The Untold Misery Of A School Boy-Part Six

First our pleasures die - and then Our hopes,

And then our fears - and when These are dead,

The debt is due, Dust claims dust,

And we die too.

                                       - Percy Bysshe Shelley

WARNING: The contents and images of this story may cause some pain and fear to some readers. Therefore I request those who are under treatment for psychosomatic disorders and cardiac problems not to read this story. Anyone going ahead are doing so at their own risk.

                       ………………………..

Driving away all the darkness and driving away all the silence in the room,there was a sudden lightning followed by a huge thundering sound in the sky that sent ripples across the whole frame of Rahul…..

The atmosphere that was so chilly till that time became breezy resulting in a heavy downpour outside..

Rahul could not withstand so much of lightning appearing so suddenly in the field of his vision that was filled with lot of darkness till a moment ago..

His whole body started to shiver terribly…

But shivered..

Not with chills..

And..

Not with fear..

And definitely..

Not with the thunder and lightning..

But..

But..

With the sight of a dark ghostly image that suddenly appeared on the white walls of the class room like a flash during that lightning..

It literally stopped Rahul’s breathing for a moment..

He had very clearly seen it..

Very very clearly seen it..

It was like the face of an old lady with her whole hair scattered over her shoulders..

And that lady in the image clearly stared at him for a moment during its brief appearance....

He too had seen the face of that image very clearly..

And then along with the lightning that image too vanished..

It was a damn scary and hair rising experience for Rahul..

But what was that damned image..??????????????????

Huhhhhhhh………..

He was too scared to analyze that..

Unfortunately..

Poor Rahul could not realize that it was actually the image of the dark bushes of the large Banyan tree in the school compound behind which the lightning occurred..

And as a result when its image reflected on the wall it appeared like an image of an old lady to the fear filled mind of Rahul..

That is all..

But with that scary effect and with terrible jerks in the whole body..

Rahul started shivering like a patient who shivers with severe convulsions during an attack of epilepsy. He was involuntarily grinding his teeth and his lips were constantly shaking with an unknown fear..

With the inner walls of his head diabolically squeezed by terror..

With his stomach set on fire with anxiety..

With his chest clutched with heaviness..

Rahul was fully loaded with agony….

And that agony was terrible and a bit too much for Rahul..

Unable to withstand that..

He started pulling his hair with both the hands and suddenly broke down into uncontrollable tears and wept loudly..

Pathetically and painfully, calling his beloved mother whom he thinks is the only force in this world who can save him from that misery..

His whole pain filled voice was circulating in the room hitting the four walls very violently..

He wept and went on weeping till his eyes started to overflow with tears..

Loads and loads of tears…

Though dark those tears were clearly visible to the darkness…

And through the darkness..

To the dark cat..

That was observing him silently from a distance....

But that dark cat was not looking at Rahul and not looking at his tears..

With the whole hair on its body fully rose…

It was looking at..

Rahul’s future..

His fate, his destiny…

His nearing end and his total destruction..

With occasional thunders and lightning..

It was raining very heavily outside..

Though drenching in heavy rain the dark cat was still un moved and still observing Rahul,his sad fate and his sorry state..

On the other hand..

Rahul was weeping through a hell of tremendous intra psychic stress and was totally unmindful of all the things around..

He was growing restless second by second and could not sit stable at one place..

As part of an involuntary body reaction he closed his eyes tightly..

Opened them immediately as that ghostly image was haunting him when he closed his eyes..

He wanted to get up and move but was blinded by the darkness around and could not move..

He is thirsty,he is hungry..

And he is what not..

What a situation for the young mind of Rahul..

Terrible…Terrible..Terrible……

To be or not be..

To move or not to move..

To be here or to be there..

To believe or not to believe..

To live or to die..

A sort of a complete parenthetical inter position..

Terrible…Terrible..Terrible……

Humanity can survive anything but suspense…

Humanity can survive anything but helplessness..

And humanity can survive anything but loneliness..

And unfortunately Rahul has to battle against all those three evil elements of Nature in order to survive..

And he has no other way and has to survive till God interferes..

But when will God interfere..

Will HE or wont HE……..?????????

Suspense again..

………………………………………………….

Continued in The Untold Misery Of A School Boy-Part-Seven

The Untold Misery Of A School Boy-Part Five

WARNING:The contents and images of this story may cause some pain and fear to some readers.Therefore I request all those who are under treatment for psychosomatic disorders and cardiac problems not to read this story.Anyone going ahead are doing so at their own risk.

