Godlove’s Duty-II

II

I always felt father-like when a kid touches my hands. I could not see Rahul’s hands, although I did feel his touch on my right arm. He was holding it. I could not see his face properly. Everything around me was a blur.

No one talked. I could hear someone sniffling. It was Rekha. I could not see her, either. I blinked away some watery membrane that calloused over my eyes and made my vision fuzzy.

Then, I told the story:

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When the prime minister of One’thumbria woke up that day, he found a messenger from the king on his doorstep. He knew something would be wrong. That was unusual—a messenger from the most powerful person in the kingdom. Usually he would wake up at about 6 in the morning and after all his morning chores went to the palace with a bag in his hand.

Once the Minister was told what to do, the messenger went back. A heat of anxiety rose inside the minister. He was told to do one of the most difficult jobs he had ever faced. 

“Find out the best servant in the palace. The award was one million gold coins.”—the message said.

His wife came by right at that time. Her name was Chakky. She asked, “What caused this gloom on your face my lord?”

“The king wants to find out the best servants in the palace. How can I? I have no way in front of me to find the best one,” the minister said.

“But why not my lord?” asked the woman.

“Because there are many people who does their duty well. It’s not easy to find a single person. And doing one’s duty well doesn’t mean one is happy with what one is doing. It could be out of the king’s fear that they are doing what they do.”

After listening to her husband intently, Chakky said, “Don’t worry, I have a way out of this situation.” She mumbled something secretly into her husband’s ear.

The minister got up, though confused he smiled and got ready to go to palace.

He walked through the alleys and verandas in the palace. He kept his face down as if deep in some thought, but focused on each and every person he could observe. He held a list secretly inside his long robe, from which he could pick each servant from his name and work. He stopped by each employee and asked two questions.

At last he reached at the end of the list. There was only one person left—the gardener. His name was Godlove. He was a young man.

He could have become a soldier, the prime minister thought.  The prime minister was an aged person and he looked like a thin post dug on the ground. The young man looked well built and strong like a thick growth of teakwood.

The minister went near him and decided to ask him the same two questions he had asked others. The young man seeing the minister coming towards him stopped his work among the vegetables and stood up.   

“Why do you work here?” the minister asked. To this question all the others had said somewhat like ‘I didn’t get the job I liked, that is the reason,’ or ‘everyone does it, don’t’ they?’ and the minister remembered what his wife had whispered into his ear.

“One must love his job to be able to do it better.”

Godlove looked puzzled at first at the sudden question of the minister. He smiled quickly and politely and said; “My father taught me the best thing in life is to serve others. It gives happiness. When I thought about it, I found plants and vegetables give better result when served. That is why I serve them. I am their servant.” He looked down, afraid of being punished for not saying ‘I am the king’s servant’, as he saw the minister’s face changing.

The minister shot his second question, “What would you do if you were expelled from your job right now?” From others he had received answers such as; ‘I work so well, the king will never consider sacking me ’or‘ I will die for sure of starving.’ The minister’s wife had warned him of such answers.

The young gardener had no confusion this time. He said; “I would be happy still, because the fixed work schedules in the palace and the interference of other weak skilled workers ruin my garden, mostly. I am sorry, but that is the truth. I will keep serving plants better outside. I love them. I know they will help me survive.”

After answering the question, Godlove’s face turned red and he looked down. He said to the minister, “I know I have spoken against the king and I will be punished. I beg you please do not humiliate me in front of others. I will go away at once. Do not harm me…” his eyes welled up and hands were folded together.

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The prime minister spoke up, holding Godlove’s shoulder, “The king wanted me to find out the best worker in the palace. I didn’t know how to, so I asked my wife. And she told me one thing, “Those who love their job never depend on others, they will find a way to keep on doing their work, at one place or another.” And dear Godlove I am proud that I found out the best employee in this palace—it’s you.”

“But…sir…” Godlove fumbled; his eyes all watery.

“Yes, you are. For you, your love is your duty.” And Godlove had a sack full of gold with him in a guarded chariot when he went back home that evening.

I looked at Rahul as I stopped the narration. He was staring at me intently. 

[To be continued...]

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Godlove’s Duty

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I

Thecalling bell rang and I opened the front door. It was drizzling outside. There was a chilled breeze that kept the hairs on my hand and neck upright.

