Batch of 1999

by Anurakt Srivastava

Jagdeesh

 

 

  Things weren’t like they looked like. They were not that complex. Everything was clear. Jagdeesh developed that thing in the government workshop by utilizing most sophisticated and dangerous elements and machines. He asked the authority the permission to test these but that only resulted in indirect insults, cautions and warnings from the upper level. That increased his determination (it works like this) and he made the resolution to use it on common men to take revenge from the country which ignored him and disgraced him for his talent.

  School was the first place that came into his mind. Yes, no better revenge than destroying the future of the country. All his life he had been a nationalist. Even he wanted to become a scientist to serve for country. He used to stand on national anthem wherever he was and was a fan of patriotic movies and revolutionaries who contributed in the freedom struggle. Strange what an insult can do to a person’s whole ideology. All the love transformed into hate rage and now he was taking this step which was going to leave its mark forever. This plan hit him when his old friend, who was a principal of a reputed school, approached him to volunteer the art class and teach them about the importance of science and about its basic facts. It was a nice opportunity to spread the poison in the next generation. The only thing he had to do was to prepare an appropriate leaking container for the substance he invented. He already had the substance so rest was as easy as making lemonade. That’s what he was doing since childhood. Planting it inside the laboratory was a tricky business. But principal was a friend of him. Friend, haha, they were in the same class once. Everyone used to call names on principal when he was a child like dumbo and square. Principal never mind anything. He was too square really. And Jagdeesh needed a spoon to follow him wherever he would go. It looks good. So that was the friendship story. Now he needed that square once more and principal was eveready to help-out his old friend. It was only a coincident that a boy struck on the wooden shelf and it fell down. And it wasn’t needed. Gas was already leaking. The fall only dramatized everything and make it seemed different which worked in favor of Jagdeesh because principal never had suspicion on him. Principal was too straight to think bad for anyone. World was too good in his eyes even when he had seen everything in his life. So everything happened like Jagdeesh wanted. Results of the human test were better than he expected. He changed thirty lives in an irreversible way. He started a chain that was still going on. Which couldn’t be stopped now. Jagdeesh was priding himself for making such a weapon and pitying on his seniors for not recognizing his wonderful creativity. He was an artist. He made a great thing and its hit was so amazing that there was no need to kill the victim after that. It was worse than death. Authority should have affiliated and passed orders to develop it further. There were many areas of improvements still there. But they considered it a dead project and turned their backs to it. They were all stubborn bookish bums anyway. But they were forgetting that if Jagdeesh could do it once then He could do it always again. It was tickling him that he was the reason behind most of the hustle that was happening in the city these days. It was giving him a feeling of being powerful and brilliant. If only people knew then he would be recognized like a Nobel-Prize winner. Of- course some people got killed in the process but great things need sacrifices. And this substance could get the reputation which it deserved. It deserved the place Equivalent to best inventions of all times. Sad, that he born in this country or things would be lot different. He thought about the days when he used to shout vande mataram on the school functions with the finishing of national song. It always filled him with honor and pride. And how he used to roam around the streets with flag on 15th of august. People normally don’t expect such activities from studious boys but who bothers. It was a free country and free air at that part of his age. Things got tangled as he grew up. He became a scientist when his parents wanted him to do a regular more paying private sector jobs. He decided to make his country more secure and powerful. But this country let him down. People of this country crushed all his expectations. All his hard works and brains went into filling forms and keeping things in order. Bureaucracy and diplomacy made him work like a clerk and that was simply unacceptable. How could they? It was like using an anti-aircraft gun to kill mosquitoes. He wanted to do something solid and permanent. For that he needed the permission and it was not easy. Not that it was going to stop him either. And Jagdeesh kept on doing what he wanted. It was butter. He could do anything he liked to do there and no-one ever tried to pull him too hard. It wasn’t a bank after-all. It wasn’t a private sector company. Government is not professional but there are some advantages of having a government job. People used to take things light here. There wasn’t a war going on and no emergencies. Things were normal and a scientific workshop was only a formality of a developing country according to many people. Only to give a sense of security. Which was a right point of view in many aspects. But as the rule of exception some people are always at every place who take their