Social Issue Short Story – The Cinderella Man
© Anand Vishnu Prakash, YourStoryClub.com
He looked at the morning sky. It was an exuberant color of blue, orange, white and crimson. He had always been in love with the sky.
It was not that the oceans, the rivers, the trees and the mountains did not fascinate him, but it was just that he had a special love only for the sky.
The sky with its myriad hues created a strange magnetic pull for him, that was near impossible to resist.
Every day of his life, right from his kindergarten days, it had been spent with a deep love for the sky. Every single day he felt getting deeply attached to the sky. He at times felt he wanted to hug the sky. To be able to tell the sky how much it meant to him. To be just able to look at the sky and marvel at this magnificent of all of God’s Creations.
The dawn and dusk were special moments for him to spend time with the sky. He felt a great energy transfer into him from the sky during these special moments. A feeling of being strangely energetic and alive. His body responded to these moments by creating a mysterious and sublime fluidity into his veins and arteries. He felt strangely energetic. Like a Superman.
Captain Siddharth Sharma finally made up his mind.
He would give up being a soldier. He would leave the Army.
No, it was not that he did not love his country any more. On the contrary, he was completely in love with his country. But the reason he made this decision was just that he finally just realized that the enemy of his country was not outside the border of his beloved motherland.
No! The enemy of his country, the enemy of his people was actually well within the country’s border, it was right among the people.
The enemy was not one in number but humongous in numbers.
They were the politicians, the rapists, the drug-traffickers, the criminals and the scum of their society.
He looked at his beloved sky and thought deeply.
Why should he fight an enemy, created by the politicians?
The man across the border was just like a man on this side of the border, going about earning his livelihood and living an honest life with his family. Why should he fight and kill him? Wouldn’t that man’s family greatly suffer without their bread-winner?
Why should he destroy the life of another brave soldier on the other side of the border? That soldier is just another brave man taking up his duty to protect his country without doing any harm to any innocents unlike the scoundrels in his country.
There were so many scoundrels in his country! The scam tainted politicians bent on amassing wealth. The morally decadent police who were always super-quick to put the blame on innocents at the drop of a few lakhs of money by the corrupt of the society.
Why should he stay awake on every night and stay guard for an enemy who wasn’t an enemy at all?
The sly demagogues, the politicians who go on create fear in people’s minds about an outside enemy when in all reality they just want to manipulate people’s minds and rule over them. To create a fear psychosis and then take control of people’s lives.
What motives compel politicians to take up office?
To get power for themselves and their children. To go on be hand in glove with the corrupt and morally decrepit industrialists who just want to rule the country and fill in the coffers of their own houses so that their children and their children’s children can go on live the good life!!
He finally made up his mind. He would not be a mere cog in a well oiled Machinery of someone’s nefarious plans!
No! He would not fight with a make belief enemy.
He would fight against the real enemy. The enemy within the country-within the society!
He would fight the Real Enemy.
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