It was a cold half moon night with the road ahead masked
in a foggy darkness making it difficult for us to determine whether we were moving
in the right direction or not. From somewhere in that darkness beyond us floated
the unbearably off rhythm whistling of Hai
Apna Dil which unmistakably signified that MKD was trekking behind us empty
handed in a cheerful mood.  For me, however
there wasn’t anything to cheer about and neither were my hands empty and that
was  basically because I had to carry a
whole bagful of rock specimens which MKD had collected over this week long  field trip in Spiti Valley. MKD was my
thesis guide and the only person in these circumstances who could lead us back
to our camp but yet there was something in that whistling that filled me up
with an irrepressible urge to empty all those rocks in my haversack over his
blissfully bald head. The only way to fight that urge was to think of something
nice which under the circumstances wasn’t at the moment coming to my head and I
was lost in those type of thoughts when Ravi’s voice rang out from below asking
everybody to stop because MKD was missing.

I joined theses under MKD since somebody told that Asha
Oberoi was also doing her theses under his guidance and I thought that I could
be with her in the field and if my courage permits, propose to her. However,
she chose to do her theses under someone else and I got ceremoniously ditched.
The ultimate fallout was this geological field trip in Spiti where instead of a
moonlight romantic escapade with Asha Oberoi I had to move about with almost a
tonne of rocks in a cold foggy night with three other lunatics and a super
eccentric teacher. This field trip itself was supposed to have taken place in
Udaipur but then MKD managed to net a big budget project sponsored by DST which
required a field study of the Spiti Valley near Manali. As a result of it, my project
proposal underwent a sudden gigantic geological swing and I landed up in this
godforsaken terrible depressing place called Takche in this horribly cold mid
autumn conditions. Not a single soul other than ourselves were visible anywhere
nearby and even the hills around were devoid of any sort of vegetation. Far
away in the horizon the glacial peaks of the Chandra Mountain stood across a
sun less dull grey sky making the ambience more frigid than it actually was.

The very day we arrived in the Spiti Valley and
camped in this remotely desolate place, things started to go horribly wrong. The
day of arrival was spent in planning the field work and none of the plans made that
day were actually followed in the rest of the trip. I was asked to share a tent
with Roy and the whole night he snored like a steam engine, so loudly that
anyone within a radius of five miles couldn’t have a single wink of sleep. The following
morning my bottle of drinking water which I had saved for the next day
fieldwork disappeared which I later discovered on the bank of the river where
somebody had left it after washing himself subsequent to attending the calls of
nature. This was too much for me and I spent a whole hour charging everybody I
came across of stealing my water bottle and using it for something it wasn’t
meant to be. This continued for quite sometime until I was assured by MKD that
I would be provided with a fresh bottle of water before waking up in the next
morning. The next day after waking up I found my bottle back filled with water
beside my bed side, the very same one that was left on the river bank,
thoughtfully and duly returned by its user with a tag ‘Water fit for drinking’
attached to it. This time I chose to keep quite fearing further disastrous and
degrading consequences.

The next few days we had to endure MKD and his
tuneless whistling as he explained us the different rock types of Spiti Valley,
their chemical composition, mineral content and their assumed genesis as if he
was Raju Guide showing us Chittorgarh fort. Within a few days it seemed that he
was repeating the same thing over and over and Rajnish was even of the opinion
that he was probably showing us the same rock repeatedly and giving it a
different name each time he described it. 
  Whatever be the case, there
wasn’t any other way out other than to note down his lectures, follow
everything he was uttering and then when he was out of earshot, curse him with
the choicest invectives under our breath. Yet each time we swore against him,
he seemed to know about it and it appeared to make him more and more cheerful.

Meanwhile the weather God did her best to add to our
miseries making the surroundings as grey and gloomy as was godly possible
without providing any speck of sunlight through out the entire day. Added to
that was the effect of the fog that made the mornings look like evenings,
thoroughly bleak and dull. Whatever we touched appeared to be in a perpetual
state of wet and dampness and our noses seemed to be in a perennially running
condition with fluids always oozing out of it. The outside temperature seemed
to fast approach absolute zero and nobody ever mentioned about taking a bath
and neither did anyone among us bear the courage of actually going through the
ordeal of taking one.  Back in Roorkee,
we had made a systematic classification of bathing where the degree and size of
the bath one undertakes is inversely proportionate to the outside prevailing
temperature. When it is manageably
warm, it warrants a full bodied Poster sized bath, a cooler weather gets a half
bodied Postcard sized one, then in still lower temp there are provisions of a Passport
sized or a Stamp sized baths which involves washing only part or whole of one’s
face. Then there is  an  extreme case, when one does a Dry Wash just
by  looking at the water collecting in
the bucket and feeling that he had taken a bath and then coming out of the
bathroom rubbing  a towel though everything
is as dry as in default  state.
There are
however situations when one improvises by gathering  enough emotional strength to 
bath, just by thinking about things more deadly than a morning bath like
a class of MKD and teachers like him and eventually come out after a  shower in a drop or two of water . Here
however nobody attempted such a courageous thing and was content to live and
stink like a pig in a pig pen type of ambience. Ravi did once try to be brave
and clean something very much unlike him and washed his face with the river
water. This kept him quiet for almost the entire day as his face, as he told later,
felt like a block of pine wood very much incapable of feeling, moving or telling
anything.

The third day of the field trip was one of those
days which began badly and showed every signs getting worse as the day
progressed. Earlier that day we suffered a dose of medication by Rajnish, who
felt that we were being subjected to too much fatigue and to boost our energy
gave us some sort of watery mixture of unknown composition. This however didn’t
have any effect on our energy levels but made its impact leaving us with a red
and puffed up face and a swollen nose making us really look like pigs as if it
wasn’t enough to just smell like one. Rajnish’s father was a doctor and this
made Rajnish a self appointed health counselor of everyone around him and most
of the times we were at the receiving end of this phenomenon. Last summer, when
there was an outbreak of pox in our hostel affecting most of us and Rajnish was
one of the few to escape from its clutches. This however had nothing to do with
his father’s medicinal qualities but was only because of is natural immunity.
However when his father heard about this outburst of pox, he got worried and immediately
faxed him a prescription of medicines that were to be taken immediately for
preventing pox. These, Rajnish took religiously for two days and within the
third day came down with a bout of pox at a time when most of us had recovered.
From that instance very few of us had any confidence left on Rajnish’s medical
sense or on his father’s reputation as a doctor. MKD however avoided both
Rajnish and his mixture and anyhow he didn’t need the mixture to look like a
pig, he resembled one by default and even sounded like one when he whistled.  

