Wednesday, March 4, 2009

2. Karan's encounter with death and a new direction (Disha)

Sagar had this superb talent of pumping up Karan and I added the spice on top of it so much so that he ‘almost’ proposed a girl in std 8(one who had recently joined our school and it was just 2 weeks after her joining). It resulted in a big issue as the girl was not a timid one as we expected her to be but an expert in handling such situations. She gave a naive look when Karan blabbered all the stupid things, and replied in an innocent manner that she came here to study and does not want to get involved in these things. But then, nobody knew that she had an elder brother Vicky in std 11 who was a huge person, almost twice the size of Karan.

During recess, that girl informed her brother about Karan and as is usually expected from a brother, he got extremely agitated and came to us while we were having lunch. As far as pranks were considered, Karan was always the first target for us. But when it came to facing the consequences, we never left Karan alone. I came forward to explain the whole situation to Vicky, and tried to clarify that Karan only asked her for friendship  and nothing more. Then Sagar came and tried to calm down Vicky by cracking a joke on how being friends in co-ed schools was not a bad thing after all. But out of his anger or maybe to show his strength, Vicky punched Sagar's face, which resulted in a small scratch and it started bleeding. Now that was enough, Arsh who was listening silently all this time at the side, came forward, pulled Sagar aside and without any second thought smashed Vicky’s face, who was stunned by this sudden reaction from his junior. Then as he was trying to regain his composure, some teachers came and took us to the Principal's room. Which did led to our parents being called but it was not difficult for us to convince our parents, and they managed the situation. They never stopped us from living our school life in the way we wanted, at the same time making sure we never crossed the lines. 

As a matter of fact, we all knew very well that it's really hard to stop Arsh once he has had enough and he'll show Vicky his real place in no time. None of us supported violence as means to resolve any conflict but then, when I pondered over what Arsh did, I realized that he was right. We tried our best to explain Vicky about the whole situation and we had no plans of bothering his sister again, then also he hit Sagar on face, and so did Arsh. He had it coming anyway.

Disha, she joined our school in 9th class and this time, it was Sagar who approached her, as they worked together in lab. Sagar hardly missed any opportunity to talk to a girl. He was clever with words but as they say, when you really like someone, you make sure not to botch up the whole thing. It took Sagar some time to gather the courage and they became friends soon and along with Sagar, she became our friend too. She is one charming girl who makes you feel really comfortable with her presence. We all admired her and also the suggestions and points she used to raise during our discussions. 

We developed this habit of taking up any relevant point from the news or any burning issue and taking about it in detail. What are the reasons for that issue to arise, who all are responsible for it, what can the government do for it and what are our responsibilities as citizens to resolve or at least mitigate that. It was actually quite amazing that Sagar and Karan, who never sat seriously during any class and always tried to find a way to divert the attention of class, took part in this with great seriousness. Although we never denied any other person to come and join us, mostly we were the only 5 who used to discuss some issues related to movies, sports, politics, defense, technology, etc. We all had our own personal interests in some or the other issue.

Disha was always very conscious about getting to the conclusion of our talks. She was extremely fascinated by the journalists and admired their tasks very much. She was a feminist and made sure she was treated at par with guys at home and outside. She had this ambition of leaving a special mark of herself in this male-dominated society. Which, she actually did as she was one of the five persons who got selected to represent their country in an international research program to analyse the impact of environmental pollution on increasing cases for cancer and find solutions for the same.

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