A STORY OF FATE

It has been exactly eleven years since the day Mrs. Sharma died. It was a terrible misfortune to befall what had, till then, been a small and happy family consisting of Mrs. Sharma, her husband and their young daughter Tara. It would be superfluous to mention that Mr. Sharma deeply loved his wife because on seeing her lifeless body, the bereaved husband had lamented that he could not imagine life without her. But the death of one unremarkable woman hardly affected the general scheme of things in a planet of teeming millions. It was not a surprise, therefore, that Mr. Sharma remarried within a year of the tragedy and started a new family. His daughter too did not seem too unhappy about the arrangement. Nevertheless, she did sometimes wonder about the new lady in their house whom she was supposed to call 'Mother'. This story, however, is not about either Mr. Sharma or his second wife. It is also not about their daughter, Tara. This story is about the events which occurred on that fateful day, eleven years ago.

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It was one of those sultry days during the monsoons, when the heat and sweat combine to make clothes stick to your skin like a spandex suit. Fans hardly provide any relief from such sweltering heat, yet, the Sharma family had fought through the day under their illusory comfort. Since it was a Sunday, Mrs. Sharma had suggested, during lunch, that they should go to the only air-conditioned movie theatre which had opened recently in the city. "If not for the movie," she had said, in a manner befitting her middle-class existence, "but for the comfort inside". Mr. Sharma had signaled his concurrence with a gentle nod of the head. How was he to know that on later days he would deeply regret his decision? The late afternoon saw Mr. Sharma lock the front door, tug at the heavy lock to make sure that it was secure and then set off, with wife and daughter in tow, for their evening outing. It did not take the three of them very long to reach the theatre and buy the tickets, but Mrs. Sharma's insistence on having an ice-cream ensured that by the time they were at the entrance of the screening hall, the movie had already started. The usher guided them along the aisle in semi-darkness, pointed out their seats with the beam of his flashlight and disappeared into the darkness. Mr. Sharma instructed his wife and Tara to take the first two seats from the aisle while he chose to sit on the third. It was the best he could do to prevent any unwanted attention towards his wife. Mr. Sharma was just about to sit down when a yelp of pain from his wife brought him to his feet. Instantly, a number of heads turned towards them defeating his intent of not drawing any attention. A concerned inquiry from Mr. Sharma revealed that something sharp, probably a tiny nail protruding from the upholstery, had pricked his wife just as she was settling on her seat. This carelessness on part of the theatre owners greatly angered Mr. Sharma and he hurried towards the entrance to look for the usher. He presently returned with him and pointed out the seat in question. There were loud shouts of protest from the seats behind them as Mr. Sharma and the usher proceeded to look for the offending nail. What they found was not a nail but a pin with small piece of paper, about the size and thickness of a visiting card, attached to it. Under the pale-yellow light of the flashlight, Mr. Sharma saw something written on one side of the card which drained all the blood from his face and sent shivers down his spine. Written in clear, bold letters was the message, 'HIV, ALWAYS POSITIVE' and a small signature scrawled at the bottom. The next few minutes went in a daze. In short, incoherent sentences Mr. Sharma told his wife about the horrible turn that events had taken. Mrs. Sharma was strangely quiet for a few moments and then broke out into uncontrolled sobbing when she realized that none of the people she knew had HIV and that all of them thought that HIV was contracted through dirty habits. By then most of the people around them had forgotten the movie and were staring at them with great interest. The usher saw this and led three of them away from the hall but not without young Tara throwing a tantrum about it. Though her husband tried to reason with her, Mrs. Sharma could already see herself ostracized from everyone she knew. All three of them would be treated like lepers; they would become the living dead. Her husband, meanwhile, was thinking of the two logical things he could do. He could either accost the manager of the theatre or he could immediately take his wife to a doctor. He decided on the latter and accordingly came out of the theatre dragging his daughter by the arm and trying to console his wife at the same time. They walked up to the bus-stop nearby, where Mr. Sharma asked the two them to wait while he himself went to hire an auto rickshaw. Inspite of more than twenty people being around Mrs. Sharma and her daughter during that time, no one was really sure what happened next. Some said she fainted, some said she was trying to cross the road, while some even said that she did it on her own. Whatever might have happened but the fact remains that a speeding bus ran over the anguished Mrs. Sharma mercifully putting to an end the intolerable misery she had been suffering from for the past ten minutes. The screech of wheels brought a bewildered Mr. Sharma to the spot and it took him some time to realize that life, as he knew it, was well and truly over. Since one must take care of the living than worry too much about the dead, so in subsequent discussions about the accident, Mr. Sharma never mentioned the part that the pin played in the incidents of the evening thus saving his daughter and himself from a lot of trouble.

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While Mr. Sharma was still trying to convince himself that the mangled, unrecognizable body lying on the street in front of the theatre was once his wife, a different scene was being played out in a hostel of the government engineering college in the outskirts of the city. Twenty-three youths in the last years of their teens were made to stand in a line in front of their hostel where a few of their seniors had started gathering. It was their daily ragging session - a sort of ice-breaking taken to the extremes. The twenty-three freshmen, with their hair closely cropped and dressed in formals in the warm and humid evening, were a jaded lot. They were a trifle frightened too though none of them admitted it. The seniors sat on the stairs leading to the hostel, sharing a cigarette among themselves while the wretched freshmen stood in attention in front of them. "So are you maggots ready for the quiz?" KP asked with a faux, sadistic smile. All the freshmen moved their heads to indicate an affirmative. It was KP's idea to order the helpless freshmen to watch the movie being played at the matinee-show at one of the theatres in the city and question them later on what they saw. The matinee-show movies were invariably awful and the one which the freshmen watched was no exception. That the theatre happened to be air-conditioned was the sole redeeming factor. "First one from the left, come here", demanded KP. The chosen one came forward slowly.
"You are the one in your batch with the highest marks in the entrance examinations, aren't you?"
"Yes Sir."
"So are you very smart?"
A question such as this was not about right or wrong answers per se, it was about giving the appropriate answers. Previous experience had taught the freshman to keep quiet when the questions were too complicated and so he did not give a reply. A string of the choicest expletives and jeering followed. But that was much better compared to any kind of physical pain.
"OK, then. First question....." KP said."Who is the art director of the movie you saw this afternoon?"
KP was waiting for the answer, when someone from among the other freshmen caught his attention. He beckoned the poor soul to come nearer. There were no questions this time, just two hard slaps across the face which would leave their mark and elicit sympathetic glances from the professors the next day.
"Can you see all of your friends wearing the hostel badge on the pockets of their shirts?"
"Yes Sir."
"Do you know that all new boarders are to wear it at all times when they are in the hostel?"
"Yes Sir."
"So where the fuck is your hostel badge, you bastard?"
"I am sorry Sir, I lost it somewhere."
Two more resounding slaps, this time from another person. It was ARP. "You will find a few extra badges on the table in my room." he bellowed "Take one of them." Smarting under the sting of the slaps and the embarrassment, the new boarder silently walked away. He was back soon with a badge pinned to the pocket of his shirt, it was identical to the ones his friends had.
"It looks good on you" observed KP looking at the card attached to the boy's shirt. Written across it in clear, bold letters was 'HIV, ALWAYS POSITIVE', it also had ARP's signature at the bottom. "What does it say?"
"Hostel-4, always positive. We, at hostel number four, are always positive in our attitude, Sir" answered the young man. One of his cheeks had already started swelling.

Notes:
What are the chances of transmitting HIV through a needle?
Snopes: Pin Prick Attacks