At 3 in the morning, a pair of footsteps ran through the Singhal household. It opened the door to the backyard and rushed towards the mini swimming pool.
Mr and Mrs Singhal woke up to the sound of water splashing and rushed out to see their son Ajit standing in water, still in his night clothes, staring blankly at the sky.
Ajit had been living with an unsettling feeling for a while. Born privileged to parents running multiple schools, Ajit was pampered with everything, wishes considered and granted with utmost seriousness.
School life wasn’t a problem for most with teachers being pressurised with making his performance better without being hard on him and strings were pulled for his transition to college as well which he barely passed after trying multiple times to drop out. But Ajit had his group of friends, who enjoyed being in his company because his company availed to them the huge pocket money Ajit spent.
As he rode around with his friends in his car driven by the driver, Ajit never took the time to observe the world that was happening outside his little world. He thought life would last like this forever or for the most of what it was.
Ajit’s parents, with a life of hardships they had faced, decided Ajit was the generation who should get to enjoy the youth a bit more.
But Ajit’s little world ended as the friends disappeared slowly, walking away to find a meaning of their own existence. One did remain for a long time but a family crisis filled some sense into him.
Alone and clueless Ajit felt for the first time the isolation he might have not felt since the day he was born. Tried stepping into one of his parents’ schools, but he had not worked let alone worked hard for a very long time and was soon back home. Sleep left the nights, hunger left the mind as Ajit desperately tried to grab on to something which would make him feel more alive.
I don’t think I heard anything of more serious nature occurring beyond the pool incident and the next time I saw Ajit was on a social media video, he had surprisingly stepped into the world of politics and made social media content around that field.
Written by Anuran Chatterji
Early Morning Memories 