The SUN - One shot

Him

"The Age of Technology has been the single most.....blah blah blah..." 

Professor Ranade was really good at boring the life out of you - cheerfully.

I couldn't have asked for more. My mind was not in the most co-operative mood currently.

Him... So that's him.. The one who looks like Dada.. smiles exactly like him... the one whose damn laughter can charm a smile on your unwilling face.. The same one who was there in the foyer yesterday and pretty much at many places after that.. 

I couldn't have not observed that he now seemed to be at too many places in too less time... in the classes, at the canteen, in the library, in the staff room, at the security gate... even in the school bus area. And every time, he kind of seemed like a part of the team there and not like the 6th graders we were supposed to be. 

What was the matter with this boy! Who was he? The second version of Hermione Granger with her time clock? What was he doing in so many places?  and especially how was he connected to Dada? 

Can't you give it a rest? We are trying to concentrate here - said my dual-version second inner voice

Don't try to sound as if you were really trying. I can hear you listening to the gossip behind - Voice no 1 retorted

Well I never said I was trying to concentrate on what the professor was saying - Voice no 2 added smugly

It wasn't long before I stopped listening to the 2 buffoon of voices and concentrated on the chatter behind. 

Amazingly, it proved more than helpful. By the end of my first week in this place, I was starting to understand how it all worked.

Anay was the eldest among Dada's kids. No doubt he was a commoner there.. But it was his fathers occupation as the watchmen-cum-peon of the Kendriya Vidyalal which brought him to this assemblage.

But Dada was getting old.. Being a father to five daughters and (a much desired) son in most of the typical orthodox families, was no easy task .. So it was that Anay landed in the mud much early than the time when most kids his age would know to figure their r's different from their n's.

He was earning for his education and their living. 

Thus it was that he took up whatever odd jobs he could lay his hands on during the day, while learning at the same time. He would cook and clean at the canteens when they were short of hands, run errands for the professors during his free lectures and for the little time that the professors stayed after school, he would help the bus drivers by cleaning their buses by getting early to school every day and would assist the ground keeper in watering and preparing the grounds afterwards. All this along with giving Dada company in his job as Security personnel till the day would yawn and go to rest as the sun stretched its legs to the west and went to sleep.