COINS

As they say, your life is just a sum total of your sins, goods, happiness, grief, suffer and other good or bad deeds that you have done. The result of the sum is always zero before you die. That means you have to suffer for your sins in one way or the other and you will be greeted by happiness for all your good deeds. The equation made with these is what we called the equation of one’s life.

By the way I am Kunal. Right since I was a child, I wonder who God is. What he is like? I wanted to see him as in real. So once I asked my Ma about God. She always told me a lot of stories about different Gods; how he is just one coming on earth in different bodies and faces and kills the monsters and evils whenever require. So that’s how my love for God started. She told me that one day when I would grow older; God would come in any sort of form in my life. So I asked her whether God had come to her to which she didn’t reply anything instead of a smile. I assumed that she hadn’t grown old enough.

I was born to a poor but probably the best family living in slums behind an engineering college of Patna. The college was National Institute of Technology, Patna (N.I.T Patna). So I grew older, watching engineers and all the stuffs they used to do. Damn! I grew up wanting to be one of them. But for people like us; that was next to impossible.

Our area, called as the slums, had around 15-20 nearly broken small houses. That was our life. There were hundreds of us here, each of us fighting for existence and food.

My childhood was hilarious. I was blessed by the purest river. Although the river is not factually pure but yes, emblematically speaking, they call it the purest river. They say that all your sins are washed in that river. I wondered how was then, even emblematically, that river is pure?

According to some myth, people throw coins while crossing the river from bridges and ask for a wish in their mind. I didn’t know whether their wishes come true or not but mine did, well technically. I didn’t know that a substance that attracts an iron made another substance is called magnet. But I knew how to use one. Every day, I went to the bank of the river and spend hours with a long thread and a magnet attached to it being the magnet part of thread inside the water. The magnet attached the coins and thus those people made my wish. In my lucky days, I collected a bunch of coins and well, some days turned out to be not so lucky for me. So logically, I fished coins, bunch of coins and sometimes, no coin with magnet as bait.

I always had a dream to get wet and dance in the rain. But I never got a chance to willingly fulfil my wish. Whenever it rained, my mother strictly ordered me to not to go outside in rain and get wet because I would fall ill. I dreamed that one day I would dance in the rain like a mad boy when I would achieve success in my life. My home was a small one room sleep-able material. It has two side made up of bricks and one side being the boundary of the NIT.

SANKALP…

God serves us like a silent guardian. He can speak to us in any character we can possibly imagine. If required, he can speak to us in a demon character, challenging or daring us to fight and struggle. These characters do exist in everyone’s life but they neither are felt nor seen. They are the angels. Everyone sees their angel daily but yet they don’t see it. God has his own ways, to forgive, to punish, to challenge and all. We spend our life understanding to believe in God or not and end up realising that we don’t even know what believing in God means.

One day I went outside to play with a ball which I found in a lawn. Some other bigger 4-5 kids threatened me to beat unless I gave them the ball.

I got scared but I didn’t want to lose the ball at the same time. One kid hit me on my head. Then all the kids encircled me. Suddenly a boy came and started to throw stones on those kids. They left me and started running.

I wiped my tears and said thanks to the boy. His name was Karan and he was the son of the happiest person in our slum; the vegetable seller man.

That’s how we became friends.

Few months passed. One day, a group of engineering students came to our area and asked the kids to join a school like organisation which they had made providing free education and books.

On the evening of that day I and Karan talked about it.

Me: I have never been to any school. Is it fun there?

Karan: I don’t think so. My sister says that they punish her when she doesn’t do her homework.

Me: what is homework?

Karan: I don’t know. But it is something bad.

Me: but I want to go to school. They said that they would give chocolate. Let’s go 1 day and if anyone will beat us, we will run away.

Karan: okay. I liked chocolate the only time I ate it.

So next day we went to the school. They called it SANKALP. It was very nice and they didn’t punish us; treated us very nicely. The first teacher of my life that I got was Ashish sir. He was very kind to us.

Then all the students were given books. We started going there regularly. They taught us in a very familiar interesting way so that all could learn quickly. They provided us with books, notebooks, pencils etc.

They died and I was happy…

Next few months passed happily for both of us. We were the toppers in the class and Ashish sir supported us a lot.

