Mango Chutney: An Anthology of Tasteful Short Fiction. (17 page)
Read Mango Chutney: An Anthology of Tasteful Short Fiction. Online
Authors: Gabbar Singh,Anuj Gosalia,Sakshi Nanda,Rohit Gore
At long last, I found myself in the classroom sitting on a wooden
bench
with my hands on a notebook on a wooden desk that was at a higher
altitude than my butt. I could sense an aura with which the Cause had
gripped a significant portion of my age group. Sitting in a corner was the
winner of the half-marathon from our school in full formals, while on
the other corner sat the editor of our school magazine, with ‘Concepts
of Physics’ lay open before him. Both of them staring intently at the
white board hoping it would reveal formulae that would forge a path
into fantasyland.
Suits walked into the classroom after a while with a grin pasted on his
face, and distributed bags and stationary to everyone, the first phase of
our indoctrination. It reminded me of the time the local hockey associa-
tion, who in their efforts to promote the game at the grassroots level,
had distributed sticks to children of theslums. That they started fighting
with it the next day was a totally different matter altogether.
he manipulated the acoustics with the efficiency of a cow in heat.
“These are the two most important years of your life.” The grin had
turned into an expression ofseriousness. Somehow I managed to control
myself from snorting. I had heard people say this to me during my tenth
standard while I played Delta Force on my computer, like a junkie who
found his next hit. I wasn’t angry: why did they have to use ‘most’ if they
were going to use it again after a year.
“You need to abandon your cricket bats, hide your television remotes…”
and he went on being excruciatingly specific about how to systematically
murder any activity that was fun, all for the Cause, for only the most
devoted are rewarded at the end.
I felt like I was in one of those communist countries that look gray,
where everybody seems to work all day for a cause nobody knows about.
I wouldn’t have been surprised if, later in the day, we were asked to ad-
dress each other as ‘Comrade’ and the faculty as ‘Dear Leader’.
their constant bombardment of us with legends about IIT.
“It is no other place but the heights of achievement in our country. Be
-
lieve me, they would put the summit of Everest at second and winning
an Olympic gold at third.” A faculty member started bawling midway
through a class of organic chemistry noticing the apparent disinterest in
the crowd. “A place with monstrous possibilities and shimmering fan-
tasies, a palace where knowledge and excellence inundate the environs,
where the sun shined paved pathways with perfectly manicured lawns
led to hallowed buildings brimming with the purest ofknowledge. Angels pranced around ready to drown you with sustenance and cutthroat
innovation that changed the world.”
Nobody, though, cared about any of this. What everyone did care about
was the treasure chest he happened to mention, which lay at the end of
this journey.
Getting this was no easy ride, for you had to know the speed of a ge
-
netically programmed, super-intelligent bird that would fly to and fro
between two trains which for reasons unknown would run towards each
other at speeds in square roots.
Fed up in my efforts which included a sinister plot to kill the bird, derail
the train and finally trying to mortally hurt myself with institute-branded
stationery, I pulled myself to Suit’s room hoping to ask for a refund or at
least demand for photographic evidence of the pathways lit by the sun
and frequented by angels.
Surprisingly, Suits decided to oblige me and pulled out a copy from his
desk. It was a prospectus of IIT Kharagpur. Dusty, frayed buildings with
their paint peeling off dotted the landscape, the grass, too, was green,
not lush green nor like the greener grass on the other side. I felt cheated,
like the suicide-bombers who are promised Jihadi heaven in lieu of
bombing a crowded market.
Suits could probably sense the startling drop in my drive which must
have showed on my face and said as I was leaving:
“Study hard you, you really don’t want to end up in some college named
after somebody å la Lakhotia or a Gupta or Anatrao or Keswani, It
would stick with you all your life.”
As I revisited the graying buildings in the photographs in my
head, I began to wonder if this was the biggest piece of misinformation
being spread by grownups in order to make us study for two more years.
We were Pavlov’s dogs that would salivate when shown food but would
later have their throats sliced. Maybe this place was purely the stuff of
hypothesis, or myth: you can only crave to go there but you can never
actually get there.
the pressure evaporating. I had seen through the sham.
human bird now
stranger reasons ran at speeds in logarithms.
