of surprises.

After some brainstorming, we decided to allocate a safe shelter for our new tenant. The verandah-slab, on which she was still perched, wasn’t exactly safe for an immobile bird. We reached a consensus on building a temporary shelter for our bird. Now, there’s an attic (more of an plastic-roofed terrace guarded by metallic-grills) at my place. We decided to lodge the pigeon there. Dad brushed up his engineering knowledge and conjured up a makeshift-home from an old computer monitor cover. Mom gently grabbed the bird and took it to the terrace. Suprisingly, the bird cozied up to my mom, not showing the slightest attempt of protest. I smiled.  :) A pitcher of water, and more rice grains were brought, and the ‘shelter’ was affixed on the sunshade within the attic. Our little pigeon had her own home, complete with a tiny door. Yes, she could go out and grab some fresh air if she so wanted.  The pigeon seemed to love its new home – it resumed pecking the tiny grains, gobbling up water from the tiny pitcher, fully aware of our presence, this time. We were all happy. The pigeon was here to stay. The three of us dispersed. Dad returned to his laptop and files, mom rushed back to her cooking and I returned to facebook.

After dinner, I thought I’d pay our buddy a visit. I simply couldn’t get enough of her! I’ve always wanted a pet, but refusal was all I got whenever the request was made. When I was in the eighth grade, my uncle had gifted us an Alsatian pup, and it was an offer my dad couldn’t refuse. I was overjoyed! But the days of joy didn’t last – good ol’ Robin died a tragic death. Since then, I’ve been craving for a pet. Perhaps the li’l pigeon was God’s gift. The more I thought about it, the more joyous I became. Even though the pigeon wasn’t exactly ‘adopted’ as the ‘resident pet’, I had already done the honors in my mind. I actually was on the lookout for a good name for my good old pigeon.

With an involuntary smile pasted on my face, I opened the door to the attic and stepped out. I didn’t switch on the light, it was bright enough – full moon day. Besides, the light might actually disturb her meal, for, the flurouscent lamp was adjacent to her shelter.

“Chinnu kutti!” – I called out to the pigeon. No, that wasn’t a name I’d fixed – ‘Chinna’ in Malayalam/tamil means ‘small’. And our PYB (Pretty Young Bird), was tiny and small. So…

**BOOM**

A muffled ‘thud’ and a scamper.

Must be one of those coconuts – our attic is dangerously close to a coconut tree, and the roof routinely-suffers from the fall of stray coconuts.

I moved towards the sunshade. Curiously enough, the ‘shelter’ was missing from the sunshade. Duh! Did dad remove it or what? Dad has this fetish of ‘arranging proper things at proper places’ and he wasn’t exactly enamored about the sunshade being our bird’s abode. He was the one who suggested it in the first place, cause he couldn’t stand bird-crap on our marble floors, but he didn’t feel it was right too. He must’ve shifted the ‘shelter’ to someplace else. I decided to find out on my own. I got back into the hall that led to the attic and switched on the lights and returned, humming a mock-James Bond tune. Investigation time!

I paused on my tracks as I stepped into the attic. Before I knew it, I’d stopped humming too. My fists loosened, my eyes dilated as my heart started beating faster.

Something terrible had happened.

The makeshift-shelter lay collapsed on the attic-floor, along with the steel pitcher. Water was splayed across the floor, along with grains of rice. Tiny black and white feathers were spread out in different parts of the floor. There was a long, oval shaped, red stain on the floor, formed by droplets of blood, fresh-smeared.

The pigeon was missing.

My heart missed a beat. Panicking was not an option, though – it was quite obvious and there’s no turning back. The ‘thud’ noise was that of an escaping animal (a cat probably). The bird was too weak to retaliate, and…

Fate, it seems, is not without  a sense of irony.

I slowly trudged downstairs with trembling arms, to break the news to my parents…  What else could I do?

P.S.