Later during that day’s fieldwork, at a place near a
ravine MKD stopped showing rocks and began to point at a set of footprints
claiming them to be that of a snow leopard. He was in the mood of tracking
those footprints and find out the where about of the alleged leopard but
somehow we managed to thwart his plans and escape from that area. Yet
throughout the day there was that haunting feeling and a nagging fear of the
snow leopard stalking us, ready to pounce on any one of us while we were busy
with the fieldwork. During the retreat to our camp, while crossing a stream,
MKD slipped and lost his footing and in an effort to keep him out of water all
of us ended up in the stream totally drenched, in a condition much worse than a
Poster sized bath. To make conditions further worse a mountain goat appeared
from somewhere and crossed the stream immaculately without ever slipping a foot
hold. This made MKD to comment, as he enjoyed himself in the mud like a pig, that
probably a goat was much more balanced creature in any sort of sense than any
of us. Finally, at the end of the day, at the camp fire, after MKD had finished
showing off his antics with a mouthorgan, which was a more harrowing experience
than suffering his whistling, he started narrating about the experience of one
of his last fieldtrips and how he saw a villager being dragged away and killed
by a snow leopard very much near to the place where we camped. The dead body of
the villager, he told wasn’t even cremated by the villagers but was cut into
pieces by the local llama and left for eagles and carnivorous birds to feed on.
This was a very much disturbing story and even after MKD had finished telling
it, it continued to haunt and made me edgy. The recurring thought of snow
leopard attacking me and MKD waiting to slice me with his knife came to my mind
and didn’t allow me to sleep for quite some time.

Just when I managed to fall asleep there was a
shrill sharp cry from outside that woke both Roy and me. It was the voice of
Ravi and the obvious thought of the snow leopard attacking him stuck both of us
as we rushed out to help him. The snow leopard however wasn’t anywhere in sight
but the entire tent that housed Ravi and Rajnish had collapsed and lay on a
heap with the shout coming from somewhere inside it. It took quite some time for
us to recover the inmates of the tent of which Ravi was found hiding under his
bed still crying for help and Rajnish lay on the ground totally confused at the
turn of the events. It was only later that we found out what actually happened
and there wasn’t any snow leopard involved in it in person. MKD’s story actually
gave Rajnish a nightmare of being attacked by a snow leopard and for that he
had cried out in his sleep. That had woken up his camp mate Ravi and gave him
the impression that it was the sound of a snow leopard attacking him for which
he gave out that shrill and sharp cry for help and tried to hide himself under
Rajnish’s bed. However in that attempt to get his buffalo sized body frame underneath
the small bed he overturned the entire bed along with Rajnish and the weight of
Rajnish pulled the entire rent down. The combined weight of the tent, Rajnish
and his bed upon him gave Ravi the impression that the snow leopard was perched
just above him and he continued shouting for help until we explained to him
what actually had occurred. However throughout the entire fiasco, MKD was out
of the scene and appeared only after everything got settled, brandishing a thin
piece of wood and then got very much disappointed on finding that there was
nothing of importance left for him to do.

The final night of the trip was the coolest and the
harshest of all but it had the associated comforting and motivating factor that
the trip would be over the next day and soon we would be able to return to the
comparative warmth of Roorkee. Somehow, somewhere at a corner of the heart
there was a longing to be in the comfortable, gentle and sunny winters of
Durgapur which at any time was far more enjoyable than this brutal and bleak
climate prevailing at Spiti, with or without the company of Asha Oberoi. The
field was finally over in the evening with all the geological formations duly
mapped and analyzed with as much sincerity as could be mustered in such a climate.
MKD however didn’t appreciate our efforts and kept on whining that things were
more difficult during his days and he had been far too lenient than his theses guides.
Ravi probably wasn’t too much convinced about it and enquired if MKD’s guides
were somehow related to Stalin, Hitler or Khrushchev. This uninvited curiosity made
MKD mad and earned us a punishment in form of a six mile long night time trek back
to our camp. I tried to escape the ordeal pointing out that the difficulties of
carrying such a burden of a bagful of rock samples while walking in such a terrain.
For that MKD considerately and compassionately reduced the load of the lunchbox
from my bag, leaving me to carry the remainder of the bag’s contents. From then
onwards MKD had been walking somewhere in the darkness behind us in a Dev Anand
like swaggering style whistling ‘Hai Apna
Dil’ in his patented tuneless rhythm.
It was only near the ravine where the tracks of the snow leopard were spotted a
day before when we realized that the whistling had stopped and Ravi pointed out
that MKD was missing.

The realization that MKD was missing was accompanied
by another uncomfortable insight that we too were lost since MKD was the only
one who knew the way back to the camp. Suddenly for the first time in the
entire trip a genuine sensation of fear gripped me. The creepy feeling of being
lost forever in these awkwardly deserted and cold mountains made me feel like
crying. Ravi seemed to be more anxious about MKD than himself and that wasn’t
because he cared for him but for the reason that MKD had our lunch box and our
dinner in it. He had this supernatural ability of getting simultaneously hungry
and afraid at the same time, the more he was afraid, the more he felt hungry
and the more he felt hungry the more desperately he worried about MKD. Roy
wondered whether there was any chance of the snow leopard carrying away MKD for
having his own dinner and this left Ravi in further doubts whether the leopard would
also eat our dinner after finishing with MKD. 
Rajnish never ever thought like someone normal and was more concerned
about the condition of the snow leopard and the extreme agony it would suffer if
it unfortunately came in contact with MKD. It took quite some time to register
and resolve our doubts and concerns and finally it was decided that for the
best interest of all of us we should turn back and search for MKD.

 The search
of MKD began desperately with all of us yelling his name hoping to get a reply
from somewhere and using our flashlights to spot any traces he that he might
have left. Our cries for MKD echoed against the high walls of the naked
mountains and returned back to us without carrying any message of MKD’s
whereabouts At that time there weren’t any mobile phones and even if there had been,
it is very much doubtful if a network would have existed in such a place. There
wasn’t any light visible anywhere except the thin faint moonlight filtering out
of a veneer of clouds and fog. Far below us, on the other side of the narrow
foot track the river Spiti flowed noisily in the darkness giving a lot of dangerous
implications to my troubled mind.   In a
few days, it would start snowing and the Kunjum La Pass that acted as the entry
point to Spiti Valley would be choked by snow. If we didn’t find our way back  to the camp, there seemed to be a lot chances
that we would be wondering around helplessly  and hopelessly in this wilderness for eternity or may be turned
into food by some hungry snow leopard. Ravi was a vegetarian but had huge front
teeth and I tried to gauge in my mind how much hunger he could bear before he
turned carnivorous and cannibalistic. I am not a brave person, in fact people
do call me a chickenhearted sometimes and the idea of praying to God comes to
me only when I am in danger. This seemed a situation where I felt that I should
send an urgent SOS type of prayer to God to rescue us all inclusive of MKD.

