Uday Prakash - The Girl with the Golden Parasol

It was decided that all the students living in the hostels would unite to take on the goondas.

“Don’t assume they’ve locked up support from all of the local students. We’ve talked with the ‘day scholars,’ and they’re with us. Sure, they come from the same place and know all the same people, so, okay, they might not support us openly. But they’ll find some other ways to help us.”

“Believe me when I tell you that these goondas are few in number. Their strength and boldness have shot up only because of their weapons and political connections. If we let them know what we’re made of, loud and clear, they’ll think twice before breaking into our hostels again.”

Pratap Parihar’s and Kartikeya’s speeches were powerful.

It was also decided that the next time such an incident happened, the students would shut down the whole university.

Strike! Strike! Long live student unity!

The meeting was forceful and a complete success. Rahul felt as if the blood in his veins had suddenly picked up speed and was being licked by flames. He gazed at his biceps. The trips to the gym looked like they were paying off. I belong to a martial race. I will fight for a just cause till I breathe my last.

He slowly began to hum. “I shall live and die for you, O Motherland. . I gave you my heart and I shall give you my life, O Motherland. .” He gently squeezed Sapam’s shoulder and gave him a smile.

But Sapam didn’t return his smile. His eyes wandered off, lost in empty space. What was there? Was it his dead brother, who could only watch Sapam with his sad, helpless, lifeless eyes, and do nothing? He’d been shot. Blood still flowed from his temple. Sapam saw him right there, sitting quietly in the corner of the field below Tagore Hostel, looking at Sapam with his dead eyes.

Every morning, he’d hoist his younger brother Sapam onto the bicycle, take the net, and go catch fish. At home ducks ran everywhere. Behind their house was dense forest, and mountains, whose color changed all day because of the sun’s and clouds’ continual play of light and shade. Mountains that appeared blue in morning would look gray or brown as afternoon crept along; then, a sudden shadow from a cloud falling on the mountain, and it transformed completely, green. It was a wonderful sight to watch the mountains disappear right before your very eyes, totally, without a trace. Only the fog of the clouds, suspended to the side of the mountain, was left to see. His brother used to tell him, “That’s how plane crashes happen, Sapam. The pilot thinks it’s just fog when really there’s a big mountain ahead.”

In the summer heat, the thick, wet bamboo stands in the forest became dry, and when the evening wind blew swiftly through the stalks, they droned as if a thousand bansuris played. Father said that when Krishna fell in love with Rukmini, the sound from his flute floated through this same bamboo forest. Rukmini was from right here, the Northeast. These bamboo learned how to play the bansuri from Krishna. Even today, Rukmini comes to the jungle to meet Krishna, secretly disguised as the wind.

Sapam’s father drummed on the dholak during the devotional kirtan songs. He played very well, and so totally submerged himself in the singing and drumming that people said the spirit of Chaitanya had entered into him. Chaitanya, the great master!

Sapam had turned into a stone statue.

It gave Rahul a shudder. Then he found his friend and roommate, O.P., six foot three, himself a bamboo stick, with a neck as long and delicate as a swan or heron’s, bobbing at every step, standing straight up in the middle of the crowd. His thin, oval face was burning with rage.

Rahul came up quietly to O.P. and hugged him from behind. “Hey, Guinness book contender, why aren’t you looking around for your petite girl? There must be one here somewhere in this crowd. Forget about fighting the goondas. And if by chance your girl did show up, your great house of bones would break in ten places.”

“Shut up! This is no time for jokes,” O.P. fumed. But as Rahul tightened his grip and twisted harder O.P. began to laugh amid his wincing. “Uncle! Uncle! Okay, you win!”

The SMTF — Special Militant Task Force — consisted of twenty-five young men. Pratap Parihar had not only procured iron rods, khurkhuri blades, Rampuri knives, hockey sticks, tiger’s claws, cycle chains, billy clubs, and lathi sticks, but also arranged for three makeshift pistols.

Rahul and Madhusudan lifted the recipe for Molotov cocktails from Che Guevara’s Venceremos and filled ten soda bottles with gasoline, caustic soda, and miscellaneous shrapnel. Sapam and Kartikeya crafted homemade hand grenades from gunpowder, potash, lead shot, shards of glass, and nails that, when thrown, would burst open and cause all hell to break loose. These were the weapons for tossing into jeeps from the roof of the hostel, should the goondas happen to come at night.

“Venceremos! Venceremos! We shall overcome — we shall overcome! Our hearts are filled with faith!”

After that night, hostel warden Chandramani Upadhyay would seem like a scared, worried little mouse. Just over the last few days, he’d noticed a clear change in the boys’ behavior. The Namaste Index had fallen off sharply, went into a downward spiral, and nearly crashed. Even the rare “namaste” delivered like a blood-sucking protégé, reminiscent of the golden age and good old days, came from the lips of either a student from his department or a real ass kisser. Upadhyay had an eagle eye, infallible, for spotting boys of his own caste; so how was it he was now being fooled by not recognizing his own kind? Before, when he walked the halls, students made way and greeted him with a “namaste” or “adab” as he went by. Now they stood in groups, looked at him like he was some weird insect, and walked past talking among themselves, ignoring him. So now he stuck to the edge of the hallway. He was scared. Who knew if one of those bastards might take a cheap shot?

It’s been said the age of information and technology had descended upon India, and on Delhi, and then somehow even got dragged all the way to this university. Students had in their possession reams of information about each and every person. Only a short distance from the hostel complex a “Max Cyber Cafe” opened where a few boys made what they called “de facto” files on professors and administrators. Hemant Barua, a student from Assam studying in the Department of Mathematics (and simultaneously working on an e-commerce degree from the private IT school NIIT), led the information-gathering effort. Hemant was a chess master and his number-crunching skills were dumbfounding. He was short and dark, his hair curly, his eyes tiny, smiling, and blinking. Every day Hemant and Rahul played chess for an hour or so. When Rahul confessed his crush on Anjali, Hemant said, “Hold on a little while. First I’ll put together a full profile on the girl.”

Meanwhile, at the Max Cyber Cafe, the de facto file on hostel warden Dr. Chandramani Upadhyay looked something like this:

Name: Dr. Chandramani Upadhyay.

Age: Fifty-five years, seven months, four days.

Marital Status: Married, but left the Mrs. Brahmin back in the village in Uttar Pradesh with six kids. Now lives with his mistress, who writes about women’s issues.

Property: Bought two flats and three plots of land in town, but stays in the apartment reserved for the hostel warden. Besides his salary and retirement benefits, he holds several other private insurance policies. Has credit card. He gambles and plays the stock market.

Comment: A classic schemer. A loyal lacquered lackey of Vice-Chancellor Mr. Ashok Agnihotri.

Following this, some student added additional commentary.