System

Aaryan Khanna

“And… this shit still wasn’t over yet, ya see.”

The gibbous moon stood silently on top of the sky, with some star embedded like beads around it. The bungalow on our front sat peacefully on the edge of the park, staring upward at the night sky.

I had my back leaning frontward, my elbows on my thighs, and my eyes glaring aimlessly at the front. Kritvik had his hands between his thighs as he hesitantly looked at me, and Sooraj on my left had his arms on the backrest, his head tilted up skyward.

“Man, I can legit feel this.”

I smiled. “Hope ya do.”

“The fuck that happened to ya today fucked ya up.”

“Right? I feel the same too.”

“Anyway, don’t take all of this to your heart, man. These dickheads don’t know our side of the story, and won’t even understand it.”

“Generation gap, right?”

“Right.”

Kritvik then commented, “Maybe they won’t, but, you should try to make them understand.”

Sooraj turned to him. “But why waste time over such silly things, man?”

“At least, they gotta know that it’s just not because of looking cool that you all vape.”

Sooraj nodded as he looked into his eyes, and then turned to the front. “Yeah, man. But I don’t see any fucking reason for them to believe in this.”

“Yeah, they’d just… fucking reply with some shit, saying shit such as all of it are just tantrums and shit.”

“It’s too much of shit in a single sentence, man,” Sooraj smiled.

I smiled too. “Yeah, pal.”

Sooraj turned his head downward. His smile then faded away.

Kritvik had his eyes at me, looking at my face tilted down and my smile slowly fading away too. That asshole then turned his head to the front, staring aimlessly at some shit in the front.

A little gust of wind blew from our left to right. It was fucking cold, and I moved my right hand up and rubbed it against my left shoulder. “It’s fucking cold tonight, pal.”

“Yeah, man,” Kritvik replied. “No doubt, the winters are here.”

“Yeah, man. It’s December, after all.”

Silence was what came next. For the next couple of seconds, no one said shit. All three of us were fucking quiet as we sat there, my head tilted down, and Sooraj and Kritvik’s heads turned to the front. It remained like this a second passed. Then another. Then another. Then another.

Kritvik broke the silence, “Uh, so what happened next?”

Sooraj turned to Kritvik, and then to me. “Yeah, man.”

I closed my eyes. “Nothing much. The atmosphere of my house has turned to shit. Everywhere I turn, all I feel is this… this aura that has fucking filled my house with despair.”

“I legit understand that feeling, man,” Sooraj commented.

“Ya see, it’s one of the worst feelings.”

“Yeah, I agree.”

“It… has fucked my life. It’s made my life so fucking shitty. I fucking wanna kill myself.” I moved my right hand up and held my hair tightly, closing my eyes. “This… This fucked up state of mine… I wanna get rid of this shit. I wanna fucking return to normal.”

“… Our life ain’t normal to begin with.”

“… Right,” I said. “I’d rather return to those days when I used to be one of the nerd, ya see.”

Sooraj nodded. “Yeah, man.”

“Ya need to be the part of this fucked system to feel wanted, desirable, and a normal human, right?”

“Absolutely.”

“That’s just how our education system is. It’s all about studies and only studies—something which is gonna be fucking useless to us, but we still gotta do it.”

“Right.”

“And we don’t even know where to use this shit.”

Sooraj nodded.

“And, what about… What about those who can’t study? Where are those guys supposed to be?”

“Yeah, not everyone is born with every talent. Like I can’t study like some do, but I can play cricket much better than most.”

“Yeah. But the shit I’m tryna point here is that if that person is not into studies, then… what the fuck is he supposed to do?” I turned to my left at Sooraj. “There’s… absolutely no hope for me in life? Should I fucking die… just because I don’t possess a talent that this system sees as a pre-requisite?”

Sooraj nodded, still glaring downward.

“We are tortured mentally all our lives, pal! These assholes… They…”

Sooraj patted on my back. “Man, ya rant a lot.”

“But, it’s something that the parents need to understand, right? That… That studies don’t need to be something everyone just has to do. It… It should be seen like a fucking hobby… perhaps just as cricket or something else.”

“Yeah, it should not be given so much importance that it gets nowadays.”

“Yeah!” I was frustrated. I turned to my left, and then to the front again. “All of it is fucked up!”

Pat! Pat! Sooraj slapped my back twice. “Yeah, now leave it. It’s of no fucking use. Ya ain’t gonna legit change this system tonight by ranting about it.”

“Yeah, pal. I hope we could.”

“Yeah…”

Sooraj had his right hand on my back as he continued glaring at the front.

I had my head tilted down.

Kritvik was staring aimlessly frontward. “For some reason, we can’t change the system—not definitely in one night.”

“Yeah.”

“But obviously, we can… rebel against it.” Kritvik turned to me and looked at me questioningly. “Is that… what you’re gonna do?”

“… No…” I gulped in. “I wanna be a part of the system now, so that I can escape from this mental torture.”

“But why?” Sooraj asked.

