Baba was the only one remained after the accident, rest of them left; my uncle didn't leave much money with my aunt, he spent most of what he had in the trainings, traveling and for the equipments. This ranch was his big dream, but his wife didn't care much about it, his sons didn't care about it either, but Uncle did, and Baba and his son Pratyush does. Baba spent a good part of his life on these fields, he care for it too much to leave, he is, his life is, woven together with the ranch by some invisible thread. From the lawns to the wooden burrows to the range in everywhere nook and corner of the property, his soul resides. Pratyush, his son, has the same zing that my uncle once had, his eyes twinkles when he talks about the shooting. Whatever they collect from Sunday outings they allow and the tour of the ranch, they spend in maintaining it, they spend it on the cartridges and other stuff. The locals too, recently, came forward, they decided to raise some money by collecting among themselves, from time to time. That's how the facility runs, that how it runs in the hope that it would one day bring back the glory of yesteryear and would again produce a bright shining star; only this time not to fade away, I hope.
I am no expert myself, but I like to teach her, I want to give her something, I want to give her memories, I want her to remember me like this, something that she could cherish about when she is all grown up. And then she wouldn't complain that her father didn't love her or her mother didn't care; but she'd always remember how much I loved her, and she'd always be at peace with herself. And when I am gone, she has to keep in mind to look after herself; and the feeling of being loved and cared would give her the belief she'd need, to go up against the bitterness and the harshness of the world. And that's why she has to learn to shoot and that's why I have to show her, a little at a time.
Dew, I love you! more than anything else, more than anyone else; and beyond any boundaries.
Did Shiva know time was going to tear them apart?
Chapter 6: The Turning Point
After the second lecture I bump into Dhaval or he was seeking me.
"Aron?"
I look back to find Dhaval Kandpal standing.
"I just got a message from Siddhant"
"Message? Siddhant?" I ask surprisingly.
"He asked me to told you that he's in some sort of trouble," "and he wants you to come over JJ's snooker"
"JJ's snooker!" I exclaim, now what kind of trouble he is in, this guy promise me he would never touch the stick ever again. Now what?
"You guys play snooker?" He adds, "Cool! I didn't know"
"Why did he inform DK, and not Raul, he has a cell phone too"
Seeing us, Raul barges in.
"What's going on?" Raul asks.
"It's about Siddhant," I say "He wants us to rescue him"
"Again?"
"Yeah! he's at JJ's"
"But I am walking out of it, I am not gonna go"
Dhaval watches us with intense curiosity.
"What's going on here?" He asks.
"Nothing," "I don't know what kind of help he needs" I play innocent, no point in describing the details that might hamper Siddhant's image in the college.
Raul takes me aside and says, "What are talking about Arone, we gotta help him" "I am not bailing him out this time," "He promised us"
"I know, I know, he did" "But we don't the full details about it, so don't jump to any conclusions yet, it might be something else"
"For God sake, he's at a snooker parlor, what else could it be besides..."
Raul cuts me short, pleadingly he says, "Siddhant is our friend we can't ditch him, come with me this is going to be the last time we'd help him, do it for me if not for him"
I pause for a moment to think and I reply with, "No," "Let him learn his lesson the hard way"
The bell rings four times, it's the Automata lecture, the last lecture before the lunch.
"Have you changed your mind yet?" Raul asks.
I shake my head, "I suggest you do the same too"
"I can't leave him hanging, I am his friend," He adds, "unlike you"
I stare in his eyes, I wanted to ask "Who was it who bailed him out last time? Who was it who put himself on the line for him?"
'Turing machine', the chalk scratches on the board, 'Hopcroft and Ullman Defintion'. He says aloud walking around on the podium, "Turing Machine is a 7 Tuple machine defined by-" He scratches again on the board - a set of obscure equation:
M = < Q, Γ, b, Σ, δ, q0, F >
“It's all greek to me” I mumble. “It is, as a matter of fact, Greek” DK sitting behind replies.
The peon comes in and says something to Mr. Chandola, Mr. Chandola calls Raul and says, "Mr. Raul, Dean wants you to meet him after lunch"
"...The internal state of a Turing Machine at any given point of time is determined by the..." The bell rings and finally the torture of automata gets over, Raul slams the key on my desk and walks out. "Raul!" I shout but he just leaves without looking back. I stare at the key, I guess now I have to go on the mission Save-Siddhant, and that too all by myself. What's going on today, first Siddhant and now Raul? What did Dean call him for? And that too after lunch, he could have called him straight away in this period itself and Raul could have gone to Siddhant after that. Wretched timing, just my luck!
I pick-up the key, and take the exit, it proves pretty easy to find Ashutosh's bike, a purple pulsar, in the parking.
~'~'~
I am out on the road wide but my thoughts still narrowed, little question marks floating before my eyes. And inside of my head being constantly banged by the hammer of innumerable logicdefying questions. What mess Siddhant is in? Why did he call Dhaval instead of Raul? And why was Raul called for by the Dean, Raul is a soft and gentle creature, what wrong he possibly could have done? Did those juniors really complained? They are so dead, if they did.
