Bad News

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“This is going to have a cliché ending”

“No, it’s not! And stop reading my stuff, you moron”

“Dinner’s on you if I can guess the ending right now. For all of us”

“NO THANK YOU, I haven’t even thought of an ending”

And this is a regular evening in the dull apartment where it smells single but still full of life, and dreamers. I’m Sankha, a mysteriously silent math major with a touch of madness (Like every great mind) and I have an irreversible mute button. Aha, the irony! Named after a musical instrument just to realize that your son is going to be mute for life. That must have been hard for my parents. Well, that is how it is and it is irrelevant. By the way, the one who writes is Kamil and the ‘moron’ he is referring to is the geek king Prathap. If you’re still wondering, the reason for the smell of our apartment is the situations like the aforementioned dialogue. Believe me, the fights and arguments never get old between a hopeless romantic and an undergrad who has watched every piece of entertainment Hollywood has to offer and then some. Of course, the arguments rage on in the living room while I try to focus.

“I wouldn’t expect someone who is dead set on finding the one piece in the land of fire to understand something deep as love” yells Kamil.

“Those are two stories, you idiot! And what are you even talking about? You’re always writing up some sad poems and saying that it is literature. Read some books first!” shouts Prathap.

And insults fly back and forth. Sometimes I wish I could just join them in the brawl but holding boards would not be as effective as speech in an argument so I just decide to check the texts and maybe get some work done. And by work, I mean diving into social media accounts. When scrolling through those, I feel like I am not missing out on much being mute, well mostly because at least one of those two fellow roommates is always by my side, even so, I have come to hate the sympathetic looks I get from everyone else. But besides that life, these days have been better than great. While I am deeply bound in my thoughts I receive a text with an attached link to the university website. I start up the computer and begin to sweep through the website for the page which was attached to the text and it reads “Message from the new Vice-Chancellor” and there is a video down to the title. On any other day, this might not have been a surprise because news this important would have gained much popularity even before an appointment. Because of that, I jumped up and try to shout as loud as I could to ask the two guys who were still deep in their argument to come to check it out. Oh right! Almost forgot! I am mute! Err!! I have to walk over to the other room and make them watch it. And somehow I was able to play the video after they signed a peace treaty for 5 minutes.

It was not a speech from your ordinary head of campus. Not at all. First of all the man had a camouflage jacket on which was more like a hunter rather than a military outfit. And it seemed like he has spent the best years of life wearing that same jacket hiding from civilization and now he has crawled out of the woods to hunt down the fiercest animal of all, the college student! The hunter starts the speech and the first thing I notice is his voice is almost nonexistent might be because the way he had to live in the wild. So he goes;

“Dear students as you can see this is our new vice chancellor for the university speaking to all of the staff and students. This is a new beginning as you have already noticed I am a stranger to you all because after I departed from the campus I never really set foot again until today. But I guarantee you there are going to be some exciting changes around here. Above everything else I want this institution to focus on academics thereby I am going to stop every extra-curricular activities including sports, student clubs, or associations. Also waiting on the premises after the lecture hours without permission will be a serious offense from tomorrow onwards. And the most important announcement of all, as the new curriculum is going to be extremely stressful, I have decided to let go of every special needs student from the university. They will be admitted to the Institution for the differently-abled children run by the national military research organization within 3 days. I have to tell you that this is entirely for the sake of improving the status of this prestigious university and not in the least a personal vendetta. That is all I was planning to say about the fresh changes that are going to be. Finally, if anyone will not abide by these rules will be hunted down and will be punished accordingly. See you all tomorrow”

As the video play ends, my heart fills with sorrow, hopelessness, and irrepressible anger towards this new VC, and phones of all three of us started to buzz at the same time. I took it and turned it off without even looking at the screen while Prathap and Kamil started cursing.

“Who does he thinks he is? A dictator? How the hell did he even get selected in the first place? And what is his right to ship off students to some military camp? In hell, he will. And Sankha! Isn’t your birthday like 3 days from today?” Asks Kamil. Even though that is right I doubt that it is the fact that we should be focusing on right now.

“He is the one who has to be in special needs. He has special needs. In his brain! This will surely stir up trouble for him” Seems Kamil has gone berserk which he never does.

“I don’t know Kamil, It seems he is connected to that organization he talked about. The research thing. This feels unreal almost like how Umbridge took over Hogwarts! Where is a DA when you need one?”

This is not a time to be joking. What are we going to do now? Is it really going to happen? Everything that I worked for, for the past few years is going to be in vain if this happens. And most of all I will regret not having these two knuckleheads around. All these thoughts are circling my head with all the emotions has taken me into the brink of breaking out to tears and that is when Kamil proposed the first useful thought of the evening.

“Should we look him up and try to dig some dirt on the guy. I’m sure everyone is mad about this and try to take action somehow. Yet, searching about him won’t hurt right?”

As there are zero good suggestions other than that, we decide to follow the said plan. So in every first dirt-check, the first ingredient is the good old Google therefore I enter his name and press search.

“Oh look there are a bunch of results oh! oh!! Ohh!!! There is an article about him from the university alumni page. Open it! Open it!!” shouts hot-blooded Prathap.

And we began reading the article and according to that, he has not ever been a good person at all. Whoever wrote this article is clearly holding a grudge towards him as it seems. But several accusations of harassment, manipulation, treachery but somehow he was the smartest in the room as well. Climbing to fame after joining as a researcher for military, bla bla bla. The bottom line is it seems this guy is bad news. I feel like my entire life is breaking apart in front of my eyes. And then I suddenly hear footsteps of like a hundred people approaching our door. Well maybe not a hundred but with the situation, I am in, I don’t feel like I can handle the sympathy of that many people. I feel like I want to crawl into a hole and hide until someone wakes me up and says it was all a nightmare. But we cannot escape the realities of life. So I just sit there while Kamil goes to unlock the door for possible caregivers and I hear things like;

The usual “Is he alright?”

The caring “Is he taking it too hard?”

The empathetic “I don’t even know what to say” and

The roommate “How could I know, He didn’t say anything”. Very clever Kamil! Since when do I say anything!!

The voices grew louder and entered the room. There were so many people and in their faces was the same puzzled look thinking what would be the best thing they could say to me. And I am looking at each of their faces not knowing what to feel. Happy, that I have a lot of friends who will come running if anything bad happens to me or devastated that I will have to leave them soon. Overwhelmed by this reality I feel like I am going to burst so I decide to get up and go to the washroom to refresh my thoughts and then suddenly it dawned on me! It was, in fact, a master plan! I could not help but smile and tears fill out my eyes not because of sorrow or despair but of joy, warmth, and love because I felt those people in that room went to extreme lengths just to break me down just because they can make me feel even better with their crooked but inventive methods. That is a feeling nobody can put into words. Some may say this is over the line. I say let it be because I don’t really care as long as it is these guys on the other side of the door.

As I wipe out my eyes I hear a balloon pop, a suppressed laughter and as I walk toward the door, I hear a certain theme song of a popular show I used to watch.

Maybe a story with a cliché ending is not half bad after all…

By Buddhika Rasanjana

Image Credits:https://bit.ly/2EHYwZi

 
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