Probably it might have been the prayer but almost
after an hour of frantic search in the darkness from somewhere downhill a faint
whimper like sound could be heard. Roy who also had heard the sound thought
that it might be the snow leopard whimpering under the shock of meeting MKD.
Nevertheless, as we moved in the direction of the sound, we found it to be
coming from a gap in between two rocks. A further venture inside discovered the
source of the sound to be MKD, who was stuck in the between the two rocks in
such a way as if he was meant to fill up the gap between them. MKD in all his
vital statistics and body dimensions resembled a big fat pig and it really was
surprising how he managed to get inside such a gap. He had been stuck there for
almost half an hour and had was totally exhausted and despaired when all his
efforts to free himself had failed. He had tried to shout to get our attention
but we were out of reach. This time he saw the lights we were carrying and
tried to shout again but managed to get only a whimper and he was lucky enough
to get our notice. Apparently MKD had lagged behind us in the trek but then he
tried to be smart and wanted to overtake us along a short cut that passed in between
these two rocks. He had done that lt of times in his earlier trips and was
confident of doing it this time too, but what he failed to take into account
was his own volumetric increase from the last time he did it and that was what
got him stuck.

We tried to drag him, push him and pull him out,
applying all the principles of mechanics that were force fed to us but none of
that came of any help. The more we tried; MKD seemed to get more firmly stuck
in the gap than before. Roy began to use his geological ideas and told us to
wait until the rock underwent some amount of chemical weathering and became a
bit loose, so that it would be easy to haul MKD out. Rajnish proposed to keep
giving doses of Milk of Magnesia until it caused a good amount of dehydration
and loose motion to MKD and thus help him shed some of his volume. MKD listened
hopelessly to our plans, initially ordering us to get him out, then pleading us
to help him and ultimately just silently and helplessly listening to our mindless
insane ideas. It was almost an hour that we had been trying physically and
mentally to dislodge MKD but still he didn’t move an inch. The night was
becoming darker and cooler and our energy and patience levels started to dip
lower and lower.  Ravi was probably the
first to run out of patience and declared that there was no other way to save
MKD than to carve him out of the rock. MKD was advised to stay calm as Ravi brought
out his knife in an attempt to slice of some amount of MKD’s stomach that was
the most prominent part of his body. MKD held his breath as Ravi raised his
knife to slice and as he brought it down MKD came loose from the rocks and
dropped unconsciously to the ground with a resounding thud.

The next day was a sunny one, with the clouds
parting and showing that the sun hadn’t forgotten to shine on this part of the
world. It shone brilliantly and dazzled against the snow topped mountains
across the horizon. It was the end of the camp and we were to move to Roorkee
where the sun shone far more brightly and generously. The earlier night it took
more than too hours to trudge back to our camp and the entire duration MKD
walked silently before us, without any swagger or any whistle.  He regained his consciousness and his
composure after we emptied a whole bottle of water on his bald head, thanked us
in an inaudible voice and then clamped up falling silent for the rest of the
trip. The next day he left early and alone leaving us a note to return to
Roorkee as per our convenience and a request not to discuss the incident with
anybody else. We didn’t but he ever took anybody to field at any place after
that and only attended proposals that involved laboratory work. Nobody from our
junior batches heard him whistle or move about like Dev Anand or anybody else
from Bollywood or Hollywood. We however did ask our seniors about the snow
leopard and learnt that they dwell in further higher reaches of the Himalayas
and nobody had seen them in Spiti for the past ten to twenty years.

          It had been almost six months of our stay in this bachelor accommodation in Jorhat and we were gradually coming to terms with the ups and downs of life in this foothill city. Life had fallen in some sort of routine track where for the five days of a week daily we got grounded by office work, fired by our bosses and bullied by our staff and then from Friday evening to Monday morning did whatever we could to recuperate, rewind and replenish ourselves to bring our energy level back to ground state. This cocaine experiment was part of that rehabilitation process that however had gone terribly awry. Roy was probably in the most pathetic state among all of us. Throughout the week, he had been appointed as a duty officer to some foul tempered senior visiting dignitary and his basic job profile consisted of leading him to the toilet, getting his dressing gown, finding out if his bed sheets had been ironed and explaining people that this fellow wasn’t smoking but just chewing a pipe devoid of any tobacco. This he endured for the first three days of the week and then on the fourth day turned up in sunglasses reporting an attack of severe conjunctivitis and was sent back immediately on forced leave. From then onwards he stayed at home, in a permanent sort of sulking mood, trying to figure out whether he should give up his job or tear up his M.Tech in Applied Geology certificate.

          It was probably the effect of his downcast frame of mind that made Roy to suddenly realize that our accommodation was in some sort of filthy state and this weekend should be spent to clean it up.  It was true that our rooms were gettingdirtier and dirtier by the day and had ultimately reached a level that even Roy, who had the privilege of being unanimously considered the dirtiest among us, had realized that the house was filthy enough to be cleaned. So that evening at dinner, when he expressed his opinion about our house looking a bit dirty, everybody at the table felt that it really was high time to get our accommodation cleaned. 

          However, this was not the only single point factor that triggered our decision about tidying up our accommodation. Also added to this realization were the orders of the retired major and the landlord of our house who lived across the road. He somehow had firmed up an  conclusion that it was easier for him to live in any “ bloody battle field than beside our damned house and given any damn chance he would really pack up his baggage and head off to any damned war in any damned country rather than living across us as our damned neighbour”. Anyway, we cared a damn for him, until he began to stop us on our way to and from office and began to lecture us endlessly about the art of cleanliness, about how we lacked discipline, about how really and utterly hopeless we were, how our lifestyle was shattering his mental peace and how given a chance he would set us straight within a day or two and many other things which were likely to make even a dead man get mad and bored and walk away from his grave. Filled into all these sermons of discipline and cleanliness, were also the age old woes and anguish of an old, antique, primitive man that we were a generation wasted and rotten and how things so beautiful, principled and flawless in their time were fast deteriorating, since our generation began.  The major was not alone. There was his dog too that added to our distress - a terrier or something like that of a foreign pedigree with a eternally gloomy and sad face bearing an ex-pression of perennial disgust about everything he saw around him. Somehow its looks always did appear familiar to me though I could not place it properly to any particular individual. It was only on my last visit to a conference in Kolkata did I realize that my guide in IIT Kanpur also wore the same look in his face whenever I saw him. Anyway, my guide may be left alone to rest in peace but both the major and his dog did share a common dislike for us and never
hesitated to express their displeasure whenever we met, only the dog did it in a more vocal and a more violent way. Every evening and probably in the early mornings too (we never got up that early to see early mornings) the dog took the major on his walk and on his way back relieved himself on our lawn and then barked aloud to declare his achievement. Anyway, this had continued on for quite sometime until things reached a flashpoint today evening when we had to withstand a whole hour of the major’s gruesome and tiring lectures and his dog’s disgusted looks that left us with a lot of insight about our being hopelessly idle and utterly dirty and also a temporary loss of appetite for junk foods and watching girls. 

