Batch of 1999

by Anurakt Srivastava

 

  Name – Sanjay Purohit

  Age - 23

  Education – pursuing Masters of Business Administration

  Marital status – Married

  Occupation – staff supervisor at PUROHITS.

  Sanjay Purohit was working in a factory when his father found him. Strange thing was that this factory belonged to the Purohit’s family itself. Owned by sanjay's uncle, right now it was situated on the left wing of the whole empire. It was an old plastic profitable factory which was the proud of the Purohit's until now when they are watching their own son working as a labor in here. His father didn’t told anyone and get his son fired as a first step and summoned him to his office immediately.

  At the office, son refused to recognize his father. He was respecting this man but he wasn’t Sanjay's father according to Sanjay. Senior Purohit made two drinks. Sanjay gulped his with hesitation. Then father asked Sanjay if he was angry on something. Father told Sanjay that his every wish would be fulfilled if he went home straight because his mother was worried about him. And Sanjay was ready to go but he couldn’t recognize his father anyway.

  It didn’t happen overnight. Sanjay was like this since the last year of the school. A day when he come home and his rich blood lost all its richness. He had all the qualities to succeed the position of his father soon which was inherited from his grandfather. A long history of success and ruling in private sector. And now Sanjay was unable even to recognize the golden spoon he was born with.

  That could be bearable as most of rich kids are mood freaks but now he was even working in the factory as a labor. This was really bad for the reputation which had taken more than 100 years of Goodwill and prosperity. And Sanjay had his own stories of life now. His own silly concepts and theories. Someday he loved everyone and someday he forgot even his mother-father. Sometimes he came out of his room ready to take over the whole thing and sometimes he was absent like disappeared found in their own factory in rags working near the furnace. Sometimes his father found him on the gate of Purohit’s family home, talking with the watchmen about his another family (which didn’t even exist), where he got a father who worked in a shop and mother was a house-wife. He laughingly told the watchman that his mother was an unfaithful woman. Watchman didn’t comment on that because Sanjay's actual mother was unfaithful too. He dropped her many times on many suspicious places. But it wasn’t watchman's business to ask. His job was to serve only and if Sanjay wanted to brag here about his real or imaginary family so let it be.

  And then there was murmur in the house one day. Rumour was that Sanjay baba got a girl in his room. Rumour was true. Sanjay baba not only got a girl in his room but the girl was being raped by him for three days continuously. When the father heard about it, he made Sanjay free the girl immediately and tried to bribe the girl generously to keep her mouth shut. She wasn’t that easy so he threatened the girl. She was fearless. He requested one more time and got denied. She couldn’t be bought or threatened or buttered so there was only one remaining way.

  Her body and name vanished in a week of time. And he punished his son by cutting his weekly expanses. He couldn’t be so hard because Sanjay was so sensitive and important.

  One day servants of the house find Sanjay hiding in the garage. He was scared of something. And he told servants that it was around. They took him out and tie him to his bed, where he kept shouting some names, curses and strange-things.

  Though in normal days, he got a strict schedule for himself which he made for discipline because Sanjay liked living with a time-table. Break-fast after exercise and then going to yoga and then college and then to the office to supervise a small branch of the business to learn all the necessary skills.

  Some occasional outings with his friends. And on special days, he came out of his room in one of his greatest moods to do anything anyway anywhere. No one could dare stop him. No one could dare ask any question. Then he could be found on streets or on dope or working as a labor or loader in the factory or hanging from the tree right behind the house. He was happy in both the faces. Some psychiatrist told his father that it was multiple personality case. He was shown to the best professionals of medical and spiritual fields from father and mother respectively. But the gas which entered his mind in the lab was more powerful than all of them put together. Powerful and strange and unknown.

  His parents thought that they should have married him for it could make him more responsible and married life is considered as the only real life in India. People do everything just to marry a suitable partner here. And when you are the only son of a great industrialist then there would be no lack of interested girls even if you are half nuts. He pushed into marriage with the daughter of a family friend who was lesser in money but equal in bloodline. Friend’s daughter was princess by mind and attitude. Her name was Kiran. She was moderately beautiful and high on trends. Too much fashionable. She didn’t care how much the size of the cloth if it could get her noticed at parties. Sanjay liked sleeping with her but he was too busy in his own world. She never gave it a thought if her husband was eating caviar or cigarette ash. Sanjay never bothered if Kiran was going-out in pillow-cover or nude.

  Though she loved Sanjay but in her own way. He was like a child to her. She always found him entertaining and didn’t know how he came to be like this. She laughed once when Sanjay slapped her without anger because it was the first slap of her life and she found it amusing and entertaining. She slapped him back and laughed at her action. They were living like two room-mates instead of married couple. But He continued to make up fake stories about his second family and another lifestyle. Now he even had a wife in imaginary world. Her name was Shanti and she was so lazy.

