Death of a Prince

Death of a young boy brings havoc to the families and the shocking results at the end. Based on a true story, the conclusions being completely fictional and mine.

Perhaps I am going way ahead of my story. Let me tell you something about this boy and things relevant to the story. He was the eldest among the siblings, followed by a sister, a brother and three other sisters.  His sister Nimmi was about 15 and quite pretty. Sukku was in love with her. Now Babu had an aunt by the name of Sabiha. She was young and in her full youth.

Here I will have to give a sort of sketch of our school. There were two buildings here. They were connected through an Auditorium where we used to start our morning assembly. First the girls finished their assembly, finished and departed. The gate, a collapsible one, was closed, and then it was our chance to assemble there. We had an outstanding and perhaps the very best of Head Masters possible. We called him Anwar Sir. He was from the Aligarh University. He seemed to be very friendly, but we were scared of him. He used to walk with a lighted cigar in his hand whenever he went along the corridors of the classes, rarely entering. But things came to a pin drop silence.

One day the girls had finished their assembly and the gate hardly closed when we went in the Auditorium and a small piece of paper fell apparently thrown by a girl. A friend of mine picked it up and said “It is for Sukku.” Sukku looked at it blushed and at Lunch time showed it to me. It has from Sabiha. She wrote a very emotional and crazy latter. Like “So many springs have I passed,.. Now I see a flower… bees.. I am madly in love with you…” Sukku next wrote a reply where he addressed Sabiha as “Auntie” and wrote that she should stop such behavior, he always looked at her as her auntie. That was that. Babu knew nothing about it. Babu asked Sukku to go to his house the same day. And he did.

Sukku told me that Babu took him in to the Drawing room and went inside to change when Sabiha came, saw Sukku and rushed in and kissed him. Sukku was stunned. He simply handed her the letter and came out. Now Babu was a very lonely boy. He had no friends. He loved his mother. The only person who cared for him was his mother. He was terrified of his father. He always avoided him, whenever possible. But if ever this became apparent, he used to get a  thorough merciless beating which lasted at least five minutes, followed by five more minutes of shouting advice, intermittently mixed with some more thrashing.

Babu was crazy about films and music. One day he told us at the school that a wonderful film “Solva Saal” with Dev Anand and Waheeda Rahman, was being released that day at a Cinema Hall called Mukul in Johnson Road. He asked us whether we would go there or not. We told him that we would ask our father and if he agreed we would. During those days we always tried to watch a film on the day it was released.

We asked our father and he agreed. We went to the film, liked it and liked the music. Babu liked the music so much that after the show was over, he took us to a record shop (records came in fragile plastic 78 RPM disks in those days). He found his record, played it and bought it. He invited us to his house the next day.

One day when Sukku alone went to his house, he had his meal and later when he was about to leave, it started raining. It was not that much, but Babu’s mother simply told him, “Why go at this hour in rain. You can sleep here tonight and go in the morning.” The father did not complain. Sukku took the chance and slept that night with Bablu and the next day he took a letter from his own father wherein it was written that since Sukku has to go to school so far, it would be financially and academically preferable for Sukku to stay at Babu’s house till the holidays. They talked and fixed a monthly amount. Sukku became a sort of paying guest at Babu’s house. That started another chapter in the short life of Babu.

Days passed, months passed, years passed. I appeared at the Matriculation Exam and passed. My results were not so impressive for Notre Dame. I managed to get in to the Jagannath College in Science (Physics, Chemistry, Mathematics and Biology).