Chapter 1: Parth
My future was decided on the day I was born. Both my parents are distinguished, affluent members of society just like their parents before them. They are both civil engineers and own a construction companys in India that covers both government and commercial projects. It was natural that I would be led in that direction.
Name and prestige played a very crucial role in my household and education was pertinent, perhaps even more important than the air we breathed. One could only be distinguished by the qualifications they held. You will be remembered by the name you make, my mother often told me. I can't say I disagree. Even to my ten-year-old self, it made sense because that's all I had ever known.
Rules were meant to be followed and anarchy, punished.
I never felt at odds with it because I was used to decisions being made for me.
The time I woke up, what I ate for breakfast, what was packed for my lunch, which car would take me to school, who I was allowed to talk to, what my schedule was after school, what time I would return home and have dinner and what time I would sleep. Everything was fixed.
Needless to say, the privilege of a skittish childhood was never graced upon me. When kids my age were playing hide and seek behind trees and benches in parks, I was being moulded into becoming a cog in a machine.
I had tuition after school, tennis lessons after tuition and karate lessons after tennis and by the time I would come home, I would be too tired to even eat. And despite how much my body was starving, it killed me to sit at the dinner table and force the food down my throat. But I still did it because it was expected of me.
Sit straight, and keep your elbows off the table.
I didn't enjoy dinners much. But I still did it because no matter how much I wanted to just go and crash on my bed, dinners were the only time when I felt that there were more people in this house than just me.
I was not allowed to sleep on the table.
》《
The diffusion of my parents' reach was not limited to just the house. My teachers paid extra attention to me and the principal always made sure I was comfortable. Some might think this was a boon. It was not. I learned to work beyond my limits because I always felt like I needed to pay them back with excellence.
But it would be unfair to reduce my parent's influence to just the bane. It had some perks too. Friends came naturally to me as I was the class topper. That meant something to my peers. My parents were friends with the top politicians in the country. Teachers, staff, and even the parents of my classmates wanted my peers to treat me well.
I liked it. It made me feel needed.
But that was cut short on my thirteenth birthday.
I had made the mistake of inviting my entire class to celebrate the passage of my thirteenth year into what I thought was an important milestone before adulthood.
My parents were not pleased.
Out of courtesy, they tolerated the people I called friends but once they were gone, the bubble of my happiness burst. The day that had started with excitement and joy, had ended with a two-hour lecture from my mother.
This is how I came upon the first reality of my life. I was made to understand that there are two types of people. One I could call friends and one that I could not. My mother told me that the company I keep will shape the man I become. I did not want to agree to it but I did. I had never disagreed with anything they had told me before. How could I now?
But later, when I returned to my room, forlorn and engulfed in dejection, I began to see the cage around me that had been invisible so far.
Something lodged in my chest that night.
Something big and heavy and it weighed down on me, forcing resistance into my breathing just a little.
》《
My life did not change much for the next nine years. My parents wanted me to study civil engineering, so I did. They wanted me to study in the college they had graduated from so I packed my bags and flew 1400 kms away to study at the country's top engineering college.
I did not mind.
It was not like I had a dream. I had never learnt how to have one and any spark of imagination that ever ignited inside of me was extinguished mercilessly under the confinement of rules and the burden of my family's name.
》《
The first three years at college passed by smoothly. I was lucky enough to maintain my top rank despite being involved in the students' council, college press club, debate, as well as swimming club that the dean had got me enrolled into under my mother's instructions. Then I was a part of clubs focused on building sustainable communities, rural development as well as green roofing in urban cities because my professors thought it would benefit me.
Like always, I agreed.
It was mostly fine except for a few nosebleeds every now and then. But it was never alarming and nothing a few hours of sleep couldn't fix.
Everything was set.
Everything was going as it was supposed to.
I was living the life I had always been destined to.
But things changed soon after my seventh semester began.
》《
Storm.
That is all that comes to my mind when I think of Avyukt. When I think back, I am surprised how I did not notice him at first. If I had, perhaps I could have warned myself of the storm that was about to brew. This is a lie. Nothing could have prepared me for what was about to happen.
The moment Avyukth stepped into the college campus, things changed.
There was a light buzz running across campus about the new guy who sounded like bad news. Everything he did was being watched by someone or the other. He wasn't significant enough to be noticed too much but wasn't the quiet type either. He mostly kept to himself but created a stir no matter where he went. We were in different departments, me in Civil and him in Computer Science so I never had any reason to bother about him.