Little did I know at that time it was much bigger, much much bigger than I thought, I was being sucked right into a trap, a shroud of conspiracy slowing cloaking me over.
The bike picks up real speed as I pass through the baton turn, there's this saying that goes in our college:
‘It's a turn that can turn your entire life, so turn carefully when you are at it.’
Although on a first look it's a very simple, innocuous looking turn. Geometrically speaking it’s only about 120 degree, not a very curvaceous bend really, but the catch is, this is what makes it more dangerous - a lesser degree bend - it’s easy to lose control when you've just start picking-up speed (because of the slope) you really hate putting down the foot on the brake pedal. It catches you off-guard, and suddenly pops out to life just when you’d least bit expect it. In life too it’s these silly looking impediments that prove to be the giant stumbling blocks. We spend our time, so caught up and worried about the big problems that we don’t even get a chance to realize when these small blockades razes us over.
I am so caught up in thinking about being careful that I almost get run over by an MTB - Mussorie Tourism Bus. The air off the bus brushes my right shoulder; my heart sinks for a moment. But I am unhurt, unscratched; the bus rush passes me just a few meters away. As the bus drives away, I see in rear view mirror, a bunch of kids waving at me, through the window. Mussorie diversion is an interesting place, for it presents you a choice. you can either take a right and go to scenic Rajpur, a place so picture perfect that it looks like it has come straight out of Bollywood dance sequences, or you can trace back the road on which you came and go back to the city, or if you have really decided you have nothing else to do, you can take a left to the college. But today, for it’s a beautiful day, besides these basic choices it offers you more, more like free toppings on a scrumptious pizza.
~’~’~
It is said that the great battle of Krukshetra was fought in minds as much as it was fought on the ground. And the great battle of Mussorie Diversion too was fought in the minds and in - some dirt and mire.
From a distance it looks like regular gang fight - two groups battling out each ot
her for some idiotic reason - regional rivalry, false pride or maybe it’s about a girl who herself doesn’t know people are clashing over her. It is a norm rather than an exception, these kind of things happen every now and then in the college, nothing novel about it, and I admit we all fully enjoy whenever it does. For weeks it takes rounds in the gossip circles, what, why, when people speculate. And casualties happen too, not just in the physical sense, many image erodes, reputations charred, unpopularity meters shoots through. I slow down as I draw closer, there’s something about this that doesn’t fit. Semantically speaking, it all looks wrongs, too many people from one group, where’s the other group? Who are they fighting with if there is no enemy? Huh! I am startled by the sudden revelations; I notice as I observe even more closely, the mercury of my interest is about to break from the thermometer - the temperature of the patient (ruckus) is too high; the odd thing is there seems to be only one guy in the ‘rival group’. The group is showing no mercy, people are coming really-really hard on him. What a oneacre! (massacre of one person)
There was a pause in my head, my mind went absolutely blank for a moment, I thought of nothing and then all of a sudden I was overwhelmed by the downpour of the ghastly images that filled up every inch of my mind, my thoughts went completely berserk. There are times in everyone’s life when you got pulled into unwanted situations, you get into a fight that is not yours, and you can only loose if you meddle but then there is such thing called conscience that drowns you with heavy emotions, that compels you to stand up against the injustice and that forces you to respond by doing the right thing.
My jaws harden as I recall I bailed out on someone the last time I was needed, and ever since that day I felt a chill inside me, restlessness, I am at a constant unease with my own self. The images conjure of the memory, arousing a mix of emotions, anger and self-hatred. It happened years ago, but still fresh, still painful. I could have saved him, I failed, I should have him, I failed him. My fists clinch as I think about it, my face reddens and breath grows heavier. I slow down and get off the bike, I put it on a side stand, on the other side of the road. I sprint across without losing a moment and without putting a thought what am I going to do. Half a second later I am in the middle of the scene trying to make out my next move.
~’~’~
How much of it is truth when they claim they can see the future? A clairvoyance into a time tunnel? I close my eyes and all I see is redness, a hot dark redness, where is the future? There is no future perhaps, only the decision that takes us through the divisions of time. On a tight rope, on a sharp edge of the sword, hangs in balance the future of eternity.
I open my third eye-
~’~’~
Much much Later –
The way she takes the Activa directly to the MDDA parking lot without considering for a moment a second option, makes me ascertain that she has always been on the good side of the law and has herself been a model citizen. It was all okay till the guy, supposedly a fee collector, asks for fifteen bucks, fifteen bucks! I mean fifteen bucks that is completely insane. I say to her getting-off the activa, turn it around, what? She asks me looking bit surprised.
“Just turn it around” I say, “I’ll show you a better place, where I park.” “for free”
“Okay” she says apprehensively and turns that thing around. I point her in the backward direction.
She says, “We can’t go back.” I get a feeling that she is a difficult person to argue with and so I seize the control of the activa from her and drive in the wrong direction, I stop in front of an open area of a purposed fountain (purposed for last five years) near the uti atm where already a lot of two wheelers are parked. I fit in the activa somehow, when she freaks out,
“It's no parking” She says, pointing to the board right above my head.
