First Time"What are you doing here?" the guard asked suspiciously.
Raghav looked up from his hiding place. He'd just been kicked out of a prominent business school in Mumbai, due to a combination of unruly appearance, lack of attendance and fights with his classmates.
The last reason being the most important.
"I'm here to meet the principal," he said, clearing his throat. The guard looked him up and down and then laughed. "You like you've come from a chawl. Wrong school boss."
"You don't look like you've come from Ambani's house either," Raghav remarked, a devilish grin playing on his lips. The arrow found its mark.
"Being smart with me huh? I'll show you!" the guard screamed, and leapt at him. The scuffle that ensued brought all the students and faculty out of the campus, with the principal, Mr. Saxena at the head of the group. He saw the grease-stained hands and the long hair and immediately deduced the disheveled man-child whimpering on the ground to be Raghavendra Singh.
"Leave him!" he commanded. The guard stepped away, shamefaced. The principal picked up Raghav by the shoulders and dragged him to his office. Seeing that the drama was over, the faculty dispersed.
"You would still do anything for attention, wouldn't you?" the principal demanded. Raghav only gave him a gap-toothed smile, a result of the numerous campus brawls he'd been involved in.
"I wouldn't want to be your dentist," Saxena said. Raghav chuckled. "I love your sense of humor sir."
"Be seated," he said curtly. Raghav obliged. He looked around at the trophy cases and took a secret pride in knowing that despite his stained reputation, many of the trophies there had been won by him.
"Raghav," Mr. Saxena sighed. "I've known your family for years. I used to be the principal of your brother's college in Delhi before I came here. I know that you're going through a hard time after Dev passed away..."
Raghav instantly smarted."I'm in a very good phase of my life sir. I have decided to open my own garage in Delhi, after seeing the success of my mechanic business here. I am an independent man who does not need his family's wealth to sustain myself, and with the help of the business models I've learnt here, I plan to fare for myself."
"You could still join back...Hindustan Lever...HDFC...they're all waiting for you Raghav."
"How about Raghavendra Singh Limited? Sounds like a good offer," Raghav smiled.
The principal stared at him for a moment, then leant back in his chair, as if in deep thought.
"Don't worry sir...I'll manage..."
"One question Raghav: Why?"
Raghav thought back to the incident that had brought him to his current set of circumstances. He'd been returning to his hostel from tuitions when he'd seen the girl, lying half-conscious and fully naked on the side of the road. Her body was covered with bruises, and her mouth was still open in a silent scream. One could have mistaken her for a carcass.
She'd slipped into a coma at the hospital. The police had interrogated him for two hours. He had a 'reputation' her parents argued. She was his classmate in college, and he might have been keeping an 'evil eye' on her. When he'd finally been freed, he'd wanted to erase the incident from his mind.
The next day, he heard the girl's boyfriend and his gang of goons discussing in great detail what they had done to her. He didn't need to think-he'd just pounced upon them, like a tiger on its prey, and punched them till they resembled the girl they had assaulted.
He hadn't done it to avenge his own inconvenience, because if that had been the case, he could have forgiven them. All he could think of was that girl, reduced to being an animal by a group of creatures that in his opinion, were even less than animals. In his opinion, they did not deserve to exist.
So he had wiped them out. Not completely though. But the perpetrator still hadn't woken up from his bed in his fancy five star hospital suite.
"You do know that eventually with the kind of influence your family shares, they can argue insanity and free you. So why don't you take this opportunity and correct yourself?"
"But where did I do anything wrong sir? I owed it to poor Sunita to give that saala the beating he deserved."
"Raghav, you're not going to lessen her parent's pain."
"But I made sure it's never going to happen again."
"You can't always be a hero Raghav. Accept it."
"Why not?" he argued, suddenly losing his patience. "And what if I don't want to be a hero? Maybe I did this not because I'm such an attention seeker, but because that is what my conscience told me to do?"
"That's what I'm trying to say Raghav," the principal said gently. "Dev is dead. You don't need to tell your conscience anything. It's not your fault he died. You don't owe the Sunitas and the Devs of this world anything."
Raghav stared at him, agape, for a moment. Then he let out a ear-piercing wail, one that was unearthly even for a woman in distress, let alone the six-foot tall cliff of granite Raghav was. "No, no," he screamed. "That's not why I did it. God, you horrible horrible man! You're my teacher! How can you say something like this?"
"Raghav," the principal said, reaching out to comfort him. But he'd already taken off.
"I didn't do this because I was guilty over Dev. God, that man is crazy," he repeated over and over to himself. "Trying to pscyhoanalyze me. No." There was no logic to it. Those vermin had deserved to be exterminated. Even somebody who didn't know the meaning of loss could have agreed with him.
For the first time, Raghavendra Singh knew what he wanted out of life. He wanted to meet a soul who was as damaged as he was. And he wanted to save that soul. At any cost.
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dont know where this came forom. hope you like it.😆😳
Edited by IndigoBlues - 12 years ago
Anupamaa
Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi 2