But people around me talked. Every time someone mentioned him in passing, or when there were rumours of him getting into fights with someone, all my mind would think of were my mother's words, how it was the quality of a weak mind to gossip about people. So I never indulged in them.
But then, I encountered him.
The first time I noticed Avyukt was right before our first assignment.
A month had passed since the seventh semester began and we were given gradable projects to complete. Ten minutes before the class was due to start, the door opened suddenly and in came this guy in nothing but black. That's all he wore. Black, All day, every day. Everything about him was dark and mysterious. He stood out, like a sore thumb.
He walked in like he owned the place and placed a pile of papers on the teacher's desk. It was impossible to not notice him immediately. His presence was loud and created ripples in my life.
My eyes lingered on him longer than I wanted them to. I noticed that he was tall with broad shoulders and a lean, muscular body. Even from a distance, you could notice his sharp jawline that complimented his slender neck. His hair was always messy and he always looked like he had come back from a fight. I couldn't help but notice those sharp piercing eyes that always had a hint of mischief in the. He looked like the definition of chaos.
And he was everything my mother wanted me to stay away from.
"Get your paper!" was all Avyukt said after he entered the class and suddenly, a crowd gathered around him.
I saw everyone take their wallets out and exchange money with stapled paper.
He was selling the class assignment.
As if he'd heard me, his eyes met mine and instantly, an incandescent bolt of lightning cracked across the sky, splitting it into two.
When he looked away, I felt like I had been robbed of something.
That is how monsoon began for me that year.
》《
I can't say I am a righteous man because what Avyukt was doing, selling the assignments, didn't bother me. No one has died from passing assignments so I did not believe it was needed for me to intervene. It was not like a couple of assignments here and there would outrank me in class.
But after that, more rumours would pass by about him and more often. Fights were something he had become famous for. He would often get into one with students from other colleges, sometimes even the gangsters and every once in a while, they happened on the college campus.
Everyone always rushed to see him fight because apparently, he was pretty good at it.
And no matter how much I tried, the incidents happened so often that it was impossible for me to escape them. So I started to spend all my free time at the library instead and another month passed before I encountered him next.
》《
Alcohol was not allowed in the hostel. The college board was very strict about that. There were cameras in the hallway and the wardens often conducted surprise room checks to make sure the rules were not broken.
I was comfortable with that. Following rules was like second nature to me.
But not Avyukt.
Someone knocked on my door at 2 am on a weekday. I had started staying up late after I moved away from home and I'd found my nocturnal side so addicting that I couldn't sleep before 4 am on any given day.
I put down the book I was reading. I had picked it up from the library in the afternoon and I had about a hundred pages left.
When I opened the door, I found one of my classmates, Rohit standing outside.
"I am sorry to disturb you." he offered first. "Were you sleeping?"
I shook my head. "Is everything all right?"
Students showing up at my door was not a rare occurrence. I was head of the student body and they could come to me with any and all academic grievances. But the grievances had become quite frequent these days.
"It's just that..." Rohit seemed unsure so I waited. "A few of us have a placement test tomorrow and there is a party next door and we can't sleep."
Campus placements had begun and after slogging your ass off for 4 torturous years, a placement felt like freedom, like someone had given you wings and told you to fly as high as you could. So it was natural that they were followed by huge celebrations.
"Did you tell them to quiet it down?"
Some were sensible enough to do it outside the campus where others would not be disturbed but every week, there was at least one person who would not listen to reason.
"They won't listen. They're all drunk."
Rohit did not have to say more. If the time was after midnight and there was alcohol involved, it was Avyukt's doing.
He had been warned twice by the warden for selling alcohol to the students after hours. and those were the times he got caught. The admin didn't know about the weekly parties.
I suppose it was a profitable business for him because the liquor shops in my state closed at 12. Considering how every party usually started after midnight, Avyukth was notoriously known to sneak in alcohol and sell them at double the price.
If these incidents were isolated and rare, I would not have bothered much. But the fourth year was very important to a lot of us. It was not just the stress of the placement, but also the completion of projects and exams. There were many who were planning to go abroad and the applications and processes started a year in advance. And as the days would progress, more people would be placed and that would call for more celebration and alcohol.
I knew going to the party and asking them to keep it low would not work because if they wanted to, they would have lowered the volume on Rohit's request.
If I needed to put a stop to it, there was only one way.