“Because I’m not good at anything anyway, pal.” I gulped in again. My eyes were filling up with water. “And… I wanna be good at something. I wanna have a talent or a hobby for which I can be admired, ya see. So, I’m gonna study and find that hobby of mine. I… wanna find my purpose in life.”

Sooraj turned to me again, looking at me emotionally.

Kritvik too continued to glare at me.

“Oh yeah, I gotta tell ya one more thing. Actually, after all that shit… later in the evening…”

***

I was sitting on the bed. The mattress was covered with a dark blue bed-sheet, the room lit with the little bulb on the left wall of the room. The room was painted baby pink.

My legs were folded as I sat straight up on the back edge of my bed. My eyes were glued to the pages of the book on top of my lap.

“And when a more reactive metal gets in contact with the aqueous solution of a less reactive chemical, it displaces the chemical. This type of reaction is termed as displacement reaction,” I murmured as I read from the book. “Some of the examples are…”

Creak. The door opened.

I turned my head frontward at the door and looked at the figure of my mom standing beneath the door-frame.

Suddenly, the figure of my dad appeared beside her too. Both of her glared at me emotionally.

“Dear, we want to talk to you over some matter,” My mom said.

“W-What happened, mom?” I asked.

Both of them walked into the room. They sat in front of me on the edge of the bed. My mother sat with both her legs folded, and my father had his right foot down and his body tilted to his back at me.

“Aaryan, we just want to ask you one thing.”

“Why do you vape?”

“For the first time in my life… they… tried to understand me… and talk to me normally.”

“I-I-I don’t know…”

“And I couldn’t come up with a better excuse.”

“You do,” My father said.

“See, whatever you feel, you can speak it out. We need to get to the bottom of this so that you can come out of this addiction.”

“I-I… I just tried it. One of my friends gave it to me, and… I got addicted after some time.”

“You sure it’s not something else?” My mom confirmed.

“Yeah, mom.”

She nodded. “Nicotine can… cause a lot of lung diseases.”

“It can cause heart attacks and cancer too,” My father added.

“Kids can die because of it, son. And… we don’t want our only son to die, okay?”

“It surely was a fucking awkward conversation between my parents and me, because neither one of us knew where to head this conversation to.”

“See, son, it’s… not good to become addicted to something so harmful,” My father explained. “There was a time I used to smoke, and vaping is similar to that, right?”

I nodded.

“You… might not feel it right now, but, nicotine and other drugs, they… they start to eat your body up from inside. It might have caused some damage to your lungs, and you don’t even know about it. Your lungs are definitely weaker than before.”

I gulped in and turned my head down in guilt.

“There’s a reason why our society doesn’t accept those who smoke so much. It’s not a healthy exercise, and… it’s not acceptable anywhere.”

“We feel that you might be vaping because you’re not good at studies, or that we don’t understand you, or that… you can’t be the son we want, right?” My mom said.

I gulped in. My eyes were filling up with tears. I was on the brink of crying.

“I know my son. I was just… blind enough not to see all of it. All I saw was your marks.”

“See, son, all of these studies, and these marks… they don’t matter in the long run,” My father added. “But, they are like an exercise to open your mind, so that… you can get a picture of the outside world, and… and can develop your critical thinking, creative thinking, aptitude, and other important mental skills.”

“And we don’t need marks from you, son. But, in this world, the only way through which you can live peacefully is through good marks. You know that too, right?”

A drop of tear ran down my right cheek.

“See the two of us. Both of us were duffers at school. And, all we’re doing now is struggling.”

“Yeah. I gotta indulge in physical labor all day long so that I can run my shop and bring home food.”

“That’s why, son, we want you to work peacefully in air-conditioned rooms in big offices.”

“But, we don’t want you to get in things such as this, because it can damage your future more than bad marks ever can,” My father added.

***

“And perhaps what they said about studies… Perhaps they were right, ya see.”

“Sure they were,” Sooraj commented back.

All three of us were still sitting at one edge of the dark park.

“Now, I gotta walk away from this gang, and… change for the better. I… I wanna fight this addiction and win it. And… I wanna put an end to all of my shitty misery… not for my own sake, but… but for my parents’ sake, pal, so that… so that they’d never feel worried about my future. And for that, I gotta leave this gang.”

Sooraj nodded.

I then turned to my right to Kritvik. “That’s why, Kritvik, I gotta say something to ya.”

“Huh? W-What?” He asked shyly as he looked me into my eyes.

I looked him directly into his eyes and said, “I… wanna befriend ya. I wanna be someone like ya—someone who can have a decent bittersweet life, someone who can make his parents proud, someone who can score decent marks, someone who can study and work hard, and… and someone who can stand somewhere in other people’s eyes.”

“I-I…” Kritvik stuttered. “For some reason, y-you seem to overestimate me.”

“Yes or no, asshole?”

“Y-Yeah, sure, man,” He smiled. “Why not?”

“Well said,” Sooraj commented.

“And from that day on, I decided to fight this addiction of mine. It was not gonna be a short and easy journey, but… this time… I was ready for any shit that comes in front of me.”