Anand and trust

Anand was a good storyteller. We walked for years on the Mehrauli-Bhatti Mines Road in Delhi in the evenings. He was a good friend while we both were teaching at Sawan Public School. What drew me to him was his ability to create stories out of very ordinary mundane things that happened at school. These stories had a unique touch of humour, one which mingled subtlety, sarcasm and slapstick in just the right proportion. Anand would laugh hilariously at his own stories after delivering the punchline. My laughter was always subdued because life had smothered much of my ability to laugh before I reached Delhi.

It was during one of those walks that Anand told me the story of his being hijacked for a short period in his home state of Haryana. He was driving to a destination that was new to him. Those were days when the Google map was not available yet. So he was forced to stop at a particular junction to enquire about the way.

“I’m also going to that place,” the man on the roadside said to Anand. The stranger entered the car.

Their conversation soon shifted to politics particularly because their chief minister was embroiled in a scam at that time. Om Prakash Chautala, a man with immense political clout and who was the state’s chief minister many times, was charged under the Prevention of Corruption Act. He, along with his accomplices, had recruited over 3000 unqualified teachers to the state’s schools.

Anand had personal reasons to be furious with Chautala. He was a qualified postgraduate with many years of experience as a teacher, but he couldn’t get a job in his own state because of the corrupt politicians there.

When Anand’s car reached a particular place, his hitchhiker said, “Stop, I have to get down here.”

“How do I go now to my destination?” Anand asked him as he alighted.

“You go back to the place from where you picked me up and go in the opposite direction.” That man went his way as if nothing had happened.

“This is how Haryana is,” Anand told me as he concluded his anecdote.

A few years later, Anand did the same to me.

Anand betrayed my trust one day by telling the school authorities something about me which I had confided in him confidentially. I refused to take it as yet another specimen of the typical Haryanvi exploit because my association with Anand had a history that spanned a few years. I took his deed as a betrayal, breach of trust by a friend. I consoled myself eventually by drawing an analogy between Anand and Coleridge’s Ancient Mariner.

The old sailor in Coleridge’s poem was stuck in the South Pole when his ship got wedged between icebergs. There was no sign of life anywhere in that desolate place; there was only water and ice all around. It was then an albatross came from nowhere. Soon the bird became a friend of the sailors in the ship. It accepted the food given by them. It started coming to them whenever they called. The albatross trusted the sailors.

Then, one day, for no reason at all, the old sailor took his gun and shot the albatross. The sailor never found peace after that.

I was only consoling myself with the analogy between Anand and the old sailor. It was I who lost peace after Anand’s betrayal. Nothing changed in him. I brooded over the betrayal by a friend. Anand got what he wanted: proximity to some of the most powerful people in the school. He was ambitious. He wouldn’t shoot the albatross without a reason, without a calculated motive.

But there had been an error from my side too. I had done something that wasn’t exactly the right thing to do though my intention was good. I had forgotten that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. I went to the higher authority and acknowledged my mistake. Ironically, the authority hadn’t thought of my deed as a big mistake as much as a lack of trust in them on my part.

In other words, instead of confiding in Anand, if I had taken the concerned problem to the school authorities, a possible solution could have been discussed. My behaviour smacked of immature rebellion.

I leant two lessons. One, if you have a problem with your institution or organisation, take it to the authority concerned and discuss it like a responsible staff instead of behaving like a terrorist who attacks the system stealthily. Two, human trust has its limits. If you stretch it beyond the limit, you will be taken for a ride.

Today, Anand is a teacher in a government school in his own home state. His nemesis, O P Chautala, spent a decade in jail for depriving Anand and others like him of justice. I am unable to continue the friendship, however, because one act of betrayal is enough to kill a relationship for ever.

Mehrauli-Bhatti Mines Road

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