work more seriously than anyone else. There are always innovative and hard-working people at every organization and Jagdeesh was one of those. He was always like this. during school when he used to be the monitor of the class, he did that work so seriously that other students filed a complaint against him. Hard work was all he know his whole life. He got a body of a rickshaw puller and it wasn’t a shame for him to wake up at nights for overtime and work without extra payments. Payments never mattered much for him. He only needed a few bucks per day to keep putting the fuel inside his body to keep working. And Delhi was good for this type of life-style. One can live like a king here irrespective of money status. It wasn’t so costly and wasn’t cheap either. Depends upon where you are standing. A samosa at lunch with hot tea and one rupee chapattis at night was all he needed. Though, he enjoyed old songs in the radio while eating instead of working. Old songs from the black and while age of Indian cinema. Romantic slow music without much of rock and roll. He did like to watch television but didn’t have the time to watch one. Though, he watched it sometimes on the telecast of a great movie at his friend’s house. Those things weren’t going to change the fact that he got a dream and all the will of world to make it come true. He used to talk big mouth with his colleagues and friends. He talked about his progress and the things which could be done to improve the existing. He was a man of plans. Big plans. He could make two plus two five and that was his real property. Straight way or not. The result was the only thing important for him. Sometimes he was handling the whole work of his unit and couldn’t be unhappy. He didn’t know unhappiness or anything. He was too busy for that. Feelings were the waste of brains and time according to him. ‘I love you’ he told his wife at first night. It was an instruction from her sister because he was not much experienced in women matters. His wife smiled because it was the first time someone had told her those words. It was the last time too because he never again expressed his love to her. He was a simple guy while not working. In the workshop he was a master. Always ready to solve the things and listen to the questions. He loved those. Questions means brainstorming and that was his favorite task. Crosswords, chess and solving problems. And from childhood he got a dream of making a great weapon. He improved many during his work including gunpowder and poisons. But that only increased his hunger to do something which got more of him. Which he could call his own. Everyone likes owning one thing or another. Materialistic or not. And there was a reason behind all his education and his marks and his hard work and all the dreams. That he could achieve what he desired and could use his talent in a right way. It was necessary for his salvation and to find the answer for himself. That was it. And he worked for it like a robot. He brought all the essential tools books and notes etc. to home and started working on it. He had a blue print in mind for an ideal weapon. It was to make people numb on a big scale primarily but as he worked more and more on it, Jadgeesh become familiar with many interesting things. Human mind was behaving in different way and no
t like he wanted it to. It was accepting the substances when he tested it by cheating but not like written in the books by the experts and not even like he expected it to. Grey matter proved itself deeper than his whole imagination and knowledge of more than 25 years. Brain was taking the doses and was producing its own, very illogically. His wife had been sent to mental institute because she kept shouting whole night and it had become unbearable for neighbors and even for Jagdeesh. His testing on his wife had failed. But he remained unmoved. He raised his standards and work hours. It had to crack and it did. After two years work he made his killer liquid which wasn’t what he had planned but not even less than that. It wasn’t made to make numb or brain dead but to transform the whole structure of thinking. Cocaine and alcohol does the same thing but this thing was permanent with no going back switch. Even Jagdeesh didn’t know all aspects of this chemical. He had a few test on his wife, relatives, neighbors, mouse and rabbits. Everyone is showing fiery symptoms. Two neighbors he tested on disappeared and never been found. His relative killed his wife and parents. One of rabbit ate the hook of the cage which couldn’t come out of stomach while keeping it alive at the same time. But those tests were on his own and couldn’t be much helpful. And he didn’t have the access to much resources like before because the workshop’s security had become tighter. He got something precious but didn’t know what to do with it. Jagdeesh put all his knowledge in this thing and it was going to make him proud now. Perhaps. Because the guys upon him didn’t think so and they killed Jagdeesh proposal to test and develop it. Okay. Then they told him to concentrate on his job which was his actual duty and for what he was being paid for. Okay. Then they threatened him of suspension. Now that was the limit so he went outside the room with all the oaths of revenge he could muster. They had to give him what he was obliged to. His destiny was incomplete without it and these fools were trying to stop him. Well, to hell with them. He knew that one drop of the thing that was in his hand could damn everyone here. But that wasn’t in his plan.