All of it had been a hoax! All of these years he had spent in institutionalized education, a ruse to prepare him for a corporate job! And he was not the only one getting duped; all these naïve faces that he saw around him now, all of them were getting ripped off too! The worst thing about the Director’s words was that they made complete sense.
Sameer walked back in to the lecture hall, where his friend was already sitting on the floor in preparation for the next class. What should he say to him? Shall he tell him the truth, let him have it in all its stark naked bitterness? Or shall he let him live in the comfort of lies?
“Bro, Bro…” Sameer was pulled out of his thoughts by Rishabh’s voice, calling for him. When he looked in his friend’s direction again, he was already sweeping clean the floor next to him with a piece of paper. Sameer knew in that moment what he had to do. The world, as he knew it, may have deceived him, but he was not going to do the same to his friend.
Smiling he walked to where Rishabh was, and seated himself down next to him.
*******
That evening in the football field, Rishabh learned about Sameer’s dismissal from the team. Outraged he left the field and went running back to the hostel, where he found his friend in the hostel’s courtyard, keeping himself occupied by performing little tricks and dribbles with a football.
“What in the world is going on brother?” Rishabh asked at once, stepping in between his friend and the ball and kicking it away.
“If I tell you, you would not find it much to your liking,” Sameer replied, doing some stretching exercises now that the Rishabh had kicked away the ball.
“Tell me nevertheless,” Rishabh demanded firmly.
So Sameer went on to tell him all about the offer the Director had made to him earlier that day.
“It is not about the percentage gap, you know that, you are being punished for taking part in this protest, a protest that you were not interested in the first place, a protest you took part in only to support me!” A wave of anger and guilt had rushed in to Rishabh’s conscience after Sameer had told him about the incident with the Director, he was angry at the extent of dirty tactics that were being employed to quell his protest, and guilty that in his personal fight, his friend was having to sacrifice the one thing he loved the most. “No, we can’t have it, you are playing for that football team, I will go talk to the Director, he stays in his office till seven, I will go talk to him right away,” Rishabh declared and ran off before his friend could make any arguments to stop him.
It was around ten minutes later that he found himself standing in the Director’s office, facing the manipulative cold hearted man who was hell bent on stopping him from fighting for his cause, and by targeting his friend, he had succeeded in it.
“So I will stop with my protest if you will allow Sameer to play in the football team again,” Rishabh offered, there were no other options left for him but to concede his defeat. Whatever happens, he was not ready to sacrifice his friend in this battle.
“Very well young Sir and a good choice I must say. So have it your way then, end your protest and I will have Mr. Verma reinstated in the football team,” The Director simply accepted the offer, not gloating at all on his victory.
“Thank you Sir,” Rishabh muttered out bitterly, before he walked out of the office. He knew he had lost, in front of all this trickery and malice he never stood a chance in the first place, but although his protest had failed, he had gained something greater and dearer than any success in any protest could bring him, and it was the knowledge that he had a friend like Sameer, who could sacrifice for him, the very thing he loved the most in this world without even blinking an eye.
*******
“We have solved it Sir, congratulations,” Mr. Sharma, who has been present in the office all this time as Rishabh had come and agreed to revoke his protest, was now stepping out to the desk of his employer offering his felicitations.
“Thank you Sharma and I wish you the same,” Doctor Banerjee replied, looking content though without being elated, in short, his usual equanimous self.
“I will go stir up some coffee Sir,” The assistant announced and stepped out of the office.
This gave Doctor Banerjee an opportunity to go back to the Rubik’s cube he had been trying to solve for the past so many weeks. But this time, instead of giving it any more twists and turns, he reached in to a drawer of his desk and pulled out six stickers, each of a different color, and each sticker having nine single colored squares drawn upon it. Carefully he peeled these off and then applied them to the faces of the Rubik’s cube, so that after their application, the cube now appeared to be a solved one.
“Yes we have solved it Sharma, but our solutions as always, continue to be mere superficial ones,” The director remarked to himself, as he placed the now solved cube away in to his drawer and picked up his phone to make the call to the football team’s coach to get Sameer Verma reinstated in to the team.
*******
-Two days later-
The first game of the football tournament had finished an hour ago, with the team from our campus winning 2-1 courtesy of a 90th minute header from a corner by Sameer Verma.
Rishabh and Sameer were back at The Booth having some ice teas to celebrate the victory.
“It has been a hell of a couple of a weeks, and this ice tea tastes the better for it,” Rishabh commented, true to his word he had revoked his protest the day after the meeting with the Director, and although it had left him with a bit of a sour taste in his mouth, he was glad that he would at least always have ice teas to take care of that.
“Yes, been a memorable time,” Sameer joked. “Anyways, there was something else that I needed to tell you,” And it was now that he went on to tell Rishabh all about what the Director had said about the present education system.
“Wow, I mean wow!” Rishabh exclaimed in disbelief after Sameer had finished with his narration of the incident.
“It’s hard to swallow, but makes complete sense,” Sameer opined.