True story. Down to the last detail.  :-(

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“കു***”! Jithin swore, precisely for the 23′rd time that day. Two years back, he would have flinched and even involuntarily pressed his palms onto his ears on hearing the same expletive in Malayalam that took a momentous dig (if you will pardon the sleazy pun) at the male genital organ. But two years is all it takes to expose a failed engineering student like Jithin to a world of abuses, not to mention other appallingly-sordid facets of life. As he took a last look at his ‘Production Drawing’ answer sheet while unscrewing his Mini-drafter from the drawing board; he dejectedly-realized that he was going to flunk this paper (once his strong point, evident by the 85% sessional marks he had secured for the paper) as miserably as the two previous ones in his fourth semester B.Tech degree exam. His hapless participation in the drinking binge last night thanks to Nikhil’s assurance that it would be the best way to kill stress; had left him dreary-eyed and groggy all day. He couldn’t even remember how many shots of Vodka he had treated himself to the previous night; let alone the once-well-practiced drawings. As he gingerly stepped out of the exam hall after handing over his sheet to the examiner almost an hour before time, he cursed the moment he chose ‘Mechanical Production’ at ABC College of Engineering. He cursed Nikhil, his roomie at the WXYZ hostel who ruined his life with alcohol, smoking and occasional shots of ganja. He cursed his fate as he boarded the bus to ‘Statue Junction’, a stone’s throw from his hostel.

Jithin heaved a sigh of relief when he saw the 5 lever Godrej Padlock on his room-door. His roomie was elsewhere, and probably he wouldn’t be back by night. Fishing his key from underneath the layers of grime and dust in one of the recesses of his dilapidated bag, he let himself in and flopped onto the bed, trying to drown his sorrows in a sound sleep. Although he was dog tired, he couldn’t catch a wink. Memories on the train wreck of his life recurred every other moment, making him toss and turn in his bed. His room-mate, he realized, was singularly responsible for his downfall. Nikhil, a final year student at MNOP Engineering college was a gone case. Though he argued otherwise, the rumor mill had it that Nikhil was yet to pass a paper in his four years of Engineering life! God alone knows how he managed to survive in a strict private college with such impunity! Rarely did one see Nikhil by himself; for he would either be on a ganga-inflicted-low or a Vodka-induced-high. He forcibly made Jithin smoke his first joint in the wee days of the first year. From then on, Jithin graduated to Vodka, whiskey and even Ganja. He enjoyed the whole damn thing first. He would brag about how 6 consecutive Vodka shots left him unscathed and fully-conscious. He would freak out the girls in his class by blowing into their face fresh from a binge, leaving a lingering stench of alcohol and ‘Wills’. By the time dismal exam results jolted Jithin awake, it was way too late. He tried, nevertheless, and did succeed to some extent, with reasonable marks in some papers. But the ‘celebrations’ that followed every such achievement made sure he was back to square one, everytime.

It was about 6 in the evening when Jithin got himself out of the bed and opened his books. He had a ‘Mechanics of Solids’ supplementary exam the next day and had willed himself to secure neat marks. Somehow he got himself to remain seated in front of his study table for over three hours when that sharp rap on the door zapped him back to reality. Nikhil had returned. Unventing his frustration with another set of choicest swear words, he unbolted and opened the door and saw that oval sized, head, supported by a burly 5’9”, 78 kilo frame he’d learned to hate. As Nikhil barged in, a whiff of whisky and ganja pierced the room’s calm environment like a shrapnel piercing a soldiers chest. His bloodshot, uncoordinated eyes tried hard to focus on Jithin’s face while he mumbled in his burly voice:

“Was at the bar with Mathew’s gang.”

“So what should I do? Stand upside down and dance? Do whatever you want!”, replied Jithin, unnerved on having his studies disrupted.

“Chill, dude! What’s the issue? Got exams tomorrow eh? Guess what, I too have some crap exam tomorrow. But I don’t give a bloody damn!”

“Duh! As if you’ve learned everything already! Have you EVER studied for an exam in B.Tech?”

“Umm… nice question. But I..*hic*… I think I have. Forgot whi…*hic*”

“Cut the crap, and allow me to mug something up for tomorrow.”

“Okay, whatever. And I’m goanna get something to fill my tummy. You hungry?”

“Not at all! Just f**k off!”

“I’ll be in Roshan’s room, munching some neat chicken 65, while you cram all that shit up! Bye.”

Nikhil sauntered off the room, slamming the door behind him and Jithin got back to his books. But he couldn’t concentrate this time. Nikhil’s arrival had destroyed both his confidence and his concentration. With time, he realized that he needed a giant help from God to clear the exam due next day. Eventually, he got so pissed off that he decided that a meal followed by a drink won’t be a bad idea. After all, he was yet to eat a morsel that day since breakfast.

