First post of the year. This one's fiction.
© Manas Gupta
© Manas Gupta
Dara was a troubled child. For a 12-year-old boy named after
a beefy wrestler, he was remarkably thin. He would walk to school with long,
rapid strides, his bony legs looking like slender pistons, his face creased
with worry, his mind a thousand miles away.
This morning, he feared he was going to be late again.
“Gupta sir”, a cruel paan-chewing middle-aged man, who took pleasure in hitting
the legs of kids with sticks from the neem tree, would scream at him again,
assaulting him with a vicious dose of sarcasm followed by a slap that would
make his ears ring and call him a useless mute. He quickened his pace as he
visualized the scene.
All Dara wore was a faded light blue shirt, a pair of worn-out
brown shorts, slippers and a morose expression. As the lone school of the
village appeared on the horizon, he breathed a sigh of relief.
Unfortunately for Dara, he was, what you would call, a
nobody. His entry in the class, or the school would usually go unnoticed. He
was never seen, unless he was late; never heard because he didn’t have a voice and
never spoken to.
He didn’t have any friends and even his teachers barely took
an interest in him. He was a shadow reeking with mediocrity, just another drop
in the ocean, waiting to evaporate and then fall back, a drop swallowed by
earth.
However, there came a day when Dara shone. It was on his way
back from school when he spotted the new stationary shop. It bought to his face
a rare smile. He entered the shop and gazed with wonder at the shiny paper, the
glue sticks, the colourful crayons. In that moment, he was a child again. Gone
from his mind was the fear of Gupta ji, the spectre of school, the daily grind.
He took out his pocket money that he had been saving from
his school bag, brought some items and rushed home. There, he chucked his bag
on the floor, took the items he had purchased, and went to the tiny room on the
terrace where his mother stored foodgrains.
Here, he locked the door, and amid the smell of dust, wheat
and jute sacks, he went to work. He worked through the day. No one missed him.
He didn’t eat, he didn’t study, he just hummed, as much as a mute boy can hum.
Eventually, he fell asleep in the room, exhausted.
The next morning he woke up feeling hungry, sore and for the
first time, happy. He went down to his mother for breakfast, carrying with him the
fruit of his labour. His mother heard him coming, grumbled something about not
helping with the chores and started laying his plate. Just then she glanced at
him and her mouth fell open.
Dara was holding in his arms the most beautiful kite she had
ever seen. Even more enchanting was the smile on his face. She couldn’t
remember when she had last seen her boy smile. Overwhelmed by the
transformation in her son, the woman just sat down and sobbed. Dara just
beamed, holding his kite proudly.
The kite was a thing of beauty. Dara had shaped it like a
butterfly. It was made of golden paper and when it caught the sun, it dazzled
in the sky. Dara had drawn a beautiful pattern on it, a mesmerizing riot of
flowing colours along with glitter and other pretty objects, breathing life
into the golden butterfly.
That day he took the kite to the schoolground. A hush fell
on the ground when he brought out the kite. Even Gupta ji looked stunned.
Suddenly, Dara was encircled by the other boys, everyone curious about the
golden kite, asking him a thousand questions, reaching out to touch it, calling
out his name.
In that moment, Dara was not a nobody anymore. Everyone knew
his name. There were shouts of “Dara, fly it Dara” everywhere. For that moment,
Dara was the boy with the golden kite. And he had a smile on his face.
©MANAS GUPTA
