The Lost One: Story of the One who ends it all (Shiva the Destroyer Book 1)

by Aarohan Atwal

  You don't belong here, he said to me, you must return home, while you can, I refused but he persisted, you can't go on like this he said, I wanted to stay with him, maybe you could come back for me with people, that's the only way you can help he said. And I thought and thought maybe what he said was right, I couldn't go like this forever, I had to break out, and one day when we had enough money he sent me packing back, he gave me some money whatever he had, and I was off for my home. Back in the town, but I didn't get straight to the home, I just couldn't find the courage, I loitered around the police station to see if they can recognize me, I assumed my parents would have come to the police, but nothing happened. So, then I did the second best thing, I hung around an old tuck shop where the kids from school came to eat after school, and I waited and I waited more, till someone eventually saw through the rags I was in, hard to recognize. I was back at home in no time, my parents said nothing to me, no concern, no remorse, just that I was punished - there'd be no lunch and no lunch money for me at school from now on. And sometime I wonder that's how they are funding my college education - by the lunch money saved, my fees btw is already fifty percent state scholarshipped.

  ~’~’~

  “You are a brave man buddy, you know that” Raul says. “You are our… the hero.”

  “Come on guys, nothing like that” “I am no hero, I just did what anyone in my shoes would have” I reply, “I only tried to help the poor chap.”

  “Don’t underrate yourself you certainly saved his life.”

  “That, I donno for sure” They looks at little suspiciously, I add “I hope he is doing okay”

  Chapter 8: Vairagi

  ERP - Enterprise Resource Planning, the class waits patiently for the teacher, we are infact waiting for her for past three days, she seems to have forgotten us, and students just wish if it could be the case with every lecturer. The teacher is a young lady in her mid twenties - Ms. Anjali Rawat - nobody ever asked her but my educated guess is she’s the product of the btech-mtech-lecturer manufacturing line. Anjali is one of those teachers with whom my relationships borders on the edge. She doesn’t have much of fondness for me, in-fact none at all, which is probably rooted in her belief that I am an egomaniacal masochistic sexist, an argument I blatantly deny. It’s just that, once, in one of her classes where the topic somehow diverted to women’s career I mentioned my honest opinion. I said something like:

  “It doesn’t make much of a difference if women work or not, or plan their career. Anyway after they are married or have kids they have to take care of the family, that’s their primary responsibility. And if you ask me, if I had a company I wouldn’t bother hiring women, it’d lead to loss in productivity.”

  She probably hates me and I know my ERP grades are screwed for sure until of-course something happens to her. Suddenly, there is a pin drop silence, not because people are feeling sleepy after the heavy lunch but it’s a silence which precedes what we call, the Dean:

  “It seems that they have got the news” Siddhant says excitingly. “You are gonna get recognized, finally” As Dean enters the class, everyone shifts himself to an upright position, leaning on the books that they just drew out of their sack.

  He commands an air of authority, like a stereo-typical Dean that you might have seen, he’s half bald, wears a grey suit and a tie, nice shiny shoes, and bears a dyed moustache. He gargles his throat, Siddhant, sitting beside me, elbows me sideways, I raise a notch up in expectation, and then he begins:

  “Hello class! I am here to give you some news.” Pause. “Some bad news”

  “Bad news?” Raul whispers over Siddhant’s shoulder.

  “One of our student, yesterday, was beaten up by a bunch of fellow students, he is hurt very badly”. Everyone is perplexed and holding their breath. He gargles again, signaling to stop the murmurs, everyone falls in line.

  “I just to want to tell you people, we are taking this incident very very seriously. This is an extreme act of indiscipline”

  “If anyone, anyone has anything to say you better say it now” “If you have seen anything suspicious, or maybe heard anything, you can directly contact me” He leaves from the same door he entered.

  “Those of you, who are found guilty, would be severely punished.” He roars, just before going out.

  “Why didn’t you say something?” He shoulders me.

