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It had to be done. There was no way I would let this go just like that.

I woke up earlier than I wanted to or was required, as usual. I wanted to sleep a little longer today, linger a little. I wish. But Mom had started her loud chants of the Vedic verses much before the first rays of dawn. How was God ever going to answer mom’s prayer if she kept waking him up at this unearthly hour? Lord Shiva is a very volatile person, didn’t mom know that. I have read he smokes a fair bit of the weed too, and I am sure he does not believe in the maxim of ‘early to bed, early to rise’. So I could see simply no point in drenching him early in the morning. I am not sure he took all these early morning affectations very well, and maybe this was what made him somewhat temperamental over the centuries. But it was impossible to make my mom realize that. In fact the first time I brought up the topic of Lord Shiva’s alternative lifestyle, I was simply asked to leave the breakfast table and had to go hungry the whole day.

My room was next to the puja ghar and there was nothing I could do to keep these sounds out in the mornings. Not able to take it any more I went out to the veranda to get some fresh air, and that’s where he was. For as long as I can remember, I remember Dad reading the newspaper at the same spot, every single morning. Today of course was no different. I suppose he had been following the same regimen all his life. His life was completely governed by these habits, which he never deviated from. It was unthinkable to him that he could break his regimen for a day and sleep till late. Dad had been an exceptional student all his life. But then he had gone ahead and wasted everything by devoting his life to teaching. Now he was lecturer in physics in some godforsaken college. He was squandering his time for students who attended the classes for flirting, while he laboured on with Transactional Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics.

Dad was a devout Gandhian. He was born the very day Gandhi was assassinated and Dadu, as I lovingly used to call my grandfather, named him Mohan Das, after Gandhi. Dadu used to tell me that those were the heady days just after India’s independence, and he too swayed by the Gandhi hysteria, had made a mistake. But Dad did not seem to think so. He took the teachings of his namesake rather seriously, and maybe as a result the bottom rack of his book cabinet was bulging full of books and other publications on Gandhi. He always kept saying these things, like, if India was to be non-violent, her people must express non-violence in all aspects of their lives, and was almost always on the lookout for ways to exhibit it. In fact there is this famous story about Gandhi where he is said that, if somebody slaps you on one cheek, you must offer the other. I think in life Dad wanted to go one step further. I think we would have offered to slap himself, if that’s what the other person wanted. This of course worked out very well for me. As a child I could be up to any prank and not be punished. Dad would sit with me and explain how Gandhi would have dealt with the situation. The more I heard, the more incredulous I was at Gandhi’s and Dad’s incapacity to take control of any situation. Mom tried to impose some semblance of discipline, but then she was mostly busy with her puja throughout the day.

I for one found it odd that the man who was called Mahatma of the nation could say such cowardly things and a complete nation would listen to it as gospel. In time though I realized that nobody cared much for what he had said. He was like one of mom’s stone gods who was merely worshipped every day, more out of habit. This was just as well, for otherwise, we would have become a nation of wimps. I failed to comprehend why the whole world paid homage to this man, whereas Hitler was considered evil. I think in both cases people almost always have no idea what either of these men stood for. I guess it was just fashionable to hero worship one, and hate the other. Among loads of other books in the house, we had a book called Mein Kampf. Hitler wrote it as a young man, and had chosen a much more fitting title, “Four and a Half Years of Struggle against Lies, Stupidity and Cowardice.” But his publisher shortened the title to “Mein Kampf,” which simply meant ‘My Struggle’, or ‘My Battle’. The original title was so much more apt for the apathetic civilian population in First World War Germany, which cared little for and actually betrayed the armed forces. The civilian population spread unrest and undermined the German war effort, but it was only a man like Hitler who fought for German self respect.

Dadu always said that one was not complete man unless one had military training. I was closer to Dadu, who lived with us all his life till he passed away last year, than I ever could be with Dad. He was in the army all his life and wanted his son to join the armed forces too. Dadu always seemed disappointed with the path Dad had chosen. In fact he used to say, ‘Babu, you’re my real son. You’ll be a great officer in the army’. He left me his revolver when he passed away, especially since Dad would never touch a weapon. Mom was shocked that Dadu could give a revolver to a 15 year old boy and locked it away. Little did she know that he had even taken me to the shooting range, and showed me how to shoot. I loved the very sound of the revolver. There was something clinically efficient about the revolver.