“Who cares” I reply. “Don’t worry, I park her everytime”
The clock tower stands majestically at the square, we cross the road somehow and get on the other side, from where the paltan bazaar starts. In winters the slanted rays of sun falls directly on the face, making it difficult sometime to see things clearly. She tells me about herself as we stroll carefree, her eyes bowed down and I making a cap with palm of my hands to avert the direct glaze of sunlight. She tells me –
His father is a businessman, an export-import man, their company exported silverwares, the cutleries are in a great demand in America and Western Europe. They once had a very successful business, at about two hundred people working for them, those were the days, she sighs, they enjoyed every luxury of life – Celebrity parties, private school, crazy vacations. Vacations, she recalls, every summer she says they went to a different European destination, they went to Caribbean’s in Christmas break and went to New Zealand in the falls.
She's born with a silver platter, almost literally. But then she says, one fine day, while his father was in Mexico, a business deal went bad, he was on his way back when he was held at customs. It was a routine, a random check he was told. She sighs as she speaks.
She tells me, without completing about her father story, that her mother works at D&N what is that I ask. You haven’t heard of it? She says surprisingly. I give her a look as if it is the first thing they tell you when start at first grade at school. Ofcourse she says correcting herself, how could you know, my bad. She goes on to elaborate about D&N, Duncan and Noruku, a legal consulting firm (started by an American, and a half Jap and half American guy). She tells me it's one of the most prestigious law firms in the world, I see her eyes glitter when she tells me that, almost as if they, her mother, owns it. My mother herself is law graduate from Kellogs, Kellogs? I have heard that name before, I say to myself. Let me think where? Uhm... on the breakfast table, yeah. It doesn’t seem very wise from my part to ask the cereal company expertises in law, so I skip the question. Instead I say, Kellogs! That's amazing. Yeah, she says with the same shine in her eyes. And when it opened its branch in here, she joined it, she practiced for a year in US she claims. I bet she made enough if not millions circumventing America's legal system.
Do you wanna know why she joined? Well, for money, I wanted to say. Instead I shrug my shoulders in ignorance. My father, she says with a certain coarseness in her voice, was charged for drug trafficking. I feel as if someone has hit hard on my guts, with bare knuckles, I take a deep breath as listen to her with more seriousness. It’s okay she says, looking at my reaction, so my mother she says, was sure that he was innocent. Her use of past-tense for her father aggravates my fear that something bad, really bad, is about to happen anytime now.
As we walk on the narrow lanes of paltan bazaar, a biker pass by us, his one hand is on the accelerator and with other he is continuously blowing the horn. He is swinging the bike around the pedestrians like a swordsman does without harming its opponent. He barely misses Ita, brushing her shirt lightly. I mumble few swears before he dissolves in the crowdy lane. You were saying something, I say. Nevermind she replies, you don’t have to listen to my ramblings. It’s okay, I want to know about you, I reply. Tell me what happened. She continues, my mother she says joined D&N to take on to herself my father's case. But she couldn’t do anything she says, neither do our attorneys, our company hired the best that they could, but we couldn’t free him, he was indicted. That strong business and mafia nexus is there, he was found with narcotics during the routine check, she says laying extra emphasis on routine. He's serving twenty years she says almost stoically, but the heaviness in her voice gives it away. But all is not lost, there’s still hope, we have already appealed in the higher court, I just wish everything comes back to normal, as it was once.
We are almost at the Phatteywalla T junction when she spots something. Hey, she says, let’s check that. It's a street vendor in his 10"X4" feet shop, he is standing outside because there is nothing really like inside. His stuff, basically apparel accessories hanging, popping from every nook and corner. I want to buy a muffler, She says. The man lays down tens of different colors and
variety in front of her, and says
"Here madam this one is made of ox’s wool from leh, very fine stuff, you know leh madam?" “And this one here is made in himachal, hand woven from goat’s wool.”
“Goat's wool!” I exclaim.
“Yes, sir” he says with an air of confidence, only an expert in woolens can have. I don’t enquire further fearing he would begin to awesome me with his detailed knowledge of his domain, goats wool huh, who knew that?
“This one” he says, “is Cashmere”
“Cashmere?” She asks, I sense that she knows more about cashmere than our woolen domain expert here. The man says with caution, “Madam this is small cousin of cashmere actually, but almost same the quality madam and the woven with the same dexterity and love madam“
He says as he smoothes the muffler slowly with his bare hands.
“It's good” she says.
“Yeah, it seems genuine duplicate” I nod. “How much is cashmere for?” I ask him, looking at the genuine interest show by her. “
Two hundred and fifty only for the madam” he replies, “madam appreciates quality.”
“Are you out of your mind?” I yell in my mind.
“Hundred and fifty” Ita offers, the girl surely knows how to bargain.
“No madam” he says, “our margin is too less in this, it's not possible for me.
She says, “I can give you only one-fifty, that's all.
” He says as the drama unfolds, “Madam for you, you have an eye good things, he says as he looks up at me and then down at the muffler. “I can only give it for one-ninety.”
“One fifty” she says unflinching. She sure is a daughter of a lawyer, a negotiator.
She says,” deal or no deal?”
The Lost One: Story of the One who ends it all (Shiva the Destroyer Book 1) Page 4