Roshan’s door was open as he approached it. Nikhil and Roshan were gobbling up giant pieces from plates with steamy ‘parotta’ and chicken fry. Briefly acknowledging Jithin, Roshan beckoned him to sit down and help himself. The sight of steamy food trebled Jithin’s appettite. Without further ado, he joined his friends. Fifteen minutes later, all three of them were burping loud, their appetite satisfied. Jithin then quietly announced to his roomie:

“Dude, I want a drink.”
“F**k man! You should’ve told me before. Nothing’s left here.”
“We’ll go to the bar. I’ve got money. Badly tensed, coz of tomorrow’s exam!”

Roshan supported Jithin’s decision.

“Try Vodka. It’s the best way to kill stress. I was totally high the night before last year’s SSD exam and I got bloody 68 for the university.”

“Okie-dokie. I too wanna kick some ass. Make sure you have..*hic* the money. I don’t have a pie.” agreed Nikhil.

“But how do we go? The bar’s many kilometers away na?”

“Don’t worry bud…*hic*… Got a bike with me. Let’s hit the road and burn some rubber!”

They hobbled towards the hostel shed from where Nikhil fished out a Pulsar. However drunk Nikhil was, he always had himself under control. Now that’s what awed Jithin. This dude would gulp six large pegs at a stretch and still remain steady on his feet, let alone throw up. Jithin himself would puke at the fourth peg, though he never acknowledged the fact. Aware of this, Jithin didn’t p
rotest when he was offered a pillion seat in the 2005 model Pulsar 150. As they roared past the hostel, he noticed the speedometer touch 60. He had never seen Jithin use this one before.

“Your bike?”, Jithin inquired.

“Kinda. Stole it from the beach last night.” Nikhil chuckled.

“OMG!..”

“Shut the f**k up, if you don’t wanna get kicked off”

His words were drowned by the deafening noise of the Pulsar engine. They had almost touched hundred as they literally flew through the almost-empty roads of Trivandrum city dodging Indicas and Trucks. All of a sudden, Jithin felt the bike swerve towards the left. As they took a 90 degree turn towards a by-lane, Jithin forcibly shut his eyes in fear.

He would never open them again.

Image Courtesy: Denmar

All major Malayalam newspapers had the news clipping in their front page. The accident was too gruesome and ‘sensational’ to ignore. A policeman on night-patrol was witness to the entire incident. He saw a Pulsar swerve at breakneck speed towards a by-lane. It skidded, negotiating the curve and hit a post, throwing its passengers away. The boy riding pillion flew and hit another neighboring post; his head smashed into pulp, killing him instantly. The other guy too suffered terrible injuries which proved fatal by the time he was brought to the Medical College.

Jithin’s dad couldn’t get himself to sign the form so as to obtain the dead body. His hands were quivering like a tuning fork in resonance. He couldn’t digest the news. Nikhil’s uncle represented his family; his mom and dad couldn’t cope with the news. He was shocked at the unprecedented alcohol levels in his blood. The bike too proved a mystery, for Nikhil didn’t own one! Their friends had crowded around the hospital all day, doing whatever they could to help out. They didn’t allow anyone to see the bodies, for Roshan, a habitually bold guy, fainted at the very sight of Jithin’s smashed head.

The News reporter who was the first to ‘scoop’ this news to his 24×7 news channel shrugged at all the pandemonium: “I’ve seen worse.”, he muttered.

[Based on a true incident. Names and some details are fictitious. Details courtesy: Prasanth, who happens to be the real-life-Jithin's batchmate @ college.]

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Rafeeq was the quintessential happy-go-lucky kid. Born to lower-middle-class parents as the youngest among six siblings in the bustling town of Kozhikkode, Kerala, he was the loved by everybody. Well, the happy-go-lucky tag lasted only until his dad died in a nasty motor accident, that is. The family which depended on the devout father’s meager monthly salary was crippled financially. Following the path of his elder brother Usmaan, Rafeeq dropped out of school and joined as a baker’s help. Enterprising that he was, Rafeeq literally burned the midnight oil. Thanks to his exquisite cakes and halwas, the bakery grew in reputation. By the time Rafeeq was twenty, the owner, a friend of his father’s, promoted him to a managerial post in the flourishing bakery realizing his sharp acumen and camaraderie with customers that far surpassed his cooking skills. Meanwhile, Rafeeq’s brother managed a Visa to Bahrain. He too began sending back money within three months of his departure. The family was tiding over its financial crises, and had married off Mubeena, Rafeeq’s eldest sister, to a Gulf-Employee.

