Like It Happened Yesterday
Ravinder Singh
LIKE IT HAPPENED YESTERDAY
Contents
About the Author
By the Same Author
Also by Ravinder Singh
Dedication
1 First Day, First School
2 Happiness in Little Things
3 My World in Black and White
4 Fear of the Needle
5 All for a Toothy Grin!
6 The Question of Birth
7 Life’s Greatest Mystery Solved!
8 I Have a Pen!
9 A Change of Schools
10 The Power of Chapter 10
11 Show and Tell
12 First Crush
13 One Dark Day
14 Fighting to Be There
15 The Annual Day
16 In Sadness and Defeat
17 Grand Finale to School
Author’s Note
Epilogue
Acknowledgements
Follow Penguin
Copyright Page
PENGUIN METRO READS
LIKE IT HAPPENED YESTERDAY
Ravinder Singh is the bestselling author of I Too Had a Love Story and Can Love Happen Twice?. Like It Happened Yesterday is his third book. After having spent most of his life in Burla, a very small town in western Orissa, Ravinder is currently based in New Delhi. He is an MBA from the renowned Indian School of Business. After working with a few Indian and multinational IT companies for more than eight years, Ravinder has finally taken up writing full-time. He loves playing snooker in his free time. He is also crazy about Punjabi music and loves dancing to its beat.
The best way to contact Ravinder is through his official fan page on Facebook, at https://www.facebook.com/RavinderSingh.official.fanpage.
You can also write to him at itoohadalovestory@gmail.com or visit his website www.RavinderSinghOnline.com.
BY THE SAME AUTHOR
Novels
I Too Had a Love Story
Can Love Happen Twice?
Anthology
Love Stories That Touched My Heart (ed.)
ALSO BY RAVINDER SINGH
I Too Had a Love Story
Do love stories ever die? … How would you react when a beautiful person comes into your life, becomes your most precious possession and then one day goes away from you … forever?
Not all love stories are meant to have a perfect ending. Some stay incomplete, and yet remain beautiful in their own way. I Too Had a Love Story is one such saga. It is the tender and heartfelt tale of Ravin and Khushi—two people who found each other on the Internet and fell in love … until life put their love to the ultimate test.
Romantic, funny and sincere, this heartbreaking true life story has already touched a million hearts. This bestselling novel is a must-read for anyone who believes in the magic of love …
ALSO BY RAVINDER SINGH
Can Love Happen Twice?
When Ravin first said ‘I love you …’ he meant it forever. The world has known this through Ravin’s bestselling novel, I Too Had a Love Story. But did Ravin’s story really end on the last page of that book?
On Valentine’s Day, a radio station in Chandigarh hosts a very special romantic chat show. Ravin and his three best friends are invited as guests to talk about Ravin’s love story. But, surprisingly, everyone apart from Ravin turns up. As the show goes live, there is only one question on every listener’s mind: what has happened to Ravin?
To answer this question the three friends begin reading from a handwritten copy of Ravin’s incomplete second book—the entire city listens breathlessly, unable to believe the revelations that follow.
This highly anticipated sequel by Ravinder Singh is an emotional rollercoaster that bravely explores the highs and lows of love.
ALSO BY RAVINDER SINGH
Love Stories That Touched My Heart
Love–only a four-letter word, yet it’s so powerful that it can conquer anything in this world!
We’ve all experienced the first flush of love and remember the lingering fragrance of it. For ages, love has remained one of the most cherished experiences that everyone wishes to live through at least once. Humanity, time and again, has coined many definitions to describe this beautiful emotion, but this small word is a feeling that can’t simply be defined. It has to be narrated … in the form of stories—love stories.
Love Stories That Touched My Heart is a collection of such stories from readers who have a tale to tell; stories that they would like to share.
Selected and edited by Ravinder Singh, this anthology—made up of the stories that touched Ravin’s heart the most—will make you believe that someone, somewhere, is made for you.
To my loving parents …
1
First Day, First School
I cried. And I cried hard.
I think I had never cried like that ever before. Till then I didn’t need to.
It was my first day in school. I had been admitted to the nursery class.
My father had held my left hand in the warm safety of his right hand. All I did was to keep pleading with him to not leave me alone. Till then, I had never been away from my family. And Dad was trying to do exactly that. I was scared at the very thought of being without Mom, without Dad. It didn’t matter for how long—what mattered was that the very next moment there wouldn’t be anyone around me whom I knew. Dad was going to leave me among strangers, many of whom were of my age and a few older. The anxiety I suffered was tremendous.
I wanted to talk to Dad and explain to him what it meant for me to be left out of the family this way. But neither did I have the words in my mouth, nor was Dad prepared to listen. And even though I would have known what to say, I wasn’t sure how to express what I was feeling. All I could do was cry. So I cried, despite my heavy, wet eyes. I cried despite my leaky nose, and I cried till my throat became hoarse. For some unknown reason, I was hopeful that seeing my terrible condition, Dad would have some mercy on me. That he wouldn’t leave me but take me back home, to the soft cocoon—my mother.
