Batch of 1999 Read online

  Aniket

  Name: Aniket Thakur

  Age : 23

  Sex : male

  Status : unemployed, unmarried

  School : White Convent

  Cause of death : suicide

  Description

  He was the topper of white convent and second topper of the city. A whole-sole winner of the Olympiad, which was a reputed competition among students. He won the scholarship for the best colleges after the school. Declined each!! Aniket was like this since he was a child. Once a topper is always a topper. Then he discovered books and kept sitting in school library bunking classes and reading all the classics and poets from all the ages. After the entertainment, he went on to philosophy, psychology and probability to know more about the reason behind actions and behavior. Librarian warned him that it could be bad for his scores and brain but he got highest marks again that year. His father was a doctor. He wanted his son to imitate him like a mirror and handle his clinic after completing studies. But Aniket broke all his father’s dreams by taking arts in the final years and that was a big disappointment. At that time he just liked history and wanted to pursue it further, irrespective of his marks and all the other dummy subjects that he had to prepare along with it. His father cut down his pocket money and other wages. Nothing bothered him. He didn’t need much money. He went on to get good marks and making it to the gold positions. Class wasn’t proud of him. He was a nerd and he wasn’t welcomed in the arts section or anywhere else. That class was all about having fun and they used to hate good students. They despised such old fashioned characters. Every other bad scorer was lower somehow because of the students who got good grades. But Aniket was a good friend and person who mind his own work, so it didn’t stress him too much (so to say). It wasn’t in his plans to become a civil servant or something like that. He liked to study and that he was doing. Marks were just the by-products not the motive.

  He used to show his copy to other students during exam to prove his friendship. Every student of the bully class was his defender on getting caught while this social-work. So he was the king during terms but they would rather neglect him anyway. He used to help them in all the ways to keep friends and to mix up but he couldn’t. This social system couldn’t get inside his brain. Not that it was very important but he didn’t have any friend except classmates. Not siblings at home. Not even a mother. His father lost wife in a train accident when Aniket was 5. Remarriage never happened because father was convenient with his loneliness.

  It could have gone like this forever. Aniket was showing good signs even in arts.

  Then came a day when everything changed.

  Aniket wasn’t a bit excited about the chemistry lab because there was nothing to learn for him. chemicals, rats, octopus in a jar, weird scales and boring instruments which were for bookish freaks who prided themselves by the weight of notes. He was not a freak. He was a nerd. But Aniket went there anyway just to remain with his class fellows because he was a part of a group. A group which treated him like an outsider.

  He was talking to Sonia about the history notes. That he would give it to her in few days. And he told her that these notes were very good and advised her to keep them secretive (to prove his importance that the girl was going to get the notes of topper of the state). Sonia didn’t like him but she managed to show that she admired Aniket. Aniket knew that she didn’t like him but life means trying. Life meant trying for him until that second.

  Everything was normal and usual until Aniket saw Vijay running after another student of low height and low profile. Few were shouting and encouraging him and then running student tangled with something and fell over the glass cabinet at the end of the lab and it fell on the floor. And the world changed for Aniket that day.

  He left the books and left his countable friends few days after that accident. He dropped his dreams and plans to get knowledge and gain something really worthwhile. He stopped meeting and respecting others. He stopped caring for anyone at the school and house, everywhere. A little more time and Aniket stopped talking to anyone. Not that he had become shy or something like that. It was only a detachment from everything and anyone else around him that represented society. His father thought that it was just his age and something related but it was more serious than that. He tried to develop an understanding with his son and called up his many psychiatrist friends. But Aniket failed all of them by not meeting few of them and insulting the rest. Father tried some of his own wonder medicines too. It just worsened the matter further. Now Aniket could sleep no more at nights and was unable to pursue a definite schedule. Now, the nights were much freezer and compatible than before so there was no need to wake up at day. Not that it was any problem for his father as long as good marks kept coming. Situation got weirder as the days went by.