          The next morning was a Saturday and like all other mornings breakfast was a horrid affair of bread, butter and jam. The shop that provided us breakfast probably knew of no other edible configuration of bread and sometimes it appeared that most likely we had the distinction to being   the greatest consumer of bread in Jorhat or probably Assam or may be entire North East India.   Long ago, during school days, it was mandatory for us to recite a prayer that went like “Our father in Heaven, Give us today our daily bread”. Now, I am not a firm believer but never expected that these lines would turn such horribly true. Next time if I am given a chance I would ask to be allowed to recite it as “Give us today a different version of bread”. Anyway the happenings of yesterday prompted us conclude at breakfast that our house needs to be cleaned this weekend but then there was the most difficult part of it, to devise the means of cleaning it up. Nobody among us had any idea of cleanliness or had the experience of cleaning anything up including his own self and neither did we expect anybody among us to do such a thing. SP came up with an idea of a brainstorming session, in which everyone was to speak up about his ideas and plans of getting our house cleaned First it was Ravi’s turn to storm his brain to get an idea, but this did not work out quite well. Ravi was in a particularly foul mood, as a result
of the compounded effects of the major’s lecture, the cocaine experiment and a traffic policeman who had robbed him off two hundred bucks as a bribe to get away for pillion riding in the market place, considered illegal from security point of view at that time. So when we asked him about his ideas, the only output was in the form of very high quality expletives with particular reference to ones mother and sister aimed at everybody including us, his boss, the major, his dog, the traffic policeman, the prime minister of India, the president of US and everybody at any higher level. He stopped when he ran out of his stock of expletives and persons to direct them to and though his brainstorming didn’t get us anywhere in our cleanliness drive it did acquaint us with a lot of slangs from around the world.

Subsequent to Ravi, it was Roy’s turn to enlighten us with his ideas.  Now Roy always dwelled in some abstract plane with a lot of ideas and philosophy, none of which were distinctly or distantly practical. Most of his cerebrations were spent on much important issues like Ho Chi Min’s policies regarding Viet-Nam war and how Hrittik Ghatak was a better director than Satyajit Roy and he found it a bit demeaning to think about something as insignificant as cleaning up our house. This time though, he spoke confidently for half an hour about his methods of getting our house cleaned, none of which I could comprehend and am sure the others couldn’t too.  His ideas or speech or whatever was full of statistics, analogies and euphemisms and appeared more like an address given on the floor of the UN General Assembly which very few people do understand but is always mandatory to clap. Here too, I was a bit tempted to clap at the end of Roy’s elaborate and incomprehensible deliberations but then thought it more prudent to restrain myself as of now. At the end however Roy’s ideas added very little to whatever Ravi had explained a few moments ago in his highly ornamental speech.

The worst part of it was to get Roy to clean his room. Roy was that type of guy, who would sleep continuously for about 7 hrs, get up and then declare that he was tired after sleeping so much and sleep again for 5 to 6 hours. His room resembled the primordial state of the universe in which everything was in a disorderly way and yet no body had any idea what was there. He did have a dustbin, but it was the cleanest object in his entire room (inclusive of him) adding itself to the gamut of things so wonderfully displayed on the floor of his room. He lived in equilibrium with his environment and nobody expected him to change the state of it or expect him to allow any of us to do it.  No body ever dared step inside his room for two reasons, one there was no place for anyone to step and secondly Roy told it was dangerous to do so without any protective wear. The maidservant’s orders however changed everything and he was seen coming ultimately out of slumbers chain and making serious efforts to get his room cleaned. The entire day was spent like that, cleaning up our house and when we finished, our limbs ached and the weekend made us even more tired than the weekdays.

Our cleaning up operation ended abruptly at sun down when the major came up with his dog, commanded us to stop immediately and complained that we were highly irresponsible, lazy and filthy people and we were solely responsible in dirtying up the surroundings of his house. His dog, he told had today relieved himself in his yard it self and we were responsible for that too. The dog however showed no displeasure like his master but bore a satisfied look of being able to shit in his master’s house. Surely enough our bachelor’s accommodation did look a bit clean but then in the cleaning process we had eventually converted the whole of major’s front yard into a terrible type of dumping ground. The effects of that Sunday were longstanding. We were never again lectured on better ways of living and we never attempted another cleaning up job through out our stay in Jorhat. The major however didn’t leave Jorhat for a battlefield but managed to stay on as our damned neighbour, ultimately coping up with the fact that we really were hopelessly irresponsible, lazy and filthy people. As for the lady, she never came. Probably she couldn’t overcome the shock of seeing the dirtiest house and the dirtier inhabitants of it in her life. Anyway she managed to waste our weekend.

          Just above us, two squadrons of mosquitoes were battling out each other like dive bombers with the same ferocity and veracity as seen or rather heard in the Battle of Britain. Not far below them, the principal target of their sting operation, our four tortured souls were sitting up on a tree, awake and waiting desperately for any sort to incident to happen that would justify our present status.

          This was supposed to be a hunting expedition and we were supposed to be the hunters. Yet till now, all the hunting we had done consisted of a cumulative attempt of killing half a dozen fat lazy and bloody mosquitoes. It wasn’t at all comfortable being perched on a tree top canopy and peering at what was a hazy outline of a goat tied to a tree. May be it wasn’t comfortable for the goat too but it didn’t seem to bother too much about it. It behaved very much like Ravi who was squatting beside me, trying to act brave, smart, indifferent and stoic to all those mosquito bites on his ass and all the sleepless nights on the tree tops. He had my grandfather’s gun and was sticking his nose against its hammer, pointing it somewhere towards the goat as if he was a sniper from a James Bond movie aiming a telescopic rifle to kill the goat.  Beside him was his brother-in-law Sanjay who had led us into this menace and now was using the butt end of a double barreled rifle like Errol Flynn to protect himself from mosquitoes. The other soul who seemed to be in the most comfortable position in such a awkward situation was Pandeyji, who had come to help us out but was now fast asleep and was unconsciously trying to develop some sort of irritating symphony  with his snores and the buzzing of the mosquitoes. I was trying to figure out what level of stupidity it was of me to agree to this catastrophic plan.

