To Rex, with Love

…………………………1

It is a three word sentence! You would think that there is no harm in finding it written in neat, loopy alphabets on the last page of a ‘get well’ card But when the same happened to poor Rex tonight, he quite broke down and to the supreme astonishment of a junior girl peeking through the window, burst into childish sobs.

But there again, I am rushing too fast and muddling you up. Must start at the beginning, or rather start with Ted. It was the appearance of this rather plump, seemingly plain boy that started all this mayhem.

He was neither tall, nor short. Neither pale, nor tanned. His eyes were jet black, lips livid and expressive. A set of eyebrows that seemed on either poles of his capital adorned by a shock of black, untidy hair. He had rather a big head. But as an entirety, his appearance, complete with his dimpled smile was quite pleasing.

He walked in, one morning to our school, observing everything with a critical eye. As he swept in with his two suitcases, his attitude seemed more of an inspector than a student.

It was breakfast time. All our form (which consisted of about 150 boys and girls) saw his arrival. His seeming indifference at what we thought was ‘our’ grand boarding school left all of us a little indignant.

Rakesh was our model bully. He was 5′11” and fittingly thick. Surprisingly, he had a tender face, which, however from continuous practice had a perpetual sarcastic tinge to it. He had been in special need of some quality show off that day. So, when the same boy appeared a little later with Mrs. Subramanium, Rakesh could hardly wait for the Chemistry teacher to depart. Here was tender meat. Here’s a new goat, he thought.

“Fat head plumpy,
Isn’t he lumpy” he started loudly.

Students nodding over their food, jerked up. Some of the girls to the right sat tensely erect. I myself looked up, expecting a little amusement. By now, most of Rakesh’s cronies (and that included a couple a bone-bare females, among other animals) had joined in.

‘The boy is a great one for late reaction’, I thought. I waited for an expression of anger to appear, ears to redden.

‘What would I have done?’ I asked myself. ‘Perhaps I would have put on a bored expression and yawned. Ah, here it come. The new boy has opened his mouth.’
The majority of Rakesh fans were chanting, ‘Fat-head lumpy…’

Instead of the expected yawn, Tedvick (the new boy) joined right into the chant. He actually sang the lines like the others. This came as a shock, as it registered, what exactly he was trying to do. Ouch!

Ted looked straight at Rakesh and sang on the lines over and over again, in his melodic, cheery voice. All eyes turned to Rakesh to see how he would take it. Ted raised his voice an octave. Rakesh suddenly found the tables turned. The others were now (mostly unconciously) singing the lines AT him. He stopped abruptly. The smile vanished. I braced myself for an explosion, when Mrs. Subramanium appeared, a little surprised at the extraordinary sound coming from the common room of our form.

The form quietened down at once. All giggles and whispers stopped.

‘What is going on here?’ she demanded.

‘Oh, Ma’am, we were singing a nice little song’ in a bright and would-be-innocent voice, ’shall we sing it for you?’ he added as an afterthought. I winced.

The resultant sniggers stopped abruptly under the deadly gaze of the Chemistry teacher.

‘I am surprised with you’, in a low voice which indicated that it was time to forget composure and run away while one has the chance to. ‘You have already turned to mischief’.

‘I am very sorry’ Ted sounded hurt.

‘I hope I’m not tale-telling’ he said apologetically to Rakesh and turned back ‘But it was he who started it. I figured that it is some kind of a daily ritual and joined in. I am sorry anyway and I shan’t do anything like this ever again’

Mrs. Subramanium cooled down visibly at the boy’s politeness. Rakesh turned red under her gaze before she swept out of the room.

________________________________________

I, like many others thought that Ted had made a very bad start. I almost pitied his twinkling eyes as we entered the Maths classroom. He went straight upto the first seat and sat down heavily. He was apparently unaware that the whole class was staring at him.

The first seat was monopolised by Rakesh. I got up to inform the new boy. The giant turned up, as if on cue, as usual late, but just before the teacher.

Red-faced still, he walked straight over to the front seat. Ted did not look up. The form was more interested about the front of their classroom than I have ever seen it to be.

Rakesh kicked at the end of the desk and sent one of Ted’s books flying.

‘Well?’, asked Ted. His voice had lost the polite tinge to a freezing cool.

‘That’s MY desk. GET OUTTA IT, infernal PIG!’ spluttered Rakesh.

I anticipated a quick and decisive fight. Once again, to my surprise, Ten sighed and picked up his books, shrugged, and walked away from the desk. He chose another seat, however, not before saying in a would be confidential whisper (that everyone could hear): ‘Your zip is open, master Rakesh.’

The whole class cracked up. Rakesh stood up, balling his fists, when our Grammer teacher, the staid Mrs Banerjee walked in.

Ted framed each of his sentences with ‘Rakesh’ as the noun (something he does even now). When asked to frame a sentence with ‘girth’, he wrote on the board, in his nice, loopy hand: ‘Master Rakesh is the proud possessor of a girth that allows him to occupy not less than a whole desk at a time’.

______________________________________

…………………….2

Rakesh was not a boy to be teased lightly. He was dominant and hated to be caught on the wrong foot before a score of girls. Continuously laughing at others had made him very vulnerable against getting laughed at.

I wanted to make this clear to Ted that he could expect plenty of rough goings now that he had ruffled the clear waters.

Fortunately, he had taken a fancy for me from the beginning. It was a simple matter that caught his eye.

I must say at this juncture that he often talks in riddles and for all his plain looks, he is the cleverest of his age I have ever known.

After dictating me his address, phone number, etc., he told me that he wanted to make a living using ‘reason’.
‘Do I get over you?’ he asked me.