“Indeed it does,” Rishabh sighed, still shaking his head. “So he said that everything starts from the schools?”
“Yes he did.”
“Now it’s clear to me what we have been doing wrong all this time,” Rishabh mused.
“What?” Sameer inquired, raising a brow.
“We have been only hacking at branches when we need to take the protest to the root of the problem, we need to take our protest to schools,” Rishabh declared solemnly.
“You don’t say!” Sameer picked up the football lying near his feet and feigned throwing it at Rishabh’s face, causing both friends to break out in to hearty laughter.
*******
Chapter 5 – The nomadic Poet
1
Thirty six summers, and an equal number of winters, his life had seen so far. Out of these the first eighteen were spent in a small town in Eastern Bihar, his place of birth, schooling and first love; the next five were spent in a coastal town in Kerala, where he pursued first his graduation and then his post graduation in English literature; leaving us with the last thirteen ones, and these he had expended in hopping from town to town in Northern India, living in eight different cities in total, working most of this time as a professor of English literature, though in one case as a salesman, and in another case as a private tutor, two occasions when he did not find any professorship in the new city he had moved to.
A perpetual wanderer in search of something, or to be more precise, someone, and today, this search was bringing him to the city of Ludhiana. Presently he was seated in a train, leisurely sipping on some tea, while gazing through the window at the scenic fields of golden wheat outside, which were joyfully swaying back and forth with the evening breeze, as if waving to the train and its passengers as they were passing them by.
‘This cardamom flavored tea, and this soothing evening breeze.
Together they render, the most wearied of lives
a new lease.
And the golden sight of these swaying fields, is a salve for them sour eyes,
That aches from having witnessed the intense darkness of this world, far too many times.’
The professor, who also happened to be a man blessed with a poetic disposition, extemporaneously came upon that little verse in his heart, and before it happened that its words got lost on his memory, he pulled out a small notepad from the pocket of his shirt, and happily jotted it down in one of its little pages.
In time, the train reached the Ludhiana Railway Station, which is the one of the busiest railway stations in the region, so no wonder as our professor came to the train’s exit door, ready to alight, he found himself faced by a great multitudinous rush of humanity on the platform below, the sight of which momentarily filled him with hesitancy about stepping down from the train altogether, and it was only after some intense urging and shoving by the waiting line of passengers behind him that the professor stepped down to the platform, and became part of the same throng which was intimidating him just seconds ago.
Immediately that averagely built, simple and unassuming looking man got squashed between a mass of bodies, and it was only after a good deal of pushing and shoving that he finally managed to reach one of the snack’s stall on the platform.
“Brother, which way is the Ghanta Ghar (clock tower) side exit?” he asked the man who was in charge of that stall, a little breathless from his exertions.
At his query, the man behind the stall simply pointed to the sought exit and then to the over bridge which led to it. In return the professor thanked him, stepped back in to the rush and resumed jostling his way through it. It was a grueling toil as he squeezed himself through innumerable bodies to finally reach that bridge. By the time he had climbed and then descended it to reach the station’s exit, he was gasping and perspiring from his efforts, prompting him to take out a handkerchief from his pocket in order to wipe the sweat off his face. As he stood in a corner, catching his breath, suddenly a loud rambunctious voice coming from one side fell on his ears.
“O, Hullo, Hullo, O.”
As the professor looked in the direction from which the voice was coming, his eyes caught sight of a flabby looking police officer, who was heading nowhere else but in his direction. Now that he was looking at him, the police officer stopped in his tracks and used his fingers to beckon the professor to come to him.
“Can’t you hear? Are you deaf or something? I have been shouting at you to stop for so long,” The police officer bellowed angrily once the professor had moved in front of him. “Where are you coming from?”
“Jammu, Sir,” The professor replied, as calmly as he could, getting in to an altercation with someone from the law authorities in this new city was the last thing he wanted.
“Jammu, that is fine and all, but where are you originally from? You don’t look like a Pahadi to me,” The police officer pointed out, looking the professor up and down.
“No Sir, a Pahadi I am not. I am originally, from Bihar,” The professor replied, just giving him honest and straight forward answers so that this undesirable investigation would quickly come to an end.
“A bihari, as I thought so, no wonder you can’t hear properly,” The police officer now sneered contemptuously, getting even more disrespectful and aggressive after he had confirmed the ethnicity of the man standing in front of him. “So why were you running away like a thief? What is in that suitcase?” he now asked, pointing towards the suitcase the professor held in his hand.
“Excuse me! You can’t just walk up to me and accuse me of being a thief!” The professor objected firmly, now aware of the regional prejudice he was facing, he was not going to bow down to it like a meek infidel.
“I can accuse you of whatever the hell I want to, this is not your BIHAR! Here, we have LAW and we respect LAW!” The police officer started shouting, losing his temper in the face of the defiance this Bihari had dared to show in front of him.
