A short story

Till my joining the company, everyday was new, interesting and different for me. From the day of joining, the further days are repetition of the first day like an infinite loop of ‘C’ program. Starting the day with kissing my five year old daughter, ‘roopa’, adjusting my nameplate in my cabin reading “Rahul.N, production manager”, hearing the previous shift’s problem, meeting with GM to talk sophisticated terms and targets which will never be transformed or translated to the lower levels, everything were the same everyday. I’m even used to the everyday admonishing of my wife, ‘sheela’ for coming late. In fact she is used to it.

My life has become more oriented to factory atmosphere. One day when roopa sat on my lap, resting her small cute head on my hairy chest, I told her,” your intellect must be as sharp like carbide coated inserts; character must be as good as the finish of fine boring; while in a company you should be flexible with others like a CNC machine and at any cost in character, you should be brittle like cast iron”. That was indeed too much for a five year old female, who then stood up and went to sheela. Holding the end of sheela’s green sari, roopa saw me with confusion. I felt sorry for troubling roopa. Many such incidents hinder me everyday. I just went into my room and shouted “let me go and relax”. I, not only shouted, but did too.

I took my bike to M.G Park on that Sunday evening. That is a peaceful park with no great attractive features except broken bench, swing stand without swing and a very old building called ‘library’ amidst trees and grasses. The park is as old as those trees. The plants around the library are maintained improperly and a gentleman called gardener is paid for that. Due to these features, it is almost empty. Thinking ‘park’ as a preserver of nature, passersby answer nature’s call also there. In a solitary mood like mine, that is a wonderful place and I found a place under a neem tree. Smooth breeze embraced me and I slept with the available comfort. I don’t know how long I slept, but when I woke up, I heard a grunt old voice talking behind the tree to someone.

I realized that the conversation had begun sometime back. The owner of the voice continued,” our troop was marching towards the enemy camp. It was winter and the land was marshy. We had to walk through a forest. The forest was dense with lot of danger. We still walked. I was leading the team. We had to pass through a small rope bridge built by someone sometime ago. When the bridge was full, it couldn’t bear the weight and it broke. We fell down into a marshy land. We, with greater difficulty got out of the land and were proceeding. In that dark night, we heard a helicopter approaching with a flashlight. I ordered to lie down. The light caught my last man and dropped a bomb. We lost around five men in it. We shot the helicopter down. We marched further. We walked continuously for a day. My men were tired. We saw a pond, camped there that night unaware that the enemy camp fetches water from the same pond. When our enemies came there that night, they started firing at us. We were startled initially by the assault. Our commandos were precautious and made tents hiding under bushes. Sentry posts were spotted and fired. The sentry jawans became alert and alarmed others. Within jiffies, everyone was ready with weapons at their points. We placed ourselves in such a way that we are away from the tents thereby the enemies will be firing in and around the tents only. We fired them back. After few moments, we took over the situation with three non-serious casualties. We took rest for few hours and proceeded.

The journey continued next day too. I got message to conquer a particular enemy post by that night. We reached two miles before the point. We were able to see the camp. As it was four or five hours after dusk, the enemies couldn’t see us easily. There were lots of people with them then. I sent five persons and asked them to fire continuously from one direction. Leading the front, I took the others through the other direction. We reached the camp slowly. The enemies were alert and were concentrating much on the five men only. In the mean time, we surrounded them from the back. We started firing. They were confused; but were strong. They had three times men than ours. But, my men were brave. One jawan’s bullets were over. He used his bullet less rifle and just a dagger to defend and defeat the enemy side. The heroes of our side took them aback and smashed their confidence and motivation levels. We were defeating them. But, suddenly one bomb exploded and killed most of my men. Remaining men fought for a long time. At the end of the three hours battle, I and five more men alone were there and we took control. We took the enemy point and sent a wireless message to the headquarters about the victory”.

Hearing this, my patriotic emotions went high and I arose to see the hero. I looked towards the direction of the voice. Under the magnificent banyan tree, over the grass bed, amidst ants and running squirrels there sat two old men. Everyone around were busy at their work not listening to the old brave marvel. I wonder why these people don’t care the importance of him. I think, I too must be one among them had I not come over there to take rest.

The old man was in an old but neat coat. The dark, wrinkle skinned, tall gentleman with grey tint in his moustache was talking to his friend. With an old pipe, he was still talking, ”the next stage of the war was more interesting…………..”. I went and stood before him. I told, “I was hearing your brave story. How brave and intelligent you are. I’m happy that I have met a warrior in my life. I’m really happy to hear from you. I wish to hear more of your war deeds in war.”

The old man looked at me and smiled, “I’m pleased by your patriotism. And unfortunately, I’m a retied teacher. What I was talking is about a computer game my grandson brought home yesterday”.