I was subconciously well-versed that the terminology ‘understand’ could be broken into ‘under’ and ’stand’. I did not think about it. Gave him a quizzical eye and said- ‘I quite understand. But what shall it be? Psychoanalysis, detection, what?’

Instead of answering, he eyed me with obvious delight.
‘Ah! You know what? I loved this school the first time I saw it (my heart warmed towards him considerably). But there are not many brainy guys around. You’re one of the few interesting people I see here.’

I waved it off, but from then on, he became my firm friend. He was evasive of difficulties and had an authoritative way of talking. But he never dominated. He listened politely to me, often destroying castles of my reasons with honeyed counter-points.

————–

As I came to the common room, I found that he was already there, buried in some huge paperback. I sat down opposite to him. He said the first ‘Good morning’, however. He gazed at me critically over the story-book.

‘Hmmm! You’ll get in trouble if you cut your nails inside your room.’ he said in a saintly voice.

I looked at him from head to toe, but couldn’t find anything amiss.

‘Are you nervous about me?’

I started. How could THAT show?

‘Shoes extra polished. Laces not bound. plain case of anxiety’ he muttered from the other side of the story-book.

We ate in silence for some time. Finally, he clapped the book shut and looked at me.

‘You said that you’ll find me friends’, he stole a malevolent glance at Rakesh, who was eating voraciously and shouting offence from the other side of the room.

I was quite impressed at how indifferent Ted was to these.

‘Let’s see,’ I said. ‘I can make you friends with Sally. She’s awfully intelligent.’
Sally was my best friend. For the last two days she had been sulking because I spent so much time with Ted.

‘Fine’, said Ted, ‘Two will be quite enough’ and flashed a grin at me.

I turned back and called the girl, sitting a few tables away.
‘Oy, Sally! Come here for a bit’.

She had finished her toast and was chatting away, no doubt, about some new findings of NASA (she adored NASA). She came upto us and drew a plastic chair beside me.

‘This is Tedvick, Sally. He is my newest clever friend’.
Sally smiled politely at Ted and gave me a pursed lipped ‘Boys…’ look.

I turned to Ted.

‘This is Shailey Ghosh, my best friend. And of course, she’s turned into Sally. She’s very intelligent. Can tell a frog from a toad. A hen from a cow..’ I ticked off my fingers. Both laughed.

‘Seriously though, she can give you info about everything available in her encyclopedia. She can bring down a terrorist and equally well, bring down the whole school with screams if she finds a cockroach within a mile of herself.’
Sally threw me a friendly punch.

Ted looked at Sally thoughtfully, sizing her up.
‘Were the old shoes quite worn?’ he asked innocently.

Sally looked startled. I looked down quickly. The shoes appeared normal. I couldn’t tell if they were new.

‘Yes. But how do you tell?’

‘Oh, new shoes leave awful marks, don’t they? Real pain-in the-feet.’
I growled at myself. A nasty round cut was visible through the white socks.

‘Do you use the ‘absolute’ series dusting powder of Garnier?’
Sally eyed him in alarm.

‘Just as well’, we thought.’Let her know why I spend so much time with the guy’.

To my relief, Ted didn’t think that Sally was too dull after all. After the ‘Hi’-'Hellos’, we got down to serious counsel. We decided, without going into anything special, to keep a general eye on Ted and Rakesh. Both Sally and I were popular with the teachers.

‘And Sally,’ said Ted as we started to leave.

Sally turned round.

‘Don’t worry about Sumanth. No competition. He’s all yours.’

Sally blushed and pretended to slap him. I walked away embarrased, pretending not to hear.’

I soon found that Ted didn’t need much looking after. When Rakesh held out his leg to trip him, Ted carefully stepped on his foot with his whole (and considerable weight). Rakesh yelled with pain. Ted, ofcourse, was very apologetic.
‘I didn’t see your foot’ he mumbled.

Another time when Rakesh tried to bang a door on his face, Ted turned realistically and said ‘Good Morning, Sir’, complete with a slight bow.
Rakesh stopped midway and was followed by guffaws for the rest of the day, wherever he went.

On the other hand, Ted turned offensive. By some clever and subtle acting, he managed to impress upon a particularly brawny Rakesh-follower, that the name ‘Rex’ would suit him very well. Once started, the mischief couldn’t be stopped. By the end of the first week of Ted’s invasion into RakeshIan terrItory, Rakesh had changed in to Rex.

……………………….3

Rakesh, or Rex, as we call him now, had to be dominating. Ted on the other hand was very genial and to my envy, he became the teacher’s pet quite easily, and to a higher degree than myself. He could complete everything too fast. That gave him ample opportunity to get to mischief.

Rex could not bear to have anyone challenging his monopoly. Though he always got the first seat and knew that he could crush Ted in an open fight, he found his support coming down day by day.

He was thick from his wrist upto his massive head and regularly occupied the bottom of the result list. But he could play underhand quite well, and thus was a dangerous opponent.

The first stroke came, as long anticipated, the next Thursday. Entering his room, Ted said that he found that someone had been in. He said that in general he did not want his welcome rug so aligned that all the inmates were welcome to go out and the outsiders had to see an inverted sign which meant that they were welcome to stay out.
What he found next was less funny. All his homework sheets were drenched in ink and his two pens were gone. He turned thoughtful for a few moments and then turned over his pockets.
I had never before seen what he kept in those. The contents were quite curious: There was a Swiss-army knife, a pair of clean white gloves, two strange instruments that I had never seen before, a finger-print pad, and for some strange reason, a cigar end.

