"Are you sure?” I asked.
"Yup, I am sure. My brother got admitted into an engineering college last year. I am an ST dumbo!” Sango replied.
"And what's does ST stand for?” I asked with the heavy and unprejudiced innocence of a nine year old.
“I dunno, but I am pretty sure it works.” He replied.
The conversion was interrupted all of a sudden appearance of a harsh woman whom I shall address as Mrs. P. We reluctantly left the comforts of the mango tree we were sitting on, and wisely ran for our life as she charged with a howling war cry with a broom in her hand. Also the way she held it suggested that she was quite accomplished in its usage for other ‘lines of work’. We were contemplating our future, our friendship consolidated by the comforting thought that we both were involved in theft of mangoes before Mrs. P decided for a grand stage entry. That only Mrs. P shall be privy to the delights of the mango tree didn’t go too well with our communist line of thinking. The mangoes were particularly juicy (they always seem to be tastier when acquired by communist means) in this part of J’nagar.
We were wondering about our future, as far as we could visualize at least. Kids always wonder a lot, before they actually grow up and lose their minds. We were long time chums, as far as you could count. Sango always had trouble counting past his fingers. And I never had to because I knew where my Dad hid his calculator. Even my math teacher was baffled by the sudden streak of brilliance in my assignments. I tried to draw parallels with Einstein’s life but he refused to buy that.
Among other things we were wondering how long we would be able to sustain our communist struggle. Sango reckoned it would a maximum up to 12th standard after which everybody went to some sort of college. Or if he managed to get a girlfriend it would be much shorter, as then he would be reformed. Sango’s mom always told him that she had reformed his father, which would explain his line of thinking. Knowing Sango I knew the latter event was pretty unlikely. What kind of a girl in her right mind would like to go out with a guy with couple of front teeth missing and shorts a size too large for him. As far as I can remember he has been pulling his shorts around. Imagine him doing something romantic like dancing with his girlfriend (at that age girls are disgusting!) a la Shammi Kapoor style and finding his shorts slip off to the general amusement of all. You cannot dance with one hand securely on your shorts, or at least Shammi never did.
Anyway at that juncture it stuck us that mango trees are not such a rarity, and we may continue our revolution against dimwit and selfish women like Mrs. P elsewhere. However how could we ensure that we end up in the same college? Also I was better academically than Sango (who was not as naïve to believe in everything that was dished out to us in the pretext of education). Sango noted with primness that he would be able to make it to any college that I could just because he was ST.
I was disturbed. How could Sango enjoy privileges like that? I decided to ask my father about that. He was pretty philosophical about the whole stuff. He said we wronged people like Sango long ago. So now we are getting it back. Then he explained something about social strata, which honestly I didn’t understand despite my intellectual powers. I fancied that Einstein was like me, pretty dumb in studies, till he discovered his Dad’s calculator. Only it took him 20 odd years to discover it.
Social barriers have and would exist in future. Its origin lies in the basic human urge to prove that I am different than others. These barriers only change their forms across different cultures, some take form as social status, power or as in our case birth based. The only way is to accept and recognize this basic human folly and fight against it. You cannot change everybody’s heart after all. As we make our global presence felt and move toward a new era of prosperity, we are still bogged down with this baggage from our dark past. It is not to say that we are the only ones with skeletons in our cupboard, history is replete with incidents of barbaric acts for every civilization. Dark ages, racial discrimination, slavery and wiping out entire civilizations in the name of discovering new lands are some examples. But they have moved forward but sadly we pay our penances and retributions. Instead of looking forward we look in our pasts and repent.
As for mangoes, nowadays I buy them. They don’t even seem half as palatable compared to when you get them by communist means!
