Initiation
Standing in the
testosterone charged 10×10 cubicle now seemed like an arduous
exercise. His slender neck, making an obtuse angle with his aching back,
gave excruciating pain as it was becoming exceedingly impossible to keep eyes
glued to his 3rd shirt button- head bowed before them in a
gesture of eternal submission and perpetual servitude.
People and
noises enveloped him and he’d always had this condition- claustrophobia- a
mutation gone haywire perhaps. Reserved as a duck as he was, talking or walking
a way out of people and situations gone bad was a trait he’d always desired more
than an Adamantium transplant.
43 hours ago,
this walking paraphernalia of social awkwardness had arrived at this place,
knowing he would make a great engineer. He had no idea his first lesson after
school would be the toughest among all to follow.
The pile of
consumed smoke buds in one corner of the room made him feel he was amidst
the Costellos and Al Capones of India. The
walls- as much as he could observe- had been turned into a canvas for what
seemed like dark arts, wherever they weren’t marred with stuff that you’d
normally come across in public toilets.
As a clueless
newbie stranded in this savagely customized place with 16 eyeballs glued to his
startled form, ready to mutilate him at the fall of a hat, he would never feel
more sorry for having fallen on the earth one-freaking-year after some random
citizens.
He had learnt
why electrons passing through 2 closely placed slits behaved both as particles
and waves or what the odds of 2 people in a room of 100 having the same D.O.B
were. But for the still unrefined renditions of Chaos Theory dealing with
dynamical systems depending on initial conditions, a lot more complex than
multivariable differential calculus and probability theory was the unfathomably
labyrinthine subject, way beyond the reaches of functions and equations and far
more complicated than anything under the sun- basic human nature.
He could not
comprehend their vocabulary, periodically marred by swear
words he’d never heard before. What he did know however, was that for some
reason, they despised him. His bizarre introduction, a
horrible attempt at singing and a pathetic stint at dance had fetched him
neither sympathy nor relief.
The decibel
level in the room had now soared to intimidating proportions. The dense
translucent cloud of Goldflake fumes clogging the ill-ventilated space had
started challenging his pulmonary capabilities.
His favourite
Puma belt hung on his sunken neck and he’d lost his Denim jacket to the clumsy
brat on extreme left. One more ‘silly mistake’ and his Levis jeans would be the
property of the Hulkian guy at the centre- the alpha male.
Poor short term
memory made worse by the horror, served him ill and he had failed to recite their names
in the correct order, yet again. Nor had he been able to memorize even
one of the 6 ‘formats’ he was being taught by them,
ones which every freshman was supposed to learn in such interactive sessions as
a part of the place’s misplaced notions of culture and legacy.
Impromptu oral
oriented mental abuse is a lot like prison- the first few minutes are the
hardest and it’s tough to reconcile with reality because faces bite you. Then
there comes the pain and it’s not physical (well, not entirely) but
worse, that of the spirit- the very substance that you’re made up of. In the
hitherto continuum of life, then comes a point of discontinuity where you got
to make a choice as to what kind of an individual you want to be. And it
totally depends on what you are willing to compromise to not lose what you
stand for.
This moment will
agitate the deepest recesses of your soul; those you never knew existed.
Irrespective of the choice, very soon there will be a point where you’ve had
enough and nothing makes a difference anymore, for you are a different man now.
Faces intimidate you no longer because you’ve seen yourself, your Tyler
Durden, in one of them and you’ll never forget it.
You don’t care about the end for it’s merely an aberration. You’ve learnt the greatest lesson of your life- it is only after you’ve lost everything that you’re free to do anything. Now, you look like you wanted to look, you talk like you wanted to talk and most importantly, you're free in all the ways you were not. Then, and only then, redemption is bliss.
25 minutes later, his shirt lay close-by, soiled. The Levis was bundled in one small heap at his feet. His Ray ban specs adorned the broken dustbin. And after seeing what it had gone through, he was sure he would not put on the Puma again for quite some time.
They had
reduced him to the bare minimum, breaking first his body and subsequently, his
spirit. The new mouse was still far from learning the old clicks that you
require to save your grace at this place.
He would’ve run
the best 100 m of his life as he sped out of their deathly
hallows into the open. When his lungs finally met respite and the perspiration
on his body felt cool, he was back to where he belonged, exhausted and abused.
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