‘Tch…Tch..Tch.. The abject level to which some people will sink.’ He shook his head sadly.

Ted was very methodical. He went down to the playground, into an angle that overlooked the open window of Rex’s room. Next, he challenged a junior boy that it was impossible to get a ball through that window.

Fortunately for us, and unfortunately for the little kid, the ball went in at the first attempt and hit Rex squarely on the forehead.

The huge head of Rex poked out belligerently from the window.
Ted smiled indulgingly and even dared to wave at him. Rex made a sound halfway between a trumpet and a roar and vanished with a mighty jerk from the window.

‘Now for it, Sumanth, now for it’ he pulled me towards the servants’ entrance. Up we ran and into the corridor.
I pushed at the door. It was locked. I groaned, these doors have a click lock if the the handle was put at a certain angle.

‘Move over’, Ted said, ‘I had anticipated this.’ Out came the two strange metal instruments. Ted started twiddling with them. Poking with one and at times, holding the other fixed at one place or the other in the keyhole. There were scratching noises and a sudden metallic click. I gasped. The door opened easily.

I kept waiting outside and was ordered to whistle if Rex came this way. After a remarkably small time, he said a monosyllable, ‘Done!’

It was followed by an exclamation. I found him looking out from the window. Peering out myself, I found Rex on the ground below, sniffing around for Ted like a hound.

Ted picked up the ball and with marvellous accuracy, flung it at Rex. It hit Rex on the shoulder.

‘What the…’ he exclaimed and looked up. Ted winked at him. Rex looked frighteningly insane for a moment. Then he tore towards the stairs. We retreated hurriedly. Before locking the door behind him, Ted slipped the piece of Cigar end below the doormat.

By the time Rex was up again and looking out from the window, he saw us walking peacefully down the ground. Rex had found the door locked as usual and everything in order. Had he opened his table’s drawers, he would have found the two stolen pens and a few blank pieces of paper missing.

He got into more trouble about the piece of smoked cigar than Ted did to re-complete his homework.

____________

……………………4

This incident, somehow made Rex more desperate than ever. He found the pens gone and knew that Ted had successfully tricked him.

The bully didn’t like to be bulled upon. He couldn’t see any way at all, by which he could get even with Ted. He couldn’t complain that the pens which he had stolen were missing. Unfortunately, a boy passing by, had seen Rex unlocking his door. He couldn’t prove the intrusion.

There was a lull for two days. Apparantly, Rex was upto something. Although Ted was turning an insolent nose at the whole thing, Sally and I were anxious. Delayed action could mean danger.

The next Thursday, I went and submitted my homework to the respective teachers. Now, I had some free time. I went to Ted’s room.

His face had a puzzled look on it and he seemed to be thinking about something. He looked up as I came in.

‘Submitted all your homework?’ I asked.

‘Nah! Pass me the History homework.’

This was strange. I passed on the homework written in the neat hand of Sally. I distinctly remembered that the name ‘Tedvick’ was ticked off on the homework register. He looked at the paper thoughtfully and then at his own rendering of the same. He picked up Sally’s copy and looked closely.

‘Was my name ticked off in the homework register?’

‘Yes.’, I said, getting more and more puzzled.

‘I thought as much’ Ted sighed. ‘He’s getting clever, the old birdie.’

I couldn’t make head or tail of anything. He completed his homework. The work, which was supposed to have been copied from Sally’s work (our History teacher asked us to help him about past topics), did not much resemble the same.

Presently he made a few changes on the paper and with me, went to Mr. Dahl, our History teacher’s office.

We knocked.

‘Come in!’ came the deep voice.

The office was large. At one end was a table littered with paper, on it’s side sat our tall, lanky History teacher on a wooden, straightback chair.
He took no notice as we came in.

‘It is about his History homework, Sir’ began Ted.

‘Whose homework?’ Mr.Dahl looked up from his work.

‘Rakesh’s homework, Sir.’

Mr. Dahl pursed his lips disapprovingly at the name.
‘Well?’

‘Sir. He was so ashamed, he couldn’t even come.’

‘Why?’ ‘History Sir’ sounded a little impatient.

‘Er.., Sir,.. he wrote my name on the top of his homework. It was a silly thing to do, wasn’t it?’

The teacher rummaged and found a bunch of papers written badly in what looked superficially like Ted’s loopy hand. Ted took the papers, crossed out his name from the top and put ‘Rakesh Gupta’, in it’s place.

I scanned the page. Most of the answers were wrong and in bad english. Swear words were scribbled over the margins.

Going through his register, Mr. Dahl looked puzzled.

‘But there’s a set of papaers that Rakesh submitted.’

Ted looked on unruffled.

‘Sir. You told me that I could accept help in topics that were taught before I came here. Well, I asked Rakesh to do the History answers for me. He must have given those to you by mistake.’

Ted took the other sheet from the History teacher.

‘I never knew that Rakesh ever helps any other child. He himself is so poor at his work and then he lacks the friendly attitude’. Mr. Dahl turned towards us-
‘I would not ask HIM to help, if I were you.’

‘Thank you, sir,’ Ted sounded surprised ‘but I do think he is a nice boy. What say, Sumanth?’

I turned my snigger into a prolonged cough. Ted handed over the new homework and we came out of the office.

Ted was red in the face and seemed at the point of bursting. We went to his room. He closed the door, almost quivering with suppressed emotion and then burst out laughing. He laughed and laughed and I sat looking at him in wonder. He gulped and choked and then laughed again.

I was completely perplexed. When at last , he was normal, he explained-

‘You see, our Rex did a clever piece of work. He intercepted the work Sally did for me. He took it with him. Produced a real bad copy with swear words and all in what he thought was a good imitation of my handwriting. He presented that to Sir and passed this onto me.’

