Neel Dervin and the Dark Angel

by Neeraj Chand

  “The meeting is intwo weeks away?” Neel asked. “What"ll I do in the meantime?” “You will continue your training with your coaches.” DoctorFahim said. “In the time left to us, we will find out everything possible about the meeting and make plans accordingly.”

  * * * It was almost a week after the meeting with Dr Fahim and the others. Neel had not had to go to Swan Labs for the last five days, giving him time to catch up on the rest of his life. His trainers had instructed him to keep practicing his exercises every night. He had told his mother that his coaching classes were closed for a few days due to renovations, and the extra time he had on his hands now allowed him to concentrate more on school and his friends.

  Neel sat in the auditorium with his classmates and the rest of the school. Several times a year their principal, Mr. Ojha, attempted to instill some life lessons into the hearts of the students and make them better human beings, and roped in some eminent personality to give a speech for the purpose. The students rarely remembered the speeches for more than an hour, the few who actually paid attention. For most of them it was a welcome break from the monotony of lessons, and the occasional performances from students varied the proceedings a little. During most of the speech from the eminent personality, however, students spent whispering to each other or staring blankly at the stage. The last such attempt had not been a success. They had had the chairman of a company speaking to them about the benefits of hard work. The speech in itself had been quite vigorous. But the man had a singularly depressing personality. His manner throughout had suggested that he had experienced things which would make Edgar Allan Poe shudder. All through the speech he had talked in an unaccountably crushed, heartbroken sort of way about enjoying his comfortable life now knowing he had truly earned it and deserved it, so that most students remained skeptical about his claims.

  Now the students were prepared for another mildly interesting morning outside of classrooms as they sat in the hall. Prefects and school house captains prowled around the hall, squashing the students whenever they seemed to be becoming too boisterous. Neel was trying to avoid catching the eye of Vikalp, the captain of gold house, which was the house he belonged to. Vikalp had tracked him down not long after the accident and wanted to know why he had stopped playing football, since he had stood a good chance of getting into the house team in a few years. Neel had tried his best to keep the answer vague, while laying as much blame as possible on his injuries, but he knew that Vikalp, who took the welfare of his house and his duties very seriously, was disappointed in him.

  “ You, boy! Stop talking.” Neel heard Gaurav, the head boy of the school, call out sternly. He had been speaking to Pawan, who had been holding a whispered conversation with Ghazi. Pawan gave Anand a glowering stare, and then deliberately turned his back on him and continued with the conversation.

  “ Pawan.” Mr. Pannikar"s voice came quietly from the back. “Stop talking at once or get out of the hall.” Pawan turned and stared insolently at Mr. Pannikar. But then he sank back slowly in his seat and became quiet.

  Their headmaster Mr. Ojha appeared in the doorway, a small, balding man with a dry manner, who occasionally displayed a sternness that kept most of the students in line around him. Behind Mr. Ojha walked an immensely fat man with small, puffy eyes and a jovial smile. He was apparently the guest speaker, and a lot of the smaller students giggled loudly as he passed by them, nodding graciously left and right. The prefects quieted down the younger students at once. The guest waddled his way over to the guest seats after Mr. Ojha, who was staring at the older students, silently warning them to behave. The head boy and girl shook hands respectfully with their guest, and he sank himself down comfortably, the chair squeaking a little in the silent hall. He waved to some of the younger students who were standing on tip toe to look at him, apparently unaware of the stir he had caused.

  “Santa Claus is coming to town…” Aryan sang softly next to Neel, and the students around him laughed in low voices. The head girl, Payal, then stepped onto the stage and spoke into the microph one. “Good morning Headmaster, teachers, my dear friends, and a special welcome to Doctor Pratap Dayal, our guest for today. We are honored to have such an eminent personality with us. Mr. Dayal is an alumnus of Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he earned his PhD in aerospace engineering, and a master's degree in applied physics from Johns Hopkins University. He accepted early in his career a position at NASA's Glenn Research Center in Cleveland. He was recently awarded the NASA Exceptional Achievement Medal, and is the lead author of several papers on compressible flow and computational fluid dynamics. I invite him to sit back and enjoy the program our students have prepared for this occasion.”

  Listening to the long list of his achievements, Neel could not help but feel impressed. The only man he knew with a bigger list to his credit was Doctor Fahim, and Neel knew what an important figure he was in his field.

  The show began. There was singing and classical dancing. A play by the lower standards was performed about a frog, a toad and an owl. It was heavily metaphorical, and left the students with a vague impression that it had been either about communal harmony or cheating during exams. Loud applause greeted Ronak"s performance, a senior who had created a mash up of Michael Jackson and Hrithik Roshan dances. Neel had to surreptitiously stuff his fingers in his ears on several occasions when the music got too loud, and was glad he was sitting well away from the speakers.

  The performances gave time for the students to talk among themselves with less chances of being heard.Aryan nudged Neel. “So, you"re coming to the grounds for the cricket match?”

  “Yeah.” Neel affirmed. “I"ll come to watch with Priyanka. ButI"m still not well enough to play.” “Better get better soon, dude.” Aryan said severely. “We always fall short of players at the park. Nitin"s decent enough when he"s paying attention, but half the time he"s off somewhere else in his head these days.”