A middle aged woman stood there with the hand of a little boy on her left hand. She smiled. I had to smile and invite her inside. My family came out too. “I will take coffee, you sit, make yourself comfortable,” my mother offered.

The woman, with the little boy sat on the chairs I gestured them to. I was in my daily work; I must bang in a couple thousand words each day. I am a writer, by design, desire and the divine.

“This year my Rahul is joining school, first standard,” the woman’s voice rang up as I was returning to my den. I turned towards her to be a polite neighbour, intended in listening to a guest.

“Great!” I said.

The woman was looking at me. “That’s wonderful news Rekha!” I heard my mother from kitchen in her top voice. “How old is he?”

“Now five,” Rekha said. “I was just expecting Lal sir to bless my Rahul and advice him something.”

I saw the look of earnest admiration in the eyes of Rekha. Sometimes, there are moments that cross us, which bring a whole new feeling through puzzling experiences and we realize ourselves being part of the cosmic cycle. That was one such moment. I was asked to bless and advice a kid going to school for the first time!

“I read your blog posts. I always do,” she said, “your memoir was very impressive. We need people like you who keep the gut to change the world, save it from corruption and evil.”

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Writing my memoir was an attempt to make sense of the senselessness that took place in my life and around. I never thought myself capable of changing my very life, let alone the course of the world!

The little boy stood up and came towards me. He stooped down and touched my feet. I wanted to run. But I prayed and put my hands on his head. A story blinked to life in my mind. This is his story, or must be, I thought. I decided to tell it. So I sat down in a sofa nearby and motioned Rahul to sit beside me.

Rekha’s husband is a high ranking police officer in Kerala Police. I knew what the answer of the kid would be like. But still, the question mattered and I asked, “What do you want to be in your life?”

In front of me was a five year old, going school for the first time. The question would have seemed stupid if I had asked it with adult seriousness. Though the truth ran reverse, I attempted a full smile close to a laugh, pretending the question to be an adult’s curiosity on the naivety of the child. The question would definitely have intimated already, his mother and my mother—who was distributing steaming coffee now—about my naivety on different stages of human life.

“You."

That was the only word Rahul said in answer.   

[To be continued...]

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The Devotion of Suspect X: A Book Review

The Devotion of Suspect X begins with the literary subtlety, maturity of scenes and simplicity that are peculiar to Agatha Christie and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. A writer of many novels and short stories, Keigo Higashino has an inclination towards mystery fiction. He is also the current president of the Mystery Writers of Japan. The engineer turned writer won the Edogawa Rampo Award for the unpublished finest mystery work. There is no denying that he weaves effective plots and riveting chapters from available, easy to connect situations and ordinary humans.  

Keigo Higashino Image Courtesy: Google

The translation in English has been done by Alexander O. Smith with Elye J. Alexander. Whether it is the kotastu table or the Shinozaki station, the elements of Japanese cultural and social life emerges tangible and with inevitable certainty. The fiction in the book absorbs the cultural reality and holds firm to it, making the culture a part of its fictional landscape. In that sense The Devotion of Suspect X takes an often prioritized ground of cultural transaction in times of globalization. The translation, unlike the translated works published in India from regional languages, hold a quality unmatched.

 The Devotion of Suspect X is the third book in Detective Galileo series of crime fiction novels by Higashino. The story happens in the suburbs of Tokyo, Japan. Two people, Yasuko Hanaoka and Tetsuya Ishigami, a high school math’s teacher, get involved with an irrevocable situation with Yasuko’s ex-husband. That is where the story takes its first turn; into the crime fiction the labels of the book proclaim to provide. Yasuko is a single mother and works in a lunch shop. She lives with her daughter Misato in the same apartment where Ishigami lives. Ishigami is infatuated towards Yasuko and lives in expectation of a time when he could make his first move towards expressing his real feelings for Yasuko.

Even though the series is titled Detective Galileo who is a physicist named Manabu Yukawa, the plot revolves around Yasuko and Ishigami. The mysterious Affair at Styles or The Hound of Baskervilles might not have a connecting character ridden as a second character, contrary to the approach by Keigo Higashino. In fact Yukawa’s character appears to be delineated in contrast to Ishigami’s, who is a former classmate of Yukawa and an exceptionally skilled mathematician.