It was around that time that computers invaded Kerala. It was the heyday of the first computer boom, and Internet Cafes that sprouted in every nook and corner were raking in big money selling inexpensive Internet porn. A clairvoyant Rafeeq was quick to identify the enormous financial prospect of a computer centre. He taught himself vital computer skills using the computer Usmaan had sent back home along with a mélange of consumer goods. Within a month, he’d become a pro, in a hugely overstated way, so to speak. With generous help from Usmaan and a bank loan of Rs 300,000, Rafeeq opened his aesthetically-designed Internet Café near ‘Mithaai theruvu’, at the heart of Kozhikkode town. Rafeeq had fifteen PIII machines (which was the best you could get in early 2001) wired to the net by an Asianet Dataline ‘Broadband’ connection; stuffed into a 600-sq-feet room in a make-shift shopping complex. Thanks to his tacit advertisements about the immense voyeuristic possibilities of the net, Rafeeq’s café was fully occupied all the time. His wily staff unabashedly encouraged porn by copying porn movies rather indiscreetly onto the computers! Though he knew what he did was morally wrong by Islamic tradition, Rafeeq had to do it to ensure financial security for his family and a good husband for another sister Sajna.

DTP was another specialty of Rafeeq’s café. He himself saw to it that the job done was perfect down to the last full stop, with attractive font-facing. The smart, Photoshopped notices, brochures and invitation cards regularly churned out by his café saw more customers flocking his office. Rafeeq was a happy man, only until a couple of teenagers walked into his shop, asking him for a quick print out. Their demand puzzled him. All he had to do is to print out two book shaped sets, with SSLC marks of the two kids, photos and names, which they provided. He was even given a copy of another book as a sample, and was asked to make sure the print out was identical to the sample. Before he could say anything, the boys kept a couple of five hundred rupee notes on his table and left, muttering that it’s pretty urgent and that they’ll be back in a couple of hours. Dismissing them as nutcracks, Rafeeq readied the matter and made sure that the couple of print-outs looked identical to their master copy. It looked like a mark-list or something to Rafeeq. The kids must be intelligent, after all, because they had scored humungous marks in all the exams. Within hours, the kids where back; and they left with their neatly bound copies, profusely thanking Rafeeq.

A month later, a burly looking man in Police uniform barged into Rafeeq’s café. Rafeeq rightly identified him as Mr. Gopinathan, IPS. The new Superintendent of Police. He was a man Rafeeq held in high regard. The stories of his escapades and encounters were widely publicized by the media. Ergo, he was respected and honoured by one and all. Dutifully offering a cozy seat and a hot cup of tea to the tall, well-built man, Rafeeq politely inquired if he could be of any help. Visibly taken aback by the hospitality of the man he’d come to arrest, Gopinathan fished out two print outs which Rafeeq identified as the ones he’d done. In a bid to help out the Police officer in his supposed investigation, he even showed soft copies of the print outs in MS Word for authentication. Torn between exasperation and pity for the haplessly-candid guy, Mr Gopinathan managed the politest tone his position could offer, explaining Rafeeq that he’d done a cognizable offence which could give him a jail term of over three years. Rafeeq, with his penchant for perfection, had actually forged two SSLC books unknowingly!

Image Courtesy: http://www.cbsnews.com/

The crowd that gathered around the café saw a dumbfound, tearful Rafeeq incessantly claiming his innocence, perched onto the rear seat of the Police Jeep, clutching an unwieldy PC Cabinet. The police discovered porn CDs stashed away in a shelf, not to mention gigabytes of porn in the hard-discs of the fifteen old computers. He was booked in three cases, including one on “Indecent representation of women”, due to which he couldn’t get bail and was remanded for over a month. A pertinacious, two-year long trial later, Rafeeq was awarded a two year jail term and a fifty thousand rupee fine, all amid media-inflicted ignominy. News channels did live shows ‘celebrating’ the first ‘Cyber crime’ of the state. None, not even his Gulf-prospered brother; cared to pay the fine for him for fear of ‘image-loss’, accruing his sentence by a year. A firm-believer in Allah and human-affection, the once-happy-go-lucky, apple-of-eye kid saw his life collapse before him!

