In Weakness And In Death II

Continued from - Part I

At first people couldn’t believe it was me. The weakling. The one who never had any serious problems. The quiet one. The one who fed stray dogs and cats and gave them shelter.

 But then people changed color.

“He yelled at me once during basketball coaching, I was so frightened”

“He was a very different kind of child…he seemed to pay attention to the smallest of things”

“What were the parents doing?” and etc. Like parents don’t have any other job other than pay attention to their just out of college son all the time. And then some minister was accused of forcing himself on his male domestic help, some train had derailed, and a few farmers died of starvation. Some college girl was gang raped in a moving car in Delhi. People were killed in Kashmir. Needless to say, I was yesterdays’ news.

He cursed once. I ignored. He told me girlfriend I was a drug addict, I told him to back off. He went around telling the world what a chutiya I was and how I didn’t have the balls, I ignored. He called up one night and cursed me. I gave him the choicest of words that would make his ancestors turn in his grave.

He slapped one of the young worker boys in the neighborhood who couldn't afford to go to school, for trying to clean his BMW with a dirty cloth. He accused the little boy whom I used to teach on occasion of scratching the windshield. That boy couldn't hear for two days afterwards.

No one liked him, but no one wanted to drill it into his head. No one wanted to teach him a lesson. No one helped or raised their voice. They just watched and tolerated his nonsense.

He trashed about my dead mother. I just laughed at the fact he had no other cards to play.

He tried to make the moves on my sister after getting drunk at a party. She found it funny and called him a loser. I was alert,concerned and worried. She told me that's how he was and it could've been any other girl.

Then one day when out with my friends on a Sunday afternoon, he mocked me and my friends since kindergarten who were like the brothers I never had.

 He came up and pushed my plate of the table.