What the Thunder Says?

Standing on the bridge, he was continuously looking down the turbulent water of the river Yamuna. The river water glistened every now and then by the lights of the cars which were crossing across the bridge. This hide and seek of light and darkness fluctuated his intentions. Being a graduate in English Literature, he had read Hamlet’s ‘To be or not to be...’. During those days he used to be dynamic and animated while reading his texts but he was so churned up by the critics and their obtrusive presence that he could hardly find out his own intrepretations of those lines. Thus a subject which he had chosen to chisel his creativity, interred his originiality and made him as mechanical as a student of a university, located in a metropolis.

At an age of twenty-nine, the gap between his goal - rather the goal of his parents, relatives, village and his entire community; and his efforts - seemed as distant as the abyss existing between dream and reality. ‘People say, the water of this river is no better than a drain’, he ruminates on. He cannot find it and wants to find it neither. It’s already past mid-night, and for the first time he has come here. The only question which poses before him is: can this river be a gateway to success to him, far from the utter fiasco of this world, where the boundary between success and failure per se will be as flimsy as a spider’s web.

His parents, who were basically farmers, always wanted to see him as an I.A.S. Officer. Four years ago, he came to this bustling city, having only this aim in his mind.

‘Is this the beginning of life?’

‘Is this the end of life, nothing exists outside it?’

These thoughts were hammering his mind as somewhere lightning thundered.

As an undergraduate student, he was one of the most promising students, the best one in Patna University.

‘But, was I the best one here?’

‘Perhaps not’, the answer echoed from the inside of his mind like a sharp bullet.

‘Didn’t I swot hard to be one!’

‘You did, but it continued for only a few months, afterwards you were lost in the maze of this city.’

Five years ago when his mother came to know about his second girlfriend Shamma, back in Patna, she had burst out in anger: ‘Never expect from us that you will bring a whore of any caste, who doesn’t even know how to put on clothes, and we will accept her as our bahu.’ Her tirade continued. ‘Have you any sense how your father sends you money by curtailing our daily needs? Send the boy to Delhi, he will be a Krishna Kanhaia’, she added apprehensively.

And, when he was to leave for Delhi, his mother - who was forty-five but looked fifty-five - shed tears for hours, but not before making him swear: ‘be away from sex and wine’. He felt proud, having been treated as Gandhi, going abroad. Unfortunately, he tasted both, enjoyed both, and longed more for it, and whatever was lacking, was fulfilled by his friends or foes, he couldn’t distinguish.

In the beginning, when he was focused on his studies, sometimes his friends jeered at him, rather at his naivety.

‘So, Gandhi wishes to be away from sex and wine.’

‘What! Want to be loyal to your girlfriend, who is one thousand kilometers away from here.’

‘Come on, buddy, man or ...’

Fortune’s wheel changed, and he started believing in pluralistic discourse, especially in the matter of girlfriends. He stumbled. However, tried to compensate for his past frivolousness, but the proverb, ‘It’s never too late to mend’, did not seem to be enough to exculpate him from his inevitable fall. He couldn’t cross the barrier of ‘U.P.S.C. Mains’.

‘My brother will perform some feat, which nobody has ever done in my village. He will be a big officer, earn a lot, and will pay off my dowry’, his sister kept on thinking. ‘Oh! This bloody dowry.’ Her entire hope from future perspectives rested on her brother’s success or failure. His father was one step ahead in building castles in the air. He had already dreamt how to invest the money which he was supposed to get in his son’s marriage. Had the things been under his control, he would have become another Mittal, with that money of dowry. A second Mittal, and would have sat on ‘Peacock Throne’. Another Shahjahan, or another peacock.

He loves his sister the most, as she is someone who is miles away from pretence. A thought of her brings two drops of water on his swollen cheek. But, again it’s tears or rain-water, he is unable to differentiate. He had read Keats: ‘My heart aches and a drowsy numbness pains.’

Suddenly, he wants to flinch from his present invention, but what will he reply to his relatives and neighbours. They will certainly sneer at him. ‘Look! S.P. sahib is going’. More than his failure, he is afraid of these backbiters who wield more power in society than the state-owned repressive apparatus. His flow of thoughts is disrupted by the sound of another lightning, as if it were a shot to inaugurate a game, signalling the beginning of a major sport event, his jump into the river. A jump into the future, which is no future; to a new life, which is no life. Certainly, for that acrobatic feat, he needs to muster up more courage, at least more than a Chinese gymnast.