The Maker of Statements and the Prosaic Hallucinator were engaged in warming the bench that lined the bank of a moss-pond. The M of S kept throwing pebbles and watched the ripples absently. She did not apparently like the carnivorous way her companion was digging into his packet of potato chips.
They had exhausted hostel feuds, professorial idiosyncrasies, soccer, crosswords, common acquaintances and finally the weather, and she was groping hard to come up with a new topic to fill the time. He, on the other hand, found ample diversion in his snack bag.
'Ah, yes', she said, tossing away the last five pebbles in her hand in one go, 'Tell me about your Number Two. How did the disaster happen? Why did you burn her letters and what did you convince your parents those papers were? Tell me all, if you don't mind.'
He merely dug further into his chip packet, entirely oblivious to her talk. She could have spoken to a wall.
He emptied the packet into his mouth and filled it (the packet, mind you) with a few pebbles, pressed the air out of it and shot it at a bin ten yards from them. It touched the bin's rim and upset it, spilling its reeky contents.
The Prosaic Hallucinator was satisfied at what he had done, plied his handkerchief over his lips, and said, 'I have always hated cellphones'.
The Maker of Statements was taken aback slightly. Her benchmate's eccentricity and impulse to surprise was well-known, hence she let this pass.
'They take away from you your privacy, your time and concentration', he continued, smiling, having noted the desired effect on her countenance, 'and my school justly banned us from bringing them to the campus. I stuck to the rule. But there came a day when I was down with common cold and had to attend an inter-school competition. My mother did the obvious -- she gave me my dad's cellphone to inquire of me at lunch hour if the victory was her pill's or the virus'. Do not ask me why I chose that day, of all days, and indeed why at all, to take the folder containing Number Two's letters to the school in my bag. For I do not know the answer myself. I'm not a fatalist, but I cannot help remarking that some unseen force had decided to destroy her final vestiges on that eventful day.'
He paused and unpocketed a large peach candy. The M of S tried not to look at it. You do not expect the Prosaic Hallucinator to share his eatables, even if it was your money that purchased them.
'Go on', was all that she said.
'The day went stormless till we returned from the other school to ours. My partner in the quiz contest, who happens to study in your college, suggested lunch in his kid sister's classroom. It was empty, he explained, as the children had gone for their annual field-trip. It was there that I made an unpardonable error that changed -- I dare say -- my life. In retrospect, it was a change for my good, and I consider my absent-minded act a blessing in disguise.
We were lunching at a desk in the classroom, and for some reason or the other, I put my mobile handset in its drawer. How true when they say Out of sight, out of mind. What with my partner and I releasing one wise-crack after the other, and with the general contentment of having skipped a whole academic day without losing attendance, the instrument was the least I thought of. Home we went, weary and looking forward to a good evening's rest.
Fathers, by and large being funders of mobile phones, are in the habit of asking their sons if the product is still on them when they return from school, especially on days the latter had lost it, the moment the young man settles on the couch and wiggles his toes freed of shoes. This my parent promptly did, and my toes froze in mid-wiggle. I frisked myself, for it did not strike me then that I had left the cell in school. Appropriate scenes followed. My bag was taken to my table and discharged of its contents. When my dad was rummaging among them, I hid The Folder in my drawer. When my dad opened the drawer, I took it out of his sight and concealed it in the shelf.
Memory eventually hit me. I told my father what had happened, and without delay we rushed to the school. Alas! the classroom was locked.
The story of the cellphone is of no consequence. It changed several hands, notably those of the Assistant Headmistress, the Vice Principal of Administration and the Senior Principal and ultimately reached me upon the submission of a lie-packed letter and a promise to pay a fine which I haven't kept till date.
Returning home from the school with my father after taking a hard look at the lock of Class IV, Division A, I scarcely sat down to study something when my father suddenly asked the last thing I required of him:
"What's in that folder?"
"Oh, nothing, Pop. Just a bundle of letters by a couple of girls. I had happened to propose to one of them last year. She rejected the idea, and the other had been loving me for quite a few years. On one point the two girls concurred, namely, to maintain a secret communication with me through written word. You'd like to read their letters? And mine too, which Number Two -- the ass that rejected me, you know -- kept returning, attached to her replies. Intimate words, but I don't really mind you having a glance at them", would have been the response of an ideal son.
But I'm no Gandhi, also that wasn't the stuff a student of Eleventh Class is supposed to say. The little grey lump beneath my cranium worked with amazing haste. I told him and my mother some of the greenest lies I've uttered. I told them that it was a bunch of papers I had penned my vilest thoughts on. I told them it included comments on them too, which I hadn't the strength to write even in my diary. I told them it was all a thing of the past, the malevolent writings of an immature boy, and that I was no longer such, that I repented keeping the sheets with me all these days. I told them, inwardly as a measure of subterfuge, that the papers must be put to fire that very minute.'
The Prosaic Hallucinator had, by this time, finished the candy. He proceeded to unwrap a chewing gum.
'And so the letters were burnt that very minute?', said the M of S.
'My dad got a tin of petrol from the motorbike tank. In ten quick minutes the letters were ash. My mother wept all the time. She did not expect her sweet son to harbour ill feelings towards her and her husband. That was the only sorry part of the episode.
I did not cry. I have not cried for the destroyal of the letters till date. Their omission from my life has only brought me strength, the stiff upper lip, and the focus on academics and on myself. Without these I would never have come this far, if it ever means anything. Had I the letters in my possession, I would have re-read them a million times, as was my wont, and would have dwelt entirely in the dead past and been thinking of Number Two and trying to analyse every word she had casually written. My remiss act with the cellphone was, as I said, a blessing in disguise indeed...'
The Maker of Statements was somewhat moved, although her face did not so betray. The Prosaic Hallucinator spat the gum.
'And now', he said, 'all this talking has made me hungry. Let's push over to the joint for a bite. Got some more cash left in your wallet, I hope.'
