Skip to main content

Going Places



“Sleep tight, you morons,” muttered Arjun as he stepped out of his dorm with a bag slung over his back.  The security guard had rung two bells a few minutes back indicating that it was two o’clock in the night.  The guard must have gone to sleep after performing his duty perfunctorily.  This was the best time to run away.

The annual exams were round the corner and Arjun was fully confident that he would fail in spite of all the efforts made by both his teachers and the Board of Education to make him pass by giving him free marks in the name of co-curricular and extra-curricular activities.  He wouldn’t score even ten percent in the written exams.

Sreesanth, his hero, was in jail.  Who does not make use of a chance to earn a few lakh rupees more, wondered Arjun.  His father was making lakhs every day. 

Arjun’s father, Nakul Kulapati, was a an MLA of the ruling party.  People came to him offering big packets or briefcases full of money.  Nakul Kulapati gratified their wishes, fulfilled their dreams, and brought delight into their lives.  True, the man had no time to enquire about his son’s studies.  He hardly visited the school.  He never worried about whether his son was passing or failing.  Arjun knew that his father would buy him a seat in a medical college or an engineering college by paying a hefty capitation fee.  Money can buy anything.  His father would have bought him success in his exams too, if he had asked for it. 

But how can his father even come to the school?  Especially after what happened yesterday? 

A woman had gone to court accusing Nakul Kulapati of having raped her.  She had met Nakul in a party and the two became friends.  Like a chemical bonding.  Sodium atoms and chlorine atoms bonded together and were drowned in salty sweat. 

Nakul Kulapati could not fulfil the woman’s dream, however.  She wanted a party ticket in the coming Lok Sabha elections.  Father must have tried his best, Arjun knew.  His father never betrayed his clients.  Anyone who paid him money was his client.  Payment need not always be in cash, he had heard his father say once. 

Party tickets are extremely costly things.  Their prices run into crores.  Chemical bonds don’t cost crores.  Even Sreesanth could not amass crores through spot fixing of matches.  Crores belong in the realm of politics. 

Arjun threw his bag over the wall of the school campus, far away from the main gate.  Then he threw his body over the wall.  He was a good sportsman and the only son of a leading politician.  Walls are no stumbling blocks to him. 

The woman betrayed his father.  That’s what really worried Arjun.  She recorded their bonding and gave the CD to the police as evidence.  And the CD leaked out into the market of sleaze.  His friends got a copy from the underground shopping complex in the city.

Even the son of a politician cannot absorb that kind of ignominy.  Even if he is a sportsman.  Arjun could not focus on his books.  Lurid pictures popped up from the books.  His friends were leering at those pictures. 

Sodium and chlorine atoms bond together to become sodium chloride, he remembered his chemistry lesson.  Sodium chloride has the properties of neither sodium nor chlorine.  It has “emergent properties.”  He remembered his teacher saying that life is about acquiring emergent properties.  Problems in life are manifestations of life asserting itself against the powers of external control. 

Life.  Very curious, thought Arjun.  He had everything that a class 11 student would need.  More than that, of course.  Much more.  Could less have been better?  His father made sure that he never lacked anything which money could buy.  His school gave him marks generously for all that he did and even intended to do, thanks to CCE.  Probably he will even pass the annual exam with a little assistance in the exam hall from liberal invigilators. 

So what was his problem?

He was not sure.  The only thing he was sure of was that the ATM card in his bag could keep him going places.  And he had decided to go places.   


Note: This is work of fiction and the characters are imaginary with one obvious exception.  The story was inspired by what happened to an MLA in Kerala recently.  But the MLA is too old to have a son studying in class 11.

Comments

  1. Wow..Really loved reading it...It is very true indeed that usually wealthy people tend to care less about their children as they think money can buy them Happiness...

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I'm consoled. At least one comment. It means at least one reader understood what I was trying to convey. Thanks for the consolation :)

      Delete
  2. When we think, as parents that giving comforts would make us great parents we are wrong. We have to be with them, understand them. I wish his father met him often and talked to him.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Parents pampering children by giving money and too much freedom (due to their own selfish interests) is one theme in the story, Saru. I was also trying to show that the whole society has a problem: there are no heroes.

