An afternoon at a school gate

(This is written by my dear Ashutosh Bhaiyya)

The afternoon sun beat down on my face forcing me to squint at the gate of the school which had swallowed my wife and somehow seemed to have digested her completely. I had prefered the glare of the Sun to the cool shade of trees on opposite side the street in which I had parked my car among the multitude of vehicles ranging from taxis, maruti vans, mini buses, bigger buses and a horde of personal vehicles belonging to the parents and other guardians of the students. 
At exactly 2.30 pm the school gates suddenly spewed out with a vengeance a motly crowd of big and small school kids who now turned the afternoon calm into a furious and noisy madness. The kids reminded me of dust particles seen in a shaft of light in a recently swept room. The random unpredictable movements created a melange of similarly attired.

A little calf trapped in the human crowd, children crying "cow cow". Calf gets hit by a car whose mudguard gets loosened.

The girls' fight turns to serious verbal fight, two kids chasing the calf. It hides behind my car. One small kid, lean, dreamy, snapping his fingers and listening to the sound by snapping them next to his ear. A musical child. Another jackson in making.

cars with parents, cars with drivers, cars with grandparents, choking the narrow street. The kids could have used the school bus. All big cars. Vulgur show of money. Small girls chiding the taxi driver.The girls' fight gets vicious. They take out their water bottles using them as clubs. One club hits my car narrowly missing the rear window. I shout at them but they go on fighting relentlesly. Three kids come to peek at the calf who is by now scared and confused. The kids try to scare him more to see it jump and bump into cars. I scold them and they back away. The yellow coloured battle tanks carry away the army of human offsprings. The future pests on the earth. The street becomes deserted. The calf dares to come out from behind my car and slowly trudges towards the far end of the road.

Motherless, shelterless, its food snatched by the mighty humans, the poor animal searches for some relief in this concrete jungle created in the name of civilisation.

WHAT IF...A PRANK GOES WRONG??

As soon I finished watching the second episode of Channel V’s ‘Axe Your Ex’, I sat down to pen my thoughts. Firstly, this is a new reality show that Channel V has started. In this people spoil the day of their ex and the channel plans all the nightmares for the poor ex in advance. Today’s episode featured a boy who wanted to axe or spoil the day of his ex-girlfriend. The girl was a 20 something and surprisingly her roommate was involved in this dirty game too. She was firstly called to this mall where strangers would come up to her to give her presents and flowers. All this was set by the channel to irritate the girl. One stranger even gave her a bikini set and asked her to try that out, much to the embarrassment of the girl and all the people sitting in the mall where all that drama took place.

Finally, the worst prank played: An actor was asked to play the role of a psycho killer and scare the hell out of the poor girl, already tired and irritated. As soon as she entered her apartment, she spotted a dead body (fake, of course!) and then a new drama started. She was even made to do sit ups to apologize for something she had never done, all that on a knife point and on the public television. And in the end her ex-boyfriend and the channel crew came in and told her that it was only a prank! You should have seen her face; she was scared and frightened as hell and burst into uncontrollable tears while that stupid boy, the one who staged all this to take revenge was laughing all the way like a sadist enjoying torture of his victim to the hilt.

Now, I did not find anything enjoyable in this entire drama. What is the channel trying to teach us? Barbarism? Sadism? Bitchy tricks, or to laugh when someone is going through a rough patch? Or enjoy when someone’s day goes wrong? All this humiliation, that too on a national TV can be enough to drive anyone to take drastic steps. Who would be responsible if the ex commits suicide out of embarrassment? What if she gets a heart attack during that idiotic prank? World is round; what goes around comes around too. Enjoying somebody’s problems is not ethical and it is not right. What if a prank goes wrong??