Code Name Shatru

CHAPTERT I : The Presentation

It was a usual sleepy day. Same old, nothing much to look forward to. As we entered the college we saw auditorium was pepped up. An event or something, maybe. Ah! Perfect excuse to cut the first hour. We changed out course, walked into audi.

It looked like an inauguration of a youth club. All were second years’, fresh faces, seemingly enthusiastic about this venture. It was nice to see them come out and take charge. Good.

“no! no! I dint ask you to do it this way.” A guy was shouting. He was tall, fairly good looking, lanky, bespectacled guy with week old stubble. Must be the brain behind all this, we realized. “Its really frustrating when I have got to be the lone one who have to manage everything” he was telling his mates.

Quite an interesting character, we thought. We had already typecast him.

We went in and were finding our seats, when this person comes towards us.

“Hey, Listen. Can you help me out” He looked serious. “The crowd of this college isn’t that intelligent enough as we know. I will be taking the presentation and uhmm.. when am done, can you ask me some questions so that whole thing becomes a little bit effective, you know what I mean”. Oh! Well, we knew.

“uh..” Yosee responded with a wicked smile “Okay. But what should we ask you?”

“Oh! Don’t worry about that. Take this” He handed out a small folded paper to Yosee. “I have written down some questions, ask some… Thanks” and with that he marched onto the stage without waiting for our confirmation.

Looks like our hero had done his homework. What the heck, thought we, If he wanted to be a hero, lets make him one. Whats we got to lose anyways.

Presentation lasted for an hour , it was very well done or so I guess. Moving over to final slide of the ppt, he asked, looking at the audience “Any Questions?”. Great! Time for us to come into play.

Yosee unfolded the paper and read out the questions in a low voice to us. ‘What are visions and missions’, ‘how it will help college’… etc. the usual ones. Ehm… And to our dismay we found that same topics were written on the final slides titled ‘What we discussed’ on the big screen of the audi. “Ambada Kalla” said Yosee. Asking any of these will make us appear superdumb in front of others.

He was looking at us expectantly. We sat there motionless, dint even flinch.

There was no Q&A session.

We decided to leave after that. We were near canteen when our hero called us from the back from top of auditorium stairs. “Hey, you. You bunch of morons, why the f*** you dint ask those questions. All I wanted was a little bit cooperation and it seems you good for nothing twats cant handle even a simple thing. Don’t come near this club ever again.” He threatened and with that he stormed back into audi.

Yosee wanted to go after him. Panji held him back. “Leave him da! We’ll get him... Later”.

That day he entered our blacklist. Code Name Shatru

CHAPTER II: The Vengeance

DJ was in full form. So were half of the students. It was pretty late into the night and MH day was just getting started. We guys were in rock and roll mood dancing to Dard-e-disco and Bachna ae Haseenon, having some excellent time. Thumban who had invented his own dance form ‘Pambaadi’ went missing in between the chaos. A bit later he surfaced, all too excited “Deyy guys. Look… Shatru” he pointed to other side of the ground where our hero was trying to shake a leg or two. Panji looked at Yosee and gave a confirming smile.

We moved towards him and surrounded him. “Lets dance mahn!” Panji said. He was smiling. “Oh yes! Pretty cool Dj huh” said he. Evidently,  he dint recognize us. Soon we started pushing him. We started hitting him on his legs, slapping him on his back, and kicking him ‘innocently’. We acted drunk so that he thought we dint do it on purpose. He tried to move away, but Boy! Would we leave him. Poor Sod! Couldn’t even complain. He went back to his room after a while without waiting for the event to get over officially. We ruined his night and we had our vengeance.

CHAPTER III: The Revelations

Shatru was never good with faces we realized when he came join us for a street play we were doing as part of the Tech fest. By the time it ended, he was too close to us. He started to hang out with us more often, still unaware of our history and we did make sure that he doesn’t know about our earlier trysts. We were ashamed of our deeds. And more he hang out with us, guiltier we started to feel.

One day when he was in our room discussing about all the good and bad of the college he said “You guys are the best people I have known in campus”. It was an emotional moment. Panji who just couldn’t hold on any longer broke down “Forgive us mahn!” he cried “We did bad things to you”.

Every one of us was silent, Shatru was clueless. Then slowly Thala explained everything to him. By the time he finished, Shatru was all red

“Pannikale, you pigs” he shouted and then broke into an uncontrolled laughter. So did all of us. Oh! He remembered those events all right, just dint note the faces. During Presentation he thought we were some freshers who dint do their assigned jobs, during MH day, he thought we were some drunk seniors who had lost it. He then said he was glad he dint remember the faces, for then he would have never joined us. We laughed for an hour or so without saying anything.

“Konnalum marakoola, Wont forget even if I die” He said finally.

“We wouldn’t too” we said.