  Exams came and went like always. Arts students were not waiting as bad as commerce and science. They weren’t depending on marks. What about Aniket? Same old story. All the universities accepted him including the ones where he didn’t even apply. He should have been glad. He should have celebrated. Instead of that, he spent all the time in cutting up all the threads of communication he had with the outer world. He had become an absolute introvert in those days and felt comfortable with all that lacked all his life. He started hating the things that he missed once.

  Aniket took admission in a local college and then stopped going there. They didn’t mind at all because he was going to score anyway which was important for college reputation. He refused to change his way of living and then he let down a girl who had a taste for toppers. Anyone tried to talk to him felt like talking to a stone. Ask him for anything and you would get it but that wasn’t going to include any emotion, mood or selfishness. He remained at home all day doing nothing but smoking reading and thinking.

  Once a relative asked him why is he like this, “why are you like this?” Aniket looked at him like relative was a statue of ice and nothing more than that. Everything was same for him.

  Once a boy of the college saw him trying to write with a spoon. He had been asked many times for study tips and problems by others. Askers got the answers only. Everything stopped interesting him now.

  At nightfall, he looked at the wet spot on his underwear with wonder and then kept laying there thinking about the eternity.

  He wrote ‘23’ on the wall of his room one day and then kept looking at it. Then he went to the refrigerator, took out a pastry and ate it.

  He switched off the lights and fans after coming back to his room on one summer day and remained like this till the day he lived.

  He was on his bed, bathed in sweat and with a blanket around him at 45 degree Celsius temperature of Delhi June.

  Father asked him for food. A gargling voice came from inside which meant a blur no. his father didn’t ask again. There was a red light which brightened suddenly and faded after that. A cigarette most certainly. A grass cigarette less certainly but it could be one possibly. Then there was a movement and a voice like screeching on plywood.

  Father left the floor because he thought that Aniket was coming out and he was so scared to see what might come out of that room. It was someone else inside. Inside Aniket. It was something absolute. Nothing should be absolute and out of reach. He was unable even to look at Aniket. It was easier to let him do anything he wanted and to pay for his expenses until he would be somebody.

  But that was not what the destiny had decided for Aniket.

  The compass entered his skin once while he was trying to make hole in a cardboard to make a book-cover. He didn’t take it out for long and kept looking at his blood while completing the book cover.

  There was a very dim light coming from the window at that time. Lots of cloths were scattered on the floor and the boy was naked. He grabbed a pant with blood stained hands and looked at the flower on the pant with wat
ery eyes. He wasn’t thinking about cover or blood at that time. Neither was it about himself or anything surrounding him. The failure overtook and he surrendered.

  He didn’t give the second and third year exams. People forget who was Aniket. He tried a BPO, but was unable to concentrate on the digits written on the dial pad of the telephone. And he had to make 300 calls per day which was an impossible task for him in this life. Though, he did sell some products but left without taking any salary. Home sweet home.

  College was a long forgotten place and going there was out of questions as daylight had become unbearable for him. He always came out at night with a hanky on his face. Then he bought cigarettes and other things before running towards home again. He always tried not to look at people while going back. In this way, Aniket increased the curiosity of the people because a man with a handkerchief of checks, who was walking fast, couldn’t be missed.

  He didn’t even shave for three months. And hairs were undone also. He brushed his teeth though. No bathing. No cleaning of room.

  His father totally ignored his presence in the house. he was avoided and then forgotten by locals. Nothing but A thought that came and faded occasionally when the talks about politics and films ended. Rest of him finished when he hanged himself from the ceiling-fan which was a popular way of suicide in India.

  Police came and declared the death a suicide after taking him off the hook. His place was a complete mess and there was no bulb and no electricity (Aniket had disconnected all the connections of electricity a year ago). People didn’t believe that Aniket was living there. Let alone the fact that he was no more. His father looked in sorrow and relief. Though he wanted to cry but he couldn’t.

  There was a diary in Aniket’s room which police found. It was not a daily-diary. Aniket wrote it whenever he felt like. There were important questions of history on page one and two. Some notes on third and fourth. And from the fourth page, there was his life. He started writing on the day when a student fell over the glass cabinet in chemistry lab.

 

  Aniket’s diary