The Devotion of Suspect X also provides a conspicuous space for its woman protagonist, Yasuko. For Yasuko, after the murder of her ex-husband it’s Ishigami who becomes an invisible controlling force. Yasuko is clearly inclined towards the desire for freedom and happiness. After the intervention of Ishigami into her life, she realizes it’s not freedom from her ex-husband but subjugation under another man.

“She was just dealing with a different man now, and this time, there truly was no escape,” she feels. (289)

Yasuko is sketched genuine, unlike many woman protagonists who appear to be so but are just flourishes of their author’s indiscriminate affinity towards the market models—like in James Patterson’s Women’s Murder Club series. In what could be termed as ‘Barbie doll literature’, James Patterson can be often seen maneuvering within areas of a feminine space, which is built as superfluous models of a mainstream cultural kitsch, inevitably failing to wedge the doors open into national prohibitions that need a little probing.

The high school system of Japanand the general academic hollowness too find authentic spaces in The Devotion of Suspect X. As a matter of fact any one reading the novel can find it strikingly similar to the situation in academics in any other part of the world. Ishigami, the math’s teacher finds it hard to go forward with his work at the school. One of the instances appears to be a sudden torch light to sleeping eyes.

“He [Ishigami] found it impossible to carry on with his own work at the new school. Most of the professors there were consumed with vying for power and protecting their positions, and not one cared the least bit about nurturing young scholars or doing groundbreaking research.”

The Devotion of Suspect X is published in Japanese in the year 2005 and the translation in English came in 2011, through Abacus publishers for Hachette India. The novel costs Rs: 350 only and has an intriguing cover design. It seems all the international news papers filled their pages with raving comments about the novel, which sold 2 million copies in Japan alone.

The thread of the mystery is kept straight from the beginning as the readers are aware of what horrible thing happened in Yasuko’s life. Ishigami helps her to hide her crime; however at the end Detective Galileo, Manabu Yukawa crosses his path and brings about an unexpected “killer twist” to the story. Even though the writer successfully executes the final twist by keeping the middle part of the novel relatively slow and sagging, the final conclusion Yukawa reaches are his mere conjectures. He is unable to outwit the mathematician; he just poses the mirror of morality in front of his former classmate and friend, Ishigami, the X factor.

After the surprising twist in the story, you will find Ishigami taking all the applause, not Yasuko or Manabu Yukawa. Yasuko’s feminine self is pitted against the moral codes of the social system and of course, the ethical suggestions imposed by the same culture that run through the nerves of the society.

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The Devotion of Suspect X is narrated in third person singular. The language is simple and straight, just like a mathematical equation. Character sketch and the plot inevitably supply the feeling of an engineers’ precision. Literature can be engineered, and engineering can be written with words and metaphors, however, in the first case, even though the publicists call a book “million copies sold”, it remains stale. Still, The Devotion of Suspect X saves itself from such demise, though narrowly.

*****

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Notification

I have been informed by some of my friends and readers that there is a misunderstanding about some references made in the series of blog posts titled: Life Scrap, The memories from an accident. This is my memoir in which I intended to portray the day when a horrible bus accident occurred and I was narrowly saved from death.

I would like to make it clear that this blog or any of the posts made in it are never meant to be disgraceful to person(s) or places. If any such misunderstanding occurred, and anyone directly or indirectly involved with any of the references are hurt, I regret it truthfully and register my unconditional apologies on the matter.

It is therefore notified to all readers that all the posts in the memoir titled, Life Scrap will be removed until I analyze them for references or areas, direct or indirect—if any—that could have been taken as a harmful remark on any individual(s) or places.

With heartfelt regret and apologies,

The Indian Commentator

Anu Lal

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The Crystal Pond

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Fantasyis the reality of a fable. There are some standard characters that drive all fables forward, a farmer, old man or woman, and some strange creatures. But these don’t make a fable worth reading. It’s something else, something close to what we know about the world we live in. The most powerful thing about fables is that they can talk about the prohibited in a unique fashion, like the story below. 

“I never dared to do this before. I feel proud of myself at least trying to get the mangoes now,” he spoke to himself. His eyes were tracing cautiously, any visible trace of wild animals that could harm him during his lonely quest.

He was a farmer and he went to the forest to collect some seeds of a variety of rare mango tree.  

He moved deeper into the woods. He saw a pond, and that reminded him how thirsty he was. As he stooped to drink from the pond, the cloth that he wore around his neck, a part of it, fell into water and for his shock, turned into crystal.

