Legitimacy

“Ya, it was Kewl(cool), I cant believe, that they actually made a fool of principal, I like their group… but they’re so proudy…. And so much arrogant… Never talk to anyone…” She said, as they drove away from school.

“I know, they think too much of themselves, for nothing. But they didn’t do anything to the principal, she called their parents, there case is gone now, they’ll be in severe trouble.” He replied, with a slight emphasis on nothing, and severe. Quite obviously he wasn’t impressed with their antics. “They just speak a lot, don’t have guts to do anything.” That was his ultimate verdict, it would seem, as he turned the car around the roundabout, and exited it right, instead of straight taking a slightly more circuitous route home, in honor of his guest. He was driving Neha home, for no apparent reason. She was meant to use the bus, but she’d decided to go with him instead, because it would be faster. In fact, she would probably reach at the same time as normal, or at least wanted to. Imagine having to explain coming home early to her mother!

Neha was just your average girl in school, everything about her was normal. And it was normal for a normal girl to go for rides home with Ankit, who was also a completely normal guy, which basically meant, all he was concerned with was getting into Neha’s tunic, since that was the school uniform they used. And Neha, being a completely normal girl, was only concerned with how much social mileage she could get out of these advances from Ankit, in fact, she was already thinking of how she would leave him. Because after all there was no greater boost to social status than rejecting someone… of course it would be better, if she could make him really fall for her. She thought about this, and thought about the things she could do to make him. Perhaps, she should wear her older tunics to college, they were a little short for her now, and would definitely help.

What else?...

“Hey have the latest SRK’s movie, ‘My name is Khan?’” Ankit asked her, disturbing her reverie. Ankit was completely aware that Neha was normal, and part of being normal was liking SRK, and liking guys who had their own cars. He knew he was going to be okay. He didn’t have high expectations of himself, but Neha was comfortably within his ‘range.’

Disciples

Salim and Usman weren’t friends, but they were the only ones who understood each other. They hated each other. It was a respectful hate that only two rivals, the best at what they do, can share.

They were disciples of the greatest chronicler of the realm, and everyone knew when he decided to stop writing one them would succeed him in the court, and sit behind the throne to record all the sayings of the court. The Chronicler already knew that either one of them would serve the sultan better than he could. He was pondering the question of who should succeed him.

It wasn’t an easy question, because of how different they were, and how much they hated each other. They’d never admit to the hate, but they’d never been able to work together, and the chronicler knew to choose one was to lose the other. As a teacher he had a greater choice to make as well: the art of writing could not afford to lose either one of them.

Writing was a rare talent, the ability to see in everyday events the making of the legends of the future. To serve the sultan well, was to make him a hero, and to lie was to insult him. To write, one had to see things differently. The heavens did not part at the words of the Sultan, God did not speak to his people from a bush, but the writer could make him. And he could not lie, so the writer had to use metaphors, ideas, techniques, comparisons, to bring out the greatness of the Great one. Even if in the decadence of the age, his throne shone less grandly, that it was made of Gold should not be forgotten. That was the responsibility of the writer.

The chronicler was a great writer, but a better teacher, and his disciples had been taught and moulded as the finest hands from the very start. They had been meticulously trained in the formation of words, or lines, of dots, of the language. Each stroke of the pen, each dip in the ink, each flick of the wrist, perfectly controlled, and so precise, they would write as beautifully if blindfolded. In fact they could, he’d made them.

He trained them in the choice of words, explained the reason for using one word instead of the other, when to go with your instinctive choice and when to think that much more. When to write the words that just flow from the nib, and when to pause… when to break with grammar, how to say more than language traditionally allowed one to. How to use the paper, and the shape and sounds of words to create pictures and shapes in the eyes of the reader, to make writing more than transmission, to make writing a method to engender ideas.

Salim and Usman had learnt it all, but still searched for more.

Usman looked through the writings of the great ones, he spent all his time reading, and slowly understanding. He became solemn like the great chronicler. He never discussed what he’d read, unlike the other scholars who spent their days in the archives, he wasn’t concerned with the information he’d read, but with how it had been written. And he asked himself why the method had been chosen. Slowly he began to understand. And his writing became like to that of the great ones… he found the right comparisons, he thought about the right order for the words to flow in. He spent hours constructing sentences, and then slowly, deliberately he made all the small strokes that first created letters then grouped them into words, and then a sentence, a paragraph, a piece, an idea… and just as slowly as his art materialised he’d feel the satisfaction of the what he did seep through his being.

Salim was not as patient, he wasn’t patient at all. He couldn’t wait for the Sunrise before he left his home, he couldn’t wait for the sunset before he turned to the courtesans, and he didn’t recognise the night. He’d spend days under the sky, watching clouds. He’d watch leaves in the wind, he watched the courtesans as they spun dancing. He watched rain fall, and felt it on his face, and felt its softness, its wetness; he lay under the moon to feel the dew, and thought of how it was different to the rain, and yet the same, and the ice in winter. He watched the grass he lay on, and felt the velvet of its blades, and the sharpness of its margins and wondered… why in grass the lines were all parallel, but in some leaves they made odd designs, and what odd meant? He watched the stillness in things, in the trees trunks, in the blue of the sky, and the stars, and saw in them the energies that drove the universe, and he felt communion with that energy. He ran from one day to the next, barely waiting for the rest of the world to catch up. He rarely ever wrote, or tried to writer better. He wrote about what he knew, and about what he thought, his hand was flawless, from the first time he picked up a nib, he never smudged a word, he never drew a long dot, and he never thought about what he did.