                       …………………      

      Strange - is it not? - that of the myriads,

      Who Before us passed the door of Darkness
       Through, 

       Not one returns to tell us of the road 

       Which to discover we must travel too.

                                            -Omar Khayyam

After waking up from the deep sleep and gaining some consciousness, Rahul then was in complete sitting position with his hands rested on the table..

He tried to figure out where he was but found only pitch black darkness all around..

He tried to see through the darkness.But nothing was visible..

 For a moment he thought that the power supply was off..

 Yawning very lazily he called his mother..

“M..o…mmmm..”

He did not get any response..

So he called again..

This time by increasing the volume of his tone..

“Mooooooommmmmmmmmmmmm..”

Still no use..

While calling so he was regaining full consciousness and was slowly getting back his senses into full action..

He then turned his head around in one eighty degrees..

Could see nothing..

Waited and then again..

He called his mother.... 

Moooooooooooommmmmmmmmmm…”

And this time he found the difference..

In the closed room he was listening to his own voice in a digital effect..

Confused and finding it very odd he looked around with still half opened eyes.. 

And again found more and more blinding and a terribly frightening darkness all around with not even a ray of light from anywhere..

He started feeling very uncomfortable with so much of darkness around and in particular with the closed room tone which was more irritating.

Not only that,after sleeping for such a long time his lips have gone dry and he was feeling thirsty..

He was very badly in need of some water to drink...

Now slowly turning to his left..

And..

With the hope of waking up his mother for water, he very casually moved his left hand in the air...

His intention was to touch and wake his mother up who normally sleeps to his left side on the double bed while his father sleeps to his right..

And when he moved his hand it involuntarily came into contact with the wooden table lying in front of him..

He felt the touch a bit hard..

In the darkness he could not understand what those hard objects were and why did they come into his bed room..

Spreading his hand on the table like a blind man he tried to find out what that hard object was..

After running his hand over it he realized what it was...

And told himself..

“It is like the writing table in my class room”

He paused for a second..

Then the doubt…

“But,why..is..it..in our…bed ro..o…oo..oo..…..”

He thought and paused,

Paused and thought,

Thought,thought…

t..h…o..u..g..h..t..

????????????????????

No need to complete the question..

No need to figure out..

Then..

And..

T…..h…..e………n..

“THONGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG………..”

A huge bomb large enough to blow away the whole universe, exploded in his mind..

That’s all..

He just jumped off the sitting position and looked around to identify the place..

One after the other…

In a quick reel..

He could recollect all the incidents that took place since morning that day..

His father dropping him at the school, the lunch break, lunch with his friends, the curd rice, the French fries and finally his sleeping in the last table..

G…………Oooooooooo..SSSSSSSS.HHHHHHHHHhhh…..

"How could I sleep for such a long time...."
"Why did those rascals Peter,Sam and Mihir not wake me up.."
"How could the teacher not notice me.."

“But..where is the watchman..why did my father not come to pick me up????”

“Do I have to stay here the whole night till the school opens tomorrow?”

"Oh no no no.."

All these thoughts that were whirling in his young mind came to a sudden halt as one thought bomb…

Bigger than all the explosives in the world..

Had blown his mind into pieces by knocking him off,shaking him off.and shattering him off there by throwing his mind into a complete disarray  of psychological imbalance..

“..The school will remain closed from tomorrow..”

Rahul may not be an Albert Einstein but is intelligent enough to figure out what must have happened while he was sleeping..

And what finally led to his loneliness in the darkness..
Hoooooooooooohhhhhhhhhh..
He stopped breathing for a moment......

Then..………..

Exactly

Then..………..

A sort of a fearfully fear packed fear rushed into his mind..

A gripping, mind wrenching fear that can blow away any brave man,

A dangerously most dangerous fear that should not enter in to anybody’s mind in their life time..

A fear from whose captivity no human being could ever escape..

And exactly that fear…

That fear..

Entered his mind..

My dear readers, Death is less dangerous and more pleasurable than the mind that is filled with that sort of a gripping fear..

That fear from within his own self took Rahul’s tiny and tender mind into complete control..

With his eyes literally popping out of his face, he looked around like a hapless Dove surrounded by a number of ruthless hunters..

Making things worse..

He started feeling a sort of heaviness in his chest.. 

There is a terrible feeling of anxiety filled with tremors right in the middle of his stomach which was making him unsteady..