Ted paced his room, like our Chemistry teacher did when she taught stoichiometry.

‘He had but to pass this onto me a bit too late and his trick should have worked.’

‘Uh-Oh’ I said.

‘When Mr. Dahl told me that my work is dirty, I knew something fishy was going on. I have never yet submitted any of my work to him. A closer look at Sally’s work showed me these.’

Ted turned Sally’s copy over and pointed at a particular place. I took it close to my eyes. A series of grandom marks, shallow incisions, really on the soft cardboard binding.

‘Rex keeps the nail on his little finger, left hand, very long.’ Ted said with his typical, ‘Elementary, dear Watson’ air.
‘Then you told me that my name was ticked off on the list.

I do not generally want to give away the fact that I’m impressed with someone, even if I am. I could not help this time. It must have shown plainly, for he chuckled.

It was quite a sight when Rex found out what happened. He never did seem to get the better of Ted. He got into a terrible mess because of the swear words.

…………………………5

That night, Rex sat down in deep thought. What could he do to show that he was better and greater than that horrible plump boy.
‘Why?’ he fumed, ‘All the students seem to think that punk is so great, something wonderful.’

What could he do to prove that the wretch was no better than he was.

His strength, he decided. He will ask Ted to fight against him.
‘I shall show them who’s boss. The rat..The weak, conceited thing..’ Rex did not sleep the night.

————–

That Saturday, there was a students’ meeting. I brought up the topic of our form monitor. The post was currently occupied (and enjoyed) by Rex. There was a girl, Eliza, who too, was in the contention for the envied post. A monitor could do things not allowed to others. He/she could be out of doors at forbidden times. He/she could visit forbidden territory (like the garden-forest of the neighbour) on the pretext of checking out loiterers, etc.

It was perhaps, only to aggravate Rex, that Ted was chosen as a monitor. This was a breach of custom. Monitors were generally old timers.

Ted smiled sweetly at Rex and then handsomely thanked him for giving up his post willingly.

This led to the outburst. Rex simply couldn’t bear to be out-voted from the position. His face turned crooked and a stream of swear words issued from it. Most of us were shocked.

‘Now, now, dear Rex’ Ted said soothingly with the air of a babysitter trying to calm a child, ‘You must not forget yourself. Children don’t say such words.’ He smiled his patronising smile.

‘OH, you piglet, Tedvick, tadpole that you are, what do you think of yourself?’ Rex shouted.

Ted laughed.

‘If you are a MAN, if you have it in you, a man’s courage, come face me. Fight me and I shall squash you. You know that, don’t you, WIMP? You hide behind your diaper changing, ever caring, darling teachers. Come out and I shall show you off for the punk you are.’ Rex kicked a chair and sent it flying across the room.
It did what it was meant to do, give an example of the inhuman strength Rex possessed.

The room went dead silent. I heard a involuntary sob somewhere behind me.

For the first time ever, I saw in Ted’s face, what was unmistakably anger. He said in a cold and hard voice-

‘It will be tomorrow, five o’clock. If you have the stomach, be there,’

Rex was distinctly taken aback. He muttered something like ‘hammer’ and ‘pulp’ and stormed out of the room.

‘Ted,’ said Sally, a little frightened, ‘Rakesh is the godson of a Shaolin Monk. You are no match to him in a real fight. We saw him beat the pulp out of a senior karate blackbelt champion.’

‘I couldn’t care less’, growled Ted and stormed out of the room in what was a comical imitation of Rex’s majestic exit.

————

Ted had certainly not lost his sense or cool in his anger.The plans were carefully laid at night.

The next morning, for what seemed to me a very suspicious reason, Rex had loose motion. He missed the first few lessons and appeared later, looking pale.

He was tortured during the lesson with snide remarks like-
‘Too weak?’ , ‘Having second thoughts?’ , or, ‘You sure you can kick without toppling first?’

However, he was quite confident about getting the better of his opponent that evening.

At noon, just after lunch (which he skipped), Rex went as usual to sit in a chair on the slightly raised platform under the kitchen stairs.
Out of nowhere, a pebble came and hit him on the arm.

With a snarl, he leapt off the chair and rushed forward. He didn’t see the taut string at the end of the platform and came crashing down.

All hell broke loose. Suddenly, a whole crowd of anxious wellwishers rushed in.

‘Ooh! He has broken his leg. Poor fellow’, cried a girl.

‘Dunno if it’s compound fracture’, said another.

“It’s ‘complex’ Jonnah.’

‘Duh! It’s compound.’

Rex found himself completely covered with friends who all thought that he had broken his leg. The pain increased quite considerably with the constant shoving, pulling, pinching and the not-so-accidental fall over his legs.

He thought it must be the bone.

Someone rolled up his pyjama leg. There was a universal shriek and then groan.

‘The bone is sticking out of the skin’ one said nauseously. Rex threw up. He didn’t have the nerve to look down. The psycological effect was unbearable. He thought that he must be dying of pain.

Rex was carried by five strong boys to the san. At the end, Ted said a few well chosen words to the matron.

‘Matron, we didn’t think there is much the matter with him. He was yelping and gurgling. So we had to carry him here. He thinks he has broken a leg. I would think it’s the Maths lesson at 4 O’Clock. He has a football match at 5, though. And I have an inkling that the bone may just get magically healed by then.’

Matron literally blew up in rage. ‘He is going nowhere for the next three days. I shall quarantine him for suspected chicken pox.’