Today, Rafeeq has made Beemapalli, Trivandrum (the de-facto home of piracy in kerala) his home. He’s the biggest dealer of illegal CDs and DVDs in Trivandrum. Known to be a master forger, his degree-certificates and passports beat the original in panache. He rakes in more than a couple of crores a year from his thriving business and travels in a Skoda Octavia. He harbors a steady hate for the system, ever since his release three years back, and would go unto any lengths to cripple it, the way it tore his life apart!

Moral of the story:
Legal literacy, anyone?

="MsoNormal">The final word:
Based on a true story narrated to me by an IPS officer, when I’d visited him in regards with the investigation of a cyber crime offence. Parts of the story and names are fictional for anonymity’s sake.

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Her friends said she was intelligent. Shalini never trusted them. She always muttered to herself: “They’re all lying. I’m incapable!” In a way she was right. For, she never realized her talent. Her intellect was way beyond the scope of her classmates’ imagination. She was obsessed with Mathematics. She loved anything and everything with numbers. Before the mathematics teacher finished dictating the question, her hands would fling high in mid-air; ready with a precise answer correct to the fourth decimal place. Never did she go wrong, never! Still, Shalini was unsure of herself.

She would spend hours staring at the mirror in her room on a daily basis. A flabby body that barely supported an equally fat head: complete with a pockmarked, pimpled face would glare back at her. Shalini would feel a chill deep in her spine as she saw her image. Especially when she noticed those gigantic eyes, accentuated by a pair of thick spectacle-lenses. It resembled an alien she’d seen in that random sci-fi movie on HBO. She would imagine the mirror was lying to her, and would check a hundred other mirrors elsewhere for authenticity. Her mirror image remained as scary as ever. Amused, once she laughed so uproariously at herself that her mother had to actually beat her back to consciousness! Shalini knew she was born the way she was born, and nothing, not even God himself could change her; make her resemble Anna…

Anna was the most beautiful girl she had ever seen… She was the epitome of feminine beauty, and was everything she was not. Beautiful, smart, elegant; even angelic. Yes! When she read about the angels in heaven, she was convinced Anna was one among them. She adored Anna, and found a torrent of ecstasy and happiness in her company. But strangely, Anna never ever reciprocated her affection. Shalini doubted whether Anna had ever talked to her once, though they’d studied in the same class for over eleven years. Once, when they were in the first grade, Anna forgot to bring her pencil-set in the drawing class. She passed on her pencil set to her, and lied to the teacher that she forgot to bring hers. The teacher spanked her black and blue and made her stand out of the class for the hour, but she was happy. Her angel would be able to translate her dreams on paper! But, Anna never even returned her pencil-set, let alone thank her for the gesture. Still, Shalini loved and adored Anna.

That day, she was at the library. Reading was Shalini’s passion. She would spend hours at home lying on her bed, piles of books by her side. She devoured them the way a hungry tiger would devour its pray. While she was glancing through the latest work of her favorite author, Carl Northcutt; she heard a peculiar noise from the next shelf. It was a group of shelves, actually, enclosing a square-sized mini-cubicle with benches to help readers select books of their choice and read. Her instinct said that the sound was definitely human. But that perplexed her, for, she was sure there wasn’t a soul in the library that evening other than the librarian (who was dozing off with a magazine on her lap) and herself. Could it be some evil spirit? The ghost of Wordsworth himself wailing about the plight of the multitude of his unopened book?

She gingerly walked forward and glanced through the shelves. There stood a guy by the window. She wasn’t quite sure who he was, but she’d seen her around the school. Though he wore the school uniform, his tie was unbuttoned and her shirt wasn’t tucked in. Shalini could hear him talk in hushed tones to a female form that almost entwined his body the way a parasite-creeper would attach itself to its host-tree. The female-form, wore a partly-unbuttoned white shirt and check-skirt; her school uniform. She couldn’t for sure say,who it was, for the face was hidden between the boy’s shoulder and her long, flowing hair; neatly held by a hair-bun.

