"Alok ran away."
"He flunked the maths test again."
"His dad beat him black- and blue , that's why ."
"Where is Alok now ? "
"His mother has gone insane ."
"Somu saw him at the bus stop ".
"Alok will be dead by now ."
"Most probably sold ."
"They will break his legs and make him beg on streets."
"Or blind him. "
"Why did he run in the first place ? "
"The coward ."
"Shhh, here comes his studious sister -Poonam."
The entire school was abuzz.
Rumours flew thick and fast.
Teachers were having tough time quieting the groups of whisperers .
The assembly was a farce as people kept bursting into uncontrollable bouts of whispers.
Seema started sobbing. No one paid much attention as she was given to sobbing . She had also sobbed when the school was asked to keep two minutes silence on the death of Neelam Sanjeeva Reddy. Now, who was he ? I mean how can you sob at the death of a person , whose designation and name both miss you , specially at exam times.You get my point?
Father Thomas, the principal, read a small prayer after the National Anthem for the well being of Alok, where ever he was, and for fortitude for his family. We crossed ourselves and said" Amen", solemnly . Everyone felt good about having done something .
The bugger, a perpetual backbencher and trouble maker, no one would have thought he would be this famous one day . Or provide such wholesome entertainment .For all you know,he would die , and we might have to adjourn classes and keep two minutes silence . We might even have a holiday.And Seema could weep to her hearts' content.
Teachers wore a solemn look. Even Uday sir .We thought he would forget the weekly test , he did not . But today, unlike other test days , he didn't walk up and down the aisle , reading mistakes and rubbing his hands with undisguised glee, chuckling loudly, and making everyone feel miserable . Today, he just sat at his table , looking at everyone with a worried stare.That scared us more than anything else.
Alok was the youngest of a brood of six children , of a bus conductor ,the corpulent Sharma ji.
He was so fat his kurta would be caught in the sides of the jagged metal doorway of battered govt. buses.So his swarthy skin would always be visible at the sides of his massive paunch, through the tear.Kids used to poke his tummy , with their grimy fingers, and he laughed , a huge booming laugh, till the epicentre of his belly introduced a mini-earthquake , and the rickety bus would quake ,its nuts and bolts further loosened. It was a potential hazard to board a bus being worked upon by Alok's father, you never knew when it would just cough and give up.
Alok's mother always told patient listeners , that Alok was a' mistake'. We were too young to comprehend the words, but we all agreed to the mistake part. Barely scraping past tests and exams , his destiny always hung by a thin thread of luck, swayed in his favour , mostly by his devout mother's poojas . Her forehead shone from numerous temples she visited and touched her head to the feet of millions of Gods , hundreds of times in a day.
If you paid a visit to Alok's home , his sisters would be busy cooking , sewing or studying, his mother would be off to some temple , his father away , fleecing ticketless passengers, and his brothers nose deep in some sleazy novel or playing cricket in the ground beyond.
No one actually cared much about Alok, except us , I guess.
That too, because of his ability to provide endless entertainment. He could pull off a mimicry of all the leading movie stars of our times , effortlessly. For some , he would enact entire scenes.
Besides being the best all-rounder of the school cricket team.
One year passed and there was no sign of Alok. The police came and went a couple of times, a fat , paan -chewing havildar, would ask us the same questions , where we were , who saw Alok last etc: had tea in principal's office and was gone .
Poonam, his sister, had passed her exams , in flying colours, now that she was no longer encumbered with Alok's laundry, homework and meals.The fat Sharmaji shriveled up and looked more glum , each passing day,having blown up his life's savings looking for the missing "idiot". His mother practically took up permanent residence in one of the temples, gave up family life , and started wearing saffron robes, sporting a huge tilak on her shinier forehead.In other words, life changed for everyone.
But the last desk in the classroom , remained forlornly vacant, and our cricket team sorely missed an all-rounder. The breaks were monotonous, as no one caricatured the bachchan baritone, anymore.
One more year had passed , and no news. Alok was slowly being erased from public memory.
That year, in December, Alok's parents went on a trip to a nearby town. On a visit to the famous temple there , a straggly group of beggars were to be given free alms of food and blankets.Poonam held the pile, her father distributed alms , and her mother touched their feet. The elders murmured blessings and the rest just cringed.They were at the end of the line , when a grimy hand emerged from a small bundle of clothes and caught Poonam's legs , calling out -"Punno".Now there was only one person in the whole wide world who called her Punno , so Poonam froze. Her parents froze, and the small sickly, pale figure from underneath emerged to give the famous gap-toothed smile.Poonam shrieked and cried, her mother fainted and father , was just plain stricken.
It was , indeed Alok.
The rascal came back to a rousing welcome and told a different version of his story to everyone , each one a more colourful than the last.Now , in addition to a mimic and an all- rounder, he had also become a famed story teller. A story of his own life , the real truth of which was known only to him.