The coursework and its subsequent problems frequently married the
laws of physics with scalding chemistry and bore illegitimate progenies
of mathematical conundrum. The only way to survive this ordeal
seemed to create more fantasy utilities regarding the degree
about how it was the ultimate pinnacle of the success ladder,
like a trophy wife, that would also later land you a trophy wife.
The two years of classes, assignments, tests with demotivational outputs
seemed like having to meditate while seated on a frying pan. The fruit-
lessness of the whole exercise was only compounded by newer facts
emerging about the place, thus furthering the aura around it and con-
vincing me that ‘This cannot be for real’. Rumors prevailed, of the sex
ratio in IIT’s that bordered on numbers long found in mystical king-
doms where an evil king decides to order a genocide against females for
reasons as stupid as losing a game of ludo or a girl hanging up his call.
“We have had our first deserter from the Cause.” I was stopped short
in the parking lot hearing a classmate murmur to a group, few months
into the course.
“Mayank Sharma, says he is going to pursue his dream of pursuing
architecture.” He further added, to laughter from the group as they bal-
anced their cycles, with the overweight bags weighing them down from
the shoulders. I failed to understand how following one’s dreams can be
a subject of mockery.
“Even you said you wanted to quit.” I asked a member of the group,
joining the conversation. “No way.” His eyes widened. “You don’t real-
ize the importance of the degree from IIT. It could make or break the
dowry economy of my village.”
“Dude, get serious,” another one from the group snapped. “While we sit
herewonderingwhatuseisof Internettotheworldatourdialupspeeds,by
the way, searching it can only induce further pain with slow speeds. IITians
getspeedsthatmirrorthatof light.Inthenameof bringingintechnological
change all this speed, though, is subtly diverted to watch porn.
The arguments they raised, though tempting, needed serious relooking
for they failed to back them up with any authentic paperwork. On being
slightly interrogative about this, I was heckled, termed a non-believer
and was insulted as fit to being a ‘Liberal Arts’ student.
I had the last laugh, though, as days passed and none in my batch of
numb-nuts were even close to figuring out anything numerical with the
behavior of our super intelligent bird. As trails of zeroes piled endlessly
on our weekly result sheets, they started to come accompanied by a mo-
tivational quote.Sometimes they would just be instances from The Life
and Times of Suits. As in ‘at the tender age of 10 he wrote essays in four
languages.’ The practice was discontinued after someone wrote below it
‘Uppercase and Lowercase don’t count as two different languages.’
Finally a month before the exams, Suits entered our classroom after a
year (in the meantime he had only been sending over-the-top power
point presentations, I couldn’t remember much of it except they had a
lot of birds flying towards the sky).
“The last two years have been tough on us.” He skipped the niceties
and the usual exaggerated monologues over achieving goals and came
to the point he had come to make. “We have been pressurized; have
endured magnanimous coursework, though nothing goes in vain as the
land of opportunity beckons you. United States and its universities is
where change is happening, still the Americans need us more than we
need them.”
For a moment I felt vindicated. He didn’t mention the ‘I’ word even
once. As if the place had suddenly stopped admitting students. I even
wondered whether he would dare to tell us to go out there, follow our
dreams, not become a part of the herd. I kept wondering, only for all of
it to go downhill as he elaborated.
“The sooner you start preparing for the GRE, the better your chances
are of getting admitted into the best American universities. Software
engineering is the hottest field with the swankiest pay packages and best
perks.”
He went on till he finally unveiled the banner of his new GRE coaching
venture that promisedthe best scores to get lucrative opportunities at
universities abroad. The class looked around spellbound, for them IIT’s
had ceased to exist and another venture of madness with another mad
race for aspiration was now beckoning to them.
The final nail in the coffin was when I looked around after two years
at the local engineering college, named after someone I am too embar-
rassed to enunciate, and I spotted familiar faces. The bespectacled boy
in the corner scribbling notes or the one who had made indexed sheets
with formulae or the one who would try reactions between inorganic
and organic chemistry to gain greater insight into the workings of IIT
and so on. The only conclusion I could arrive at was that either none
of us made it or I was right all along and IIT never existed in the first
place.