It was a sort of an unbearable trauma too much even for the matured elders…

And it is needless to say what sort of a devastating impact it will have on the tiny economy of Rahul..

He looked fearfully at the fear he has to combat..

Looked tearfully at his fate pleading for mercy...
And looked requesting at the darkness with helplessness..

Unfortunately..

He could only find more and more blinding and a terribly frightening darkness all around...

Again with that deafening dark silence mixed with the more irritating room tone..
He was going breathless..

There is no light whatsoever from any corner..

Except…

A little light that was coming from the sparkling marble like eye balls of a dark thick haired black cat that was observing Rahul and his plight from a little distance from the window..

The dark cat was surprised to see someone sitting in darkness in the class room at that hour of night..

With its eyes filled with curiosity it was silently observing Rahul for a long time..

Fortunately Rahul did not observe the dark cat that was like a symbolic glorification of darkness and fury..

He was just sitting and looking deep into the terrorizing darkness spread before his field of vision..

Suddenly his whole body started to shiver with chills..

Continued in The Untold Misery Of A school Boy-Part Six

The Untold Misery Of A School Boy-Part Four

                         When fortunes come,

                         They normally come in a single file,

                         And when misfortunes come   

                         They definitely come in battalions

Little Rahul’s parents Shekhar and Supriya are brilliant academicians with high profile jobs.

Even their friends and relatives are all brilliant academicians with aristocratic back grounds. But all their intellectual energy combined together could not generate one simple common sense related theory that,

“Rahul is a young boy and there is every possibility of his sleeping in the class room.”

Shekhar too just went by what the stupid watchman had told him.

”I CHECKED EVERY ROOM..THERE IS NO ONE THERE”

May be all of us will normally go by what people around us say and shun our responsibilities and duties at a very crucial juncture.

We think that the watchman has a duty to perform and that he had checked everything as per his duty and should be trusted and when he says so we trust him.

But the other person whoever it might be may still be wrong some times…

Many people among us with our pre occupied minds tend to take certain people and certain statements for granted which may some times result in an irreparable damage and irrevocable tragedy causing unbearable pain for a life beyond life.
And that sort of a lackadaisical attitude of humanity resulted in this story.

After their desperate search..

Shekhar and friends left the school premises and moved towards their respective vehicles…

Supriya was weeping inconsolably for her son.

“..Rahul..my Rahul..where are you my son..my beloved son..where are you..God..where is my Rahul..”

???????????????????????????????????????

The friends,the relatives,the police everyone were watching her in utter helplessness..

Some were trying to console her,and some were giving her words of courage..

It was 9.00 PM..

Holding Supriya close to his heart Shekhar moved from that place..

With heavy hearts,the friends too followed them..

Raising a lot of dust..

One after the other all the cars left the place..

At that time..

The wind was still blowing mildly..

The room where Rahul was sleeping was bathing in thick darkness getting ready to greet Rahul..

The dark corridors,the crows ,other living creatures and nocturnal animals were all waiting to greet Rahul when he wakes up..

The tips of the tall Eucalyptus trees in the school compound were moving very closely to the room gazing at Rahul from a very close quarter..

When viewed in loneliness during the night and when viewed in darkness through the window from Rahul’s point of view the moving of those eucalyptus tress will definitely shatter even the bravest among the brave..

And how will the tiny and tender Rahul receives it..?????

Only time will tell..
That time that has never altered its pace for any one..

That time that treats everyone with equal respect..

That time that is so detached from all human emotions and attachments..

That time that is the only witness to so many historically important events, happenings and tragedies..

And that time “at that time” was moving very mechanically..
Moving..

With one foot up and one foot down..

Marching in complete discipline and in an order

As commanded by HIM, The Supreme Commander of The Universal Forces..

And..

At that time..

And

Exactly at that time..

At 9.02 P M…

Our very beloved tiny,tender,cute looking little Rahul..

Woke up..

Really,really..

Woke up..

Woke up first from his sleep..

Then rubbing his eyes with his fists he tried to open them..

Slowly..
Very Slowly..

He thought he opened them, but they were only half open..

After a few seconds he opened them fully..

The eye lids were still sticking to each other..

Waited..

Then he opened them again with some effort..
He could only see thick darkness all around combined with the sound of creaky nightly tones like that of crickets...

For a few moments he remained static in a state of confusion..

It was a semi conscious state anyone would experience when they wake up from a very deep slumber..

His head was heavy and numb as he slept continuously for a long time on a wooden table..