          It all started the fateful day when Aunt Ruby summoned me to gift the gun that Ravi was aiming at that indifferent goat. It was a double barrel Remington Model 700 Magnum with bullets almost the same size as that of an Eveready torch cell and grandfather used it for shooting man eaters of Hazaribagh Reserve forest. After he finished with them and drove his jeep down a 200 feet deep cliff, grandmother used it (sans it bullets) in the reverse way with a mop on its barrel end to clean cobwebs in the corner of the rooms. Anyway since it was getting relatively heavy for a frail bodied grandma to lift the gun and drive away spiders and other crawling creatures from the walls of the house, her only daughter Aunt Ruby decided to dispose the gun and get a regular wall mop instead. And since the best way of disposing anything undesirable meant giving it to me, I was summoned and handed over the gun with the duster intact on its barrels with stern instructions to be careful with the gun as well as take proper care of it. The parting however made grandma overtly sentimental and after a few futile attempts to weep, she began to narrate all the adventures and misadventures that the gun had suffered while playing the dual role of grandfather’s gun and grandma’s wall mop.  This wasn’t humanly tolerably and so I had to escape with an excuse of getting late for work after cutting her emotional recollections midway.

          A semi-employed geologist like me had very little use and knowledge of a gun and though I felt tempted a couple of times to use it on my annoying, pestering, arrogant and hippopotamus shaped landlady, I controlled my feelings thinking about all the dire consequences that would follow if the gun failed me. And anyway the gun wasn’t supposed to shoot anything more dangerous than a man eater. As a result the existence of the gun was soon forgotten and it was ingloriously dumped in a corner of the room along with a bunch of other disposable gifts bequeathed to me by Aunt Ruby. This was until Ravi unearthed it a few months later from the garbage heap that had started to develop under my bed and got rid of the flora and fauna that had began to prosper harmoniously within its barrels.

“Why are you hiding a gun under your bed?”

Ravi had this very much irritating habit of suspecting everything in a criminal point of view. Even the old beggar with the stick in Civil lines would be some sort of KGB agent with a semi automatic rifle concealed in his stick. Cervantes, if he was alive might have written a sequel to The Adventures of Don Quixote with Ravi as the hero and it would have easily made it to the best selling list. Ravi was a journalist and had been employed in the Coalfield Times but that was until he was been ceremoniously kicked out from it for failing to show any proofs to support his report on Sicilian mafia invading Durgapur to loot the National Bank. Now that he is unemployed he calls himself a freelancer and tries to find out anything remotely suspicious or any clues to any nonexistent mystery so that he could write a report about it. That day however he had invaded my room in search for some money that he could spend on his birthday party and when he failed to recover anything he emptied half of my tin of biscuits and started to search the room for something more edible until he found the gun.

When I explained how I had got the gun and that it wasn’t hidden under my bed but kept there with utmost care and that it was used to shoot only man eaters and not man kind and also for the last decade its primary job was to help in shooing away spiders and lizards and even lesser wall life, Ravi got a bit dejected at the loss a such a good story.   He probably had already started framing some sort of an exclusive report with a scintillating headline, something like “Deadly gun found under bed of an out of work geologist” or ”Deadly geologist sleeping over an out of work gun”. Anyway my explanations turned his focus more towards the gun and he began examining it with the same panache as Sherlock Holmes would do a murder weapon and came to a conclusion that it was a hunting gun, which I had already told him. After finishing with it, he cocked up the gun, took careful aim at me, pushed up the bolt and pulled the trigger. The gun wasn’t loaded but Ravi managed to get his finger trapped between the trigger and its rusty socket and started a wild African type dance around my room disbursing choicest slangs in a very much flowery Saharanpuri accent. This subsided after a few moments with his departure with a promise to come again the next day with some sort of plan which were always complicated and troublesome. It was only after his exit that I realized that Imtiyaz was probably the one and only first and last human casualty of the gun.

The next evening he returned inevitably like Halley’s Comet this time with a proposal to accompany him on a hunt in Hazaribagh.  This was automatically turned down but then he began to hit at my roots, with an implication that I was really a coward grandson of a fearless grandfather. This too was parried with some discomfort but after that he began to plead me for going with him since he desperately needed to write a report on something and a hunt according to him would make an interesting copy This was followed by a barrage of sentimental adjectives like merciless, selfish, fifth columnist, ungrateful, unthankful and so on and eventually I had to agree to his plans to stem that barrage of verbose attacks which were almost like US carpet bombing of Iraq. It was mutually agreed that whatever hunting would be done will be done by Ravi and I would merely be there to write about the proceedings and give him moral support if he really needed that. Most of the hunting would be done by him and his brother in law Sanjay who had been so kind to guide us in our hunting expedition. In those days Maneka Gandhi wasn’t around to protect animal rights, neither were animals aware of the existence of Maneka Gandhi, hence hunting was comparably safe for the hunter and since my role was merely of a vestigial type I  finally did agree to this trip.

          The next few days were used up for planning and procurement of the trip, with Ravi drawing up lists and I censoring them and trying to strike a balance between his lists and our carrying capacity. His lists even included an entire 3 volume omnibus of Jim Corbett, which he told would serve as a ready reckoner while hunting. Whatever it was for, I found it extremely difficult to visualize Ravi with the gun in one hand confronting a man eater type of tiger and simultaneously consulting Jim Corbett’s books to decide what to do next and at the same time believing that the tiger would politely and patiently wait for him to finish with the book before attacking. In any case it was difficult for him to complete all those books before setting on his hunting trip and going by the rate at which he reads it might have taken an entire decade to complete them. I suggested putting them below his head during sleeping so that some material from the book might enter his head like it does in osmosis but then he told there might be a reverse case in which something might have come out of his head and get into the book, that would leave his head entirely empty like a hollow coconut. This seemed a very much likely phenomenon and hence my suggestion was overruled. Anyway, the final list of essential items required during hunting compiled after much censuring and editing seemed as if it would require something about the size of Titanic to carry them from Durgapur to Hazaribagh.

As per our plan we were to find out Sanjay at the Hazaribagh station. That however didn’t turn out to be a major problem at all. He was so prominent and conspicuous that half the station was crowded around him staring at him as if witnessing some sort of extraterrestrial alien that had just landed at the Hazaribagh station. He really was a spectacular type of sight, decked up from top to bottom in a full hunting uniform complete with a wide brimmed hat, knee high hunting boots and a double barreled Winchester rifle, looking somewhat of a cross between Jim Corbett and Shambhu Shikari and standing in wide daylight in the midst of a crowded railway platform as if expecting to hunt man-eaters then and there.

