School Short Story – Eve of the New Millennium.
Photo credit: solrac_gi_2nd from morguefile.com
The shot and the smoke coming off the gun, that’s all I could imagine reading the news.
Indo-Gothic Architecture,eagles flying,the chapel bell rungs and this sound which for someone is mere bell but for some unfortunate soul is knell that would summon him either to heaven or to hell.Yes him , Anirudh. Why him?because this is a boys school established in 1888 in Nainital.
I had been studying there for almost 9 years now, have heard about ghosts of past teacher and imagined the ghosts that of the future ones. The school almost touches every cloud as it is at the hill top with many deadly cliffs around.Even Google maps show a great field on top of the hill which gets flooded in the monsoons.This story also revolves around this school,this bell,these cliffs and this season. Anirudh a 9th grade student playing football on the field hits a ball real hard which advanced victoriously leaving the air behind towards a senior,Sameer,and hits him hard. This was where the bell for Anirudh becomes knell.
Sameer calls for him behind the twelve’s class room where he was waiting with his friends and gave him the beating of his life. I watched them being locked inside the class room for completing my projects of class 8 . Anirudh was quite revolting which made it worse for him. They punched him in the chest , stomach and in the face. There was a balcony behind the room built on the cliff which leads to a 500 metre ravine which in monsoons roars like a fierce lion which was also the reason no one could hear them beat him.
Almost ready to be pushed off the balcony unconscious Anirudh didn’t even breathe properly but then a boy known as the rat of the class did this very unique thing he stood up and said “just look at him he will die” and pushed him on the ground and said “just look, just look” looking into the eyes of Sameer and his friends.They stopped and later got suspended from school.
Anirudh taken to the hospital haunted by serious nerve disorder for a year never returned to school.
And then the news came when I sat where he use to sit and where his name was written ‘Anirudh Sharma, 1999’.
But he never saw the new millennium.
Based on A True Story.
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