The Unwritten Story of Love

I had not started writing then. At least not in English. This is about the time when I used to get lot many ideas to write stories about but never materialized them. Ideas came at all odd times. Most of the time reading some good story or article or inspired by some incident that we come across, but to express it into words was something rarely practiced and subsequently the idea vaporized into the future.
One such incident is what I am going to talk about now. The story did not vaporize this time but it lingered long because I shared it because it was born because of that sharing. Let me start before I am entangled into words and the real idea vanishes.

Aditya, probably the lightest person of our course, got inside the auto rickshaw, straightened the crease on his trouser and made room for me to get inside. It was the Deccan road of Pune. At Khadakwasla, we were allowed to free ourselves from the busy cadet life only once a week. Sunday was much awaited for. We went out to enjoy the freeness of the open air of the street in the mufti with tie. The food at many of the good restaurants was devoured after or before a movie. This generally completed our six to seven hours liberty and we came back. That day too we planned for nothing out of the routine. In the morning I had read a story written by Aditya. A touching story of a pilot who meets death in a romantic manner and his spirit follows his lover, but the tragedy sets in when he is there everywhere but can not tell that to her.
We adjusted well and Aditya instructed the driver to take us to the new multiplex opened at the outskirts.
“I read your story yesterday. It was nice….” I started the topic, and kept him guessing with the punctuation. Aditya looked at me and smiled. His pride buffed through his cheeks.
“…but very tragic.”
He was an Air Force cadet. He did not speak.
“I had also written a story once.” I think I was sure I had already got an idea as to what will be the outline of the story. “It is about a teenager boy and his discovery of adulthood.”
Yes! Certainly I had made the outline and it sounded interesting….. to me at least.
“Hmm... sounds interesting.” But was that what he really meant? I couldn’t make out.
“A teenager of … well… in ninth standard… is very disturbed with the changes taking place in him.” Was I copying some book I had heard about recently, dealing with the same subject for a girl? More important than that, did he know that?
“Oh shit!” He convulsed. I was relieved to know that that was only a reaction to the bumpy speed breaker we crossed. Was it a symbol for me to stop speeding without control? I mean I knew I had never written a story. I had written a few poems and two of them were published in the school magazine when I was in eighth and tenth. After the school I had a dream to become a journalist but that too was canvassed somewhere in the background.
I looked at his face to take the reassurance. He was indifferent! Indifference is one thing a man fears. I feared too but it was already too late.
“I hope you understood. What I am referring to is the various changes that take place as part of the sexual development.” The cadets enter the academy at the age of sixteen to nineteen. Aditya had made it over the opening of the limit by few odd days; probably he was one of the youngest to join.
“Oh yes! I understand.” His sincere reply encouraged me.
“Because of all this….the pubic hair growing and then the first time he accidentally jerks,…. he was really disturbed.” I looked at him and utilized my pause to get stronghold for future moves.
He made me believe I had grabbed his attention, at least it seemed. Was he relating to his own experience?
“Then he had heard the story that masturbation is a sin and those who do really become weak and loose fertility.” I wanted to ask him had he also heard the stories like me when he was in school but I was warmed up and did not want to break the rhythm. “All this was making him loose appetite and interest in studies and in every thing.” Did I strike a cord somewhere, even remotely? I remembered the dark days of sexual ignorance when I could feel it but could not explain it. And those cheap vernacular guide books that showed some Sadhu in a photograph were scariest things I had ever felt. They all said masturbation, hastamaithun, is a disease. That made me feel diseased every time. It was one of those guilt ridden kind of moments when one knew it’s wrong and yet he could not stop himself. I knew he must have gone through the same situation and his memory must be fresher than mine, by two years. But I had to take care I don’t make it sound too personnel. It was just a story I had supposedly written. The line to draw, between fiction and autobiographical exhilaration, often writers face.
“Then his mother could make out that he is not well.” I continued. Though this was a new thing for him because I knew he had studied in a boarding, it was a sentimental issue for him.
“And the teacher in school could make out that there is some problem.” The auto-rickshaw stopped at a red light. I felt stuck. We were in no hurry. There was time for the movie to start, lot of time. The red light did not matter much. But I was not liking the feeling of being stuck. I started hating myself for having started at all. But we were lucky and the traffic started flowing, again, soon.