One rainy day, Karan fell ill. His father took him to a nearby hospital. His condition seemed critical. But doctor saved him from dying. In his medical report, doctor found that there was some blockage in Karan’s heart which required operation. The cost of the operation was around 1 lakh. If operation was not going to be performed within 5 months, Karan would die.

How the hack could a vegetable seller managed 1 lakh?

Sometimes, the world and the God don’t seem fair. It was not fair for a small innocent child to suffer like that.

Karan’s father loved his son too much. He couldn’t bear the pain of losing him. So next day onwards he went door by door in the city with his child and his medical reports and asked for money. But the thing is that maximum of humans couldn’t bear an unprofitable deal. The world is selfish. At one place he got doors slammed right in front of him and on others he was tagged as fraud or thief. Sometimes he got lucky also and earned 5 bucks or 10 bucks, even 100 few times.

He sold all the accents he had. He sold vegetables in the morning; went door by door for money in the afternoon; again vegetables at evening and did the duty of night watchman at night. That went on for few weeks.

One day when the sun had just risen, I heard people calling ‘RAM NAAM SATYA HAI’. I went to see. There were 6-7 people carrying something on their shoulder. They were throwing coins as they were passing. I ran and walked with them collecting the coins until they stopped near the river. Then I returned home happily with around 25 coins.

I wanted to give money to Karan. That type of event happened 13 times in 4 months. Also, I regularly went to the river with a magnet to collect coins.

I collected a lot of coins in 4 months. With my education from SANKALP, I counted those coins one day. The total was Rs 1389. I went to Karan’s father and gave him the money. He accepted the money with tears in his eyes. I had the highest contribution to the donation.

When I grew older, the biggest regret of my life was that someone died and I was happy. I was happy collecting coins on someone’s death but that was to save my friend.

After 4 months of hard labour, he managed to earn around 50 thousands. He went to hospital and requested them to operate his son because he could not afford more money but the hospital didn’t listen. He returned home and cried the whole night.

One day, I and Karan were playing.

Karan: my sister says that I am going to die soon. What does it mean?

Me: maa says that when God needs you, he calls you back and you die.

Karan: so will I meet my maa there?

Me: I think yes. Maa says, you will get everything there whatever you want.

Karan: wow! It will be fun.

One winter dark night, Karan died and I lost my only friend. The funny part was that a kid died who still didn’t know what dying mean.

That night, his father was relieved from all the hard works. He drank the whole night and before the morning arrived, he headed towards the city, fully drunk and was using abusive words for the riches and the doctors. Nobody had ever seen this face of his character. But none could share his pain. The next day, afternoon arrived with the news that he had been hit by a motorcycle and he was dead. His two children left were taken to an orphanage. That’s how a family ends in a slum and nobody knows or cares about it.

I was a kid then and a death of the only friend of mine meant a lot to me. I was unable to tackle that. I had nightmares.

My mother always taught me to be brave. She had a whole different way of teaching me anything; the most pleasant way that I could understand and get inspired.

One night I got up scared from a nightmare. I hold my Ma sleeping next to me and started crying. She moved her hand on my head and rubbed my chest and assured me that everything was fine. She told me that nightmares were just a product of fear with no danger in reality. She made my heart believe that the fear was not real but the danger is real and the nightmares don’t cause any danger but they are just the tool for the generation of a not realistic fear. Those golden words gave me a weapon to tackle with the fear from nightmares. I didn’t have scary dreams thereafter.

After some days, I started going to class. My mother encouraged me to do so. She told me that Karan would be happy if I continue doing things I used to do with him. I didn’t know how Ma could know anything about the happiness of ‘late’ Karan but she sounded very assuring. I continued my normal living.

PIA

I remembered Ashish sir very well. He was a tall, dark and handsome guy with a cute spectacles over his eyes whose presence nearby could make even a cancer terminal patient, comfortable. He never punished anyone. He dealt everyone with a smile on his face. I was his favourite. I was the best in the class.

Few years had passed. I was 10. SANKALP arranged a scheme which provided free education to 2 students among those 50 students in the most prestigious school of Patna and I qualified. Ashish sir gave me chocolate and told me that it was his last year of the college and he had already got job in some big company as a software engineer. In last few years, I had become compatible with terms like engineer, software, mechanical etc. He told me that he had very higher expectations from me. He promised me to give Rs 1000 every month after I joined the school. I was very happy.

I was going to an official school finally. It was quite a big thing for me and my family. Ma was happier than the happiest and so was baba.