  “What?” I ask Siddhant. “See, I am not sure what exactly what happened there. The last thing I want is getting into somebody else’s mess.”

  “Still, you should go out and help”

  “Help? I already helped the guy, look at me, what did I gain? I am a completely disoriented. I don’t wanna get into this any further” “I did my part, and that’s that” I stop.

  The tension is somewhat diffused when Pathak, in his slippers, and whistle on the lips enters the room. He walks in a manner similar to a Tollywood’s hero, a jhola hangs by his side and a goatee sticks on his chin. He’s one guy who never gets overwhelmed by Dean’s presence.

  The two almost bump on. “What’s up boss?” he says, in his harmless, rebellious, devil-may-care way. Then realizing that he’s staring an ‘agitated someone’, a guy who looks like an old man, and an authority maybe. He blurts:

  “I mean, sir. How are you Princi-pal sir?” He says stressing on pal.

  ‘It’s the Dean you moron’ Raul whispers.

  Dean scans him from head to toe, and says not finding his hippy-ness a bit hip. “To my office right now”

  The class waits for Anjali for few more minutes before everyone disembarks to their own personal journey. I too got to check the lab results for the operations that I ran yesterday.

  ~’~’~

  The section five of biotech lab is the area where the researches take place, it's secured by a fingerprint and a retina scan, I can't understand why such enormous level of security is required for some college lab.

  "An exciting news" says Vikrant.

  Vikrant is a guy from final year, working on something that he wouldn't share with me as he has reasons to believe it's a top secret project backed by the hushed corridors of the government. The guy himself appears to sharp and astute, big lips and pointy hair. He is working on recombinant DNA technology, that's all he could spill, for me to help him in the project.

  I myself not working on anything specific at the moment (seriously, and I am not trying to hide anything) but on smaller tasks helping the other researchers. And in free time, I am just working up few things leisurely - to find traces or the signature or what can scientifically termed as seemingly redundant (unexpressed, unused genes mainly) yet meaningful patterns.

  "What is it?" I ask.

  "We are getting the gene gun finally"

  Gene gun is an instrument meant for particle delivery to transfect cell populations; maybe I can use it for the transmission of human DNA itself!

  "I just hope that it turns out to be what it is promised to be."

  "Yeah, sure hope so"

  I turn on the monitor of my workstation.

  "Damn it! it is still running, two days and the search is still going on"

  BLAST Search is a search application for looking up a sequence in the database of DNA sequences. I ran a sequence that I extracted from the culture of yeast, against the human genome to see if there are any interesting resemblances. For next fifteen minutes I fry my brains over the incoherent nature of sub-cellular dynamics.

  ‘You know what, you should probably take a break’ The little voice in my head says.

  ‘I think you might have a point here’

  Let’s go somewhere mankind Shivakind has not ventured before, let’s sail the seas high, and crawl to the lands filled with creatures barbaric – flying anacondas, three headed mountain lions, super giant lizards.

  Seriously, let’s go to the library for now, that too kind of qualifies for the uncharted territory.

  ~’~’~’

  The library is housed in a big-big, very big hall, probably h
alf the size of a football ground, ten and tens of shelves kept parallel to each other amazes me, ‘so much knowledge, so less people’. The big wooden plate fitted on the wall right over the head of the librarian displays: “Keep Silence”. I, in-fact remember, I have been to the library earlier but it was different then, much smaller, fewer books, even lesser people.

  “Hello, how are you?” I ask the librarian in sign language.

  He shouts on my face and replies, “Can’t hear you, are you dumb?”

  “What? It’s you who is dumb.” This is a library somebody should tell him. ‘I can’t read the sign, it’s behind my back, is this your excuse?’

  I don’t even remember the last book I checked out or whether I had checked out any book at all in past three years or whether I have the library card or whether I took the card in the first place. It’s all confusing. My memory is abandoning me, I can’t remember a thing straight, it’s looped with if-else.

  “Sshh-” someone says, as if listening to my inner thoughts.

