With Love

By Shivam Raghuwanshi

My fractured toe put me on bed. The doctor strongly advised me to rest but now I want to do all that more. The school nurse put on a solemn expression as if she had just diagnosed me with a fatal disease or found a cure against it or both and said, “Stay in bed.” Her ‘s’ sounds like snake hissing, and I hear ‘bad’ in her ‘b.’ Whether I stay in bed or leave it, I will be a bad student for fracturing my toe, for playing football, for seeking medical assistance, for breaking the prescribed treatment, for being young and reckless and getting no punishment for that. She is not a bad person. I am.

At midnight, Yuvraj, the strongest in our gang, comes to my bedroom and makes a cross on his face using his forefinger and tightly compressed lips. The warning sign vividly contrasts with his eyes bursting with mischief on the verge of devilry. I am ready. I am the author of his mischief. He drags my body to the bedsheet making sure he touches the aching toe several times and merrily watches me twitching in spasms. The white shining marble outside the room is already smoothened with talcum. My self-made sledge makes its rapid, reckless ride down the dark, empty corridor. Two horses guiding my sledge (un)intentionally make my fractured toe and my head take turns in bumping against the walls. They are my buddies, the members of our student gang. They are not bad people. I am.

The fourteen of us have gathered in our secret place under a rosewood tree on the lakeside. The air is sweet and relaxing. Our talk is cheap. We are law-breakers. We are careless and shameless. “Did you hear Devansh snoring? That guy is turning 80 before he’s turned 30!” “Watch out at night, Yash is walking in sleep!” “No need to close the door then, when I’m giving myself some pleasure time. He ain’t gonna see anything!” “How come you spot such things and never have time to give yourself some bath time instead? You stink, man!” I am the target - the one who stinks. Swayam is the prosecutor. He is not a bad person.

Welcome to my personal despicable-me realm. It is no adorable-minion-friendly cartoon reality. My friends despise me for being too negative about things. They do not know that I used to be too positive, Leibniz-extreme-style positive about everything, making me almost lose the sense of beauty because when you are positive about every single thing around you, how would you detect truly amazing, breath-taking events, people, emotions? Now I devour on flaws of the world. I like to know that today is a worst place for leisure. I am greedy. I want things better.

The housemaster of my boarding school despise us for pillow fighting, night-sneaking, noise-making, and thinking. But it is not his fault. It is us who are animals. Isn't he more of a zoo-master than house-master ?

My father despises me. That is the bitterest-sweetest contempt of all. He despises me for writing this essay. For thinking about writing this essay. For daring to think to write this essay. For a mere attempt to imagine myself as creative and weird artist, where my chances to be successful are buried somewhere behind the farthest and the coldest iceberg in the north. It gives me strength to do it.

Sometimes, I despise myself. For the time wasted on friends. For the time un-wasted on them. For my excessiveness in some things and inertness in others. For yielding to the temptation to go with the flow at times and for overcoming this cowardly urge.

I do not want a despicable-me nameplate on my grave. I want the shine of talcum, the warmth of a rosewood tree, lazy conversations with my buddies, the aching of my toe reminding me that I am alive, the promising whiteness of a blank page providing me with all the opportunities in the world. I guess I want it all …wrapped in love.

By Shivam Raghuwanshi