But he didn’t.
Rather, he left me in that unknown place called ‘school’, which I began to hate with all my heart in the first hour itself. He handed me to two of the ‘ma’ams’, who grabbed me by the shoulder and dragged me away with them as I tried my best to run away. For a few minutes, I was hanging from their arms, above the ground, paddling my legs in the air desperately. I bit the hand of the ma’am who had grabbed my shoulder from the left, and succeeded in escaping her grip. I pulled up myself with full energy and slid out of the clasp of the second one as well. Then I ran straight towards Dad, who was about to step out of the classroom.
I wrapped myself tight around his right leg and clutched his white pajama in my hands. In the grip of my front teeth was the corner of his kurta. I was ready to tear it apart but not let it go. But Dad didn’t stop. Instead, he began to walk faster so that he could escape my hold.
But the fear of not being able to survive without my family made me cling stronger to him. The louder I cried, the heavier I panted—I had succeeded in creating a scene in front of everyone. And I was absolutely not ashamed of it at all!
It happens—this shameless display of emotions, when you realize your worst fears are about to come true. At that time, I was merely a child. I have seen grown-ups creating a scene too, when faced with their worst fears.
Well, I kept holding on to my father with all my strength, so much so that, when he dragged his leg ahead, my little body got dragged along with him.
‘Nahi, Daddy … please mainu chadd ke nai jao … please, Daddy,’ [No, Daddy … please don’t leave me alone … please, Daddy] I wailed loudly in Punjabi.
But it seemed to
have quite the opposite effect on him. Being older and stronger, he scolded me in his loud, angry voice and stretched out his palm as if he was going to give me a slap. Then he yanked away my little arms to release himself and handed me back to the teachers, who were more cautious this time about holding me. I saw my father walk away from the classroom. I couldn’t do anything.
At that very moment, I hated him.
And now that I hated my father, I loved my mother much more than I ever did. So I started missing her.
I was left sobbing in the class. The sound of my crying lasted as long as it could.
When all my energy had been drained, I became quiet and went to sit in one of the corners of the classroom. I was still scared, but it had been more than an hour, and I suppose I was getting a little used to the environment around me. I also realized that it wasn’t just me who was crying. There were plenty of others. And, just like me, they were all in the navy-blue-and-white uniforms. I wondered how come all their parents had ended up choosing the same clothes as my parents had chosen for me. A girl in the far corner was still crying. She had more energy to sustain her agitation than I did. She was also louder than me.
Sitting alone there, I thought to myself—What would I do without my family? I believed that Dad had left me at that place forever. I remembered my mother. I remembered her love for me. I wanted to run into her lap and complain to her about Dad for what he had done to me, that too in front of strangers!
But I didn’t even know the way to my home. I wondered if Mom was missing me. Thinking of her my eyes became moist again, not that they had dried out completely. But, this time, I cried quietly. I was much too exhausted to shout any more.
Suddenly, one of the two teachers approached me. She raised my chin with her hand and asked, ‘Kya hua, Ravinder? Kyun ro rahe ho?’ [What happened, Ravinder? Why are you crying?]
Through a choked nose, I said, ‘Hu … hu … hu … mujhe … hu … hu … mujhe Mommy ke pass jaana hai … aaaaaaaaa …’ [I want to go to my Mommy] and continued to cry.
The teacher wiped my wet, dirty face with the handkerchief that my mother had pinned on to my shirt. She sighed and smiled. Then she promised me that she would take me to my mother. I looked into her eyes. She appeared to be telling the truth, or maybe I didn’t have any other choice but to believe her.
‘Sacchi?’ [Really?] I asked and so many hopes started swimming in my eyes.
‘Haan. Lekin tumhe meri baat maanni padegi,’ [Yes. But for that you will have to listen to what I say] she offered.
And soon I was game for all that she wanted me to do. I sat where she asked me to sit. I played the games she wanted me to play with the other kids in the class. There were lots of toys and balloons around me, and lots of kids playing with them. In a short while, I had made new friends. I still didn’t know their names, but I was happy.
Each one of us, for whom that day marked the first day of school life, had his or her own level of insecurity about each other. But it took only a short while for us to shed our inhibitions. Human nature is strange. Just because we all had a common thing to be afraid of, we turned into friends. In that new and unfamiliar environment, the only support was seeing people who were just like me—and that made things a little comfortable.
In my mind then, I was happy to think that at the end of all this, I would meet my mother and all would be fine. I would tell her about the cruelty of my father and she would never let me go again!
Two years passed by in understanding what a school was all about. By the time I got into Class I, I had finally accepted that there was no escaping school. I had a fair idea of what my life was going to look like for the next twelve years, or even more if I failed midway. My friends from the class, too, didn’t have any idea about what else to do with their lives; so they accepted what their parents asked them to do. I thought it was safe to follow everyone. And, so, I accepted going to school.
