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The year 2040, India has become a global superpower under a rule of a dictator who is knows as "the president".
Several years of civil wars have reduced China and U.S. to rubble. India now owns a large part (called sector) of the two nations. The world lives in fear for they might be the next...
Shiva is an ordinary boy, a student, who lives an uneventful life... but that is about to change. Shiva finds himself at the center of a conspiracy, goal of which is to dethrone "the president" and to create a state of anarchy. "The Organization" believes Shiva holds the key to their plan, and they want him by their side, no matter what!
Will Shiva slip to the dark side, bit by bit... Or will he be able resist the temptation.
In the hazy grey twilight, I look back, dried lands, dead soldiers, purple horizons; the day has ended, and the darkness falls. I remember how it all began when I got suspended from the university and the unusual circumstances that led to it, just in the matter of ten days my life turned upside down; and this is how it happened -
Chapter 1: Identity
There was only one letter in the mailbox - a long brown envelope addressed to certain gentleman - Shiva. The boy looked at the envelope curiously; it didn’t say who it was from. He tore open the envelope and a white rule-less paper came out, he hesitated for a moment but then he unfolded - it had only three words written on it, right across the middle; he read it aloud:
Who are you?
The chalk hits me on the head. I wake up in the midst of unknown faces, dazed and confused, async with the reality. The old professor decides to make an example of me. Trembling with anger, he shouts. “Get out of my class” I look into his eyes and he confirms “Now!”
I pick up my notebook, a conglomeration of loose sheets bound together in the middle with a big staple, I turn to look at the saggy faces, I have been sitting among dead beings; I walk out in pity, slamming the door behind me.
"What? Are you out of your goddamn mind?" Raul shouts.
"I am confident, I have a feeling about it" I reply.
We are standing in JJ's, a snooker club, with neck deep in debt. Well, we have been losing for past three days, I guess that's got to amount to something.
"You just took one shot" Raul shouts.
"He is playing us" Siddhant replies calmly.
"Don't support him, it's all you fault to begin with" Raul says.
"Who's idea was it?" Siddhant hits back.
"Guys, guys. Calm down, I can feel the game inside me, let me just play now" I bend down to take the strike.
Few days earlier, on an idle Monday evening at Tehri, in Raul's dorm room -
It's a small room packed with books and CDs. Siddhant and Raul are lying on a single bed, which as a matter of fact can barely take the combined weight of two, it's not their fault though, the bed is weak. I am browsing through his CD collection, looking for something interesting.
"You have to put an end to it"
"I just can't-" Siddhant says squeezing his teeth hard "can't stop myself"
"It's like taking cigarette or doing pot" "Once you are in, it's difficult to get out"
"Difficult! Certainly, but not impossible" I quip.
Siddhant Kukreti, more and more I look at his physical characteristics more and more I am convinced he is molded out from an entirely different mold. He has long elongated fluffy face as if someone has filled in moist air from inside, big poky nose, a square jaw, and he is tall, tall like 5'8'' feet tall. His hair are charcoal dark with small curls. His mannerism though not awkward but still borders on funniness. He usually wears his light grey trousers, both on and off campus, even on weekends he wouldn't wear casuals, just the same uniform, I am afraid he is afraid of looking casual.
"What do I do? How do I get rid of this?" "I just can't stop thinking about snookers"
"Do you realize how much time you are wasting in there?" "and not to mention the money"
Siddhant shrugs at his helpless. "Then do something, help me" An uneasy silence envelopes the room. I put the CD labeled Purple Death in the CD-ROM of the system, but the only music that comes out is of the CD whirling inside the ROM. "Hold on" Raul says, and gets up from the bed.
He slides out the side cover of the system and connects a wire, "now it will play" He says. A soft music begins to play. 'What is this? Shakespeare’s missing sonnet?' I mumble.
"There is a way" Raul says, "Do you remember the law of diminishing return?"
"Organization Behavior?" I reply.
"Yes, essentially it means we love doing something because we derive a value out of it, and so inversely, no value means no interest" "And after a certain point, say breaking point, the value starts decreasing" "Clearly this is not yet happened with Siddhant"
"We have to hit the breaking point" Siddhant concludes.
"Yes, the breaking point, we have to saturate you" Raul says excitedly, rising up from the bed. "So-" Raul adds, Siddhant and I look at each other, "let's play pool, till he gets completely over it"
Play pool to stop pool, it seemed logical, but there was one catch -
"What is the guarantee that you guys will not end up falling into the same trap? and become one like me?"
"That's the risk we have to take" Raul replies dramatically.
Back at JJ’s, but earlier -
"What are the rules?" I ask.
"Huh?" Siddhant asks.
