Nocturnal

Suraj was facing a problem he could not solve.

As a physics student in an engineering college, this was not new to him. He regularly faced mystical riddles about relativity and quantum mechanics which he could not fathom, let alone answer. He often said that the things he did not understand in those two-hour physics sessions could fill the Library of Alexandria many times over. But it was palatable. He was not the only one, after all. The baffling and complex strings of physics had trapped many a poor student in its 12 dimensional web.

The issue facing Suraj was how to get to the physics class on time. The class occupied the much-loathed 8 a.m. time slot.  But Suraj was a nocturnal fellow. All kinds of productive ideas as well as fun ways to waste time would ferment in his head after the sun went down. It went against his raison d'etre to get out of bed before noon at the earliest. So Suraj did the only thing he knew.

He did not get out of bed before noon at the earliest. And missed four classes in a row. He skipped the 5th one in order to wake up early enough to catch the 6th, but missed that due to the mountain of laziness triggered by the greasy pizzas he devoured at a birthday treat that night. His alarm malfunctioned and the 7th class went down. He decided to take a break from the stressful pursuit of waking up on time and gave up classes 8 and 9 to recuperate. Class 10 was the one. He was fresh, eager and guilty enough to do it. But would he?

Well, he didn't. The guilty party in this case was caffeine. Suraj developed a strong liking for this drug during his recuperation period. The repeated pumping of sweet coffee into his blood stream made him overflow with excitement. To satiate this intense excitement, he pursued and finished a lot of strenuous tasks which exerted his brain and got him tired and made him sleep even more. 

Unfortunately, his absence in ten classes had not gone unnoticed by the eagle-eyed physics professor, Mr. Verma. He was a reasonable man who had been in the profession of teaching long enough not to take things personally.

"At the time of the birth of the universe, there was only a single point. A singularity which exploded and gave rise to everything we see and beyond."

Rajeev was Suraj's best friend. He was sitting in the last row of the Physics of the Universe class taught by Mr. Verma. He was enthusiastic about many things but cosmology was not one of them. At present, he was pondering about the beautiful motion and the delicious violence of the action sequences in a superhero movie he had watched last night in a slightly inebriated state.  There was some physics involved in those fight scenes, so any diligent lawyer could argue that he wasn't slacking off in class entirely.

"And what name do we give to this explosion? You, on the last bench."

In Rajeev's mind, Batman was about to deploy his batarang to end a long, stylish fight when a sudden shake of his shoulder by the boy sitting next to him dissolved the entire scene, and brought up another one, that of a class, with fifty students and a bemused professor looking straight at him. The tension in the room told him that the question had already been asked, and he had not heard it.

"The Big Bang." Someone whispered next to him.

"The Big Bang."

"Yes, that's right."

"Thank you so much." Someone whispered again. Experience told Rajeev to trust this voice.

"Thank you so much."

"Right, OK. Don't get too excited. It would be an embarrassment if you didn't know that, so knowing it doesn't exactly deserve a medal."

Rajeev was too sleepy to taste the snipe. Also, he was groggy and the professor was a soft talker so he didn't exactly hear him on the last bench. One could say that he just heard some mumbling.

"Right, of course. The medal I deserve but do not need right now. Wait, what?" he muttered incoherently.

Fortunately for him, the professor returned to the story of our universe's grand birth. Five minutes later he stopped to take attendance.

"Suraj". He liked to start the roll call with the students he had never seen.

A very long but completely expected silence greeted him.

"Does anyone here know him?"

Several heads turned in the direction of Rajeev, tacitly revealing to the professor the identity of the truant's friend. Unfortunately, in the five minutes that elapsed since his last eventful conversation with Mr. Verma, Rajeev's mind went back to its usual thespian business. It was now in the middle of a tense confrontation between Batman and The Joker.

"Rajeev, is it?" asked the professor loudly.

It's quite amazing how the human brain works. You could be musing about marshmallows and mulled wine in the middle of the Amazon rainforest, but a single sound of a growling predator will be enough for the brain to pump up the heartbeat, focus your attention on the threat and get some of that sweet adrenaline flowing. The sound of his name had a similar effect on Rajeev. It launched a rocket into his hypothalamus, which made him sit upright, suddenly realising where he was again.

"Could you tell Suraj to come to class and see me once in a while?"

"Yes, of course, Sir. I will tell him about the...um...the thing you said."

"Right," the professor said, looking amused and perplexed in equal measure.