But now that I had accepted going to school, my parents upgraded their level of expectations.
‘Study well. You have to come first!’
When I nodded my head to that demand at that time, I never realized that I had stepped on the starting line of what later was going to become a rat race.
2
Happiness in Little Things
Our family lived in Burla, a very small, peaceful town situated beside the river Mahanadi in the western part of the state of Orissa. Hirakud Dam, once known as the world’s longest dam, was just four kilometres from the place where I lived. Because of its importance, Hirakud Dam had become a landmark for Burla—a dam which the little, sleepy town was very proud of.
If you ever happen to be in Burla, you will see this 4.8-kilometre-long dam that connects Burla on one side with the Hirakud town on the other. On either side of the dam, in both towns, there are two tall constructions, which serve as lighthouses. The one in Burla is called Jawahar Minar, named after Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, who, people say, came to visit the site while the dam was being built.
From the top of the Jawahar Minar, the view of the dam is breathtaking. The length of the dam holds back the huge water reserve of the river Mahanadi on the left, releasing it partially through the canals, from which the water passes through the gates on the right and flows further east, right through the Burla town. Giant pulleys along the length of the dam and a high-voltage electricity plant fill the scene in the east. In the south-west, there is a scattering of green islands rising out of the water. Looking in this direction, it appears as if there is no end to the water—it is hard to make out the line on the horizon, miles away, where the water meets the sky. The sound of the running turbine is the loudest noise one can hear. One can see the whirlpool of churning water as it drops down the open gates and goes ahead to rotate the turbine. On the east of this, stands my beautiful town Burla.
Back in my childhood days, everything about Burla was small. Anyone who owned a Maruti 800 was considered extremely rich. For what it was worth, only a handful of people were privileged enough to have this car in their garage. The town was so small that one could easily travel from one corner of it to another in less than half an hour, that too on a bicycle.
In spite of being tiny, Burla was pretty self-sufficient. We had just one market to shop from, which primarily was divided into two sub-markets. People used to call one the ‘Kaccha Market’ and other the ‘Pakka Market’. There wasn’t any difference in the infrastructures of these two markets, which could have been the reason why they were separated by names. The only difference was that the Kaccha Market was primarily a place to buy vegetables; while, just one hundred metres ahead, the Pakka Market was made up of a range of kiraana, grocery stores and clothes’ stores. Come Sunday and the Kaccha Market would turn into the most populated area of the entire town. A number of small trucks and jeeps would bring in fresh vegetables in the morning, and everyone, including my father, would go to the Kaccha Market to buy them. But if someone had to buy anything big, like a home appliance or furniture, he had to travel to Sambalpur, the nearest city, because a wide variety of such things was usually not available in Burla.
The town was also treated as the knowledge hub of Orissa. In Burla there were Veer Surendra Sai (VSS) Medical College, one of the most well-known medical colleges in Orissa, and a well-to-do engineering college called University College of Engineering (UCE). Apart from the engineering and medical institutes, we also had a branch of Sambalpur University. As far as the primary and secondary education was concerned, there were three different schools, each of them affiliated to a different language medium—Hindi, Oriya and English. My parents had admitted me to the English-medium school. It was called Sri Sathya Sai Kiddies Abode.
Burla was a secular town and had religious institutions for all the religions. Temples of Hindu gods, including Lord Ram, Lord Jagannath and Lord Krishna, provided the religious platform for the majority of the people. Every day a lot of devotees would visit these temples to pay homage to their deities. The biggest temple in th
e town was of Lord Krishna. It was well known as the Krishna Mandir, though it had idols of other gods and goddesses as well inside it. The yearly Janmashtami celebrations were held with great enthusiasm at the temple. Apart from the Hindu temples, there was a mosque at the Kaccha Market, a church near the road to Hirakud dam and a gurdwara right at the geographical heart of the town. And this was where I lived with my family.
My father worked in the gurdwara as a priest and our house was located within the gurdwara’s complex. We were a family of four—my mother, my father, my younger brother and I. The entire complex was a vast rectangle, with the central portion of it taken up by the gurdwara building, surrounded by an open courtyard on three sides. Beyond the courtyard on both sides, a series of seven living quarters marked the boundary of the area. These quarters were owned by the gurdwara management, and the rent from them was one of the sources of revenue for the gurdwara.
To the front of the complex was the gateway to enter, and on the right corner was our house. Of course, it wasn’t a house we owned, but a service house offered to my father because of his job at the gurdwara. It wasn’t a well-planned house, but a good enough arrangement of brick and mortar, divided into four rooms. If you saw it, you would know what I mean when I say that it was barely meant to provide shelter. At the entrance itself was the kitchen; but because of the three chairs placed against one of the walls, it also served as a sitting room when the women from our neighbourhood occasionally turned up for a leisurely chat with my mother. The arrangement worked well for Mom, as she could cook while chatting with her friends.