Before the next thought could cross her mind, the female form lifted its head up and its moist-lips contracted to an O-form only to be joined by the guy’s lips. As Anna kissed the boy full on his mouth, Shalini felt a sea of panic rage deep within, which,in no-time found its outlet through an involutnary shriek. Anna quickly retracted her face only to see Shalini’s contorted, teary-eyed, panicked face stare at her in pain and disbelief.

“Aw f**k!! The bloody c**t saw us! Hey, a*****e? Who asked you to peep in upon us? Who the f**k, do you think you are? Miss goody-two-shoes? If you’re dying to get f**ked, go d**k-searching instead of peeping around, you bitch!…”

Shalini shut her ears with her hand!! She wasn’t quite sure what her angel was saying, but she guessed it was something really bad which would depose her from heaven and lead her to hell! Anna had betrayed her… Someone had cast a spell on her angel and made her a devil. Her eyes were flooded by tears, and the pitch of her shriek grew exponentially with time. Her obese frame made running hard, but some newfound energy from within spurred her to run; away from her angel who had now become a devil… away from the facade of her life…

That evening there was quite a crowd outside the school library. Young Shalini Mathews’ body was being carried away into an ambulance for autopsy as her parents’ looked on, hysterical and broken. Elsewhere the School-Head Girl Anna Teresa, Shalini’s classmate, was stoically fielding a team of reporters: “She was such a brilliant girl! I actually saw her hysterically running out of the library and jumping down. I tried my best but… alas! She’ll always be alive in my heart!“

Shalini’s face, devoid of life, had a placid calm all about it…

Afterthoughts:
This sheer beauty and poignance of this short story by my friend Sindhya Chechi, precisely is the reason why I ventured on writing a story for the first time in this blog. Do read that too… It’s way better than mine.

If you felt this was too cheesy, apologies. Hope you weren’t offended by the expletives. This is my first attempt which was written on impulse. I need to learn quite a LOT to pen-down a ‘readable’ short story!

Comments please…!!

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[All names, characters and incidents portrayed in this story are fictitious. Identification with actual persons, places and products is neither intended nor should be inferred. If you tend to do so, chances are that your inference could be purely coincidental. However, if your sense-of-identification is a notch too strong and you start accusing this author of blatant plagiarism, it is probable that you suffer from a severe case of cognitive dissonance and/or you are a conspiracy theorist. Should the aforementioned situation arise; the author strongly recommends you to consult a psychiatrist pronto.]

Once, a child was born in the country of India. Now, that’s nothing new, for; more than a hundred thousand children take birth each day in the ghettos of this country. This child (henceforth christened ‘X’) however was better off than a good number of his 99,999 contemporaries, his parents being highly-successful and renowned engineers. Eons before X was even conceived, his parents had lofty ambitions about him. Together, they dreamt about their would-be son ‘Engineer X’ pioneering NASA’s pilot, manned-mission to Mars some thirty years down the line. X would marry an engineer and their children would also be engineers (who would first set foot on Jupiter, at 2090!) They cherished the very thought of originating a true-blue engineer family-tree. In a bid to entrench their son’s NASA-future, X’s parents actually played a (scratchy) videotape recording of Armstrong’s & Aldrin’s “Small step for man & Giant leap for mankind” exactly when X was being conceived (possibly to give a bombastic start to his résumé!)

Pangs of having been subjected to the moon-mission video in the primal phase of his embryonic avatar perhaps, our friend was not exactly brilliant by modern parlance, where brilliance is often synonymous with an eminent academic record. He was more of your average, buck-toothed, next-door-geek. Though he had an unassailable memory and an IQ of 129, he despised the very idea of sitting long hours before the books, mugging facts and figures. X was obsessed with analytical and logical problems since childhood. Right from his pre-teen years, he made friends with the computer. When his friends would spend long hours playing NFS or Counter Strike, X would be busy coding. X’s parents did not particularly endorse this trait of his. They argued that his coding skills, which might eventually induce a host of problems ranging from myopia to cyber crime, would be detrimental to his NASA admission. Consequently X witnessed a massacre of his Gatesian dreams, dutifully aided by his dad’s multi-encrypted passwords on the PC which steadfastly resisted his frail brute force attacks.