"Rules?" I repeat. "I want to play" He briefs me in short, what and how to stick it in, it was nothing that I didn't observe myself. "That's what I already saw" I say.
"That's about it" Siddhant replies. What I understood about game of pool is, it is like a carrom played on a table with sticks"
"What’s the bet?" The guy in black leather pants ask. "The usual five hundred?"
Siddhant hesitates. "Hundr-" He begins to say, but I interrupt.
"I say double or nothing"
"Don't fool around" Siddhant says.
I repeat with an open arm gesture , "Double or nothing, simple"
The guy gives me a stern look and replies, "Let's play"
"What? Are you out of your goddamn mind?” Raul shouts.
Now -
"If you pull it off, I swear I'll not touch the sticks again"
I position myself at the table and strike! Two solids find their way in the pocket, "So we take out the solid" Siddhant says.
We played best of three, and in exact fifteen minutes the game is over, and we walk out debt free, and Siddhant pool free.
"How did you do you it?" Siddhant asks.
"He obviously was a state champion, he just didn’t tell us" Raul replies.
"No, God swear, I played for the first time"
"What do you think we are, jokers, idiots?" Raul snaps.
"Well, believe it or not I am telling you the truth" I reply dryly.
It indeed was the first time I played the game, but it was not the first time I excelled at something in the very first attempt, I guess it's just in my genes, not from my father surely, but it's just there.
~’~’~’
I pick up my notebook, stuck between the other-side of the bed and the wall. Dusting it off, putting it under my arm, I pick up the pen from the study table and put it in my shirt pocket. I leave for the college. My mom is not home, cold and insipid breakfast is left on the table, my father is busy watching hockey reruns, my sister still sleeping. She excuses herself from school time to time, pressure is too much she says. I run my fingers through her entwined hair, and mash them gently. Often I'd sneak up on her when she's sleeping, her face fresh like a rose petal in the mornings, and her body curled up like an embryo in a mother's womb. I touch her soft fingers and a zest of life runs through my body, my beautiful little sister, Mihika, whom I lovingly call - Dewdrop, which actually is just a
straight English translation.
Sometimes I think God didn’t do us justice, my parents have never been an ideal parent, they never bothered about us. They can probably be best described as the perfect examples of self-obsessed, self-centered people who keep their own interests beyond anyone’s even their children’s; classic examples of narcissistic personality disorder if I may have to go that far to label them. Even their interest in us, whatever miniscule amount there is, often hinges around making us meet theirs.
My father was not around when my umbilical cord was cut. He was in the city busy earning for the bright future of his son that he didn't come to see born. My father was a farmer before he turned to the city to work in some paper mill. The land in our village was not really fertile, infact it wasn't even ploughable, the fields were farmed just like those in B&W films - with big strong bulls. The river Ganges flowed below but its water never could reach our perched lands, reason being there's nothing like reverse irrigation canal existed which could carry water up the hill. So, that was the end of it, he moved to the city, to earn and to provide, leaving his expecting wife behind. I never knew what he did there in the mill, actually I could never know because he left it soon after I was born, he joined in the state electric department - UKEC - Uttrakhand Electric Corporation. Later when he got transferred to Sambhala (a small hamlet surrounded by Shivalik on north, Ganges on east and Yamuna from west) from Sector five, Daulatpura, Ghaziabad, we too moved with him to the big city. I was five then and my sister Dew still unborn.
It’s really difficult to understand them, they act like such freaks sometimes, in-fact all the times, they don’t care much about us, and yet they want complete control over our lives, we are forced to do things we have no interest in, and we are asked to drop-out what we are excited about. If I have to recall things that my father or even my mother has provided or done for us, I wouldn’t even be able to count on two hands. They fail to see I have my identity beyond them, my needs, my rights, my life, my aspirations, my way of seeing and doing things.
I told my father once that I am keen to continue studies after graduation, or maybe I’ll take up research work, it interested me. One minute he’s sensible, a patient listener, another minute, he is a zealot, a fanatic. He was indifferent, he had different plans for me, he told me. He wants me to be a government servant, aim higher he says, pursue civil services. It will bring a lot of respect to the family. And my mother - she is in the same team, with him. She says, your father is a very intelligent man, you should listen carefully to what he says.
So much so for his wisdom that during junior year, the eleventh grade, I was forced, quite literally, to take biology. I hated biology, to the core, I hated or rather I pitied dissecting those hapless frogs and running experiments on little moths. And all this merciless torture, only because, my father had a plan! He wanted to push me into medical field, he saw a doctor in me. He said back then he wanted me to be a brilliant, all-shining doctor, and why so? Basically, because our family never had one, it’d be such a pride for him.
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Zero Defect: An autobiography of a software engineer Page 24