Kissu's Chronicles

Kissu’s primary matter of fame in the village school, from class five to ten, was the fact that he had spent five previous years of his schooling in Arunachal Pardesh where his uncle was posted in the army. With a dramatic multitude of stories about that distant land that we saw in the map, he built a formidable reputation by telling spicy anecdotes from the mysterious land. The sluggish and stagnant air in the classroom would instantly vanish as the flurried notes of his hair-raising episodes touched our boyish hearts. Most of these were elephant stories, allegedly based on his own direct experiences with the pachyderms. His well-spun stories had a lot of scope to adjust and get digested in our boyhood imagination. Now but they seem too outlandish.

After matriculation, at the Industrial Training Institute (ITI) at the district town, he accumulated even more reputation. The Bollywood was spinning sylvan and sublime dreams of a hero with his ameliorative touch to undo the hideous deformities plaguing the society, especially the molestation of women, where the hero suddenly jumped among dozens of goondas and saved the honor of the damsel in distress, love would blossom then, followed by lots of dance and songs. He carried a hockey stick doing justice to the Bollywood heroes of the eighties and nineties who saved the society, especially the women in distress.

He walked with a perfectly puffed-up chest; his heroism and macho attitude seeking an opportunity to save some damsel in distress. Those were the times when the roadways buses carried a passenger load at least four times more than their full capacity. It was always an ill-omened adventure. You had to push into the throng with devil’s impunity. And when you emerged out of the stuffed box you felt misshapen to your last bone.

During one such scuffle among the multitudes to get a foothold onboard, a girl lost her footing at the crowded footboard as the bus started to crawl slowly. The driver usually drove it at a snail’s pace for a couple of minutes to allow the throng the last chance on any square centimeter of the bus still available for grabbing. The bus was moving very slowly and this girl softly slumped down. It wasn’t a hard fall, she just lost balance. There wasn’t a single scratch on her. She would have jumped back to regain her vertical. But that brief moment gave Kissu the opportunity to save his heroine like a Bollywood hero. He hoisted the shaken girl in his worked-out arms and started running. She was perfectly alright and had all the reasons to believe that it was an attempt to kidnap her in broad daylight.

Kissu thought himself to be the savior hero but to her he was nothing short of the most gruesome villain who played with the honor of women. She started beating him with her fists. His face got a lot of blows. Many people ran to rescue her. After getting a few thwacks on his body by other heroes, who came running to rescue the girl, a much perturbed Kissu couldn’t make out why he was rewarded that way for his good did.

‘I was taking her to the hospital!’ he shouted in wonderment, still facing the barrage of many fists. ‘Sometimes, even a few seconds delay in reaching the hospital is a matter of life and death!’ he hollered his logic over the din.

‘Take your mother and your sister to the hospital, you fool!’ the girl shrieked with such a look of abhorrence in her eyes that Kissu instantly knew she thought him to be the cruelest goonda ever.