Revolution 2020 (6 page)

‘We are both
stupid, fine? Did you have dinner?’

She had asked me
this question every night for the last five years. I wanted to stay
mad at her, but could not. ‘I did, thanks’

‘What thanks?
Stupid. Go to bed now, sleep and don’t think about the entrance
exams’

‘Aarti,’
I said and paused.

‘What?’

‘You are very
nice,’ I said. I couldn’t come up with a better Hue.

‘Nice and
stupid? Or nicely stupid?’ Aarti laughed.

‘What would I
do without you?’

‘Shut up. I am
here only,’ she said.

‘We are not
young anymore, Aarti,’ I said.

‘Okay, okay.
Not that again. Go to bed, Mr Grown-up Man.’

‘Aarti, come
on. You always avoid ...’

‘We’ll
talk, but not now. After your entrance exams’

I kept quiet.

‘Don’t
complicate life, Gopal. Aren’t you happy with our friendship?’
‘Yes, I am but...’

‘But-but what?
Good night, sweet dreams, sleep tight.’

‘Good night.’

‘It’s no
use now,’ I said, closing the maths textbook.

Raghav had come to
my house on the eve of the exam. He had offered a last-minute
trigonometry revision, my weak spot. Raghav picked up the textbook.

‘You sleep,
okay? Rest before the exam is a must. And take lots of sharpened
pencils,’ he said

Baba came out of the
kitchen when he saw Raghav leave. ‘Stay for dinner,’ Baba
told him.

‘Not today,
Baba,’ Raghav said. ‘1 will take a proper treat once
Gopal gets a rank,’

I did get a rank. A
fucked-up rank, that is.

‘52,043,’
I read out from the screen. I had come to Raghav’s house in
Shivpur. We had logged on to the AIEEE website.

Sure, I hadn’t
scored too badly. Out of ten lakh test-takers, I had beaten nine lakh
fifty thousand. However, the NITs had only thirty thousand seats.
Sometimes, life played cruel jokes on you. I’d be one of those
unfortunate cases who had done well, but not well enough.

‘5,820,’
Raghav said, reading from the computer monitor.

Raghav’s
father had come into the room to stand behind us.

‘What’s
that?’ I said.

‘My rank,’
Raghav said.

‘Excellent!’
Raghav’s father said delightedly.

Raghav smiled. He
could not react more than that.

‘This should
give you lots of choices,’ Raghav’s proud father said.
‘You can get Electronics in Delhi.’

‘There’s
NIT Lucknow too, right?’ Raghav said. ‘Closer home.’

‘Forget AIEEE,
let us wait for JEE’ Raghav's father said, his voice elated.

Father and son took
a while to remember my presence in the room. They saw my crestfallen
face and fell silent. ‘I have to go home,’ I mumbled.

‘Fifty
thousand should get you something, no?’ Raghav’s father
said, fully aware it would not. He didn’t mean to hurt me, but
it felt bad. Never in my life had I felt so small. I felt like a
beggar hanging out with kings.

'I’ll see you
later, Raghav,’ I said and scurried out of their house. I
didn’t want anyone to see my tears.

Raghav came running
after me in the lane outside his house. ‘You okay?’ he
asked.

I swallowed hard and
wiped my eyes before turning to him. ‘I’m fine, buddy,’
I lied. ‘And congrats! You owe us a treat. But your dad is
right. We will take the real party after JEE.’

I continued to
ramble until Raghav interrupted me. ‘Will Baba be fine?’
he asked.

I shrugged my
shoulders and fought the lump in my throat.

‘Should I come
with you?’ he offered.

Yeah
right,
take
a
top-ranker
to
meet
your
parent
when
you
’
ve
flunked,
I thought.

‘Don’t
worry. He’s faced worse things in life,’ I said.

‘Aren’t
the AIEEE results due today? They are not in the papers,’ Baba
said as soon as I entered the house. Four different newspapers lay
open on the floor.

‘No, they
don’t publish results in the newspaper anymore. Baba, what is
this mess?’ I said.

I bent down to
collect the papers. I did not mention that the results were available
online.

‘So how do we
find out the results? Isn’t today the date?’ he said.