      I think I should stop writing stories and start preaching :)

      Delete
  3. Matheikal,

    You are not going to believe this! When I came to this space, the comment space, my comment was going to be and still is, "the story flew over this cuckoo's nest!"

    And your response to the first comment - you are happy someone understood what you wrote!

    Now, you must be happy that someone took the time to write he did not understand :)


    RE

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Raghuram,

      I'm indeed happy that you bothered to comment on this.

      First of all, let me remind you that I wrote recently about Marcel Proust trying to criticise his own writing and failing (in a blog titled 'Self-criticism). Fiction writing is a complex process. The unconscious is more active than the conscious. The complexities in the writer's mind will turn up in the writing. If you are a psychiatrist you can analyse my writing and find out the psychological traumas I underwent...

      Secondly, there are too many themes I have packed into this story. This is my problem as a writer of fiction. The moment I sit down to write fiction I cease to be me. Somebody else takes over. Who is that somebody? Is it me? Is it NOT me?

      Thirdly, look at the themes of corruption, evil, adolescence, love... too many of them in the story. That's where I fail.

      Fourthly, The starting sentence of this story is taken from J D Salinger's famous novel, 'The Catcher in the Rye', in which a 16-year old student of a residential school runs away saying the same sentence: "Sleep tight ya morons". The rest of the story and everything in it is my making. But the connection means something sacred (?) to me.

      Fifthly, you need not bother about this comment. I know you. I know me.

      Delete
    2. I will bother myself and you by reacting to your response Matheikal :)

      Who else but I (or, is it "me"?) can get so much out of you simply be raising one's hands? I am really good ;-)

      RE

      Delete
    3. You are not good, Raghuram, you are the best.

      Bother me - I love it when you do.

      Delete
  4. Hi, good one!! I loved the way the narrative shifts between what the boy is doing and what the boy is thinking.

    ReplyDelete
  5. CCE is such a politician who pampers all the vagabonds who don't even qualify for any sort of education. Even sports is a part of education, provided the students play with ethics and not using their bodily strength and skill alone. Why has CCE forgotten that? Even the sports teachers cannot understand the subtleties of education and an ethic called sportsmanship. How can they evaluate any student. Everybody cannot become Dhyan Chand. Can anybody?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Do teachers mould their values at least to some extent by what they see their bosses doing? In a system which exploits teachers how many teachers will succeed in retaining their virtues?

      What I'm implying is that there's something radically wrong with our societies. The rot lies deep...

      Delete
    2. That rot is nothing but selfishness. Lack of humane feeling for others. Everything should be for me - attitude. Those who sacrifice or share with others or do justice to their jobs are considered to be fools. It is really difficult to surmount such selfishness. It is a long journey to travel. Unless a spiritual token is there, no one can enter the road to that destination.

      Delete
  6. "Sodium atoms and chlorine atoms bonded together and were drowned in salty sweat" - Good one.

    ReplyDelete
  7. I am glad to have read a story that reflects utmost brilliance in lacerating politics of the kind of perversion being practised by some politicians. I have also written. a story dealing with the theme of power politics. Your post is really a scathing one!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks, Kajal, for the appreciation. Politics at any time was not edifying. Contemporary politics is at the lowest level on the moral hierarchy.

      Delete
  8. Wonderful story. I would definitely have loved to see what Arjun did after scaling the wall. Where did he go and how he dealt with the situation? Did the experience touched his outlook somewhere? Can you write another continuing episode of this fiction? Phew...too many questions of mine :)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks for this suggestion, Pankti. In fact, I'm planning a novel set in this school. But due to time constraint, I may have to wait for retirement (or retrenchment) for the novel to materialise. But it keeps growing in reality!