I too was captivated by the armed forces. Dadu had told me stories about his army days, with fascinating accounts of the 1971 war for ‘bangla’ (East Pakistan now known as Bangladesh) independence. The notion that one can stand up and fight for what one believes in was heady. One should not need to accept situations, happenings, and things that one was against, as a fact of life and let it go. It was a strange energy that rushed through my veins as Dadu recounted how the enemy was overthrown in that war in a matter of two weeks. Dadu too was not one to take things lying down. He believed that every citizen should be able to fend for himself or herself. The Sangh that he was associated with for the last few years also propagated this idea.

Dadu was a staunch believer in the principles of the Sangh. The Sangh spoke about national pride and respect, and how formal training in the army was the essential training in a young person’s life. Throughout history India had been trampled by every advancing army because it was a country that did not lay stress on its own self defence. This mentality permeated to individual self defence too. We were a nation brow beaten by mobs, common thugs and small time crooks. As a nation we needed training in the armed forces for every person.

But here was Dad, reading his morning paper peacefully, when he should be working out instead. Here was somebody who would never lift a finger against injustice, and live through his life brandishing his ahimsa mumbo jumbo. Mom entered the veranda and forced to come out of my early morning stupor. Maybe even she realised at some point and it was enough for the god’s had for one morning, and decided to return to her earthly duties.

“So when are you planning to start studying. There is no need to be complacent you know. You have to leave for the study group by eight thirty, do you remember”.

I knew that board exams were a fortnight away, but I hardly cared. I had always topped my class, and considered even competing with my fellow students an insult. But then in our inane education system, age was more central to advancing to the next class or course, than capability. We were having our study breaks before the boards and the only study I was doing was attending the study group discussions. Study group was a new thing our school was trying out, where a group of students prepared together for the boards, helping each other along the way. I did not need help of course, but then I was not allowed to abstain. To top it all I was in a group of absolute nincompoops. I mean there was Arshad, the best of the lot, who had never even ranked above fifteenth or so in the class. The less said about Arun, Sultan, Amir, and Venkat the better. I think a couple of them had even actually flunked before.

But I did not have a study group session today; and there was another summon from the principal, but Mom did not have to know that.

I knew Arshad quite well and he is one who roped me into this ragtag group. Arshad lived quite close to my house, just outside Dhantoli. There was semi slum area ahead of Dhantoli almost near the Ajani railway station, and Arshad’s house was just on the outskirt of this slum. They had a small bakery which his father and elder brothers ran. In fact they made the best fresh breads and cookies in Nagpur, and we always got our stuff from there. They had a large family, and how they stayed in that two room ramshackle house behind the bakery was beyond me. Arshad was the youngest of 4 brothers and 3 sisters, and was the first in the family to go to a convent school.

I loved biryani and kebabs. Arshad knew that, and had invited me for home last weekend on the occasion of Eid. Well, all I could think about then was the food, and readily accepted the lunch invitation. When I reached there, the festivities were in full swing. It almost seemed as if half the slum had descended upon the house. The house was teeming with people, and I stood, a little stunned, not knowing a soul, hoping Arshad would surface from somewhere. Well he did show up almost immediately and dragged me to the inside room. It was much larger than the outside room, and was, I supposed the bedroom. There were two large beds on one side of the room, and cupboards almost all around instead of walls. All the doors of the cupboards had some poster or the other. Some of them were of the Kabah, the holy mosque in Mecca, a few of religious leaders whom I did not recognize, but the pride of place was given to posters of a whole line up of Pakistani cricketers. What was odd was that there was not even one poster of any Indian cricketer. The room was full of mostly women, burqa clad, but with the facial covering uncovered and draped on top of their heads. And then there were children. It seemed like the pied piper had coaxed all the children in the world and left them in this room. The melee they made was an awesome sight. There were kids running about, spilling things, and getting sick, all over the place. I tried to retreat far into the corner Arshad had left me in, and tried to peer at the other half of the room. Soon I noticed that the room also served as the dining room. There was another doorway at the other end, which I presumed lead to the kitchen.

