THE SHATTERED WORLD

: The tracks branching into a labyrinth leading to several platforms near the railway station were plunged in a pall of cold and still darkness. Uma Shankar took a draw from his hand made ganja filled cigarette, and soon after the satisfying inhalation, blew the smoke into strong smells of his drunken suspiration. He looked a bit at the exit gate, which he was to attend on arrival of the train. He could now espy the head light spot of the engine. The lit silhouette of the engine could now be seen darting into the darkness, resembling in alacrity to darting meniscus of mercury in a glass tube temperature meter installed in a suddenly overheated chamber. Uma Shankar, before stubbing the cigarette out, considered to take another draw, changed his mind, threw whatever was left of the cigarette, and walked leisurely towards the exit gate of the platform. He stopped for a minute near the rectangular display frame with photos of the steel plant, some public places of Tatanagar, a dam on the local river and a few other displays showing market places etc painted on glass that was illuminated from behind. He, then, walked towards the exit gate as the train was now losing its final bit of motion to come to a stop at the platform. 5-45 PM. Victoria Terminus Station of Bombay. The crowds on the platforms would be the highest ever in density one might have seen despite nine or ten trains leaving full packed with passengers every three minutes. Only after 6 PM, the density of the home goers would ease a little and then slowly in phases it would start returning to normal. Like an intense, dark color shade gradually receding stepwise into lower shades till the hue is a normally breathing one. It is only after this normalcy appears in the works that our young man, Dr. Sahdeo Singh, would dare into the turmoil of crowd. Dr.Singh, after attending a seminar at National Metallurgical Laboratory in Tatanagar, entered the station in his hurry to catch the train for Calcutta, from where he was to take his flight for Bombay. His furtive steps were suddenly stalled as his sight fell on a face recognizable despite elapse of long two decades between then and the adolescence of the two men. Uma Shankar Mahto was chatting with someone, apparently oblivious of the sudden bizarre situation in his vicinity that involved him and the scientist from Bombay. Dr. Singh, averting his face on noticing Umashankar’s eyes straying in his direction, walked unsteadily towards the waiting train on the platform. And with another ten years passed from then, now Dr. Singh was there at New Delhi, contemplating how best he could face Uma shankar, now Minister of State for Defense, as Dr. Singh waited to come to a resolve sitting in a chair near outer offices of the Ministry of Defense. Finally Dr. Singh prepared himself to go through the mill, and walked into the corridor leading to office of the state minister for Defense. He was immediately called in, the minister dismissing a meeting with some political people. Soon after shaking hands, the minister reached into a drawer of his escritoire where probably highly sensitive files were stored. He appeared engaged in some thought, then it flashed like a lightening to him that the man sitting before him was not a stranger: the man was the same old pal of Jamshedpur, Sahdeo, the person who was the hardest memory of the past to erase. He had seen the scientist’s photo in some published documents of DST. The photos had, somewhere in him, struck a cord; but he had not tried to give it any further attention. Now it was in a sudden disclosure that things were crystal clear. It was as unbelievable as a dream and it was like a man seeing himself in a dream; a dream of journeying in an aircraft which had to crash-land just when the man was thinking how unknown to him was the territory on earth below in his sight; and on grounding of the aircraft, the man was dumbfounded as he discovered that the territory was the same old place of his childhood where most important event of his life with it’s imperishable prints had occurred. The minister’s mind now appeared gradually digesting the dilemma, and leveling out his thoughts in his effort to become equal to the situation. Presently he extended his hand to the scientist and delivered a manageable, " It’s you, Sahdeo. What a surprise! I never imagined things like this happen in real life. Throwing of two classmates and special friends together after twenty years of no communication. Things like this happening just the ordinary way and then, suddenly, the disclosing of the great extraordinary element in them for the persons involved. Terrific thing of pleasure to happen to somebody, I would say." And he ended with all focus of his eyes from the surroundings claimed and shifted to the lit matchstick that was traveling to the tip of a cigarette that somehow he had managed to thrust in his lips still not rid of an occasional little quiver. The scientist had taken his extended hand and had for some time not known what to say. Then he somehow found his words, " Uma Shankar, this is a moment of shock and pleasure together for both of us, I think. Yes, one can hardly imagine meeting with a friend of teens in his forties under the circumstances as these. But let me tell you. Due to my knowing about your being the minister before this moment of our meeting, the surprise and shock have no presence in my thoughts. Only I am very happy to be with you after all these years of not seeing at all." After a short while, they turned their conversation to the topic