  Neel looked over at Nitin four seats away. He was staring at the stage with a dreamy expression, and had clearly already drifted off. The sages of ancient times had spent years atop Himalayan Mountains, searching for a meditative state strong enough to ignore all distractions. Nitin had learned to achieve the feat in his youth while sitting in the dark and noisy auditorium.

  “I"m really sorry, man.” Neel said quietly to Aryan. “I really wish I could come by more often. Just these last few months have been really busy. But I"ll definitely come today.” Aryan nodded and leaned back in his seat.

  Then Payal returned to the stage and invited their guest to say a few words to the students. The guest of honor got up and waddled his way to the stage, the wide smile back on his face. Giggling and muttering broke out through the hall again. He stood in front of the mike and gazed at the audience. The students stared back, preparing to drift off. There was shuffling and shifting in the hall as children with low attention spans and too much energy moved around restlessly.

  “Thank you, Mr. Ojha,” he spoke into the microphonein a surprisingly soft voice. “For inviting me here, and for allowing me to witness the immense talent that your students have.” He paused for a moment to stare at the audience. “I thought long a nd hard about whether I should come here, and what I would say to you all if I did. But then I realized something. It doesn"t really matterwhat I say.” He paused again, his voice growing quieter. “Few of you will pay attention to my speech, or remember my being here after this session is over. Young people rarely feel the need to listen to advice, and even more rarely follow it.”

  “Because you are all immortals.”

  The shuffling and shifting stopped abruptly. Students looked startled, and several of them who had already drifted off sat up and started listening. Mr. Dayal stared at the audience, a strangely contemplative look on his face. “When I say immortals.” he spoke finally. “I am referring to the state of mind that people of your age possess.” He smiled. “Living completely in the present, with the future nothing more than an abstract concept. The magaz
ines you want to read today. The film you want to see at the weekend. The exam a month away that you have to study for.”

  “But getting a job? Putting food on the table every day? Taxes, insurance, and p lanning the future of your family? That is all years away. The future is of no consequence to you, because the gulf that separates it from the present is far too engrossing on its own. Why worry about tomorrow when you are here right now, young and healthy and strong, and bursting with the power to change the world around you as you see fit!”

  “Childhood is often seen as the time of beautiful illusions. When you see the world as you wish it to be. Reality is a closed box that is only opened a bit at a time. And that makes the discovery all the more thrilling.”

  “But once you begin to dig deeper,” Mr. Dayal continued, his voice now very quiet. “you come into contact with the harsher realities. Some of you have to deal with abusive families. Some of you experience neglect. Some of you live in poverty. Some of you have lost a parent or a beloved family member. Some of you struggle with illnesses, a condition which separates you from your classmates, that makes you feel different and alone.” Neel sat up straighter, listening very hard. “It is a uniquely difficult time, childhood. The sense of discovery is not always a blessing, and the thrill, or the horror, of finding out just how big and complicated the world truly is, rarely occurs again. You come into contact with new experiences everywhere, and how you understand them expands the boundaries of the world as you see it.”

  “But our minds are strange things.” Mr. Dayal paused, looking at the students intently. “When we first come across something strange which we don"t understand, our curiosity compels us to examine it, and often we use humor to cope with that strangeness. For instance, when first I came here, you were all amused by my appearance. You were joking and laughing amongst yourself at the way I looked.” His eyes swept over the hall, and several of the older students dropped their gazes uncomfortably.

  Mr. Dayal spoke again. His expression had grown very somber, and his eyes were suddenly as piercing as Doctor Fahim"s. “So what would you say if I tell you that I was born with a heart condition that prevents me from exercising, and that my thyroid gland is defective, so that my body balloons up more every day without my being able to do anything about it?” The students were all staring hard at him now, each face showing various degrees of surprise and embarrassment.

  “I was like this as a child too.” Mr. Dayal continued. “All my clothes were too tight for me, and I was hopeless at playing games.” His gaze did not falter, and his voice was steady as he spoke. “Needless to say, I had a difficult time at school. You all know how cruel children can be to each other. It did not matter that I was the brightest student in my class, or that I was a good singer. It did not matter that I was lonely, and needed friendship and acceptance. For the other children, I was simply the ridiculously, grossly fat one. I felt miserable there. I felt I did not have a friend in the world, and that I was all alone.”

  “Except that I wasn"t. I was too miserable to notice it at first, but there were also some good students there. Decent people who treated me with respect, and who eventually became my friends.”

  “So how should I deal with that part of my life? Do I stay stuck forever in that phase? Do I live a life resigned to being the freak?" Mr. Dayal paused for a long moment. “It would have been a tragedy if I did. Instead I studied, I held onto the few friends I had. And my life improved.”

  “And then I realized a very important thing. That all that I had suffered through school, miserable as it had been, was not permanent, and I need not stay wrapped up forever in those feelings and emotions.”

  “So that is what I want to say to you all today.” Mr. Dayal said, and his smile was now as wide as it had been at the beginning. “New experiences surround you at this age. I know young people feel emotions much more intensely than their elders. It is at once a gift and a curse. To handle it all sensibly, you need proper perspective.”