He took it out. It had been cloth a moment before, but now changed into glass. What a transformation! It was magical but horrifying, he thought. The glass part of the cloth stuck with the other cloth as if glued together.

He had to drink water. He had water in front of him; however the reality existed not in his favor. The thirst increased beyond what he first thought.

He kneeled down near the pond and looked into it. On the surface of the water he saw something reflected. It was a flower, a white two petal flower on a tiny plant, near the shore.

“Who would be responsible for this magical pond?” He asked the flower.

“The Creatures who look after this forest,” the flower said.

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The farmer remembered the Creatures from the stories told by the older people in his village. They were Creatures with the head of a buffalo and the body of a lion. They resided in the depths of the forest; they were said to be beings from the Other World.

He felt a fierce rage for the Creatures. He felt the desire to curse; he felt it apt.

“Where are the Creatures?” He asked the flower.

I don’t know,” the flower said.

“Those are responsible for my plight. I know my thirst too is induced by them. The only choice left for me is to drink and die a crystal statue. I want to see them. Where are those cruel—“He was about to curse them, but right then the flower cut in.

“I have something to ask you,” It said.

“Ask.”

“What did you see in the water when you looked in it?”

The farmer groped in his thoughts for an answer and said, “I think, I saw you, little flower.”

“No…” the flower said with an unsettling grunt. “It was not me,” he said, “think deeper.”

The farmer felt a light bulb going off in his mind. Yes, it was his image that he noticed first on the surface of the pond.

“Do you have any idea what that means?” the flower asked seeing the farmers’ expression.

After thinking for some time, the farmer said, “All I know is that the pond was made useless by the Creatures and I am going to have a word with them.”

“Do you know how powerful the Creatures are?” the flower said, “If they can transform the water into a magical potion just imagine what they can do to you, if you pick a fight with them,”

“Whatever…. I just want to take my revenge,” he said.

“But why do you still want to fight with the Creatures? Didn’t you understand what you found in the water?” the flower enquired in confusion.

“What? I found myself in the reflection,” the man said.

“OK. Do one thing, just check one more time, what you find in the water,” the flower said.

With enough second thoughts as common to any skeptical human being, the farmer went close the pond and looked into it. He found his own eyes staring at himself; then the little flower nearby.

Waves were forming on the surface of the water with the wind from east. It was getting late and if the night fell, he would be lost in the forest. It was believed in village that the Creatures don’t prefer outsiders in the forest after the sunset. The farmer’s heart was beating faster and throat was drying with thirst. Then, right then, he found something yellowish on the bed of the pond—the Flower of the Black Star!

He knew this flower from the tales grand mother had told him in his childhood. She had told him that the flower was brought to the forest by a group of demons who lived in the kingdom of the Beast King. However, the village storyteller had a different version for this story. He always said that the flower had descended from one of the Black Stars in the sky. No one had seen that star, because it was black in color.

Even though there are many stories about the Flower of the Black Star, on one fact, they all united—the flower was extremely poisonous. The Flower of the Black Star can poison even the air near its presence and the soil it falls upon. The farmer’s mind paced like a kingfisher’s dive.

So that was why the Creatures turned the water into a magical potion that transforms anything into crystals. They wanted to caution everyone.

The farmer looked at the little white flower. The flower smiled at him. The yellow Flower of the Black Star gleamed from under the pond like a sign of warning, a poisonous reminder of something the farmer now regretted.

Image Courtesy: Google

“I thought they, the Creatures were trying to kill me, but see; their intention was to save my life. Am I too late?”  He asked the little flower on the shore of the pond.

“No, my human friend,” the flower said, “However, every realization cries for action.”

The farmer dipped the long pole that he used as support for walking in the forest, in the water. It became a crystal pole. He tested its strength by thrusting it hard into the ground nearby. It was strong and sharp.

The farmer looked around for an appropriate spot and started digging a new pond. 

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On this Easter Day

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On this Easter day, I would like to share a memory and a seed I had planted on the luscious ground of that memory.

Although I had thought of posting my Easter story today, I could not. The reason is that I received the Easter story only yesterday night [7-4-12] at the church where my family and I visited for prayers. I returned home late and could not write the story down. Still, I am hopeful that I will be able to contain the story in words soon and present it to you.

I feel the story and its writing down is very important, since the story is my experience itself, though it would be told in the language of fiction. It is through this experience I received the wisdom of ‘the Candle’. I am eager myself to write it down and to see how it all turns out.