————-

Five o’clock at the field, the whole form (and many more) turned up.Ted was there in the round opening at the centre, sporting white karate robes (which were quite new, infact).

Most of the people did not know of the noon incident. They already felt sorry for Ted. He himself looked heroically unaffected. Sally kept giving out quickly suppressed little giggles from beside me.

‘Shhh!’ I said. Turning on Sally, I saw that she could barely keep the laughs in. I shouldn’t have looked. These are contagious. As I thought of poor Rex, I myself shook with suppressed mirth. Sally pressed my palm in hers.

Time went by. It was 6 o’clock. Then 6:30. Still no Rex appeared. As darkness fell, a junior came up and told us that he was lying in the sanitarium.

The whole lot went there.

‘Nothing’s the matter with him,’ she said ‘He feigns that he has broken a leg, when actually they are both fine.’

‘Wants to miss something?’, I asked innocently.

‘That’d be it’, matron snapped back.

Rex must have been made up of sterner stuff than I had thought. He had heard it all and guessed the rest. His nostrils dilated, red face seemed a fixture. But he controlled himself and tried to look disinterestedly the other way.

All this, however, changed when Ted sent him a get well card. This was the proverbial last straw. Rex, the hulk, our own pet bully, could endure it no more. He broke down to sobs to the surprise of the before-mentioned girl and the disgust of matron.

Oh! And I almost forgot. How stupid of me.

What were the three words?

Knowledge IS Power

A word on ‘The fifteen rooms and one third

This was written when I was about 14-15 years old. The accents are (*shudder*) a little on the colourful side. Gimme a review.

THE FIFTEEN ROOMS AND ONE-THIRD

Part I: The forty six rooms

———————————–

 

There was something in the quick, slightly alarmed look of the caretaker that old Mr. Raman picked up with his experienced military eyes. He poked Mr. Ghosh with his knobby elbow.

‘Yes?’ grunted Ghosh.

Mr. Raman poked him harder at the ribs.

‘YES?!’ Ghosh shouted in his ear.

Mr. Raman promptly turned to face him and rolled off the moth-eaten, sponge bare sofa.

Mr. Ghosh smiled his know-it-all smile, nodding his head at the same time-
“An’ this a’felah! What? He went to the wars? Ma foot! Theenk af it…” his guffaw was cut short by the appearance of the manager.

He was a tall, elderly man. With sober eyes looking out from well shaven face, he glanced from Mr. Ghosh on the sofa to Mr. Raman, struggling to get upon his feet. There was something in his face, which suggested that he was immune to surprises caused by the two old gentlemen. Far ago, back in those days when he still had enough hair to comb, on such occasions, he would have tried to help his boarder to his feet, thereby, offending the concerned gentleman to the highest degree. It was long away too, that he had abandoned all such attempts.

______________________________

When Mr. Mittal looks back at his leisure, before him appears a new building being built. A large sign painted under his superintendence that said in bright red letters:

SAUBHAGYA OLD AGE HOME

He remembers this same building, posh and clean. As he looks out once transparent glass panes of his office, the manager can sometimes see the ghost of all forty-six boarders rise before his eyes…

Then came the day when Mr. Raman joined the old age home; partly deaf, but quick eyed, quite ready to take to the ‘good old’ warpath at the smallest hint of contradiction. It was a winter night.

On a similar winter night, Mr. Ghosh turned up: an extremely eccentric person, whose optical as well as mental vision did not extend beyond a few feet of himself.

Mr. Mittal had long tried, and like everything else, given up the attempt to discard the two appearances as coincidence. There was ample reason for it, indeed. The income of the duplet marked the decline of the old age home. Many of the boarders died due to a sudden bout of cholera (Olaotha). The remaining fled in fear. Only the two gentlemen remained and remained the building, thanks to the government’s blindness.
No one ever enlisted for that old age home again. It remained more of a jinxed asylum, a mere shadow of what it had been.

____________________________ 

And now, today, when Mr. Mittal opened the main door in response to unwonted knocking, he was greeted by a party consisting of a charming couple and a very rugged, haggard looking old man in expensive clothes.

 

Despite being happy beyond words at first (we must remember that it was twenty-one years since such a thing had happened), he soon found to his despair from some sly hints from the son and daughter-in-law, that old Mr. Bose had lost at least ’some of his marbles’. He would not have been so reluctant, had his age been twenty-nine instead of forty-nine. But this was government job and unhappy as he may have been (for he was a man with foresight), he had to introduce his guest to the other members of his ‘old age family’.

The primary problem that appeared due to this unwonted (and unwanted) intrusion into the divided monopoly of Mr. Ghosh and Mr. Raman was the distribution of rooms. The home, we must remember, had forty-six rooms worth living. Till date, the two old gentlemen had under their express illusion, inarticulately divided these into twenty-three each.

The appearance of this abomination created a semi-mutiny, the like of which the poor hoar building had never witnessed. Mr. Ghosh pretended that he couldn’t even see Mr. Bose. On the other hand, Mr. Raman was heard to utter several times, what sounded suspiciously like ‘my old four naught four’! Quite apart from the rest, Mr. Bose presented himself one morning in Mr. Mittal’s office, and confidentially declared that ‘the home’ would be far better off without Mr. Ghosh and Mr. Raman.

It was quite surprising how quickly Mr. Bose grasped the situation prevalent in the old age home. Thus, when Mr. Ghosh and Mr. Raman ran to demand for an extra room, Mr. Bose was not a distant third.

_______________________________ 

 

 

The problem, shortly was this: There were forty six rooms. Now, when we divide this number among three such good-natured men, there remains one in excess, or rather, two short.
Though Mr. Raman threatened and Mr. Ghosh turned away defiantly and Mr. Bose took to sobbing, Mr. Mittal chose to be fair. He decided to divide the forty six rooms into three equal parts.