I was admitted in class 5th in St. Michael’s high school. The distance of the school from my house was around 7 kilometres. I started getting every month a thousand rupees from Ashish sir. My mother liked him a lot. He had come to our house twice and ate with us.

My father used to carry me to the school on his shoulder every morning. It took approximately one and an half hour on foot to reach the school. In the way, we see the sun coming outside from hiding to light up our world. Watching that with my father everyday was the best feeling of happiness I ever experienced in my life. Halfway, I walked on my foot and halfway on my father’s shoulder.

Earlier, I hated school. New teachers, home works, punishments, selfish students; all these things were new to me. No other student liked me. No one sat on the bench on which I sat. It was like I was some kind of virus. In a few days, I started ignoring all these and started concentrating on my studies.

In few months, we had our first unit test in which I got the highest marks in whole class. Everyone was shocked. Teacher praised me in the class. Now, everyone started noticing that I also existed in the class.

One day during lunch time, a girl names Pia came and sat on my bench and said hello. First time in school someone had sat with me and greeted me with a hello.

Pia: Can you teach me maths? I have heard your maths is as good as pizza.

Me: yes sure. My maths is good.

Pia: my name is Pia and you are Kunal?

Me: yes.

Then she offered me her lunch. That was the first day that I tasted pizza. It was amazingly delicious. Thus we two became friend. She was beautiful. I had never heard such sweet voice in my life. She was the first good thing that happened to me in a very long time. From the next day onward, we sat together. She was always talking about pizza as if it was her life. I helped her with her studies and in next exams her performance got better.

With time, we grew older. We became best friends. We were in class 8th. A new boy came to our class. His name was Prashant. On first day, he came and sat with us. He lived in a world of fantasy and superheroes. The first time I heard about batman was from him. He had a lot of comics. He gave me many of them. He was a nice guy. He wanted to be an engineer too. Pia wanted to be a doctor.

Soon my 10th board exam came. I prepared hard and got 94.4 % marks. Pia got 83% and Prashant 81%. That day Prashant took both of us to his home. It was a big home. I ate the most delicious food of my life that day.

My life was awesome until one day my mother fell ill. She fainted and broke her left hand. We went to the nearby hospital where she was diagnosed with last stage of cancer. My life turned upside down to hear that news. I wasn’t ready for that; neither maa was. Later that night I cried in her arms and she told me that God had come to her in form of silent guardian; Ashish sir as he nurtured the most important part of her life, that was me, and thus made her life happy.

Soon, maa died. Baba was devastated so was I. Pia and Prashant supported me a lot. And thus life went on. I registered for science stream in class 11th so did Pia and Prashant. Ashish Sir encouraged me to prepare for IIT (Indian Institute of Technology) – JEE (Joint Entrance Examination). I and Prashant started preparing for it from the beginning of class 11th. Ashish sir told me many tricks to tackle many problems of physics and maths and also gave me a bunch of books. Pia started preparing for her medical exams.

Those two years passed very quickly and soon we had our board exams. My two papers did not go well. So I was disappointed. Soon came the final day. The day of JEE. I and Prashant had prepared very well. Exam went well. Now was a long wait for the results.

It was the day of result. 19th of May 2013. I went to a nearby cyber café and waited for the clock to hit 10. The wait was over. The results were online. My heartbeat was too high that I was about to get a heart attack. I entered my roll number and the webpage showed YOUR IIT-JEE RANK IS 937. I refreshed the page but the result was same. I started crying out of joy. All the people in the café congratulated me. I ran to tell my father. It was raining. I had always dreamed of dancing in the rain. For me, that was the best success of my life. I danced in the rain like a mad boy with tears in my eye. I reached home and told baba about the result. Ashish sir was also there. Both were happy for me. I saw tears in baba’s eye and I big smile on his face after a very long time.

Prashant did not qualify for the JEE but he got good rank in AIEEE and got admitted in NIT Calicut. I got admission in IIT Delhi. Pia did not qualify in any exam for two consecutive years and later she committed suicide.

Now, I am in 3rd year of computer science and engineering branch at IIT Delhi. I go to Patna regularly and visit baba. I take coaching classes to solve the money problems and even send some money to baba. Baba is proud of me. Prashant is happy with his life. Recently, he has made a new girlfriend for the 4th time in the year. We are in contact regularly. I miss Pia a lot. She was the best thing that occurred to me. I hope she were here with me.