To help X obtain the best possible school education, his parents admitted him to a Jesuit-run boys’ school – de facto acknowledged as home to the crème de la crème in town. By the time X passed his tenth grade with a heartening 87%, his parents had shed much of their astronomical (pardon the pun) dreams, fully realizing that their son wasn’t exactly NASA material. Nonetheless, they believed he was brimming with potential and started crafting IIT dreams for him.

X was obligingly enrolled for Engineering-Entrance-exam coaching classes at the start of his 11^th grade. X wasn’t too enamored, but he gave in realizing that as an engineer he could specialize in his cynosure; computers. Before long, X understood that he wasn’t exactly IIT material. His course material was demanding; he had to put in hours of untiring ‘work’ (read mugging) on a daily basis to crack JEE, the Holy Grail of all entrance exams; not to mention a dozen others. Initially, he did his best to comply with the haranguing schedule, but soon he realized that he was wearing himself out to near-death. Brickbats from parents and instructors alike destroyed his peace of mind. Gradually, X saw a stubborn reluctance to work (mug) cultivate within. He began resorting to rather inventive methods to deceive his tormentors to his favor. To top it all, he developed an obsessive attraction to a stunningly-beautiful girl in one of the coaching classes. Ergo, a once-highly-ranked X saw his position dip to abysmal lows, never to bounce back again.

The retribution came along with X’s results. Our IIT Aspirant secured a measly 82% for his boards, qualifying only in his state entrance exams and that too with an appalling 2000+ rank! X’s parents, who almost expected their son to top the JEE were dismayed beyond proportion. Pipe dreams about their son ruined, they blamed him for bringing all their reputations to peril. Though, with time they more-or-less reconciled with their son’s fate, the debacle saw a pernicious strain build up in the parent-child relationship. Things were worse for X; his classmates, most of them not even half as intelligent as he, bade him goodbye to join prestigious institutions. What’s more, he even ‘lost’ his girl, who probably never knew X existed despite his best ‘efforts’. Besides, X wasn’t quite sure whether the girl would accept his ‘proposal’ going by his looks which were unpalatable even by conservative standards.

After a delayed, three month-long ‘counseling’ process, X got admitted to a mid-ranked Govt. Engineering college in town. X was alacritous when he was allotted the trade Information Technology. Finally, he could dabble with computers! Gatesian dreams returned in full throttle, which saw him pouring over dictionaries coining names for his soon-to-be-launched start-up firm. Sadly for him, it was only the beginning of what would be the worst-phase of his life. The first shock came when he stepped into the portals of the college which looked more like the quintessential primary school, complete with tiled-roofs and ramshackle walls, exactly like those one gets to see in third-world ghettos. After his first month in college, X’s notions about his alma-mater meliorated nevertheless. He realized that beneath the unassuming tiled roofs, functioned a robust institution
which could brag about some of the best teaching faculty, infrastructure & campus placements in the state. The elation, albeit was ephemeral. His course material, though engrossing to some extent, required zilch intellect and maximum mugging! The recognition came with the marks of his first internal examinations for which his performance was dismal in all subjects but Mathematics. Constant reprimands from his Lecturers became part-of-life for X.

Even so, X demanded immense respect and bonhomie from his college mates who were enamored with his refined, euphonic, affable and Jesuit-perfected self. An acclaimed singer and part-time wordsmith, X won numerous accolades in intercollegiate festivals. His Gatesian dreams bought him an entire fan following. Some even acted Venture-Capitalists, agreeing to cough-up money to foot his dreams. For the first time in his life he was being loved and respected for the facets of his life that did not pertain to academics. Throughout the first year of his college life, X worked on improving himself. He got hooked to the habit of reading, devouring almost one book a day. He followed developments in and around the world through television, internet and newspapers and would debate tirelessly on sundry topics from Bush’s incompetence to the perennially-doomed nuclear deal. Having broken into the computer with an indigenous key-logger code snippet, X honed his once-lost coding skills to perfection. X began writing too: his works encouraged by friends & prizes in essay writing competitions.