The memory I intend to talk to you today about is embedded in my student days, during my graduation. I did my graduation in English Literature as correspondence course, where you get all the course materials postal and no classes to attend like regular colleges.

There were of course some days of formal classes called ‘contact classes’ where teachers come and introduce different courses to the students. These teachers were appointed by the University and were always in a hurry to finish things off within the allotted time. Yes, there was an allotted time schedule for these classes, eight hours, in two days for one paper, usually.

So a couple of my friends and I decided to join a parallel college to help us with the portions.  After one year, the manager of the parallel college called me and told me it would be difficult for them to carry us as a class, because we were just three students and we must therefore start looking for some other college to help us.

We all had this common thing, then,—and I attribute this to a specific reaction common with humans—we were totally, pathetically shaken. The problem was with the course we were doing. There was no other parallel college in the city or nearby areas that took Literature as a course, as all of them were obsessed with Commerce and Engineering Diplomas, the vogues of the day.

We felt ourselves a bunch of outmoded morons, who now had to go looking for someone to help. The first person I decided to call was Prof. Kammat, an old retired professor who taught us in the parallel college, kind, benevolent, and good hearted.

“Don’t worry, I am with you,” he said and nothing more, even though I expected more words to cool off our hearts full of the lava of concern.

The next day he rang me up and said, “I have talked with our manager and made arrangements. We can use one of their rooms and I will teach you whatever you need. Don’t worry. You are no longer vagabonds.”

Another of our teachers too came forward to help us, Mr. J.P, at the request of Kammat sir. J.P is known by this short name, and till this day I have no idea what his real name is.

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Our marks in the final exams were top row, especially among the correspondence students. Later, I joined for Masters in Literature and Professor Kammat went to Bangalore to live with his son’s family there.

I kept my contact with him all through these years. There was something always special about him; he did not just reply our queries, but always came for us, asked how we all were doing and told us how he enjoyed teaching in Bangalore.

The previous Saturday, I sent him a text message, just to let him know what I feel about him. It’s true that he knows it as I never kept my thoughts from him.      

I would like to quote that text message here, for my readers:

“Hello sir,

There is a magic in every living organism that is hidden, for the most part, in their lives, even from themselves, until a wizard comes along and transforms their lives forever. In my life, you are the wizard and I am the magic you initiated. Good day!

Anu.

The seed of these fifty-one words has grown in the fertile soil of memory to become this article. I am just a spell. The wizard is hidden from everyday sight.    

Happy Easter!

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A Lizard’s Tale

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Upon the wall of a University English Department I survived, almost alone with a strange sensation in my head, along with an urge to cut my tail off sometime.

I always felt the presence of a voice, like a creature inside me that I knew never would exist, which puzzled me enough to think of fleeing.

The reason why I was alone was strange too, especially for those who live in houses and other close relatives of human abodes. Mostly our enemies come in the form of strange poisonous sprays or birds, none of which appeared in the place I live in, however, most of my family and friends never came here. Those who lived fled from the Department, because they said they all felt a suffocation that cannot be explained.

I didn’t run away, though. When I was about to make off, I realized the voice was coming from my head. It said; ‘if you ran, you would find no roof ever to crawl under’.

That was it; it was this same voice that puzzled me about things in life as well as the world around me; it was thought.

The legitimate reason for thinking was life itself. One alive would think, must think. From the moment I learnt I possess this mysterious inner sound, I was happy and at peace with myself. There was a certain pleasure in knowing the presence of something mysterious by one’s side. Therefore, even though, this sound told me conflicting things, I never lost my peace.

I could see two eyes staring at me; sure they were not looking at me, but were helping the mind focus to think.

It was the teacher who taught British Prose and Drama. Most of those classes, in which he taught prose, I slept. I could hear him later, struggling in his cabin to make sense of the useless information the course taught. His face would be scaled with concerns of an unprintable sort.

Another day, the young teacher came in, his face lit with a unique light; it was clear he was not the person on the previous days. And just before speaking to his class, he did the same thing; staring at the wall, but I was watching him from behind this time.

He asked the students to write a play in two acts.

I wished I could meet his staring eyes, since each time it reminded me of the happiness I felt when I first realized what the voice inside my head was.

When I thought about this happiness, I was reminded of seeing other people around too; people who never looked at me or the wall, who never thought anything, whose thinking never bloomed into life.