He tried to come into full consciousness but his numb mind was not cooperating with him,so he did not try to move and remained in the same position for some more time..

While doing so he felt some hardness under his back and then made an attempt to wake up from that position..

In an attempt to raise his body from that sleeping posture..
Ddhhakkk.. 
He forcefully came into contact with the writing table in front of him as his head hit it very badly..

A pain filled”mom”,invoulantrily came from his mouth as that contact with the table caused some pain..

And with that contact he regained complete consciousness..

The lonely room filled with darkness,the fully open window,the five elements of nature were all watching him with bated breath…

If only humanity is gifted with the powers of reading,viewing and understanding the body language of the five elements of Nature,it will definitely find them shedding tears for our little Rahul as they were seeing his future at that moment..

The Story Now Begins in the Untold Misery Of A School Boy-Part Five

The Untold Misery Of A School Boy-Part Three

                       "Man was made for joy and woe;
                        And when this we rightly know,
                        Thro' the world we safely go"
                                                -William Blake


Rahul's father Shekhar normally comes at 4.45pm everyday to pick up Rahul.But on that fateful day he was late by twenty minutes due to unforeseen diversion in traffic on the way.

By the time Shekhar walked into the premises the whole school was empty.

Looking into all directions he hurriedly rushed into the school and saw the watchman coming out..

Shekhar halted the watchman and asked him,”..watchman,where is my son Rahul..Did you see him..”

“..No sir..I didn’t see him..he must have gone long ago..there is no one in the school.”Replied the watchman..

“..Did anyone come to pick him up..”Asked Shekhar anxiously

“..That I don’t know sir,I have just checked every room and locked the whole building..All the children were in a holiday mood..Rahul must have gone to some nearby friend’s house..”concluded the watchman..

That looked like a convincing conclusion for Shekhar..

Bidding goodbye the watchman who was in a hurry excused himself from the place...

And Shekhar too moved.. 

The third and another big blunder that finally led to the great tragedy…

Shekhar should not have trusted the watchman..

Because Rahul never went to any of his friends’ house in the past without informing his father..Even in the past too Shekhar came late many times..

But Rahul used to wait for his father under a big tree in the school premises and never ventured to move out of the school any time..

The watchman who was in a hurry wanted to move quickly and to avoid Shekhar he told something that worked on Shekhar’s psyche..

So Shekhar too moved..

And by moving so he committed the biggest mistake ever committed by any father in this world..

And that mistake he will regret for a life beyond life..

It was 5.15 P M

Rahul was unmoved and still sleeping in the class..

In complete loneliness..

And..

In gradually growing darkness….

The first thing that Shekhar did after coming out of the school was to go to the nearby friend’s house..

”No..Rahul didn’t come..”came the reply..

He received similar replies from three more houses..

Though not very sure Shekhar called his home to find out if Rahul had come..

“..No..”replied Rahul’s grand parents in an anxious voice..

Shekhar was not listening what they were saying later..

He disconnected the phone..

“Where..Where..W…h…e…r….e…???????????????????????

His head was full of questions and questions..

Slowly and very slowly sweat started accumulating on Shekhar’s fore head…

The first sign of anxiety and panic disorder.

He hesitated for a while and then called his wife Supriya on her mobile.She was still in her office at that time.

Trying to control himself Shekhar very slowly told her..”..Supriya,..be normal and listen to me.Rahul is missing..”

Which mother in this world shall remain normal when she hears some thing like,”..our son is missing…”

“Whaaaattttttt……….????????????”

Supriya screamed loudly to the utter shock of her colleagues..

One after the other Shekhar explained everything to her..

All the colleagues gathered around Supriya to know what was wrong with her..

They were shocked to hear that her son went missing….

Supriya has the telephone numbers of all Rahul’s close friends..

She called everyone one by one and everyone one by one and one after the other doubled her anxiety with their negative replies first and anxious questions next..

She is neither in a mood to reply to their questions nor she has the patience to stay composed..

She immediately rushed out of the office along with some of her colleagues and friends and reached home as quickly as possible..

Shekhar was already waiting there with his friends and relatives.The word spread around and almost all the friends gathered at Shekhar’s home.

It was 6.45 P M..

Surprisingly so..

Rahul was still..

S..l..e..e..p..i..n..g....

Still unmoved..

Still in the same posture..

There is a thick darkness gradually growing all around him in the room..