What If... ?

What if… he drowned the rest of the question in the engine’s whistle, distracted himself watching the platform with its tea stalls, magazine vendors, red shirted coolies, and infinite moving bodies slip by. First slow enough to make out details, and then so fast that things not in the light became vague silhouettes, till they faded to a grey haze. The wheels found a steady rhythm to beat, and the coach rocked to it. The outside streamed by, a continuous grey, exploding into gold at the end of the platform. Four halogen lamps lit a board proclaiming ‘N. Delhi Station.’

As it slid into the same grey shadow that had become the rest of the city, he realized he was going home. For what may be the last time. He knew he should want it to be.

His compartment seemed crowded, and he was hot. It was stuffy inside and after looking out at the dim city, the lights seemed too bright. He waited for the AC to kick in.

The first tendril of cool air against his cheek brought no comfort. He looked out, into the darkness, made deeper by the tint on the windows. A few pin pricks of light filtered through, he wondered how far they were, how powerful. Were they traffic lights, flood lights, or lights put on hoardings?

It was hot. He wanted some fresh air. If only the windows could be opened.

A slow, sticky unwanted silence descended. Two men fighting over a berth had called a truce till the TTE decided their case. The sullen silence permeated through him, he blamed himself for the confusion. He knew it was not rational.

Sitting across from him were three ladies. They sat still, with their hands crossed in their laps, right over left. Their saris are carefully draped over their shoulders, hiding their necks, upper arms, torso… the only parts of their bodies visible beneath the veil, were their faces, and arms below their elbows. Their backs made identical angles with the back of the compartment, and shoulders were evenly hunched: a group preparing for a recital, perfectly uniform, staring straight ahead. Their eyes looked past him, through him and through the partition behind his head, at nothing. They barely rocked with the train, nor did they resist its motion.

The eldest sat near the aisle. Her face had wrinkled around her eyes, as though she squinted a lot. Her sari was a shade of brown almost no one would wear out of choice, a few tufts of hair sticking out under her sari were grey. In the middle sat probably the youngest of the three… her sari had been pink at some time. She swayed with the train, occasionally even brushing her companion’s elbows, guiltily enjoying the ride. The third sat next to the window. Wedged deep into the angle of the back and side of the compartment, with her shoulder pressed firmly against the window, she hardly swayed at all, and she did not seem to want to. The beginning of her sindoor was visible under her sari and a black and gold mangal sutra hung low over her chest. She was the most impassive. The lights of the city flashed by her window unheeded.

Who were these women, he wondered, so intent on being ignored that they failed?

Basketball for Beginners

The basketball team, in all schools, is divided into the playing five, the extras, and the wannabes. Contrary to popular belief, the most important component for the success of any such team is not the playing five, but the wannabes.

This is a story about determination…

Not how the team won the city tournament, which we did, or how this geeky kid made into the team, and we carried him off the court, in triumph, that would never happen. The only guys who ever get carried off the basket ball court, are the ones who get injured, and that too, by medical staff.

This is not a story about basket ball; it’s a story about the only thing that counts in school.

He was worried… but no one knew that. This fact bothered him even more. He was absent from school, and no one asked him the next day, ‘why,’ not even the teacher.

This made him question his own value, and he realised, he was pretty much a loser.

“Then again, may be I am not,” he said, “I am captain of the gymnastics team…” that chain of thought trailed off into space, and was replaced by the realisation, that captain of the gymnastics team, was just that.

I’ll tell you how, there are no wannabes. No one, cannot make it to the team, no one needs to improve… and try again next year… The gym team’s slogan, as far as selections go, is something along the lines of ‘beggars can’t be choosers,’ only more desperate. And he was captain of that lot.

He decided, he needed to do something to emerge from the shadows, and he had just two years in college.

The immense effort (ego bruise) it took to accept his social status, or lack there of, took its toll on him, and he missed two more days of school, and the teacher marked him present… it was that bad.

While he had faced the inevitable truth, he had no clue how to make his next confrontation with the inevitable truth, slightly more favourable.

They say, 'God helps those who help themselves.' They also say, 'success is 99 percent perspiration and one percent inspiration. 'They say, honesty is the best policy, and that hope springs eternal, the point being, they say a lot of things… very few are actually useful, like the one about luck, that I can’t remember right now.

Basically, while he was languishing in abject dejection, over the fact that no one noticed, his abject dejection, and that this was causing even more severe languishing, indifference to which brought even more severity in his dejection… basically, call it the vicious cycle, of dejection, while it was operating, on our poor friend… lady luck intervened, for the first time, in his favour.