Chotu's Tale

                        "The world has befallen upon me", he breathes a sigh of despair and pessimism. "I can't think of anything, I 'm in doldrums. Those I entrusted to lend their shoulders gave me a cold one", he continued his “ Gloomy Sunday”. I was all ears to his dejection podcast. "No way can I take such drastic measures yet impulses demand so. I am stuck between a rock and a hard place, blind as an owl on a broad daylight, have people to accompany yet I am alone”, his heaved exhale displaced air few centimeters.

 He was no stopping even though it took a sting out of me as I got back to my senses from momentarily induced melancholy. His words made me wonder: if and when the world is ever devoid of the worrisome tales, is utopia just a fantasy, and if humans will ever get out of their woes and worries.

It wasn't an eighth wonder for him to come up with same old Oh God ! and Oh Lord’esque tidbits, and emotionally carried away with relative ease, it got better of me as l felt touched down by his plight. Poor man I thought.

He has been working in an electronics shop for nearly half a decade, owned by one of the acquaintances. He toiled to sweat, gave all he could and in the process earned himself a good name in no time. He became the hallmark of loyalty amongst his co-workers. And as it often happens to most of them, he was pushed to the limit for his naivety, pushed and just pushed. When his pleas for pays met with unrelenting excuses, dilly dally, and thereafter somewhat heated discussion he finally came to terms with the reality of cheap blue-collar labor and exploitation at the hands of masters. He pleaded but in vain as days turned weeks, weeks turned months, and months to years and all he was fortunate with were the two-time meal and the shred to drape for half the year. He would often turn to me seeking advice which I had no clue of, and all the while beseech the almighty to put him off his endless trials . "He robbed me of my sleep, if there was any prior in my life. All my hopes are dashed away now”, he laments. I usually drift to a whole new time and space yet the consciousness in me persists to perceive him parallel to which I respond with sporadic nodes to inform him I am alongside. Like a  storm howling from inside the mantle unbosoming oddities to the nature.

He often recounted  his stay  in Delhi, Chandigarh, Kolkata and several Indian cities and the wonderful time he had cherished then, once in his otherwise drab lifetime. Traversing through these cities,  he wouldn’t know how and when he got besotted with a lower-middle class girl Ramila, still in her school years. He was steadily understanding the dynamics of life and his love. They started to see each other more frequently afterwards yet hadn’t had the gut in all honesty to take the all important leap of faith. People had eyes on them too. Much to the anger of the merchant he was working for and to the all-too-possessive family of the girl, the relationship was tragically nipped in the bud.

Fate had it otherwise. He returned from his brief indulgence to the drudgery at his village farming acres of rice and sugarcane until one day he bumped into a familiar figure, one who later became his nuisance master.