“Yes! His teacher could make out that he was having some problem. He was considered to be a good student; he scored good marks, at least before then.” The auto had rushed with a new zest, but the fresh smell of the burning patrol made me uncomfortable.
I remembered my economics teacher in my ninth class. A young unmarried woman of... well... I can’t tell the exact age; I had not developed the art to find out the exact age of females by looking at their features, then. But the young fair lady was elder than us, much elder, must be around twenty three or twenty four. May be even more. But she was beautiful. She smiled kindly. She did not complain about the students to their parents in the parents teachers meet. She should have been my class teacher, I had often wished. That way she would take the first class in the morning.
I emerged out of the nostalgia, “His mother tried to counsel him. His class teacher, a beautiful young unmarried woman, also tried to find out from him but he did not tell anybody any thing.”
But when I thought about my own class teacher then, a woman in her late thirties or forties, who was bespectacled and who smelt of sweat under her huge arms, pieces of fat contained in side the sleeves of the blouse, evidently forcefully, I almost chuckled.
He was lucky to have a class teacher like that, I thought, almost smiling at my self for being jealous of my own protagonist. I looked at Aditya’s face in the small round mirror of the auto; it gave me a false feeling of safe distance. And searched for hints of being exposed. But he was deeply engrossed, may be thinking about his own school, I thought.
Did you also have some beautiful teacher in your school? I wanted to ask immorally, but I continued.
“Then when his teacher talked to him in detail about many things, she understood the problems. And she directly asked him, and somehow he told her every thing.”
The auto suddenly jerked and screeched! It was not a zebra crossing and a foot-walker had suddenly appeared in front from nowhere.
“ eh! Marna hai kya? Saala!” the Ricksha-wala had a peculiar kind of high pitched voice which pierced.
The man in his thirties stood still for a moment and walked on, indifferently. I followed.
“Now when you must be thinking that the problem has ended, because the teacher advised him and told him that all those things about masturbation were just a myth,” I touched him at the shoulder, “now the real problem started.”
This time when Aditya looked at my face, not through the mirror and swayed towards me, the auto was taking a right turn.
“Of course this matter was over but the boy, you know, in the process of all that secret talks and all that, started developing a feeling for the teacher.”
I was fumbling for words. It was hard for me to imagine exactly how I would write this if I would really write this some day as a story, in future. Was it immoral? The same doubt I had once when I had really liked my economics teacher but had not talked about it with any one else.
“And again all the bad phase of problems started with our friend.” This turn in the story, was it just for the sake of lengthening it? There was still time before we reached the multiplex. I continued wondering what the next move would be.
“And he was really disturbed and lost his appetite. He remained alone most of the time. Nothing would look or feel charming to him other than the teacher’s face. He loved to watch her endlessly in the class, without speaking a word, dreaming.” Aditya was one of those cadets from the RashtriyaIndianMilitaryCollege, an all boys feeder institute, where boys are prepared for the armed forces. I was aware of his limited experience regarding the other sex. But I could not imagine what this thing about the love for a teacher made him feel like. But he looked interested.
“Then the teacher came to know about this. You know you can make out by seeing the behavior, by observing, the teacher herself could guess.” I tried to explain it.
“She tried to explain but he would not listen. He could not. Every time he thought he will not think about her and then he could not stop dreaming about her when she came in class. She also caught his rough copy on the back of which he had written he initials, and mad ea heart with something that looked like a heart.”
That time I tried to think about one of my friend who really written a love letter with blood. I had some how found that a very silly thing to do. The blood, dried on the letter page with the roses in the background, looked like thin layer of red mud. I could not feel what in that impressed any body if it did so.
“Then finally he flunked the final exams and was pulled out of the school by his father; with an advice from mother, who knew every thing but did not tell him. She did not tell it to any body and he was enrolled into a new school.” After the final turn, through the open space at the side of the auto, beyond Aditya’s face, I saw the large neon lighted blue board. E square, the end of my story.
I did not know where my economics teacher had gone after that one year.
“Meanwhile the teacher too left the school. Though she did it for different purpose.” The auto halted and I came out of the auto relieved of many things, and, paid twenty rupees.