of this meeting- the NME project of the Mechanical Engineering Research Institute undertaken for the Ministry of Defense. After their discussion was over and the scientist had left, the minister friend kept staring out of the window at the distant traffic for a long while. Then his eyes and visage shuffled to make way for emergence of a smile: a smile that slithered to visibility from underneath like a fatal snake on his face that was looking now as hardened as age-old rocks. Dr. Rajan Gupta, a senior scientist in Mechanical Engineering Research Institute, Bombay, was surprised to learn that minister of state for defense from New Delhi was on his telephone line. A surprised Dr. Gupta waited to know what was up. The minister said the matter was highly confidential; it was only for ears of Dr. Gupta, and that Dr. Gupta was to meet with the minister in Taj Mahal Hotel of Bombay sometime in the following week. The minister appeared to be certain that few words about the secrecy of the matter were sufficient for Dr. Gupta to keep it private, and to remain patiently waiting for the mystery of the matter to become unfolded to him in due time. Uma shankar had started his air journey from New Delhi to Bombay with his mind engaged in thinking how best he could manipulate events to occur, for things to fall in place, and was somewhere near conclusions when the plane was preparing to touch down at domestic airport of Bombay. As his chain of thoughts abandoned his mind, his eyes strayed to the slums encroaching the swathes of the airport. The minister had in fact not bothered, on earlier occasions, to notice the concomitant expanse of slums alongside the airport. He had read about the Bombay slums. The stretch of slums surviving just next to International Airport of Bombay was perhaps unique in the sense of its co-existence with an airport. Slums and high tech prosperity manage to run hand in hand and now with decades of their co-existence all along Bombay having passed, appear quite hackneyed; but here, at the airport, it was markedly conspicuous. It was something like synonyms of a certain word appearing all along the city line with the most appropriate and closest in meaning word installed here at the airport. That evening, in his hotel room, the minister had been waiting for Dr. Gupta to arrive. Dr. Gupta came directly from the Research Institute and as such was in a white suit, white being his dress code for the office. He looked every inch a man of Science, but somewhere, something was belying. It was the pair of eyes in arrant contradiction with the rest: those were the eyes that promised just not to lean to knowledge and intellect in preference to all other worldly aspects: those were the eyes of a man who won’t balk at killing or destroying for his gains. The minister’s examining sight, ignoring completely the fakeness of all in the scientist except the latter’s eyes, remained directly addressed to the eyes of the scientist as the two men kept regarding each other for a long moment. Later in minister’s room that evening, while the two men enjoyed a costly liquor and dinner, Dr. Gupta had been thinking about revelations of the minister’s plan made to the scientist. All that the minister said was no more than a twinkle in the minister’s eye and was extremely unlikely to materialize. Four scientists headed by Sahdeo Singh in an isolated section of the premises of the Institute, which was always under high security, were carrying out NME work. It was possible for Dr. Gupta to go inside; plant a video camera behind old volumes of research publications stacked on a line of racks in a corner. The atelier for NME project was earlier a section, not much in use, of library where old volumes of some research publications were stored. Senior scientists were allowed access to this section, but they were instructed not to interfere with the NME project work. NME work was not at all documented in hard copy. The computer files were protected by a complex password, which was known to only Sahdeo Singh. The minister wanted to videotape the keyboard of Sahdeo’s computer to know the password. Then Dr. Gupta was to copy major sensitive documents and bring the copy to the minister here when the latter would come next to Bombay on completion of the task. Reward for the trouble taken by Dr.Gupta would be Rupees 5 millions in cash and promotion to the post of Director of the Research Institute. Dr. Gupta didn’t need any time to come to a resolve. He had not lost any opportunity of this magnitude ever in life. Three attempts at videotaping yielded the result. Dr. Gupta handed over the copies of prohibited documents to the minister and collected his cash. The remaining part of the promise would soon be taken care of, the minister assured him. Uma Shankar was alone here at his farmhouse bungalow. He had already tried telephoning the director of the research institute two times, and had thrown the receiver on the cradle each time mid-way in his dialing. He had asked his driver, to the surprise of the latter, to go to the market and bring liquor bottles, as the minister was known, in the staff and elsewhere, to have never touched liquor. But here was Uma shankar drinking glass after glass till one bottle emptied. He had, with the help of medicines and self-control, conquered his drug addiction and alcoholism and had successfully remained clean for 15 long years. Although he looked having surrendered to the knock of the liquor, he still remembered what made him drink after 15 long years of complete abstinence. He looked with