32. Prahlad’s tale of unintended consequences

The second time, I lost my balance. It was a light push but my energy was worse than a doll’s. Recovering, I used my best version of bangla and cried. Someone actually winced. As if the air out of the lynching pogrom had been punctured. I sensed a foothold.

The mob sighed. A problem with mobs is that are allergic to negotiations and run out of excuses soon enough. This mob was still ambivalent, when someone lunged at me with a compass that scraped past me. Energy rippling through the crowd and more jostling. My mind, as usual, veered past, towards the bloodied compass.

I wonder who authorises the compass in a class full of boys, unruly, jumpy and filled with the wickedest designs inside fertile tiny heads. Just its war like feature should have been reason enough to ban geometry. Boys using it for target practice, on the doors, windows and to pockmark benches. Worse, even the protractor had not much use other than to draw the sun, often the only picture school kids will ever draw in their lives. The triangle shaped divider was a handy tool to poke others. And the ruler was a measure of our fast-changing height. Mortal beings never understood geometry, using it only for war like activities. I still remember the promise I made to myself, to petition the parliament to ban compasses in the classroom.

In the meantime, I got smacked a few times, enough to feel that I was but a few drags down the path to Nirvana.