‘But’, said Mr.Ghosh, quickly onto the obvious, ‘Ha’ can ye splita room in three?’

‘I will not sacrifice my part for building walls’ Mr. Bose found time to speak between fits of sobbing.

Mr. Mittal (by now) knew better than to get exasperated.

‘We shall put lines. Lines.’ he replied.

‘Ha!’ cried Mr. Raman, ‘FINE? What’s going on com’rades? Why pay fine when it is but fair that we get our parts in return to what we pay’ he looked up impressively.

Mr. Mittal couldn’t help smiling at the latter part of the sentence. At the beginning of the institution, the families of the boarders had to pay a certain amount which had not increased since. The money paid, taken together for a whole year, at present, would be sufficient to buy nothing more than a couple of cups of tea!
The thread of his thought was broken by a sudden ejaculation from Mr. Ghosh.

‘LINE!!’ he shouted, ‘Line, do ya heear? Ya bleesful eediot! Ya peevish bear!’

Mr. Bose peeped from behind his fingers.

‘NINE?’ Mr. Raman’s roared, his eyes dilating in anger. ‘And you promised us a fifteen rooms and a third each’ his hand flew to his shoulder as if his ‘old four naught four’ still hung there.

The alert manager quickly intervened. He struck at the weakest point.

‘We shall now find the room adequate for our purpose and divide it.’

Mr. Ghosh and Mr. Bose agreed instantaneously and Mr. Raman, feeling that they had reached some sort of a consensus, followed suit.

The manager, after his heroic attempts at settling the dispute for once and forever, stretched his means to quite overcome himself. He managed a feat, any manager of any lunatic asylum would have been proud to complete. Settling the worst skirmishes possible (which I shall leave to the imagination of my readers), about which room to divide, whose part will have the so-and-so, etc., the poor manager literally took to his heels and fled.

‘I will go mad’, the wretched man thought, ‘I wonder if Mr. Bose has not affected me already!’

 

 

Part II: The forty sixth room

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It was his fifty-ninth birthday and Mr. Mittal was talking to the fifty-ninth servant who had come to say that he wasn’t interested in working here anymore. He jumped at the unusual ring of the old, metallic-dialing phone. He was quite surprised to find that it still worked. Ordering the servant out, he picked up the phone and to his joy found his old friend at the other end.

‘Ha ha! There you are. Can’t recognise my voice. Can you?’

‘Thanks the Gods that I CAN recognise your name at least. I’m not even sure if I am sane.’

‘Doesn’t matter either way. You’d remain the little pest you always were.’
The strangely stoic man felt his heart lightening.

‘Tell me, old Johnny, how’s she?’

‘Ah-Ha! I thought so. Won’t talk to ME, eh? By the way, I just got news that ‘Toddy’ Burma is going for a ride…Your way!’ Mittal was sure Johnny winked at the other end. ‘So I thought I’d drop a hint…Here talk with her.’

That evening, he made the angry servant dust out his office and straighten the pictures.
He himself sat expectantly, in his best shirt and trousers.

Presently, Mr. Raman came to complain.

‘You know Managerji, if it was the good old time, I would have picked up that impudent Bose and thrown him out of the window.’

Comic though the conclusion was, Mr. Mittal remained unchanged. He looked on for more.

‘He, I mean that crack-brained fellow, he put his pillows across THE LINE!!’

‘I shall tell him to obey the Law of the Line’, drawled the manager. It didn’t matter what he said, really, as Mr. Raman was quite completely deaf by now.

Mr. Raman suddenly started, then looked at his face keenly and as suddenly, turned and hobbled away.
If one had but cared to look, in one special room of the building, he could have seen three very old men sitting deep in counsel , all enmity forgotten.

He had seen it again. He had seen it that morning when Mr. Bose arrived, the slightly excited, happy look in Mittal’s face. It was ominous. It had a deep dire meaning.

So, there can be no wonder, that when Mr. Burma turned up that evening, the worst fears of the triumvirate was realised. They stormed into the office(at least did as good an imitation of the same as their age would permit).

‘Nah! Thees is thee limit!’ cried Mr. Ghosh.

‘I shall not have such treachery. Come soldiers, why conspire? Why not fight in the open?’, Mr. Raman heaved with emotion.

Mr. Bose managed a weak something which was drowned anyway, in his sobs and gasps and dry tears.

Mr. Burma was taken by surprise. He rose from his seat and half-hovered on it, gazing awestruck at the men. His friend was completely at his ease, however.

‘My respected gentlemen,’ said Mr. Mittal, curtly, ‘Mr. Burma, here’ gestured,’ has not come to stay. He’s a visitor, my friend.’

The eclipse prevalent on the cumulative faces of the ancient fiends was replaced by relief. Mr. Raman, who had heard nothing, was unceremoniously dragged way by the others.

 Mr.Mittal turned to poor Burma, who was still in the half-seated, half-standing posture. The man looked like he had just seen the moon explode.

‘And then? How will you return home tonight?’

‘Um, actually’, Mr. Burma said nervously, ‘I had planned on staying here tonight.’

‘That’s fine. There can be no inconvenience in that. You can get a room here for yourself tonight and the same gruel that I get.’

‘But,…’

‘My dear fellow, you can choose from a range of forty-five rooms throughout the building’, Mittal smiled benevolently. He bent forward and patted his bewildered friend.

‘But surely, there is no more than forty-six rooms in the building and they are all occupied by your three boarders.’