  “Don’t mumble” He says, “I am trying to study.” It’s Chewy, he is stooped over a big twelve inch book, pages of which contains photographs of 1920’s models. Chewy is a passionate, almost upto psychotic levels, about early era cars. It would be understatement if I had to say that he is walking talking encyclopedia of rustic cars. ‘It’s fascinating’ that’s how he explains his madness.

  There’s a book lying on the other end of the table, it really catches my fancy. With beakers, jars and some formula rolling over its cover, my best guess is that this is Chem-101 course book. As I look at it, I am splashed with a sudden splurge of memories from first year, Chem labs, bursting test tubes, breaking round bottom flasks - life can either be a round bottom flask or a flat bottom, it’s all how you make it. Edgy, round-bottomed, adventure seeking and live by the day type, or predictable, secure, flat bottomed with stability and warmth, plan for the future and live in the past type. Life is on us to make, what shape we give it.

  The book I hold is written by our chem professor, popularly called Mr. Beaker, a small, weak looking man, so weak that even a light breeze can blow him away. He travels from Ranipokhri daily, some 25-30 kms of bumpy road away, in his pink Maruti-800, it is said that it was gifted to him by his father-in-law, and handpicked by his darling bride, hence the color pink. The word is that our Beaker actually demanded an alto, but then his father-in-law replied he too wanted an HOD son-in-law. Back here, in the library I open a random chapter in the book, it’s about a compound, named Benzene. Although most of the stuff about benzene is its chemical geography, boring to its core, but there’s one thing that strikes out - its ring structure which people say Kekule discovered while he was high on methamphetamine or Meth for short.

  Meth is interesting, math is not. I wonder if they carry a recipe on how to formulate one, it would be a perfect academic study, maybe it can be put in the ‘Do it yourself’ section. The topic - benzene - seriously interests me. I get up from my chair digging into the shelves; chem is located on the second row in the line. I see a book by really renowned chemist and I pick it up, Benzene at page 357 index says. a sweet aroma greets me at 357, benzene it is surely.

  "You are fond of chemistry?" He startles me, while I am pouring myself into the beakers of benzene.

  "Ha ha, it just caught my eye"

  "I remember I just managed to get rid of it, almost flunked, twenty eight"

  "Passed with grace marks"

  "Yes, the grace"

  "Lord's grace!" I add. The look on his face tells me, he doesn’t like the word – lord.

  "I myself not a big fan of chemistry, I likes physics better"

  "Love to study the natural phenomenon?"

  "Yeah, I mean, how do they find an equation of out of everyday stuff, that's fascinating!"

  "-an apple falls on the ground, call it gravity, a ball rolls on the floor, call it friction"

  "-and" he says, "student escape the classroom, call it the entropy"

  "Ha ha! That's really funny." We both let a mild laugh.

  "Sh sh -" Some guy interrupts.

  The motorcar encyclopedia is lying unclaimed on the table, Chewy apparently has left. My eyes inadvertently fall on a machine. "That's 1939 Bugatti Esquire" Vairagi quips.

  “It's a thing of beauty, 8 cylinder engine, 450 horse power, 297.8 cu. in. displacement” “Hits 0-51 mph in less than 9 seconds, and uses six radiators to keep the car cool” “Just amazing” He adds.

  "How do you know all that?" I ask, puzzled. "Don't tell me you have one"

  "As a matter of fact we have one"

  "Ha! ha! you have Bugatti" "And so I have a Rolls Royce Phantom"

  "You obviously don't believe me"

  "Yea, like you live in Vasant Vihar"

  He smiles, for a moment, and nods his head. "I do" He says slowly.

  "You know what, either you are a very good liar or you are speaking the truth"

  He smiles again.

  "By the way, how did you get that card?" I say referring to the fake marriage card he showed earlier.