  Kiran didn’t mind at all. For one thing that she knew after talking to the watchmen that these stories were not true. Secondly, she was enjoying every bit of her husband's mind-set. She felt like a little girl again in his company, which she had lost long ago. She even started boosting him to do things which she considered would be funny. She made him threw water on a servant from staircase, breaking the windshield of his father's BMW and to hit a bicycler on road before speeding up. He could do anything. So life was great. He found a perfect partner who could understand him. She found a perfect partner with whom the life was interesting. Sanjay wasn’t what she was expecting before marriage. He wasn’t a regular busy industrialist. But he was unpredictable and she knew that when she found herself locked inside a car and he was laughing outside looking at her with keys in his hands.

  Sanjay opened the door after 5 hours and Kiran vomited with suffocation like the royal she was. He was too extreme and heartless sometimes. But they developed love for each other without even noticing that. And they were a happy couple incredibly. She was pregnant after sometime and one day Sanjay found her crying because she was missing him while he was out. She hugged him and refused to let go. He told her that they should have been making-love so they did. She stopped going to parties and outings. She stopped meeting her friends and wearing revealing clothes. She started collecting toys in a corner room room for her coming child. She painted the room blue and put the bed on the north for sake of Vastu.

  Kiran started waiting for him per day and calling him all the time. He was more stable now. They went to the first honeymoon on her third month. Sanjay went hysteric on the plane and started banging on the windows and door. Crew had to give him sedatives and they were thrown out at the next stop. So what? They were enjoying every moment of the journey. Couple was smiling on its way out. Sanjay pushed her and she pushed him back.

  A taxi driver reached them and asked for the destination. They told him to get them to a fine hotel with a nice view. He did. In the way to the hotel she insulted him by saying that he was nothing without his father's support. So to prove her wrong he threw her wallet and cell-phone outside. She had to use her money to check inside the hotel. It
wasn’t a pleasant situation but she couldn’t take her words back because she wanted to see what he would do now and she was as stubborn as him.

  He went out at the next morning without telling anything to her and came back with pockets full of 100 rupee notes which were earned according to his words. She didn’t want to stretch this topic long so there were no further arguments. They made love to make up. Then they went to sight-seeing, which included villages and amusement park. They rented a car and smashed it on a wall intentionally at 9 o clock of evening. They knew how to use the money in the way they wanted to. Sanjay drank so much at night to tease her. She drank so much to take the revenge. They were made for each other. The taxi driver who dropped them at the hotel came back to return the wallet of Sanjay which got 15000 rupee, a cheque, two dotted condoms, a love-letter (which he had written to a girl during schools but never passed) and two gold coins. Sanjay asked taxi-driver, why these things couldn’t tempt him. Taxi driver told him that he did feel the temptation and that he used 25 rupee from Sanjay's wallet to buy a bottle of liquor. Sanjay offered him a job which was happily accepted. No one knows from where Sanjay earned the money that day except the person whom he looted a few kilometers away from the hotel with the help of a kitchen knife.

  Trip was a success and they kept talking about it on the way back. Taxi-driver was with them enjoying the hospitality of the business class.

  ‘I am feeling like cutting myself,’ Sanjay told his wife.

  ‘This is not the solution,’ wife told him.

  ‘You mean I should do more than that,’ Sanjay asked.

  ‘A lot more, darling.’

  ‘I love you.’

  ‘I love you too.’

  ‘But why I am feeling like this.’

  ‘Because you are getting bored.’

  ‘I don’t think so, it is so intense. I felt like that before too.’

  ‘Do one thing. Slap the airhostess. Then you would feel better.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because of releasing your anger or whatever the hell is there to release.’

  ‘I am sorry to bother you. Okay, I am sorry. God knows, why I married you.’

  ‘All-right, if you want to talk, we can talk. This is all we can do right now.’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘About yourself. You never told me about your past. I mean the times that made you.’

  ‘You mean that I am some kind of special,’ Sanjay smiled.

  ‘For me you are,’ She smiled back.

  ‘Your talking makes me horny sometimes.’

  ‘So tell me what happened maybe it may help. Okay, let me start, I got a boyfriend once and he left me and that changed my life completely. I become carefree because life lost its value and charm for me.’

  ‘O, for god sake, how can you tell me about your boyfriend. I am your husband. Get some sence.’

  ‘Just to divert your mind. I didn’t have any boyfriend. I mean there was a guy in the neighborhood who kissed me once. I was not a love freak until I fell in love with you.’

  ‘When I was in the final year of the school my life changed and all the rules and thoughts and imaginations fucked the hell out of my mind.’

  ‘Hold your tongue, Sanjay. Baby is listening us.’

  ‘Ye-ye, I went to my childhood so I couldn’t control. You also say these things sometimes and he can listen to you louder. So don’t act goody-goody.’

  ‘I don’t.’

  ‘You do.’

  ‘I don’t.’

  ‘You do.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘No, I don’t.’

  ‘Yes, you do. Do do do do.’

  ‘Naaa......’

  Atul