A sort of a blinding pitch darkness with a typical and terrifying sound of absolute silence that is dangerously getting ready to create terror in the tiny and tender mind of Rahul..

And there was still a mild breeze blowing through the window combined with a haunting sound.. 

7.15 P M..

Shekhar,Supriya and friends are in the area police station giving as many details as possible to the police.The officer in charge was also very sympathetic towards them and was noting down every small detail..

Immediately a note was sent to all the police stations and local television channels along with the photograph of Rahul..

And immediately all the TV channels started flashing the photo of Rahul with relevant details..…

8.00 P M

Along with a few friends and police Shekahar and Supriya reached the school to search every bit of the surroundings…

With huge Torch lights they went around the whole place and covered every bit…

Without much use..
As they were so searching..

Rahul was  s.t.i.l.l. .s.l.e.e.e.e.e.e.p.i.n.g…..

Still in more loneliness..

And still in more and more dangerously growing 
D..a..r..k..n..e..s..s…s..s..s...s..

Continued in The Untold Misery Of A School Boy-Part-Four

The Untold Misery Of A School Boy-Part Two

                               
                               They say

                             "Whom the Gods love die young.."

                               If that is true..

                            "Thank you GOD,we don't need your love...."

As soon as the final bell rang..All the innocent and naughty children just jumped out of their seats and ran out of the class like a swarm of bees..

Their juvenile nature did not remind them that their beloved friend Rahul was still sleeping in the last bench and that they have a duty to wake him up..

They were too young to be mindful of these things and they just ran out in a joyful holiday mood..

Rahul was in deep sleep and in fact slept on the bench behind his writing table in the extreme corner of the room..

One by one all the students, teachers and the administration staff…

L..e..f..t……the… school..

Rahul was still sleeping..

The entire school was vacant in fifteen minutes..

At 4.50 P M..

The school watchman started his final duty of the day..

Starting with the first room in the school building he walked into each and every class room, checked everything, switched off all the lights and fans, closed all the windows and finally locked every room..

The secretary of the school was waiting in the office room to receive the keys of all the rooms from the watchman..Later the keys will be kept in a safety locker by the secretary till further opening of the school..that is the daily practice there..

One by one, the watchman finished checking and locking all the rooms in the ground floor..

Then he reached the first floor, did the same there..

As he was moving to the second floor, he got a call on his mobile phone from his wife asking him to come home early as the last bus for their village was at 6.30 PM..

He looked at his watch..

It was 4.58 P M..

He moved briskly towards the second floor..

While moving so he told himself that he should cover the whole second floor in less than five minutes..

Rahul’s class room lies in the second floor and even in that floor it was the last room in the corridor..

The East facing corridor was gradually gathering darkness with shadows of the huge pillars spreading across the carpet as if signaling a great calamity..

The crows on the nearby tree were making a constant noise as if they were foreseeing something..

Unfortunately Rahul was still sleeping..

Moving hurriedly the watchman went on closing all the rooms in the second floor without properly checking them..

He just switched off all the power switches in each room and locked them one after the other...

And finally at 5.03 P M..

He walked into Rahul’s room..

He switched off the fans first..

Then the lights..

That being the month of December and mid winter time in India, the room almost became completely dark once the watchman had switched off the lights..

Rahul was still s..l..e..e..p..i..n..g on the wooden bench near the rear window in the last left side corner of the room..

The distance between the main entrance which was in the front right side corner of the room and the place where Rahul was sleeping was around thirty five feet..

The stupid watchman thought that it was a waste of time to cover all that distance and close the window..

So he very carelessly moved out to close and lock the main entrance door..

The watchman was being paid for that job of checking each and every door and window of the school building and see that they are properly closed and locked.

But he did not do so on that day..

A gross injustice to his job and duty…

The second and the biggest factor that later contributed to the great tragedy..

The window beside which Rahul was sleeping was left open, unchecked.

If that window was checked by the watchman he would have noticed Rahul sleeping there..

But that bloody SOB didn’t do that..

He calmly walked out off the second floor first and the first floor next and finally handed over the keys to the eagerly waiting secretary..

Later the secretary very promptly kept those keys in the safe custody, locked it, locked the room and pushed off..

Rahul was still sleeping..

It was 5.08 PM…

And at that time came Rahul’s father,Shekhar

Very hurriedly….

And now..

There is a gradual change in the weather and marching from west to east an army of thick black clouds started taking positions in the sky..

Sending some signals about the great tragedy...

Continued In The Untold Misery Of A School Boy-Part Three