contempt at his hands palsied by the caducity of his reborn scruples. Were these the very hands that had done injustice to numerous deserving persons and that never faltered in daily affairs, in meeting with the hands of political and real life malefactors. The minister was in a state of complete helplessness: to the point of helplessness of a man in the habit of driving drunk and caring not what harm he used to do to people in his drunken driving, and who at this moment didn’t have the moral or immoral courage to go ahead with his this time fake, purposeful drunken driving- purposeful with a felonious object of killing an adversary in life under the pretext of driving drunk. Eventually he rose and reached for his mobile lying on the sofa. He scrolled the numbers and pressed the dial when the display showed Sahdeo. After a little wait, Sahdeo Singh’s voice came over the line from the other end. “Sahdeo,” the minister said in a labored voice, “ You must come here to see me. This is very much necessary.” A silence ensued on the line for a long moment, then he heard the scientist say, “ Well, Uma shankar, I will try to take the evening flight. It must be urgent if you say so.” “Yes, it is. More urgent than anything you may think of.” “ I will be at New Delhi this evening.” The minister, satisfied that the scientist would be with him to know what he must know immediately, disconnected the line. Later in the evening, the minister’s driver picked up Dr. Singh from the airport and brought him to the minister’s farmhouse. The minister had still been drinking when Dr. Singh arrived. For a long space of time, none of the two men spoke with the minister having closed his inebriated eyes after regarding the scientist for a brief moment. Dr. Singh patiently waited for the latter to open the conversation. Then he heard his friend speak in a faltering voice, “ Sahdeo, this is not a moment for me to bother manners and formalities. So I cut to the chase and talk what I must talk so that you know it all. I believe you don’t know even a bit of it. Do you remember those days of school, way back in seventies? Do you remember having shattered the dreams of a tribal young boy? If it hadn’t been for you, I would have gone from strength to strength in my academic career, and who knows, would have been this day in your place at your research institute. But there you were, in a school for those who could not afford even books, leave alone fashionable clothes and two wheelers, for their children. And at that place, a tribal young boy, that was I, had come and settled to give shape to his dreams for a meaningful future. Do you remember my that application to the principal in which I claimed to be the most suitable candidate for the scholarship as I had been coming first in the class for the previous many years? And wasn’t that what got you started over? You took it real hard and had me defeated in the following exam. I , a young lad of 16, couldn’t believe my eyes. I couldn’t believe my fate. Was all that I believed was there in store for me in the future, so short lived? I had been an easy target to depression. Then on an on I went with first smoking, then country liquor and finally drugs. And one day Prema, seeing no reason to believe that sometime in future I would mend my ways, deserted me and went her way, not knowing in the least that she was not responsible for actions. Prema didn’t jilt me for her own reasons; she deserted me because of you being somewhere in the back of all this. Ridiculous, would you say? No, it is not, for a young tribal lad with no worldly experience, to have taken it that way. It was you who thieved on my ambitions, my goals, my pleasant belongings of my youth and the dreams of achievements in my life. You killed the enthusiasm of a tiny sapling and blotted it’s verdure off- a sapling which had drawn life and energy from the earth of it’s settlement for just too brief a time since it was planted with expectations and hope. You enclosed the damn sapling in a black glass, cutting all that it needed for a survival of any meaning. It survived like a weed, never delivering anything of value." and with that, the minister swiveled his chair to let his eyes find the face of the man he hated most. In that one moment of his glance, a farrago of expressions huddled to his face from interiors of his wounding memories and became written allover his face. There printed in an intermingle on the man’s face, the scientist could very well read all of it; the minister’s hatred for the scientist; the fear of his listless self-defense returning him to his burrows; his vacillating judgment of all this for it’s being rational or preposterous; the fear of these events becoming known to the world; the fears of debilitating memories gnawing on him anew: and all this appeared to have popped up like a cluster of matches on a computer screen in some web-searching; all of these assorted from the memories of the minister with a boldface keyword name of the scientist. Eventually the minister rose from his place and walked to the window. Looking somewhere in the distance, he resumed talking, “ Well Sahdeo, it was all an emotional blunder on my part. I had lost my head. Here, take these NME papers and destroy these; and forget everything about this. Be careful of Rajan Gupta of your institute; and better be more careful about your computers and the place of your work. And now with your returning to Bombay, let us forget that long back we knew out each other in Jamshedpur; and --- and let us part for good, here, at this moment.”