  "You see, my father -"

  "The card" I say, "Not the car" Only later I learned it was a technique of creative misinterpretation he was using. "Oh! that was quite easy" "I had this old card and I just photo-shopped the name and took a print"

  "Ha ha! You took quite a pain"

  "Not at all, hardly a matter of fifteen minutes"

  "Sh sh-" Some guy interrupts.

  "We should probably go now, this guy is really pushing my nerves."

  "We should get together sometime, I never talked to you for so long" He says.

  "Yeah, for more than two years together, and we hardly spoke"

  "Sh sh-" Interrupts again.

  "What's your problem man?" I say.

  "Let’s go" Vairagi says.

  "Wait a minute, Vairagi, let me talk to this moron"

  "I am not gonna voice down, like it or not" I say to the guy.

  "And if you are so much into studying why didn't you take admission elsewhere where really study?" I say, in an unsuppressed voice.

  "This is a library" He says.

  "You are from second year, ain't you?"

  "Does it matter?"

  "A lot" I reply, as I pace upto him, my hands itching.

  Seeing that, Vairagi springs into action, he pulls by my arm and drags me out.

  Chapter 9: The Call

  First internal or last internal my act is almost the same everytime - I stare at the wall straight across, chewing on the pen. I pretend to think really hard, trying to recall some concept, but not really able to jog my memory I switch to the creativity mode - If there isn’t one (concept), then you create one. I stretch my mind to come up something extraordinaire, something justifiable. I look sideways, the most relaxed person right now is Dhaval, not surprisingly, for he is carrying, quite literally, the whole goddamn book in his head. He has this extraordinary ability to feed chapters and chapters right from the textbooks into his head. And in free time when Dhaval Kandpal or DK is not cramming he writes viruses and trojans and run havoc on computer systems in public domain, he is a part of some cult hacking group, whose agenda is hacking into anything which is hack-able.

  I whistle to him slowly, trying to get his attention, hoping if he could share the answers.

  “Hey DK” I say in hushed voice, he chooses to ignore me. I raise my voice few notches up and try again. Instead, Surili the melody girl, looks back, she signals me something that I couldn’t understand, so I just smile in response without knowing what actually she meant. Only later I came to know that she was asking me if I wanna hang out after the test. ‘No, I’d rather prefer to hang myself to the ceiling’

  ~~~

  The door cracks open with a mild thud, creating an illusion of surprise, the element which is quiet liberally used by the - flying squad. I watch intently at the door, for I have nothing else to do, a girl enters the room, she doesn’t even remotely looks like a flying squad, quit
e a young one for the job, probably she’s a student, can’t be in first year - they don’t come to seniors, I know everyone in the third year and final year, so that leaves us with the second year. She’s accompanied by Sanjay Gusain, the hostel warden, and a lecturer in second year. She scans the rooms from corner to corner, horizontally, vertically, diagonally, and finally satisfied, she waves a no to Gusain. I continue to stare at her in wonder, what the hell she’s doing? And who’s she? I am intrigued. I push over DK and I whisper:

  “Do you know who she is?”

  “No!” He says, irritatingly, getting back to filling the paper, he can even beat a filing clerk to it.

  She squints her eyes in a very particular manner, the very instant I make an eye contact with her; I quickly look away. And she leaves the way she entered, storming, only this time she looks somewhat unsure, something playing on her mind it seems. Silence proceeds for a minute, and then the door opens again, she is back, everyone's left wondering - why?

  She says softly to the warden, “That guy” pointing out with her eyes. I look in the direction; I am the last person sitting in the direction she pointed out.

  Gusain asks “Are you sure? He’s the one?” Why do I get the creepy feeling that something shitty is about to happen. I ask, myself.

  Gusain walks in my direction, I dig my head into the sheets and take the pen out of my mouth, pretending to write. With a lowered eye I watch him cross one desk after the other. He is certainly heading towards me. He walks over to my desk, standing beside me, he says:

  “Get up.” I raise my head, pretending that I didn’t hear him.

  “What’s you name?” He asks.

  “Shiva” I reply.

  “Shiva” He says “You have to come with us.”