Comprehension dawned into Mr. Mittal’s eyes.

‘Have you ever seen a field where a cow or goat is tied to a peg?’

‘Well, I’m not exactly partial to live cows or goats’, Burma exclaimed, resenting this association with quadrupeds that his late father often used.

‘Well, if you HAD observed, you would have found the grass near the circumference of the rope circle quite eroded, while the rest is lush and green. Pray why?’

‘Pray why?’

‘The animal, notwithstanding the grass in it’s locus, stretches for what isn’t.’

‘Er.., I don’t see the connection.’

‘Don’t you?’, Mittal looked disappointed. ‘Why my excellent fellow, the three old goats you saw before you, have never slept but in that last forty-sixth room for the last ten years, lest someone of them crosses the divine LINE I drew. If someone puts his pillow across it, they come to complain. They keep to the room and keep quarrelling. The other rooms are quite empty!’

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Precaution

This is a collection of my stories. A chronological hotch potch. The stories that are REAL ear or eye sores are generally speaking, older than the ones more tolerable. Take a peek. But at your own discretion.

The Punchbag

Please leave behind all your general comments on the blog itself, any improvement you can suggest, etc. as comments on this post. Thank you.

Torture Techniques- day one.

Catch Tony . The plan for it is briefly: Bribe his pet dog so that it strays from normal path during constitutional. Now pretend to be a busty blonde and seduce Tony into a red car (model: Sumo, if you have it). Tap his head with the heaviest piece of ferrum you can lift. Threaten with a standard X history textbook if he shouts. When he faints/swoons/falls asleep, whisk him away to your lair.

Try a quick freshener when he arrives (just so that he is refreshed enough for the main courses). First put him in a bath of 72 Celsius water for 30 seconds, before quickly dipping him in ice cold water. Pour methyl alcohol over him and put in front of a LARGE fan. Tony (who will henceforth be called ‘the victim’), will be agreeably active at the moment, as you will probably find by his use of colorful language.

Strip your victim to the underwear. Roll him in a bed of … broken conch shell and ground glass. Flip him using a hot brand from time to time. When he is arguably well laid, pull him off the bed and tear off the broken pieces from his body by rubbing a sieve on it (of course bits of flesh may get torn too, but one cannot be perfect. If pieces of glass persist within the torso, well,  it’s his lookout after all). The back should be completely red and inflamed. Rub with the toothed side of a whip or scratch with a shell. Both provide excellent results as regards the volume of screams. Tickle him with a hot iron band a few minutes before taking him for a regular checkup (The health of the Victim is one of the primary lookouts of the torturing inhumans. The aim is the maximum amount of happiness to the victim causing the least damage)

Go for the hand twister next. Put the victim in the ‘suit’. This is basically a VERY old armor suit in which nothing moves. It immobilizes the whole body. Further, it has rusty needles pointing inside which just touch the person when stiffly immobile at the very centre of the suit. Any movement causes inch long nails to pierce into the skin. (They are all sterilized of course. There is no fear of infection.). Next put the ‘victim’s’ palms in the twister, which is a mechanized glove in which the fingers can be moved respective to one another at the will of the operator (and not the person who wears it). Twist one finger at a time away from the plane of the palm. Set timer at about 2 degrees a second. Let the finger get ‘dislocated’, not fractured. Wait till the shout normalizes and start with the next finger. Try tortional twisting on the next palm. It is over in less time. But there is more fun in it for the ‘victim’. We can only hope that the victim did not move during the entire period.

Now that we are over with the mild entertainments, we get to the deluxe TT of the day: ‘The shin of ecstasy’
The procedure is brief and not at all cumbersome. However, the effects are generally spectacular (literally).
Prelab preparations: Be ready for involuntary defecation or micturition by the ‘victim’. It is generally advisable to wear earplugs. However, this may be a hindrance for the finer connoisseurs of sadism.
To get better effect, warn the victim of the whole procedure. In general, the inhumans have found that apprehension provides better effect than shock.
Take the victim to an empty room, large enough to cause significant echo. Take a hollow plumbum pipe and hit the shin bone of the victim with some force. Let the wails subside. Now hit with even more force. Go on until the bone breaks. There is no need for a clean fracture. Hitting all over the place is not an issue. (However, use of hammer is not recommended here.) Once the bone is broken, let the weight of the body crush the fracture and then let the victim collapse. Take immediate medical action. Under no circumstances should the victim pass out. Take special care to avoid gangrene formation. Get the leg plastered. Keep him entertained using off tune music, casual pinching, etc. Three hours after the plaster is cast, tear it off and twist the pieces of the shin bone so that the bone is re-broken. (Use of earplugs in this case is a must) From this day onwards the plastered shin is opened every seventh day and re-broken. Inform the ‘victim’ of this fact. In fact the actual bone-breaking is but an appendage to the mental agony of the victim in his weekly anticipation.
Note: Mr. Michael Ascheson has another variation of the ‘Shin of ecstasy’ which is already in publication. The use of one or the other is the inhumans’ choice. 

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The Prime Inhuman’s version:

 

The Shin of Ecstasy [DELUXE]

The Shin of Ecstasy is a deluxe TT designed by the Prime-Inhuman GB, AKA Michael Acheson. Beware. This is dynamite. The usage of this TT requires express permission from the GB Corp. or members thereof, or Assassins, Gamers and Wise International, a wholly-owned subsidiary of the GB Corp.

Instructions for The Shin of Ecstasy: -

1. Accrue a twelve inches long, two-millimetre thick Vanadium-steel pipe of diameter one inch (henceforth: the Pipe). The Pipe may even be made of rusty iron for all the GB cares, but must on no account be soft or fragile. The usage of such equipment is part of other TTs. The Pipe is to be washed in hot (preferably boiling) soap-water or antiseptic solution in order to sterilise it.