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Prelude to AtoZ

  From Garden of 5 Senses, Delhi [file pic] Hindsight gives an unearthly charm and order to the past. There can be pain too. A lot of things could have been different, much better, if only we possessed the wisdom of our old age back in those days. As a writer put it, Oedipus, Hamlet, Lear and a lot of those guys must have thought, “I wish I had known this some time ago.” Life is a series of errors with intermittent achievements. The only usefulness of the errors may be the lessons they teach us. Probably, that is their purpose too. We are created to err so that we learn, I dare to put it that way. I turn 64 in a month’s time. It’s not inappropriate to look back at some of the people whom life brought into my life so that I would learn certain lessons. No, I don’t mean to say that life has any such purpose or design or anything. Life is absurd. People come into your life as haphazardly as vehicles ply on your road or birds poop on your head. Some of these people change the chemist

Why I won’t vote

From Deshabhimani , Malayalam weekly Exactly a month from today is the Parliamentary election in my state of Kerala. This time, I’m not going to vote. Bernard Shaw defined democracy , with his characteristic cynicism, as “ a device that ensures we shall be governed no better than we deserve .” We elect our government in a democracy. And the government invariably sucks our blood – whichever the party is. The BJP and the Congress are like Tweedledum and Tweedledee though the former makes all sorts of other claims day in and day out. BJP = Congress + the holy cow. The holy cow has turned out to be quite a vampire and that makes a difference, no doubt. In our Prime Minister’s algebra, it is: (a+b) 2 which should be equal to a 2 and b 2 . There is an extra 2ab which is the holy cow. In George Orwell’s Animal Farm , the animals revolt against the human master and set up their own nationalist republic. Soon politics develops in the republic and some pigs become leaders. The porcine

How Arvind Kejriwal can save himself

Narendra Modi and Amit Shah have a clear vision. Eliminate all opposition. Decimate them or absorb them. My previous post [link below] showed a few people decimated by them. Today let’s look at the others: those who are saved by joining the Bharatiya Janata Party [BJP]. 1. Himanta Biswa Sarma  This guy was in Congress and faced serious charges related to the multi-crore Saradha chit fund scam. He also faced corruption charges related to drinking water supply in Guwahati. His house was raided by the Central Bureau of Investigation [CBI]. Then he switched over to BJP and all his crimes just vanished. It’s as simple as taking a dip in the Ganga and all your sins are forgiven. Today he is the chief minister of Assam. Nothing is heard of all the charges that were levelled against him. 2. Amarinder Singh  This former Captain in the Indian Army was a Congressman until Modi’s Enforcement Directorate [ED] started raiding him, his son and his son-in-law. He put an end to all those raid

The Good Old World

Book Review Title: Dukhi Dadiba and irony of fate Author: Dadi Edulji Taraporewala Translators: Aban Mukherji and Tulsi Vatsal Publisher: Ratna Books, Delhi, 2023 Pages: 314 If you want to return to the good old days of the late 19 th century, this is an ideal novel for you. This was published originally in Gujarati in 1913. It appeared as a serial before that from 1898 onwards in a periodical. The conflict between good and evil is the dominant motif though there is romance, betrayal, disappointment, regret, and pretty much of traditional morality. Reading this novel is quite like watching an old Bollywood movie, 1960s style. Ardeshir Bahadurshah, a wealthy Parsi aristocrat in Surat, dies having obligated his son Jehangir to find out his long-lost brother Rustom. Rustom was Bahadurshah’s son in his first marriage. The mother died when the boy was too small and the nurse who looked after the child vanished with it one day. Ratanmai, Bahadurshah’s present wife, takes her

Kejriwal’s Arrest in Modi’s Kurukshetra

For some mysterious reason, Arvind Kejriwal’s arrest reminded me of Haren Pandya. Maybe, because Pandya’s 21 st death anniversary is approaching (26 March). Have you forgotten Haren Pandya? He was the Home Minister of Gujarat before Narendra Modi assumed dictatorial powers in that state. Modi chose to teach humility to Pandya by making him the Minister of State for revenue. Pandya chose not to learn humility from Modi and resigned from that post in Aug 2002. Remember Gujarat of 2002? You should. A fire engulfed a train on 27 Feb 2002 killing 58 Hindu pilgrims who were returning from Ayodhya where they had gone to discover their god, not very unlike Christopher Columbus undertaking a voyage to discover India and messing it all up. What caused the fire in the train? Lord Ram knows probably. The upshot was that there was a riot in Gujarat by Hindus against Muslims. Haren Pandya is one of the BJP leaders who gave statements in many places indicting Modi for the riots. He asser