It took some sort of substantial amount of effort as well as time to get ourselves out of the station, considering the crowd pulling status of Sanjay but once we settled down at the Circuit House it was discovered that Sanjay too had never ventured inside any sort of jungle. He was here just to do a case study on hunting and that was to open up a new concept of event management called Hunting Management. The dress up in that hunting suit was just to gain the feel of it or rather in his words to assess the ambience of it. Sanjay was a manager in a coal mining company in Calcutta and as per him and the laws of good management it really is necessary to gain some feel of an operation before venturing in it and that was what he was practicing at the station. I tried to figure out the consequences if Sanjay went a step further in his management practices and began to use his Winchester on us to gain some more feel. The consideration seemed to be too much dangerous and hence I thought it best to leave it alone.

The next steps of Ravi’s hunting plans were all hijacked by Sanjay. He told that he had chalked it up all and laid down a paper before us with a big flow diagram that seemed quite incomprehensible to us but actually was the blueprint of the hunting trip. There were different levels of planning in it, a macro one consisting of different micro plans and then a contingency plan to every micro one and that ultimately ended up in the same place where it all began. Like all good managers in this planet Sanjay too had done a meticulous but incomprehensible and impractical type of planning and most of his plans were duly filled up with abstract managerial jargons that could mean anything or nothing if translated to a layman’s language. The ultimate conclusion of his plan was something like sitting on a tree, waiting for a man eating tiger sort of thing to appear and shooting it down to kill it. It really seemed incredibly remarkable how all the theories of management could conclude in something so simple and similar to that we had planned without any help of any managerial ideas.

The circuit house Manager contributed more to our plans by adding Pandeyji to our troupe, saying that he would be something like Tenzing Norgay to us in the jungle. Pandeyji anyhow didn’t invoke any sort of confidence like Tenzing Norgay and seemed more content in falling asleep anytime and anywhere rather than guiding us. Nevertheless it was Pandeyji who informed us that there wasn’t any man eating tiger around to shoot but only a leopard that had been stealing cattle from nearby villages and had turned quite into a menace. There wasn’t any fixed area to find it but if we were to hunt it we might have to roam around a few areas. This seemed to disappoint Sanjay to some extent as he had to change or rather rephrase his plans since his objective had changed from a man eater to a cattle eater

After all due clearances from the forest office the hunt began with all four along with a goat being dropped in the part of a jungle near a village in which Pandeyji got news that the leopard had dragged away a cow and might return to get another one. A machan or canopy had been set up on a sal tree near a village and a water hole and we (that is except the goat) were to sit up on it and wait for the leopard. The goat was to serve as bait to the leopard on his way to the village and if the leopard stopped to dine on it then we would aim and shoot it.

It was evening when we climbed up the tree and settled down on top of the machan. The forest around was colorful, ablaze with the flame of the forest in full bloom and multicolored birds flying in flocks from one tree to another. Far away across the western sky, the sun was about to set behind the pegmatitic hills reddening the entire horizon beyond the tree line. A few deers grazed past our tree totally unconscious of our presence. It all seemed an environment of peace and quite but that was only until the sun set. As soon as it became dark, the entire forest that had seemed peaceful and sleepy an hour ago became awake and active with sounds of wild birds, deer and sometimes some unknown and unseen animals. Both the guns were with Ravi and Sanjay and I had been told just to note the proceedings and write it later. Pandeyji had duly fallen asleep and the goat was busy grazing and sniffing around the forest air.

It was a half moon might winter night and the air was heavily with the intoxicating scent of mahua. Faint sounds of drum beats from the inhabitants of a nearby Santhal village celebrating some sort of festival could be heard. These gradually became fainter as night fell and were replaced by the sounds of the inhabitants of the jungle. The moonlight filtering through the tree tops created a panorama of light and shade that made the forest appear treacherous and haunting. Even the sounds of harmless barking deer and the screeching of an owl seemed to put us on tenterhooks. Sometimes all the sounds died down and there suddenly was an interlude of eerie awkward silence which seemed to be more disturbing than the jungle noise.

Ravi got a bit impatient sitting so long without any effect and asked Sanjay if he had any contingency measures to deal with the mosquitoes and the darkness. However Sanjay hadn’t considered these variables in his plan and hence there wasn’t any solution to Ravi’s problems. Anyway, it really was getting uncomfortable sitting cramped up and sleepless on a tree top for such a long time and till now there wasn’t any sign of the leopard that was the objective of Sanjay’s and to some extent Ravi’s plan.  The discomfort due to our posture was further enhanced by several magnitudes on seeing Pandeyji sleeping peacefully heedless to all our distresses. Sometimes there was a nagging feeling of replacing the goat with Pandeyji. The goat might have served a better purpose if it was cooked and eaten rather than using it as bait to a non existent leopard. Sanjay was still battling it out with the mosquitoes and Ravi aiming at the goat like James Bond. The outline of the goat gradually became indistinct and hazy in the darkness and I probably inducted by Pandeyji fell asleep for the first time on the top of a tree.

I might have been asleep for an hour or may be five minutes, it is difficult and unnecessary to calculate time in a jungle but suddenly the forest came alive with all sorts of activity. Birds that were sleeping in nests woke up and chirped loudly, monkeys on tree tops started chattering violently and the pack of deers grazing carelessly below our tree vanished inside the jungle. Everything seemed to be on a high alert in a rather intensely charged atmosphere anticipating some sort of happening, everything except of course our happily snoring guide Pandeyji. Suddenly that goat that had been nonchalantly digesting forest grass began to bleat furiously in a terrified sort of way. From whatever was visible in the faint moonlight I was just able to discern a faint shadow of a beast trying to sneak up on our goat.

Excited with all these happenings and observations I tried to warn Ravi and Sanjay and may be the goat by shouting something like ‘Lookout, a tiger’. That was when all the confusion started and a lot of things happened simultaneously. The beast that actually was our objective leopard got startled and frightened by my yell left the goat alone and with loud snarls rushed towards our tree trying to climb it. Pandeyji disturbed by these loud snarls jolted out of his dreamland state, lost his balance and fell forward with his full one quintal body mass on top of Sanjay. Sanjay could not adjust himself to the sudden change in momentum due to Pandey, got pinned to floor of our machan and let go his grip on his Winchester rifle dropping it from the tree. Ravi, still now in his sniper like position,  shocked with the suddenness of all happenings accidentally pressed the trigger, firing the gun with a loud bang unsettling everybody on the machan first by the sound and then by the recoil of it.  This was followed by a thunderous and fearful roar of the leopard and the abrupt end to the goat’s bleating. Then again it was an interlude of the disturbing silence as if the jungle was waiting for everything to return to normalcy. It took us quite a few moments to settle down and figure out the developments. The only things that registered to me were that the leopard had vanished and the goat seemed dead.