I kept quiet as I
stacked the newspapers. I wanted to tell him the results won’t
be out for a while. Peace for a few more days would be nice, even if
temporary. I saw his aged face, the wrinkles around his eyes. Eyes
that were extra bright today.

‘Should we go
to NIT Lucknow?’ Baba said, happy to make the five-hour journey
to find out his son was a loser.

‘Baba!’
I protested.

‘What?’

‘Let’s
make lunch.’ I moved to the kitchen. The antique gas stove took
six tries to start. I placed a bowl of water on a burner to boil dal.

My father stood
behind me. ‘We
have
to get the results. Let’s go,’
he said. When old people get stuck on something, they don’t let
go.

'Let me make the
meal,’ I said. ‘I will call you when it is ready.'

Telling your parents
you’ve failed at something is harder than the actual failure. I
cooked lunch for the next hour. I wondered if life would ever be the
same again. One stupid exam, half a dozen mistakes in multiple-choice
problems had changed my life forever.

My father and I ate
in silence, his hopeful eyes pinned on me. My hiding the news did not
help anyone.

I went to him after
dinner. ‘I know the results, Baba,’ I said softly. ‘And?’
he said, eyes wide.

'My rank is 52,043.’

'Is tli.it good?'

I shook my head.

‘You won’t
get a good branch?’

‘I won’t
get into NIT,’ I said.

My father’s
expression changed. He had the look every child dreads. The look that
says, T
brought
you
up,
now
see
what
you
have
done!
’

A bullet in the head
is preferable to that look.

Baba got up
agitatedly and started to circle the dining table. ‘How can you
not get a good rank?’

Well,
not
everyone
does,
Baba.
Nine
lakh
fifty
thousand
of
us
didn
’
t.
But I
did not air my thought.

‘Now what?’
he said.

I wondered if I
should suggest some options - suicide, penance in the Himalayas or a
life of drudgery as a labourer?

‘I am sorry,
Baba,’ I said.

‘I told you to
study more,’ he said.

Which
parent
doesn
’
t?

He went to his room.
I gathered the courage to enter his bedroom after half an hour. He
had kept a hot-water bottle on hi.s lie.nl.

‘I could do a
BSc, Baba,’ I said.

‘What good
will that do, huh?'  he said, his voice too loud for a sick man.

I'll finish my
graduation. Look for a job There should be plenty of opportunities,'
I said up words as i spoke.

‘Who gives a
good job to a simple graduate?’ Baba said.

Correct,
a
‘
simple
’
graduate
meant
nothing.

‘We don’t
have money for a donation college, Baba,’ I reminded him.

He nodded. He spoke
after some thought. ‘Try again?’

Baba had not made an
unreasonable suggestion. However, he had horrible timing.

The entrance exam
had given me so much pain. The mere thought of repeating it caused
physical agony. ‘Stop it, Baba,’ I screamed, ‘If
you had settled on the land, we would have money for a private
college. You didn’t, so I have to keep suffering.’

My father pressed
the hot-water bottle harder against his forehead. He looked pained,
by the headache and me. ‘Go away’ he said.

‘I am sorry’
I said automatically.

‘Fail exams,
scream at your father. You are going in the right direction, son,’
he said, eyes closed.

‘I’ll do
something. I won’t let you down. I will become rich one day,’
I said.

‘It is not
easy to become rich. You have to work hard. You don’t,’
he

said.

I wanted to tell him
that I did work hard. You don’t get a fifty-thousand rank,
however useless that may be, without working hard. I wanted to say I
felt fucked up inside. I wished he would figure out I wanted to cry,
and that it would be great if he hugged me.

‘Go away. Let
me have some peace in my final days,’ he said.

I went to my room
and sat in silence. I had never really missed my mother all these
years. However, on the day of the AIEEE results, I wished she was
around. I kicked myself for not getting those six extra problems
right. I kept rewinding to the day of the exam. As if my brain could
go back in time, recreate the same scenario, and I wouldn’t
make the same mistakes again. Regret - this feeling has to be one of
the biggest manufacturing defects in humans. We keep regretting, even
though there is no point to it. I stayed in my bed, dazed.

I came to the living
room at midnight. I called Aarti.

‘Hey, you
okay?’ Her voice was calm.