He then suddenly snatched away the professor’s suitcase with one hand and grabbed his arm with the other, before striding off from that spot. For a couple of minutes he walked thus, dragging the professor along with him, before they finally came to a halt at the Platform Entry, where another couple of police officers were seated behind some tables, engaged in checking the luggage of the passengers.
“Check this suitcase first; I want to see what this Bihari is hiding in there,” The police officer that had dragged the professor here instructed his colleagues, before thumping the suitcase down on the table in front of them.
The professor, who was staining hard to keep his composure through this mayhem, just stood there quietly, looking on as his suitcase was opened and then thoroughly searched. His possessions in there included some clothes, the necessary toiletries and a few of his favorite books, there were no expensive accessories, no fancy jewelry, nothing of the sort that could be of any great financial value, if he was a thief as the police officer had branded him, then he had only stolen meagerness and paucity.
“One..two..three..six..six books in total, what is a Bihari doing with six books in his suitcase?” The police officer now asked, he was disappointed by what had come out of that suitcase but was not yet ready to drop his accusation.
“Yours is a senseless question, and I am not going to disgrace myself any further by answering it, or any of your other questions, it is clear that for you, being a Bihari is being a thief, so go ahead, book me as one, and we will see what the court has to say about your prejudices.” The professor, who had been insulted enough, could not check his tempers from flaring up any longer, and ended up giving that officer a piece of his mind. But before he could go any further, a hawaldar came up to the professor and ushered him a few yards away from the scene of the fracas.
“O ho, why are you arguing? It’s only going to create trouble, Sahab’s mood is not good right now, you look intelligent, kuch le de ke rafa dafa karo (loosen your pockets a little and bury the matter), and go away in peace, no need to create trouble,” the hawaldar, who was even more short and even more fat than his Sahab, suggested to the professor with an unscrupulous wink.
“Pardon me, but are you asking me for a bribe? Or let me guess, this whole thing was an act to extort money out of me, right?” the professor responded, shaking his head in disbelief.
“O ho, not bribe, see your people come to our city, they do all kind of crimes, spread all kind of problems, but we have to deal with it, that costs money, and do your people pay any tax here, No, so this is just a little entry fee,” The hawaldar explained with a malicious grin on his face.
The professor was on the verge of completely losing control over his faculties; first he had faced derision from that officer and now from this hawaldar, all because he was a Bihari!! While threatening him with the baton of law, these people were trampling upon his basic rights as a citizen, he wanted to grab them by the scruff of their necks and hurl them to the ground and beat them with the same batons that they were regularly using to terrorize the innocent migrants, but before he could do anything of such rash nature, there arrived on the scene a local gentleman, who approached the Hawaldar and then began to talk to him, after having led him away to one side.
The professor just stood there seething. He could hear nothing of the conversation that was taking place between that stranger and the hawaldar, consequently he turned his eyes to the police officer who was still standing at the luggage checking tables and was presently fanning himself with one of his books.
The audacity of this fool was beyond outrageous! The professor moved towards that table with every intention of snatching his book away from the hands of that cretin, when suddenly, the stranger who had first engaged the hawaldar, now moved to the officer, and like he had done with the hawaldar, he ushered the officer to one side, and involved him too, in a hushed conversation.
After a few seconds the professor noticed the officer looking in the direction of the hawa
ldar, who in turn gave his superior officer a little thumbs up, and at the passage of this signal, the officer nodded and tapped the stranger’s shoulder in a friendly manner before walking away from the scene altogether. The professor stood there, trying to make sense of what had just happened there, when he noticed the stranger now coming towards him of all people!
“Pack your bags Professor, the problem is solved now,” he said in an assuring tone, with a charming smile playing on his countenance.
“And you are?” the professor asked.
“I am Kamal, Mr. Barkat Rai sent me here to pick you up. He had showed me the picture you had uploaded with your job application so that I could recognize you. Well just as I arrived at that exit, I saw you being led away by that police officer and so followed you here,” the stranger explained.
Mr. Barkat Rai was the principal of the college that the professor was meant to join in this city. He had talked to him a few times over the phone recently, and from their conversations the professor had pictured him to be a man of a jovial and upbeat nature.
‘From your past records, I see that you are a nomad by heart my dear fellow, and I love nomads, always in search of new adventures, never quite ready to settle down at one place, they are impulsive like the life itself. But I bet you, you will find it hard to move away from our charming city, once you have lived here for a while,’ Mr. Rai had said to him after accepting his application for the professorship at his college.
‘A charmed city, which already has me mesmerized by a spell of bitter discrimination’ thought the professor, as he now recalled Mr. Rai’s words. Then pulling himself out of his little reverie, he moved to repack his suitcase before he accompanied Kamal to the parking lot where the latter’s car was stationed.
“So, what did you say to that Hawaldar, and then to that officer?” The professor asked inquisitively, once they were inside the car.
“I gave that Hawaldar 200 rupees to just forget about the whole matter, and then told the officer that I had given his Hawaldar the present, so they walked away,” Kamal answered nonchalantly, as he maneuvered the car out of the parking lot and on to the moderately trafficked road right outside the railway station.