Meanwhile the last I heard of our super-awesome bird was that it was
trying to curve a parabolic path between two trains whose low morale
made them want to want to match up in complexity by bringing in a
factor of pie into their speeds.
End of a Weekend
Ruchika Goel
There is one thing worse than a fingerprint on glass: an obstinate finger
-
print on glass. The kind that takes ages to begin fading before it turns into
a smudged ghost of a print. Then after turns and turns under a furious
tap and the most dedicated scrubbing, it disappears off the owner’s pre-
cious vessel. This was one of the cons of the job. But if Preity wanted to
keep it, she had better get down to cleaning this blot, and the next, and
then the one after until every man, woman and child in Paschim Vihar
was snoring in bed and the kitchens were closed. But that was still hours
later. For now, it was just her and her castle of dishes.
Laughing, Meera Employee of the Month marched into the dining hall at
rush hour, smiling and chatting up customers, silently opening ‘Section:
Desserts’ in front of the children, and collecting tips into the sleek pocket
of her waist-apron. Sundays are the best days for business. The boys
from college are out to hang and families can drop by for lunch or dinner.
Meera loved this shift, not only because it was good for her pocket, but
also for the variety of stories she gleaned.
Just like the man who came in right then; Casual-formal, strolling in with
a generous share of time, and all alone. The rose gold frame of his watch
smacked light across the room. It caught the eye of an old woman in the
very end, eliciting a hard squint. This was a new place for him, and he
lingered at the threshold selecting his seat. To his left, there was a spot by
a family of five that included a newborn. To his right was another close to
where he stood, in a corner with a view of the rest of the hall. He chose
peace and quiet and distance. It was just that kind of day.
He flopped into the seat, bounced a little right back and when finally
settled, went through the menu. He already knew what he wanted. All
he had to do was find what seemingly exotic name this place gave to a
regular coffee and sandwich, and then order that. As final confirmation
that he did want his lunch here, he looked up and swept the room. He
saw a pretty waitress looking at him. She quickly flashed him a smile, and
disappeared around the corner. This place would do.
“Hey, can you…” Table 3’s query was cut off as the waitress rushed to
take the order. “Okay, I would like a plate of…” but the general gather-
ing was not to know what plate he wanted, as then the newborn erupted
into a wail, shattering the peace of its grandparents in heaven. The cul-
prit’s mother followed it into frenzy, juggling the baby, trying to coo him
into silence, embarrassed by the commotion and trying to keep the other
kids in their seats. Pronto, one of them toppled a glass of water as kids
and their wild-horse legs tend to, and the other splashed her foot in the
puddle.
Meera rushed the order to the kitchen. She passed Preity, who
held a mop and wore a frown, while the baby screamed with-
out inhibition and innocent bystanders suffered in silence.
All, but a little boy. You see, boys when they are little are smarter than
when they are all grown up. They don’t fret through their days worrying
about their hateful jobs, the lack of a head-turning girlfriend or their
ageing parents and their silver smile expectations. In fact, they don’t fret
about most of anything. They exploit the power of noise cancellation,
coupled with their lack of cares, and hum to themselves, waiting for their
extra-mayonnaise burger, unaware even if a baby wails right behind their
head. Life is wonderful! Which begs the question if children are indeed
as brainless as they tend to be treated, but then that is not a question we
need to answer now. Kartikey strung his guitar to the hoots of his audi-
ence, side by side with the greats of Metallica. He went on one knee as
the chords became quicker and the music faster. He banged a wild mane
from side to side, secured to his head by an orange bandana. Two chains
around his neck clanked as he moved. The beats rose, faster and faster
to an end worthy only of true metal. Thank you, thank you! He’d learnt
from Hetfield that real rockstars work the audience even after the song
is over. He walked onto the runway and blew kisses. He clasped random
hands stretched up from the moshpit and left more yearning. He joined
the rest of the team on the main stage and yelled goodbye... He was the
new member of Metallica and the audience loved him!