Thursday, July 17, 2008

A shattered dream : another true story.

Satyam was new to the life of boarding schools and was not able to take bath and dress up quickly. As a result, today he was late again and was afraid that his teacher would hit him on his hand with a scale. He looked at his hands: soft, tender and pink in color like the hands of a typical seventh standard boy. Then he looked at his nails and cursed himself, he again forgot to cut them. He remembered his mom who used to cut his nails regularly but now he was alone. He wished he could run away from there but it was not possible as he was in a boarding school which was located on the hillside far from any city, town or even a village. Then he thought to hide himself in a toilet for the whole day but then he thought that he’ll have to come out of the toilet sooner or later. He was beginning to panic now. His heart was beating louder as the class was nearing.
He stood in front of the door of the class with his eyes dug into the ground. The class teacher had already started the roll call. She didn’t notice him but murmurings and chuckles were getting louder in the class. Finally she noticed. Now the chuckles turned into guffaws. The whole class was laughing. The class teacher looked annoyed.
“Come in you dumb. When you’ll learn to be on time? I don’t understand why these parents send such dumb heads to international schools like ours.” She Shouted and without warning smacked a tight slap on his face. Satyam started crying and covered his face with his hands. She straight away noticed his nails. Satyam had forgotten about his nails already otherwise he could have hid them from her. Teacher was boiling now and the whole class silent. The teacher took out the scale and this time she hit him on the nails. Satyam yelled. He had never felt such a pain ever in his life.
His hands pained for the next few days. Actually he was physically very weak and even the smallest of injuries took long to recover.
English lecture was going on. The teacher asked Satyam to read. He refused as he was poor in reading but teacher forced him to do. He agreed. He was not afraid to read but the only problem was that his classmates used to make fun of him while he read. He started to read. Everything went fine till the first paragraph ended. But he got struck after the first two words of the second paragraph. He was not being able to pronounce it.
“What happened? Carry on.” Said, the teacher.
“Ma’am what is this word hadaaaackehadaaache… I’m not getting what is written.” He replied.
“Where?”
“The third word ma’am.”
“What? Can’t you read it you dumb? It is headache. Just get the hell out of the class and let someone else read. You are hopeless. I can give you in written that people like you can’t do anything in your life. Tell your parents not to waste their money on you.”
The whole class laughed holding their stomachs. Satyam had really made a fool of himself. But he was hurt. He had tears in his eyes. He didn’t say anything and stood out of the class for the whole lecture. He was really ashamed of himself and wanted to improve. But there was no one to guide him but there were many to laugh.
Days went on and Satyam’s miserable life continued. One day the class teacher told them that they’ll have a story writing competition the very next day. Satyam was glad to hear that. He remembered the days of his previous school when he his writings were appreciated by all. The teachers praised him for his imagination. Actually being very introvert, he used to think a lot. Some of his friends even teased him as ‘philosopher’ but his teachers told him to take it as a compliment. He had even won many essay writing and story writing competitions in that school. And now he thought he had a good chance to prove himself in his new school.
The day of the competition came. The topic was given and the bell rang. He wrote a very adventurous story. He was actually satisfied with what he had written. He knew that it was the only field in which he could prove himself. The results had to be declared the next day in the English lecture. He went to his hostel and had a very sound sleep after a long time. He had a hope now and that too after a long time.
The day came. He waited for the result very eagerly. He could not think of anything else but the results. Every second seemed to him like an hour. Finally the English lecture started. The teacher came in. His heart started beating loudly. She announced the results. He held his breath after every name being announced but His name was not there. After congratulating the winners teacher came forward again.
“Students, there is something more that I want to share with you people. There is some one in this class who don’t even know how to spell ‘these’. He writes it as ‘thease’. Do you want to know who he is? He’s the new comer Satyam. I couldn’t stop laughing when I looked at it. Call a second class kid, he’ll tell you how to spell ‘these’ but this seventh class fool doesn’t know and he participated in the competition. Huh.”
It was a shock for him. He was stunned. He couldn’t believe that he was not even in the top three and not even the fourth one who got the consolation prize. He was broken not knowing that his story was not even read. He cried the whole night and a few nights after that. His hopes were shattered. He was depressed to such an extent that he never wrote a story again.

17 comments:

Rajesh said...

amazing yaar!!! awesome narration...Infy as the best....but i felt very bad for u...but ur writing is jus gr8..

P.S: do visit my blog when u find time..

Ash D said...

Well if it's a true story, i wonder, dis that lady say international school??? :O . I just can't imagine teachers in an Int'l school do that. have to be crazy. If it's not true, plz do continue the story man... plz do..... wanna read!!!

Unknown said...

If this story is truly based on u...

i must say u have come up a grt deal...

congrats..on ur determination and hardwork dude

The Listener said...

Amazing one. Such simplicity in writing is rarely found these days.
Keep on writing. Even if a dream is broken into pieces nvr be afraid to pick thm agn and strt building another dream. May be god has a better dream for u !!!

rumpelstiltskin said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
screwdworld said...

Good stuff..alwaze wanted t write..could never muster the enthusiasm to actually do it..must say am glad there s someone like you in infy..cheers! :)

Unknown said...

its was nt abt words or simplicity... it was actually the feelings nd purity dat was dere in this superb story...i jst dnt wanna imagine dat dis is a true story...dis is amazing..

Rajesh said...

Hi Ankur...do visit my blog

The Solitary Writer said...

well it does happens .....satyam reminded me of enu :p

and even i was much like satyam during my school days where i used to be the winner in essay writing and elocutions ......gr8 story

btw whts this to shattered

ismein shattered dream ka kya baat hai bhai

btw nice read

ankur kaushal said...

@ solitary writer..

actually satyam wanted to prove himself over there and he saw a good writer in himself.
But a spelling mistake could've easily been ignored.
It hurt him so much tht he didn't write a story for the whole next decade.

Unknown said...

very good narration....it can be concluded that satyam had a great imagination power and was confident about his work....but the black mark giving by his teacher has left him such a spot that he didn't write another one for 14 years....over all gud work frm ur side..keep going

Nehal said...

Heyy again a nice story... but do tell us who is satyam? i guess its ur story. n do tell wat happened to satyam then? did he write after 14 yrs?

ankur kaushal said...

@ sri
thanks a lot..
btw i like ur conclusion thing.. :)

Anonymous said...

आप अच्छा लिखते हो । You write good.

But I couldn't guess who Satyam is. Who is he?

Abhinav Sood
- www.inspiritblog.com

ankur kaushal said...

@ abhi..
thanks a lot buddy..
actually, i've left it on the readers to guess..

nd yeah, i checked out ur blog..
very informative.
nyway thanks ns keep visiting..

Vishal said...

Gr8 story yaar...teachers of these schools are hell...u stories are amazing...really heart-touching...

Kadam007 said...

It's none other than YOU.
I hope I guessed it right :)