  “The perspective to know the difference between what is truly important, and what only appears to be. To understand the true worth of your life, and what makes it meaningful. Not money, or popularity, but whatever helps make you a more complete person. That requires introspection, and the courage to ask yourself, honestly,what you want from life.”

  “Don"t get so consumed in your emotions that you allow them to dominate your life. The person you have a crush on doesn"t like you back. The sport you wanted to excel at is too difficult. Your grades are inadequate and your parents are upset with you. Life seems overwhelming. These and other experiences suddenly become your entire world, so that they seem like life and death events. But they are not.And you should never let them become so.”

  “Your life means more than the sorrows of your personal tragedie s, or the helplessness you may feel sometimes. It is a beautiful, extraordinary thing, life. Made all the more precious because of its fleeting nature. Understand that a lot of the sorrow in your mind is only a product of the constraints society puts on you. There is more to life then getting good grades, or being a star. You will understand that better and better as you grow older.”

  “And then one day,” Mr. Dayal paused for a long moment, and all the students as well the teachers leaned in closer. “You will realize you have become truly mature adults.” he smiled again, but this time there was a hint of soberness in the smile. “And you will understand what holds meaning for you. I can"t tell you what that is, because we all have very different desires from life. But on that day, you will look back on your school days and wonder why such little things had seemed so important at the time. That day you will remember what were the really important aspects of your school life. The friendship of your schoolmates, the love of your teachers and families, and the experience of life stretching out in front of you forever. Of being immortals.”

  “And so I will leave you now with these thoughts. Don"t think your life is over because you are different,or don"t fit in, or are having problems in life that seem insurmountable. Those are all a part of growing up. When I was invited to speak at this school, I wanted to refuse. I did not believe I would have the courage to return to a place where I had been so miserable for so long. But then I realized something. I was no longer that scared little child of yesterday. I was no longer the fattest kid in the class that everyone made fun of. I was now a mature and educated young man with an unfortunate disease. And that is when I realized I was miserable no longer. I have many friends. I have a family that loves me. A job that I adore. I even got engaged.” he raised his hand to show the gold ring glinting on his finger. “To the most wonderful woman in the world, I might add.” he added with a sudden, boyish grin. “And so I was able to come here, and stand on this stage and speak to you all. That is the message I have to give to you all. Thank you so much for listening patiently, and I wish you all the best in life.” He started to step back, and then remembered something and stepped forward hastily to the mike again. “Oh, and also, work hard and study well, and all those other things.” He stepped back again, and this time gave a little bow.

  Applause and cheering broke out across the auditorium, and for the first time in memory, a guest speaker at the school got a standing ovation from the students as well as the teachers.

  Several of the students, specially the older ones, continued cheering loudly as Mr. Dayal left the stage and made his way back to Mr. Ojha. The prefects tried half heartedly to get the students to quiet down. Mr. Dayal passed by Neel, and he felt the sudden urge to call out to him, and tell him how he was different too. But the impulse passed, and then Neel joined Aryan and his other classmates in the cheering. Mr. Dayal"s wide smile was back on his face as he nodded and waved to the students, and then he exited the hall with Mr. Ojha.

  Neel filed out of the auditorium with his classmates. For the first time, he was actually thinking about what a guest lecturer had said to them. He was going over Mr. Dayal"s speech, and it amazed him how personal the message felt.
It was as though he had been speaking directly to Neel. All those feelings of not belonging with his friends anymore, of being different…

  Then the entire school broke out into chatter, and he could hear children talking excitedly among themselves all around him.

  “God, I could totally relate to everything he was saying…”

  “You know, I"ve felt exactly the same way myself, so many times…”

  “It was like he was talking justto me…”

  “I used to be teased all the time, too. That"s when I realized Shalini was my only true friend…”

  “Well,” Aryan said, walking slowlynext to him. “That was a lot more interesting than I thought it would be.”

  “I know.” Neel agreed. Under the teacher"s watchful eyes, their class formed a line and made their way back to their class in an unusually thoughtful silence.

  * * *

  Neel sat once again in the huge control room in front of the computer screen. Arjun and Negi and Premi were standing quietly to the left, looking on.

  “Form the information Kundan gave us,” Doctor Fahim was tellingNeel. “Our best bet for getting answers would be spying directlyon the meeting they have set up.”

  “Won"t Kundan knowI"d come after them, after he told me everything?” Neel asked. “He must"ve told Malik Saket about me by now.” “Not if he wants to keep his business safe.” Arjun spoke up. “Kundan"s entire practice rests on his reputation for being the best when it comes to secrecy and safety. If it gets out that a child was able to enter his stronghold, assault his legion of bodyguards, and get information abouthis clients out of him, he"ll never get another contract again. Kundan will try his hardest to keep the matter quiet.”

  “Which means we still have the element of surprise.” DoctorFahim said. “You have to remember that Kundan isn"t even sure which one of his contacts you were after, and why. The meeting place has been arranged by Alok Mehta, and will be heavily guarded. He will bank upon the fact that it would be impossible for anyone to fight through the army of armed men to get to him.”