by Parth Pandya
[box]Four different places, four different pairs of people – one common setting. Two chairs across a table and a solitary object between them. Parth Pandya writes four small stories around this theme.[/box]Click
“You think luck will change what skill couldn’t?”
He latched on to the object in front of him with the confidence of a man whose faith in himself was unshakeable. Once done with it, he slid it back on the table to his friend of 60 years with a neat flourish.
“Remember the time we had a bet to see who could swim the farthest into the ocean before turning back? You ran out of breath before we reached the first buoy.”
His opponent suppressed a grimace as his memory jogged to one of the many embarrassments he had suffered in his childhood – always the ignominy of defeat, always the tragedy of finishing last.
Not today. Not now.
He picked up the gun and pointed it to his temple. An empty click rang across the room. He was safe again. He pushed the gun back to his opponent harder than he had planned to.
“You can’t beat me at this, you know. You’ll be the first to go.” He picked up the gun and pointed it to his forehead. A fourth empty click reverberated through the room.
The perennial loser now had his final chance. He said a silent prayer and clicked the trigger hoping for the one chance to settle this. A miss here would mean death for his opponent and victory for him. He had planned it all for months, ever since he was diagnosed with terminal cancer. It was a game where he’d have nothing to lose and all to win. And so, he closed his eyes and pressed the trigger.
He felt pity when he saw a slight twitch in the calm visage of his opponent. The reaction followed the sound that would emancipate him from a lifetime of hurt – ‘Click’.
A Negotiation
“Finish it. Right now”
“Ma, can I go to Sanjay’s house in the evening?”
“We’ll talk about that later. Finish it first.”
“But Ma, I already had so much food this morning. Can I have it after I come back from Sanjay’s?”
“Nothing doing. Finish it right now or there is no outing to Sanjay’s house for you.”
“But Ma, I have already finished my homework. Why can’t I go?”
“Because you need to finish this apple.”
“But Ma, there is too much skin on this.”
“Skin is good for your health. Don’t argue. Finish it.”
“Why is it good Ma? It seems all wrinkly. Won’t it hurt my stomach?”
“Now look. It has proteins and vitamins. We’ll ask your Dad about it later. He’s a doctor, isn’t he? Haven’t you heard the saying that ‘an apple a day keeps the doctor away’?”
“Is that why I don’t get to see him everyday, Ma?”
Silence. Waves of unsaid words fill the room. A daily hurt is renewed. The apple remains glued to its spot.
“Go on. Make sure you are home before dinner.”
The Written Word
“Call me Ishmael. Some years ago – never mind how long precisely – having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world.”
Vikas halted to let the words sink in. He took his job rather seriously. Teaching literature to the prison inmates was his chosen line of work for several years. Every Saturday, he’d take an autorickshaw to the Central Jail of Nashik where he’d find his way to a table in the corner of the meeting area. He’d open his satchel, bring out his collection of books and wait patiently for his student of the day to come.
He had chosen to teach only one person at a time, something that the warden had supported. He believed that the best impact he could have was by a personal connection, rather than reading out to a bunch of folks.
Sushant hadn’t been the brightest cookie in school, but that didn’t stop him from plowing his way to a MBA degree. That didn’t save him from being caught either when charges of embezzlement were brought out against him. He wondered if the warden really was exerting a sadistic streak against him, making him ‘learn’ English literature at this age. “Good for your sentence,” the warden, Waghmare, had said, laughing at his own clever joke.
Sushant wished he could simply yank the book from Vikas and tell him to go away – he could read this all by himself much better than that B.A. student could ever teach him. But he sat there humbled, knowing well that it was outside his power to do anything of that sort.
So he sat and heard Melville’s genius being read to him line by line. An hour and a chapter later, the session ended. Sushant grumpily kicked his chair back, no more literate than an hour ago. Vikas gingerly got up from his chair, tapping his cane to find the way, going back satisfied at having made a difference to someone’s life.
Payback
“Cigarette?” he offered from the pack lying on the table in front of him.
The person at the other end smiled mildly.
“How’s the weather there?” he continued nervously.
“You know, the usual. Chilly, dull – like hell had frozen over.”
A large guffaw filled the room. The reverberations of the laughter melted away the tension between the two men.
“Was it ‘98 when you started at the company?”
“Yes. The first hit was the hardest. The rest was just a matter of time.”
“You were a special one. Never one for emotions, save loyalty. You’d have killed your father if you were asked to.”
“The company didn’t repay me too well though. Not much money on the hits, taking the blame for the boss’ son’s mistakes. Those five years in the jail didn’t help.”
“Yes, and they didn’t have to ask you to do the unthinkable, did they? They knocked off your father when you were in jail. And here you are, plotting revenge on the company, with neither the money nor the resources.”
“He knew too much, didn’t he? He could have wrecked the company if he revealed its secrets. And now they know that the link is gone forever and I don’t have a chance.”
“Some assumptions don’t quite work out, do they?” he said with a smile.
“No Dad, they don’t,” he said softly, to the vacant chair across the table.
Parth Pandya is a passionate Tendulkar fan, diligent minion of the ‘evil empire’, persistent writer at http://parthp.blogspot.com, self-confessed Hindi movie geek, avid quizzer, awesome husband (for lack of a humbler adjective) and a thrilled father of two. He grew up in Mumbai and spent the last eleven years really growing up in the U.S. and is always looking to brighten up his day through good coffee and great puns.
[facebook]Share[/facebook] [retweet]Tweet[/retweet]