One half of the room was being used as a temporary dining area, and it had a huge wooden slab, slightly elevated, being used as a table of sorts. When people squatted around it, the table reached somewhere around one’s belly button. There were huge brass plates and containers in the centre of the table which had piles of kebabs, biryani, a mutton gravy dish and a huge number of stupendously large rotis. As I sat with Arshad on one end of the table, he thrust a steel plate in my hand. I quickly got the general idea of the general modus operandi. One would just take the rotis in one’s hand or on the plate, split it into smaller manageable pieces, and dip right into the gravy from the dish in the middle of the table. The men around the table very talking animatedly; Allah was not only praised for every morsel on the table, but it almost seemed for whatever else anyone could think. The general topic of discussion was how Islam was being crushed under the boots of the American invaders in Afghanistan and Iraq. Musharaf was thoroughly decried by all for being an American stooge, and for not fighting against the infidels. I heard their conversation, but I could not relate to anything of what they said. I tried concentrating on the food instead. The food was delicious but somehow I seemed to be losing my appetite.

We were not allowed non-vegetarian food at home, though we could have it when we went out to eat. But they were not even close to the mouth-watering food that Arshad got for lunch. Now I had platters of the same food before me, but somehow I was not enjoying them. These people seemed like people from another land. They seemed so alien to me. The way they spoke, walked, ate, laughed, interacted with each other was different. The sights, the sounds, the smells, all were different. I desperately wanted to convince myself, these were our people, our fellow countrymen. But it was tough to imagine that we were the same. All the books in school spoke about how our nation was built on the edifice of unity in diversity, and how people of all religions, caste, creed, language lived together. I sincerely believed in those things. To me people, were all, well, people. They all had the same two hands, two legs, they all were the same. Our joys, sorrows, hopes, despairs in life were the same. Our goals were the same, a family, food, prosperity. How could one person be different from the other?

But sitting there, stuffing biryani into my mouth, my beliefs started deserting me. These people were different. No matter what the books said, no matter what Doordarshan beamed out about our brotherhood, there was something inherently different. But I was in the middle of a meal, and I kept forcing myself to at least give a semblance of a show, that I was enjoying myself. But as I forced another helping of kebab into my mouth, I could not take it anymore. I felt I would be sick, and rushed out to the outer room and from there to the street. Then by the side of the lane I vomited. Arshad followed me, looking worried. As I finished, I could hear him enquiring if I was fine. But I was hardly fine. Something had screwed up inside my head. Mumbling something about an upset stomach, I took my bicycle and raced home. Through the night visions of Imran Khan, Saddam Hussein, swirled in my head, as Osama Bin Laden announced his sinister designs for ridding the world of infidels. I didn’t know what, but something was disrupting my whole belief system.

I was summoned by the Principal the day after the lunch incident. I went in wondering what I could have done now that had angered him again. I had not been up to any mischief in school. In fact as we were on study break, the only interaction with school was the daily study group sessions. The study sessions were going really well. I stayed out of the way of the others and they left me alone with my doodling or with some Sangh publication that I had pinched from Dadu’s collection. The Sangh’s teachings in some way began to substitute the void that had been left after Dadu passed away. Since Dadu was a senior member we kept getting the monthly journals, much to my delight.

