Mice In Men by Anirban Bose

Author:Anirban Bose
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-9-3511-6060-1
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2010-02-15T00:00:00+00:00

It is strange how one hangs on to a statement about destiny when it involves good fortune. In Ashwini’s case however, it was mostly his mother’s doing. She had brainwashed him through the rest of his childhood to believe in the greatness that lay in his future. Pundit Sharma was a famous astrologer and couldn’t possibly be wrong. He had predicted her cousin’s recovery from a severe illness, her friend’s marriage to a high caste man and an acquaintance’s cousin-sister’s lucky lottery numbers. Besides, no one makes a prediction as objective as ‘doing something really, really great’ unless they see it written in the stars as clearly as they see the fifty rupee note while reaching for it.

Other than actually becoming famous, the prediction had served Ashwini fairly well. If his school performance wasn’t anything to inspire confidence, his mother readily dismissed education as the ride to the top. When Ashwini didn’t show any sporting abilities, she deemed that a waste of time and instead advised him to concentrate on singing. Singing teachers were hard to come by in the slum and the few times Ashwini had tried to belt out something resembling a song, it was fairly obvious that the key element missing in his rendition was melody. She had then scraped together some money to put him in ‘acting classes’ where the instructor had dismissed his chances of being a hero at first sight, reconciling to the possibility of some ‘character’ actors should his histrionic abilities live up to his expectation. They hadn’t, and so, after a number of other similar ventures, both mother and son realized the futility of their efforts.

His mother died that year; never getting to bask in the glory of her son’s greatness. Up until then, she had been the one pushing him along, coaxing him, cajoling him and cursing him as the situation demanded, making him strive for something that he entertained with waning enthusiasm with every passing year. In contrast to his dwindling belief, her faith in him remained strong till the very end. Even as she lay dying, she had pulled him close and whispered something that sounded like ‘greatness’ amidst the phlegmatic rattle that was her voice. With her gone, Ashwini found himself at thirty, all alone, uneducated, untalented, unskilled, and, what was worse, without a single other soul in the world who believed in the prediction.

At an age when most people have begun settling into careers and starting families, Ashwini hasn’t had the chance to do either. He tried his hands at cleaning carpets, running a food stall, gardening, selling detergent door-to-door and washing cars at the petrol station. But, as expected, none of these have offered him any potential for distinction or greatness, and consequently, at thirty-one, the realization has begun to strengthen in his brain that maybe Pundit Sharma was just plain wrong.

At present, he works as a security guard of an upscale apartment complex in Mumbai, writing down the license plate numbers of the cars that

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.