2. The subject/victim is to be straitjacketed or forced into a rusty and hence immobile armour suit to prevent movement. Now a high-quality microphone of the highest sensitivity available is to be placed in front of the subject/victim’s mouth. The microphone is to be connected to a concert-hall audio amplifier, which is subsequently to be connected to Bose™ speakers adjusted to the highest volume. The speakers are then placed closest to the subject/victim’s ear(s). The whole setup is to be connected to proper electrical connections.

3. The subject/victim’s left shin is exposed if previously it was covered in any way. The Inhuman conducting The Shin of Ecstasy kneels beside him, rears the Pipe a foot above his own head and strikes with numbing force bang in the middle of the left shin. If the Inhuman in question appears to be generous to an unwonted degree, he/she (wow!) will strike with sufficient force to cause a fracture in the first hit; else six or seven hits are very highly recommended. If the Inhuman in question tends to think that two or three hits after the fracture is achieved are advisable, he/she is encouraged to execute the same.

4. Needless to say, the Inhuman will by now be suffused in THX-quality audio originating from the subject/victim’s mouth. This will have been duly amplified by the microphone+amplifier+speakers combination. If the Inhuman in question so desires, he may use noise-cancelling headphones to reduce this music. The full import of this audio is, however, reserved right of the subject/victim, whose ears are not to be any further than seventeen centimetres from the drivers of the speakers.

5. The subject/victim’s credit card plays a major role in the subsequent steps. Else, his cheque-book and signature will also do sufficiently well. Required/desired amount of money is withdrawn from any/all of the above means, and the shinbone is plastered in the proper position.

6. Thirty minutes after step five is over, the plaster is cut and the bone is flexed energetically at the point of fracture. Then a fresh plaster is made. This process is repeated seventy-three times or until the subject/victim faints for the day, whichever comes later. If the subject/victim faints earlier, smelling salts can be used to revive him. Great care is to be taken to ensure that sensation does not vanish from the fracture site. Appropriate restoratives (again, at the subject/victim’s expense) are to be utilised. Since there are not seventy-three half-hours in a day, the interval between successive repetitions of step six is to be reduced by one-third of its value per repetition.

7. The victim is allowed to sleep/faint for the day. This is AFTER ancillary treatments are meted out and the second medical checkup of the day is accomplished.

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Find someone in your work-team with a high voice and good spirit. Give him a Bagpiper and tell him to entertain the victim for the rest of the evening. Just before going to bed, start pulling off tufts of the ‘victim’s’ hair. The sound will match surprisingly well with the bagpiper. When you decide that he has had enough for the first day, put him in a small room filled with the largest mosquitoes you find. Don’t forget to wish goodnight.

Binodan

Binodan/ noun: the act of beautifully administered public/mass thrashing, before during or after which the victim does not get to know his offence or to prepare his defense, which goes on for a minimum time period of 4 hours; 20 minutes; 0 seconds and after the end of which the victim falls pray to long fits of giggles or chuckles, depending on his degree of amusement and the size of the slit for the mouth he has in his bandage-cast. Whenever it is noticed that the patient is at a lack of humor, he is often subjected to vigorous flexing, bending and re-bending of his located, dislocated joints and cracked and smashed bones in order to complete the Binodan. SYN entertainment.
-G.B. Retarded Forgettor’s Dictionary.

Tripti

Tripti/ noun: the prolonged and continuous feeling one is able to enjoy after having undergone treatments of Amanushism which have made one feel absolutely satisfied with the texture of one’s knuckle-powder, the purple-black shade of one’s complexion, the dilation of one’s nostrils, the cropping of one’s ear-hairs, the sound of the splintering of one’s shin bones at 24 hours interval during the whole week and such others. During Tripti one is most commonly found on one’s uneasy-chair with half-shut eyes (opened so with enormous effort) and a heavenly smile on one’s lips (like the smile of one who approaches heaven/gives up the ghost). SYN pleasure
· Tripti-dayak/ adjective: that which gives Tripti. Often used with phrases that express the application of recurring Sukh, Ananda or Binodan.
-G.B. Retarded Forgettor’s Dictionary.

Ananda

Ananda/ noun: the after effect of Sukh in which one feels either the profoundness of one’s previous Sukh or suffers the resulting consequences of the same, with the broadest grin one’s facial skin allows one to exhibit. SYN happiness.
· Ananda-dayak/ that which gives Ananda, often used as adjective/adverb with words such as exam, drop, flight, crash, bang, lunch, poke, handshake, teacher, operation, Amanush, computer hangs, network failure etc. which describe beautiful agony/agoniser in the least.
-G.B. Retarded Forgettor’s Dictionary.

Briefly, it’s a smaller form of Sukh.

Sukh

Sukh/sookh/noun: the primary feeling that one has when one’s sensory receptors are crying out loud,as in cases of having one’s patella coarsely powdered or when one gets to keep his arm inside a particularly large grizzly bear’s mouth at a discount price of say,46534243567657 million$ etc.:today’s handshake with Chironex was a real sukh.SYN: Pleasure.
Origin:Bengali.
-G.B. Retarded Forgetter’s Dictionary.

This by Lord Timor, the Chief Inhuman.

An, alternative source, the Prime Inhuman, Michael Acheson, makes it even shorter:

Textbook definition of ‘Sukh’

The feeling experienced when a 20-pound sledgehammer is let drop from a 3-foot vertical elevation onto the great toe of the left foot.