She knew my results.
Yet she hadn’t called. She knew I’d call her when I was
good and ready. Aarti and I were in sync.

‘We will talk
on the boat,’ I said.

‘Four-thirty
tomorrow morning at Assi Ghat,’ she said.

I went back to bed
after the call. I lay down but couldn’t sleep. I tossed and
turned for ages. There would be no sleep till I sorted things out
with Baba.

I went to his room.
He was asleep, the hot-water bottle still by his head.

I kept the bottle
aside. My father woke up.

‘I am sorry,
Baba,’ I said.

He didn’t say
anything.

‘I’ll do
whatever you tell me. I will try again if that’s what you want.
I’ll become an engineer, Baba,’ I said.

He placed a hand on
my head as if in blessing. It acted as a tipping point for my
emotions. I broke down.

‘I’ll
work extra hard,’ I said as tears rolled down my cheeks.

‘God bless
you, go to sleep,’ he said.

♦

I reached Assi Ghat
at four-thirty in the morning. Phoolchand, my boatman friend, smiled
as he handed me the oars. He had never charged me in all these years.
I would take his boat for an hour, and buy him tea and biscuits in
return. Firangs would pay five hundred bucks for the same.

Sometimes I’d
help him negotiate with foreigners in English, and he’d give me
a ten per cent commission. Yes, I could make money like this too.
Maybe not a lot, but enough to survive. If only Baba would understand
this.

‘Come back by
five-thirty,’ Phoolchand said. ‘I have a booking.
Japanese tourists’

‘I won’t
take more than half an hour,’ 1 promised.

He smirked. ‘You
are going with a girl. You may forget the time.’

‘I won’t.’

‘You have a
setting with her?’ Phoolchand said as he untied the anchor
rope. In small towns, everyone is interested in every male and female
interaction.

‘Phoolchand
bhai, I will be back in half an hour,’ I said and got into the
boat.

Phoolchand frowned
at my curt reply.

‘She is a
classmate from school. Have known her for eight years,’ I

said.

He smiled. His
paan-stained teeth shone in the semi-darkness of dawn.

‘I’ll
help you with the Japanese, we will rip them off together,’ I
said, holding the oars.

Aarti was waiting
twenty metres ahead of the ghat pier, away from the stare of boatmen
and sadhus. She stepped into the boat, one foot at a time. I whisked
the boat away from the shore.

‘Let’s
go that way,’ she said, pointing in the quieter western
direction. On the east, the morning aarti had commenced at the
crowded Dashashwamedh Ghat. Dashashwamedh, believed to be the place
where Brahma performed ten ashwamedha yajnas (horse sacrifice), is
the hub of all holy activities on the banks of Ganga in Varanasi.

The sound of bells
and chants faded as I rowed further away. Soon, the only sounds came
from the periodic slapping of the oars on the water.

‘It happens,’
said Aarti.

Her face had an
amber hue from the morning sun. It matched her saffron and red
dupatta.

My arms and
shoulders felt tired. I stopped rowing and put the oars down. The
boat stood still somewhere in the middle of the Ganga. Aarti stood up
to come and sit beside me. Her movement shook the boat a little. As
per ritual, she took my tired palms and pressed them. She held my
chin and made me face her.

‘I’m
scared, Aarti,’ I said in a small voice.

‘Why?’

‘I’ll
get nowhere in life,’ I said.

‘Nonsense,’
she said. ‘So people who don’t have a top AIEEE rank get
nowhere in life?’

‘I don’t
know. I feel so ... so defeated. I let Baba down.’

‘Is he okay?’

‘He wants me
to try again. He is obsessed with making me an engineer.’

‘Do you want
to be an engineer?’ Aarti said.

‘My dad is not
in the IAS. My grandfather was not a minister. We are from a simple
Indian family. We don’t ask these questions. We want to make a
living. Engineering gives us that,’ I answered.

‘How
old-fashioned!’

‘Filling your
stomach never goes out of fashion, Aarti’ I said.

She smiled and
placed a hand on my arm. I hugged her. As I held her, I brought my
mouth close to hers.

‘What are you
doing?’ Aarti said, pushing me away.

‘I... I
just...’

‘Don’t,’
Aarti said
sternly.
‘You will spoil our friendship.’