The Sangh stood for the spread of Indian culture, which they defined as a value system. They wanted to establish a certain value system, called as the humane value system. The truth according to them could have plural manifestations and this plurality need not be in conflict with one another, they said; it could be cooperative and complementary. To understand, appreciate and realize the unity in a tremendous vortex of diversities, they preached, should be the humanity’s goal of life. Their concept of Dharma was based on the universality of spirit. Dharma was simply not simply a bundle of rituals. The mission of the Sangh was to unite and rejuvenate our nation on the sound foundation of Dharma. Recent publications also spoke about how illegal conversions were happening in our country and how the poor were being coerced with money to change their faith. Another one spoke about how Hindus were burnt in a train in Gujarat, and the whole nation, including the secular political parties did not speak a word in protest. I found it strange how the whole country could remain silent to these kinds of injustices. It was almost like Germany during the First World War, when non-Germans betrayed the German army and they lost that war. Germany at least had a man like Hitler who stood up for Germans. Our history books are replete with incidents where foreign invaders over the years attacked and plundered our lands at will, while we gave caved in meekly to one attack after another. I wondered who we could turn to. Maybe we were a nation of wimps after all.

My last visit to the principal’s room had been fairly recent, in fact only yesterday. As I had entered the principal’s room, Father D’Souza had given me one look, and a wry sigh had left his face. I had been there so many times before that by now we were almost friends, and I had largely come to know what to expect.

“I spoke to your mother,” he had said quietly, “before I spoke to you, you know. She says you don’t study at home either. Arshad, Sultan, and Amir have given a written complaint, you know. They say that you do not let them study at the study sessions. We are a small school you know, and for once we think somebody from Nagpur has a chance to get the gold medal in the board exams. And that is why I tolerate your nonsense. But if, I get even one tiny little feeling that you may not get the gold medal this year, because you are feeling a little playful, then my friend, there will be no boards for you, you know”.

Then he had come across the desk to me, and patted my head gently and said in a soft but eerie voice, “I have a jolly good sense of humour, you know. But this one time I am serious. I get one more complaint from your study group, and you will not need to study anymore. How does that sound to you? Sounds good, hmm”?

His voice had the silent icy edge that scared the wits out of the other students, but I was used to it. I had been through these before. Father D’Souza would give a long lecture, to which I would shake my head in submission and leave. It was a kind of a pact between us. He was as inconsequential as Dad. He would do nothing of the kind. He dared not. I was not worried about him. I had wanted to deal with somebody else. As I had walked out of the room my head was bursting. I may have looked complacent to Mom, or maybe D’Souza thought I was playful, but I was dead serious about my studies, about joining the army. But now these idiots were out to disrupt it. When did I ever disturb those guys anyways? I remember Amir, Venkat and the other guys asking to solve a physics problem a few days back, and I had asked them to go to hell. But it was only for their good, because I did not have enough patience anyways to explain anything to those numbskulls. I had tried to explain simple problems to them earlier, but it was impossible. To explain anything to these guys one needed to start with standard three basics. So I had stopped. But it was odd that they would make that an issue over that.

I had wanted to get at the bottom of this nonsense immediately, so I headed to the third floor where we used to have our sessions. All of them were there. As I entered the look on Arshad’s face told me that he knew what had happened.

“You filthy dog”, he had snarled, “You don’t dare touch us now. That will teach you not to vomit at somebody’s food. You people think you are too good for us, do you”.

I realized what the issue was. It sickened me beyond belief, that he had interpreted it, the way he had. It was true that I should have apologized for my conduct at the lunch table, but then it was not completely of my own doing. The environment was a little overwhelming, and I would certainly have explained that to Arshad. But he had turned it into a much more serious issue. I don’t quite know what had happened next. It was either me or him, who began hurling expletives at each other, and then Amir and Sultan jumped into the fray. Arun and Venkat stood stunned in one corner. I distinctly remember though that it was me who had begun by picking up Arhsad’s lunch box and giving a blow to his head. Then all hell broke loose and all three of them jumped on me. Dadu had taught me not to take anything lying down. I have one hell of a fight, and but then there were three of them. They pushed me to the floor, repeatedly kicked me, and then ran away. But, Dadu had taught me not to take anything lying down.

“So when are you planning to start studying. There is no need to be complacent. You have to leave for the study group by eight thirty, do you remember”.

There was Mom again, droning like a bee as usual. Then I realized it was almost eight.I did have to meet the Principal. This time I knew he would have much to say. As soon Mom she disappeared into the kitchen I rushed into my parent’s bedroom. I know where exactly she kept her almirah keys.

Student shoots himself, principal, 3 other students Staff Reporter