It wasn’t until morning that we realized what really had happened in those few moments of chaos and confusion.  When we alighted from night long perch the circuit house manager and a forest officer were there to find us, worried about our state and they reported seeing the leopard lying about 500mts away from the tree not dead but  unconscious without any bloody wound. Sanjay’s gun had behaved like a freely falling object obeying all Laws of Newton and Murphy and had landed spot on the leopards head. The leopard presumably believing that the sky had fallen on his head ran off leaving us and the goat alone but the impact of the gun probably made it senseless. Meanwhile the shot accidentally fired from Ravi’s gun went straight through the goat killing it out rightly.

Anyway, that was how our hunt ended. Ravi’s objective of writing a report on the hunt didn’t work. Neither did Sanjay’s idea of Hunting Management become any leading management  concept. The only object that got hunted was our goat that was eventually cooked and eaten mostly by Pandeyji though a few morsels did reach us. As for the leopard, it was learnt to have recovered from the shock but had lost its memory. Last heard it had given up the habit of stealing animals from the village and was seen to graze along side them.

The effigy of Ravan went down in a heap of flames and the entire horizon got illuminated by crackers and rockets. It was Ramlila and it was after twenty long years we had come back to our town to be a part of it. It brought back to my mind another such event that got etched into my childhood memory. It was also a similar event in which Ravan got to be the hero at the end of the day.

We lived in a small town somewhere along the banks of the river Subarnarekha, a town so small and insignificant that isn’t even worthwhile to mention its name. Even if I do, nobody would ever be able to point it on a map. It was almost lost in the rocky rolling lands that stretched endlessly from Bengal into Bihar and into the forests of Sal, Mahua, Gulmohar and the fiery red Palash trees that grew in abandon. The only thing that proclaimed the existence of the town to the outside world was a railway station but back then, there was only one train that stopped once during day and then back during its return at night. And there was only a fistful of passengers who alighted or boarded it, for most of the people were content living within the sleepy limits of the town.

Like most small towns our town too had a single school, a red brick building that was erected by some missionary, whose name too isn’t worthwhile to be mentioned here. And though the town had changed its appearance and the river had changed its course, the school still stood through the test of time (until yesterday, when I last saw it). Now, this isn’t about the school or the town, but about Kuldeep, one of our school mates, who is much more a remarkable entity that the town or the only school of it.

Kuldeep never passed any of the classes, at least in one chance and never did make any conscious effort to pass them. When teachers got bored of teaching him, he was passed on to the next class and allowed to fail there until next promotion. Nobody remembered how and when he was admitted to the school but students considered him a sort of pre historic personality, a living relic or a mobile monument of our school, probably older than some of the teachers themselves. Kuldeep’s father owned a dairy farm and had the idea that his son who also was the sole member of the entire clan to cross the doorstep of a school would probably shine like a light (well not literally) and illuminate their whole family most of whom were doomed in the darkness of illiteracy. People (other than Kuldeep’s immediate family) however believed that Kuldeep had the same IQ as the average of his father’s cows and buffaloes and would probably burn the face (again not literally) of their entire tribe. Kuldeep never thought anything like that and considered himself too insignificant or inconsequential to be thought about by anybody, though he spoke of a day that would come in near future when he would make a difference and everybody would stand up for him. Nobody however waited or expected such a day would come before kingdom come. It was a general opinion that Kuldeep lacked a brain, and a hollow passage existed between his two ears which couldn’t entrap anything that passed through it. Only Rajnish thought that Kuldeep did have a brain but it was composed of some alien material that was useless in earth. Anyway whatever might be the case; whenever he used it the consequences were very much strange and utterly unpredictable.

That summer was such that everybody remembered it, for one, it was extraordinarily hot, so hot that Subarnarekha was reduced to a trickle in the river bed and the other factor making it memorable was that a new teacher joined our school and had the shortest career span in it. He was one of those sorts who had a lot of free energy but found no place to exhaust it and hence spent them trying to induce through out the school some sort of cultural spirit. As per him, everybody should participate in various sorts of cultural activity like music, painting, dramatics and all such sort of intellectual stuff which a normal student with all his senses open generally avoids. It was one of his brainwaves that all the students of our school were extraordinarily talented and they should stage a drama to exhibit their talents to the world which was our town. The drama decided upon which could best exhibit our talents was a piece ripped from Ramayan in which Ram kills Ravan, ravages Lanka, rescues Sita and returns to Ayodhya. The proposal was put, agreed whole heartedly by the school committee, the plans were drawn out for its implementation and the new teacher chosen to write the script and direct the play .

As the castings were being decided, Kuldeep, along with his father paid a surprise visit to the headmaster with the demand that he be allowed to play Ram in the drama. As per him, the school owed it to him after all the time and energy he had invested in it. His father supported his claim with the threat that if his son was denied his choice, he would cut the entire milk supply of the town. This was a serious type of warning, for Kuldeep’s father was the whole and sole authority of milk in the town and secondly the head master had two young girls half of whose diet constituted of milk. Registering the threat loud and clear, the head master immediately arranged an emergency meeting with the new teacher and a few senior fellows and had to employ a lot of coaxing and cajoling and his management skills, ultimately accommodating Kuldeep in the role of Ravan. This was more apt, considering the fact that Kuldeep’s appearance, gait, the way he carried himself were so demonical that Ravan might have copied him to appear more intimidating.

Now, that the problems were sorted out, the rehearsals of the drama began and went on more or less smoothly. There obviously were a few hiccups like when Kuldeep sported a sunglass to appear more villainous and at another occasion announced that he was going to copy Gabbar Singh of Sholay to perfect his act. Both his ideas were immediately and out rightly rejected and he was ordered to do as per the instructions of the director. This he did for the rest of the rehearsals.

The night of the drama was almost a gatecrash with the whole town, trying to fit in the school auditorium. It was a first of its kind entertainment in town and that too free of cost and hence became a full house in no time. The drama started with Ram getting some idea that his wife had been kidnapped into Lanka and then marching there with a lot of vengeance and few monkeys to get her back. All went well until Ravan entered the scene and from that point everything went haywire. From the very first scene it was entirely Kuldeep breaking away from the mould of Ravan and asserting himself over the whole stage and the audience.

