He woke up by chirping of mynahs and sunlight like any other usual morning except this was not the one. The twelve to fourteen hours of mugging of biological terminologies and duelling with physics and chemistry problems routine made him go straight to his study table with his oral cavity filled with tooth paste foam and tooth brush sticking out. Rubbing his eyes, he pulled out the thick physics book, withered by regular almost war front use, to revise the basic fundas which any mortal with even the least IQ suggests to do. Shuffling the pages he turned toward the schedule stuck on the wall to get ready for the day’s struggle. Suprisingly to him, it was blank. Nonplussed, he didn’t know what to do now and was fiddling with the idea of solving another mock test, when he saw the big green circle on the date.
Now, everything was fuzzy and his vision tunnelled to that green circle. Green is supposed to be his lucky colour and he knew why it was there. That was the day his college entrance result was going to be declared. He spit out the foam, washed his face and rushed to the phone.
“Hello”, heard the hurried voice from the other side. That was Toby, his best friend and his chaddiyar.
“Hello”, he said. “I was waiting for your call only. Meet me at polytechnic, there is a cyber cafe nearby” Toby replied.
He hung up, pulled on jeans but before that his lucky boxers. He stuffed some cash in his pocket and rushed, when his mother came in the way with her bowl of dahi-chini. He stuffed some spoonfuls and rushed again.
Why are the parents so much involved with their kids? Why don’t they just let them be independent and ready to face failures or success or whatever? So much of involvement makes their kids shaky. Don’t they understand this simple thing? Anyway, this wasn’t important now. It can be dealt with some other time. It was the day he laboured for. May be now, he would have enough confidence to steraighten out his friend-cum-love relationship with his high school sweetheart. May be this time he would be equal to her. May be this time he won’t have to face failure again. Soon he realised there were much more important things involved such as two years of hard work, and his ability to face failures offcourse, which was on the verge to break.
“Bhaiya, polytechnic”, said rickshawala, when he realised he was supposed to get out of the rickshaw and the sight of fellow passengers who were staring at me for wasting their time. Paying to the rickshawala, he saw Toby waiting for him in his usual loose t-shirt and jeans trying to hide his lanky stature. He moved toward him, Toby waited for him to come near and turned to move with a hint of acknowledgment of his presence there. He followed Toby meekly. He looked at Toby, who was calm, which was very much contrary to his usual nature or may be he was equally nervous or had he already seen the result? He was trying to figure out his behaviour when Toby turned and put hand across his shoulder. “Tension mat lo dost, tumhara ho jayega. Hum hai na tumhare saath, tumhare lucky mascot.” He spoke in his more than usual excited voice. He nodded and tried to match Toby’s usual faster pace than him. They entered a cyber cafe with a paper sticking to the door, “CBSE medical results---Rs.10/-“. It was a cramped place where computers were stacked like the books on library shelf, with two people operating on each system, some visiting pornography sites, some chatting and rest.... he didn’t know doing what. Toby wrote his roll number on a slip and passed on to the man sitting at the counter. How come Toby remembers his roll number? He is not even sure that Toby’s birthday is on 10th or 11th of February. His focus came back to the computer screen when the man asked to confirm the roll number. He confirmed and pressed enter. The next thing he saw on the screen was written in bold red letters “sorry, you are not selected.”
They came out of the place and he felt nothing, everything was silent, no chaos of the crowded market was reaching him. He could see only the lip movements of the sabziwalas and the people bargaining with them, but no voice. The next thing that he felt was the squeeze that Toby gave with his hand across his shoulder. “Don’t worry; you will get through the other ones. There are lots of results yet to come.” How desperately he wanted to believe him, but this was his best bet. Toby wanted him to lure in to more talk which he was not in a position to.
He reached home and his mother stood up from the sofa hurriedly to come near him. “Couldn’t get through”, he said and moved to the music system. He put in a CD and moved to his room. His younger brother was sitting on the bed; legs stretched with a book in his hands looked up to him but didn’t say anything. Probably he overheard or maybe he knew by his face. He went to his book rack and was trying to figure out which book to go through. It was all messy and he was looking for the physics book, his favourite one. But it was of no use. What to do now. There was a void, an infinite void and he had no idea where he was. The only thing that he could sense was the A.R. Rehman’s music.
Dhakka laga bukka....... khayega re mukka....
Dhakka laga bukka.....khayega re mukka....
Hat jaaaaa...hat ja re.... hat jaaaaaa.....hat ja re.... hat hat hat hat hat hat .......hat
He leaned on the rack and tears came out. Then He cried, cried after long......for long.
Ban ja re ban ja mashal-e-rah..... o yuva yuva....o yuva
Dhakka laga bukka....... khayega re mukka...
