The Revelation

Chapter 3

       I reached the end of the street. As always, a black sleek Volkswagen was waiting for me. A driver, clad in black clothes just like me was leaning against the car and had a pair of headphones plugged into his ears. As I made my way to the car, the driver looked up. So much for acting casual, I thought. Listening to music was just a show…or maybe he really had seen me coming.

         I slipped into the backseat. The driver removed his headphones and took his place in front of the steering wheel.

       He fired up the engines and hit the accelerator. As he drove, I studied him. He looked in his early- twenties and was dressed like one too—a black t-shirt with some loud words printed across on it and a black designer denims. His hair was messed up and it looked purposeful. It made me sad to think how many young lives they were misleading and staking. Maybe he knew the truth about the group he was working for and maybe he didn’t. If he did, he was probably being brainwashed by them and would probably end up serving a life sentence someday. And if he didn’t, well so much better for him…but still that wouldn’t save him from being processed when he was caught in such company; and such an experience was bound to leave its scar in his mind.

        I leaned back against the comfy seat and placed the bag down. I would have to pick it up on the way back.

      Cool breeze hit my face and I leaned against the door, my face positioned by the window sill. The night breeze was reviving and I stayed there, letting the wind play around with my hair. Looking out into the depths of the night and relishing the feeling of the breeze on my face, I found myself lost in train of thoughts and was taken back to the day when it had all started for me…

         It was during my last year of high school. There was a seminar organized in the school on the economic development prospects of India. Like all seminars organized in all schools, students were asked – coerced, actually – to participate in it, on threats of it being included for our internals’ marks. So, without much choice, we had taken up the challenge half-heartedly. The school had spent lavishly on renting an air-conditioned auditorium and inviting along all the parents of high school students in their respective stream. The school used to do such things often. But of course, they had too…after all they were the ones who made claims that they had concentrated their efforts on ‘the all-around development and open-minded thinking of students’ and goodness knows what else…that made the parents shell out their cash casually without a second’s thought for their children; all to get them a seat in such so-called prestigious institutions. So to keep emphasizing on the point in the minds of the parents, they kept organizing such things and invited them along to see their children present wonderful projects. Of course, what they didn’t know was that all the content presented by their kids was a simple matter of search-copy-edit-and print from the internet and very few actually went through the content they had obtained and even fewer had any inkling of what it actually was.

             It had been a busy and tiring day for the students; remaining by their presentation all day and explaining its content to the interested crowd of parents asking for one. They had been grouped into teams of two each so that they could take shifts. I had got a small part in hosting the main seminar and had listened with much awe to the teachers and a few another respected dignitaries in the field of economics present their point with conviction.

            After my part, I had asked my team partner, Maria to look after their presentation. Since Maria wasn’t interested in going around and seeing other exhibits, she casually shrugged and sat down next to theirs; looking bored. Meanwhile, I went around along with the crowd of parents to various stalls that had been set up but did not linger around to hear the students explain. Her classmates had chosen topics like development in the field of banking, foreign exchange, concentration of investment in industrial sector, focus on R&D etc., as means to ensure economic development with many repetitions of the same topic among friends. Quite a few of them had chosen corruption as their prime focus.