It was Sugrib who got the first taste of the medicine. He was supposed to be the king of the monkeys and from that position invite Ravan to fight him. This he did with all his charisma and glamour but yet after completing his dialogue found Ravan busy trying to recover his sword from his scabbard. On the other hand Ravan was on the brink of his patience and after repeated efforts, when his sword refused to come out, he forgot it and all his dialogues and directed his annoyance towards a confused Sugrib thereby descending upon him with a violent and brutal rage. The king of monkeys was then subjected to such a volley of kicks and punches that he had to stage a very much unglorious retreat backstage and didn’t venture out again in the scene during the entire duration of the play.

This act had to be cut out prematurely, and the director summoned Kuldeep in the wings giving him a stern and sound hearing not to over act his role. However this made little difference, for he was not Ravan at all in the stage, he was Kuldeep trying to find out some amount of importance which he lacked so much in class. In next act he was to face Hanuman, again another mythical great warrior capable of doing impossible things and the director had vested a lot of faith in him to put the play back in the right track as Hanuman was also supposed to be the best actor in the play. However, on seeing what came of Sugrib, Hanuman outrightly refused to enter the stage. When he was pushed inside, he somehow tiptoed on to Ravan, who by that time had acquired a new sword, and as soon as he found Hanuman within his reach, subjected him to such a resounding slap that Hanuman thought it wise to get on the floor and lay there until he was out of danger. Ravan hadn’t expected such cowardice from such a valiant warrior and invited him to war aloud several times but failed to incite any response from his opponent. This disgusted him and frustrated he poked his wooden sword few times into Hanuman, and when this also failed to bring out any desired effect he threw out his arms in despair and staged a walk out from the arena. Hamuman was later recovered in his prostrate position and had to be sent to a dentist for oral repair.

By this time the director had got an idea of what was happening of his play and decided to stage a walkout himself. The headmaster caught him escaping and he had to return to chair in the wings, heavily sweating, palpitating and faking a heart attack. Hence, the headmaster thought it best to take over the direction himself and cancelled the role of Laxman who was on the verge of entering the stage. Instead, the shot put champion of our school was summoned from the audience, dressed up as Laxman and were given standing orders to dislodge Ravan from the stage at any cost. Laxman marched on to the stage, waved to the audience as if he was Muhammad Ali acknowledging his fans before a fight and then fell upon Ravan, who was a bit bewildered from the sudden appearance of an unrecognized fighter in the battlefield or rather the stage. Soon it turned into a freestyle wrestling match with the audience whistling, cheering and clapping and probably finding it more enjoyable than the actual play. Laxman by virtue of his well built and heavy body somehow overpowered and cornered Ravan and was on the point of pushing him out of stage but then Ravan out maneuvered him by jumping down from the stage and again reappearing through the wings and kicking a surprised Laxman out from the stage into the audience. Laxman wasn’t allowed a second entry back into stage as he was captured by Kuldeep’s father and his milkmen who were by the time proud of such a powerful performance by their protagonist.

The end of Laxman was as if the whole of Indian batting order had collapsed before the first drinks break. The headmaster too ran out of options and panicked when he found that this new teacher and director of the play had escaped deserting him in such a dire situation. Ram, the only one left, was asked to dress up, enter stage and fight at will until the end. Ram requested for a substitute but unlike Laxman failed to get any. The headmaster asked him to do anything he wanted but just stay on the stage and not leave it until ordered to do so. A unwilling, stumbling and trembling Ram walked on to the stage and after stammering through his dialogues threw his arrows, then his bow and then his sword towards Ravan but when none of his weapons managed to do any harm to a constantly aggressing Kuldeep, Ram forgot all his orders from his head master to hold his position and fled out of stage without any effort to rescue his wife and avenge his dishonor.

This however left Ravan without any opponents and hence without anything to do on the stage. He got a bit confused and realizing that in each version of Ramayan, Ravan had to ultimately die, tried to work something out of his non existent mind and then decided that he should commit suicide onstage to bring a glorious end to such a mindblowing performance. He brought out his sword, stuck in his chest and then recited something he had probably learnt in his English class. “It’s not to reason why, its but to do and die”. This was Lord Tennyson of “Charge of the Light Brigade” and Kuldeep had effortlessly imported him into Valmiki’s territory. This verse was followed by a crazy type of theatrical laughter, after which Kuldeep fell to the stage and finally announced he was dead.

This was supposed to be the end of the play and as soon as it was signaled, all the milkmen and their friends in the audience, believing this to be a new version of Ramayan, rushed on to the stage, carried away Kuldeep on to their shoulders and began to shout slogans hailing him as the new hero of a new era. The headmaster asked for curtains to be drawn, arranged for first aid for all the characters who had encountered Kuldeep on stage and then silently returned back home. It had dawned on him, it wasn’t a drama directed by the new teacher but a play that was fully controlled by Kuldeep so that he could gain his one day of fame. This was the day when Kuldeep made a difference and at least some people did stand up for him.

Anyway the head master resumed his office after recovering for a gap of seven days and immediately issued a notice barring any type cultural activity henceforward until further notice. The new teacher wasn’t seen in town after that night and was assumed to have deserted his post with all his boundless energy, cultural know how and intellectual superiority and wasn’t heard of there after. Life settled back into normal for the students and unsurprisingly Kuldeep also didn’t turn up for school after that night.

The effigy of Ravan had by then burnt, dimmed and almost faded out. The crowd of the Ramlila ground had started to clear out. The skeleton of Ravan was still left with a few of its ten heads. On each one I could visualize that theatrical laughter of Kuldeep, his last laugh in school. I was fortunate enough to avoid him that day; I was supposed to play Laxman. Rajnish wasn’t that lucky, he played Hanuman and he still nurses a broken molar, his reminder of that day.

I had an incredibly large name. From end to end, it stood as Subhobroto Dev Raj Mazumder and obviously was to a certain extent a burden for me to carry it about in my younger days at school. My classmates who had relatively concise and convenient names like Ravi Roy and Sohail Sharma used to infuse inside me a lot of inferiority complex regarding my christening and as a result made me a bit unhappy about my primary identity. After bearing with this type of nomenclature for six full years of my life, I rebelled against it and stopped brushing my teeth and eating my breakfast of cornflakes and even refused to go to school for three consecutive days. And this I threatened to continue until my name was shortened to a more apt and bearable one like my friends.  It was at this point I came to learnt that the middle portion of my name was contributed by my aunt who had some sort of fascination for Dev Anand where as Raj was added by my grandfather who wanted my name to bear the aura and majesty of the zamindars who we probably were some generations back. My first name was courtesy my mother where as my father gave me my surname. Such a diverse collaboration resulted in such a gigantic name. Yet now I shudder to thi