One such person who taught students once in a while in that same class room, summoned the younger teacher, the next day. He was an older person, who called himself Dr. A. Bhasan, and he would stand up and chant his name all the time as if it’s a mantra along with his importance in the University, though his mannerisms betrayed the truth of the absence of anything remarkable in his mind.

The young teacher whose name was Manu Paul, surly deserved admiration; I looked for a proper place to watch them. He always thought something new for the students, and practiced it in his classes.

He thought.

Dr. A. Bhasan sat in a room with a banner hanging from its door on which these words were written: “The Head of the Department”.

Bhasan was checking through some of his piles of papers when Manu came in. There was one more person in the room, apart from Bhasan and the young teacher, a young woman who worked with Manu, one with whom I found the same problem as Bhasan, the complete absence of thoughts.

“Please sit down,” Dr. A. Bhasan said.

Manu sat down with a pleasant face.

Bhasan asked him, “You have seven plays to finish, Manu Paul?”

“Yes sir, and I have more than one and a half months’ time left, it’s just two months since the semester started,” Manu replied.

Bhasan asked, “What if you were on leave for one month? Would you be able to finish it then?”

I didn’t hear Manu saying anything in return. Bhasan’s voice rose again,

“Did you give them a writing excise?”

“Yes, I made them write a mock play in two acts, just two pages, sir. The theme was ‘Godot in Search’, an attempt to imitate the famous play Waiting for--,”

“But the students have a negative opinion about it!” Bhasan cut in.

“What sir…? I couldn’t get you.” Manu fumbled for words, and I could see his face drying off colors, I could see the season was never what I had expected.

Bhasan looked determined, “I took the feed back from students. They said you gave them a useless writing assignment. It was a creative writing assignment, right?”

I heard Manu saying, “Yes.”

“We have a literature course to run here, there is no point in creative writing exercise. You are a creative person, I know, and that is your problem too. The students told me they could not understand the relevance of the writing exercise and they also think it was a waste of time,” Bhasan said with a grave expression.

There was something that I knew existed in my memory. However, I could not remember what it was. It might have been a thought, an idea, or a thing.  Someone of my friends had told me about that long back; unfortunately I could not remember it now.

Manu turned to the woman co-worker and I could see his pale face. “I tell you, you must apply some techniques to improve your class room dynamics,” Bhasan was saying. He had changed the topic.

Bhasan’s face again put on a falsehood; it was a fake all-knowing look. He did not think genuinely, for I knew the way eyes move when one thought, I knew what thoughts are.

Under his mask of expressions Bhasan said, “I do it in the best way possible; my class room dynamics is the best. I don’t just teach the course materials. I give them works to do in the class room. I play some drama and keep the attention of the students. I even sang them one of the folk songs of the tribal people!” I could see his face exploding with ripples of gaudiness. 

Manu smiled at Bhasan, but that smile carried a question, I could feel it on my skin like how I felt when a thunderbolt hit the air. I didn’t hear him asking it though.    

“OK, then; that is all,” said Dr. A. Bhasan and I saw both the teachers leaving the room. I had the same sensation of forgetting a thought, an idea, or a thing, again.

I went inside the cupboard and found my usual comfy room between the wall and a dusty tome with hard bind, with two words—one was ‘Holy’, which was familiar to me as the happiness at the moment of finding food or a great companion—written on it. The second word puzzled me; it started with the letter ‘B’. However, ‘Holy’ pacified me, as it meant something good, for sure.

I took a long nap there, hoping that the waves of uncertainty about that lost thought would be abated.

Just before falling into sleep, I felt I remembered what I had forgotten and I dreamt of lemmings.

Truth and lie confused me, but the happiness of having thoughts was more than the confusion of conflicting ideas. Some times what happened in front of our eyes would be truth, but sometimes, it’s both. I was there when students came to Bhasan to give feedback, inside the roof between the book and the wall.

Bhasan himself invited some of the students into his office. I heard him ask about Manu’s class, and they all started telling him about the writing exercise and how excited they all were on doing it.

But suddenly Bhasan got up and asked them, “Creative writing? What is the use for that? Why do you need it?” His face looked hurt and jealous.

I saw the students standing around him nodding with their minds all gone flabbergasted at this open confrontation.

I didn’t think about Manu Paul or those students any more, but lemmings. They all followed the one that believed in a lifeless conviction and drowned.

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