University exams approached fast. X’s buddies dusted open their long-closed books and got down to some serious studying while our friend didn’t even bother. By now, he had totally repudiated the idea of mugging. He spent hours daily with his old friend, the computer. He was in a totally different world; his study skills in abeyance, perniciously rotting in his hedonism. By the time he woke up from his cocoon, it was way too late. With hardly three days left for the exams, there was nothing he could do. His weak, impenitent attempts at pulling himself back to track failed miserably. X was still in blissful idyll, capriciously reaffirming his last-minute-study skills. The exam season lasted a month. The last day of the examinations was a breather for X, haggard after all the pressure they had on him. He knew his scores would be abject in entirety. But for Engineering mathematics & graphics, the content in almost all other papers were based solely on his general knowledge! Had he paid attention a notch more, he could have done better! Dejected, X vowed that he would work hard the next time.

Promises and vows are always made to be broken. The new-broom-sweeps-clean phenomenon didn’t last long in X’s case either. By early third semester, X was back to his old self. His academics did show remarkable improvement all the same, thanks to his proficiency in logic and computers. He topped papers in programming and logic, once more bathing in false glory. Meanwhile, X’s ‘startup-firm’ kick started itself to action. A few successful projects and some money under his belt, X bought his own website-domain and server space. Within months, http://www.thexworld.com/ became a virtual sensation in the World Wide Web. The fully Search Engine Optimized portal saw X’s Google Ad sense account adding zeroes to the right. The geeky Mr. X within no time turned into the hottest kid on the block!

The fall, when it came, was acrimonious to say the least. X’s façade was shredded into pieces with the results of his first year exams. Though X had ninety percent plus marks in Mathematics and an overall percentage close to seventy, he failed in three papers; namely Engineering Physics, Chemistry and Basic Electronics. Of course, they could well be cleared later, but, the failure would long remain a black mark in X’s academic record. It ushered in an end-of-life scenario into his life, well, literally. The day before the results were announced, X encountered a near-fatal automobile accident in which he sustained serious injuries & fractures. His parents were fractious at large thanks to the entire debacle. Though they stood by X, baring a smiling, reassuring façade; they too were downcast with their son, in whose skills they now expressed total incertitude.

The initial surprise and empathy of his friends gradually boiled down to ridicule. When they came to visit X at the hospital with their sardonic glances camouflaged amid sympathies, X realized the true essence of the (refurbished) proverb: “Marks maketh man!” To make things worse, the cheap hosting company which hosted his website went bankrupt, taking his website with it. X even got a life-ban from Google Ad Sense; the geeks at Google had finally realized that those thousand-odd clicks in their ads were the product of a brilliant PHP code! The fiasco shattered X, who for the first time in his life started contemplating suicide.

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What happened to X after this juncture is purely immaterial. Of course, X gave up his suicide plans; a fit of self-imposed determination and will being the cause. After a month of recuperation, X appeared for his third semester exams, well-equipped this time. He did reasonably well, compared to his classmates for whom it was literal-drubbing. Nevertheless, the relationship with his parents suffered major (and permanent) fallout; they permanently lost faith in their son. The once-hottest-kid-on-the-block regained his geek-next-door avatar.

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Hey, that was just the hors’d’ oeuvre!! Time for some food for thought!

Food for thought | Moral(s) of this story

1. Unless a school/college student in India has significant mastery over the art of rote-learning, he doesn’t stand a chance of getting ahead in the rat-race! Even the field of engineering, which demands an agile mind, requires a significant (if not total) amount of skill of memorizing concepts and theory spread out in pages of text. Nonetheless, it’s a moot point whether a high-score in such exams, which are more of memory tests, would signify professional competence in one’s field of study. li>

2. Though X is an intelligent guy, he fell backward in the rat race solely because the art of mugging was way above him. Had he tackled his exams with more grit and drive, he could easily have mastered his subjects and scored high. Who knows, had he given more impetus to his preparations in his school days, he might even have crossed the hallowed portals of IIT with some luck. Fate, it is! X alone is responsible for the fiasco. In a premise where marks turn out to be the most substantial employability/knowledge gauge, people like X, though competent, would perennially remain at the bottom of the ladder.

3. Had X’s parents allowed him to join a career of his choice, they would have prevented much heartburn. True that X might get a swanky job by the time he passes out with his computer and language skills; but he might have done better, had he pursued another course of his choice. Their obsession with ‘originating a true-blue engineer family tree’ resulted in the birth another Six Point someone, oh yes, with three back papers!

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