Every story should have a beginning
& so this story begins with a 15 year old boy sitting in a hesitating
posture. Neither was he in love, nor was
he about to commit crime. He was sitting in a barber shop, contemplating how to
garner courage. He needed that, because he knew the barber was about to use
unsterilized blade on him; yet again. As the barber moved toward him flashing
the bio-weapon, the boy’s eyes were transfixed: not due to fear, for he had
forcefully overcome it 6 years earlier by jumping from his two-storey building (into
a sand-pit btw) repeatedly till it became fun. His only concern was not to hurt
the barber by pointing out his lack of general awareness. You see, as a younger
boy whilst adulating the patience & bravado of Karnan (a character from
Mahabharata), his imaginative relative infused in him a lie that his bloodline
is that of a Kshatriya’s. It didn’t take him long enough (till he woke up that
morning) to realise the truth about his lineage, but that didn’t erase the pride
he had for embracing pain. The joy of
overkilling fear & the impish whim to welcome pain seemed cool to start
with. But it hurt. It hurt when he was brought back to reality by the pain the
barber had inflicted by ‘mistakenly’ cutting the skin of a child seated next to
him.
‘How dare you say it’s a mistake?’ - shouted a
voice. Tons of blurring sentences later, the boy took that child to his home,
with a sense of pride seeping from his eyes. It wasn’t about righteousness or rationalism,
for he knew he wasn’t versed enough to differentiate right over wrong. Instead,
in the age of individualism he banked on his intuition. That was why he stood
up against the thugs who thought seniority can get them anything. It didn’t
hurt when they hit him; as it only took a little push against gravity to make
them all choke. But what hurt the most was that he was waging a lonely battle
for his haplessly incognizant fellowmen.
That day he could have walked past
those people; but couldn’t bring himself to leave the society however
unbecoming it was turning itself to be. Hence he stayed an outlaw, yet not as
an outsider, ready to be summoned during the times of troubles. Neither did he
do it for honour, nor for glory. He did it only because his intuitive mind told
that it had to be done. Yet his
intuitions never were able to find the missing puzzle that would complete him.
It wasn’t merely a mathematical puzzle that could dwell deep into the three
dimensions of space. It was way beyond the four dimensions known to man that
which would make him the learnt & the learner, the empowered as well as the
overpowered.
People say good things happen when
its least expected. True to that, on a sunny day, the eternal light cast its
ray on the scrupulous boy. Before he could comprehend the meaning of it all,
the plane took off using the surge of momentum. There was the thunder, the wind
and the rain. But above them all was the ray of hope. It became his strength but
as it so happens it was his greatest weakness as well. For things that land in
your hands can either be crushed or be protected, as he flaunted & espoused
his pride, he ended up crushing it before realization struck. They weren’t the
torn pieces of paper which could be stuck together; they were the shattered
pieces of a mirror which would only reflect the ruined image thereafter. Hence,
stranded, lost and only the hapless people to turn back to, the boy for the
first time got tired of being with people who make him feel like an alpha male.
Every story should have a beginning & so this story begins with the boy wanting to turn himself to a man.
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