Rajeev remembered to relay this message to Suraj later that day.

"Mr. Verma asked about you today in class."

"Dammit, that's the one at 8 in the morning, isn't it? I've lost count of the number of classes I've missed."

"You've missed enough to get yourself to the top of the roll call."

"He starts attendance with me every day? Damn, there goes any hope of a proxy."

"Why have you not come to class?"

"Look, I've been trying, OK? Nothing is working."

"A loud alarm?"

"Snooze button."

"Coffee?"

"Overcompensation."

"Sleeping pills?"

"Woke up 14 hours later with purple pimples all over my face."

"Make a friend wake you up."

"I once slept though a magnitude 8 earthquake, so a mate shaking my shoulder will not be enough." 

"Shaking your shoulder? How about a pail of cold water to the face?"

"That's a bit too dramatic for me. Maybe I'm not cut out to do it. I feel that getting up early is against my raison d'etre."

"Why the &%$( are you using French you pretentious sloth? Have you been reading Voltaire's philosophy again?"

Only Rajeev was nice enough to insult someone in a manner that made him look good.

"I'm using it because it means "purpose of existence" which is the meaning I want to convey."

"Then why not use "purpose of existence" itself?"

"Because...umm...OK, well, anyway, how do I get up at 8 and still be nocturnal?"

"I'm sure a battery of sleep scientists are working overtime figuring that out."

The sarcasm missed its intended target as the target was lost in thought.

"Wait, I've been going about it the wrong way," the target finally said.  "I've tried a dozen ways to wake up early. But what I should just do is stay up all night."

"That idea may just be stupid enough to work."

Indeed, it was. With a combination of caffeine (in moderate doses to prevent the recuperation catastrophe) and combo-heavy video games, Suraj kept himself completely conscious and comparatively chirpy till the chime of his cuckoo clock announced the cosmology class.

"Today we will look inside of a black hole."

Suraj felt like a black hole had taken residence inside his brain. He had been awake for 22 hours now, and a tedious thrumming inside his head clamored his eyes to pull the curtains down. He fought it, second by second, minute by minute.

The end of the class loomed near. The professor stopped for roll call.

"Suraj," he called out, expecting the usual silence.

"Here!" Suraj replied, shattering that silence.

Dr. Verma's curious eyes scanned the room to find the source of the shattering.

"Good morning Suraj, it's nice of you to finally decide to join us."

"Er...yes."

"I can only wonder what calamitous circumstances prevented you from coming to any of my earlier classes."

Fortunately, Suraj had a long and undistinguished history of fabricating petty falsehoods. As a teenager, he once got out of detention by convincing his teacher that a stray cat sneaked into his room, attracted by the smell of his non-existing pet hamster, and ate his homework. ("I tried to catch the cat burglar, but you know how agile those felines are, professor.")

"I had to visit my relatives for a wedding."

"Where was it?"

"Mumbai," Suraj replied immediately.

"What was the name of the bride?"

"Erm...Pooja," said Suraj after a bit of hesitation. Hesitation implied guilt.

"It took you rather long to come up with that."

Unfortunately for Suraj, Mr. Verma had a longer and more undistinguished history of running into fibbing truants. His bullshit detector was in prime lie-catching and truth-probability-detecting form, enhanced by years of practice on nocturnal equivocators.

"Well, they're only distant relatives. I don't know them that well."

"I see. And the wedding took 2 months?"

"Well, no...see, there was also period of recovery..."

"Recovery? So you had to endure a lot of physical hardship during the wedding? Did you take part in the nuptial triathlon?"

"No, I meant the recovery from the nasty cold I got just after the wedding."

"Right. And of course, you visited the Health Center for a certificate right? You know the rules."

"Well, by the time I was feeling fit enough to step outside, the cold has already dissipated..."

Mr. Verma sighed at this shockingly unoriginal fabrication. The students were losing their mojo. They weren't the Frank Abagnale-esque yarn-spinners he had encountered in his salad days. Wrecking their house of lies wasn't even a challenge anymore.

"All right, Suraj. I'll give you one last chance. If you miss one more class, you have to come to my office with some proof of the wedding and your infirmity. Otherwise, I will be forced to send your name to the Dean. Are we in agreement?"

"Yes Sir."

"That was a close shave, what?" Suraj uttered right after attendance.

"I thought for a second that he saw through the whole thing." Rajeev replied as they started walking back home.

"See, that's the thing. I think he knows I was making it all up. I think he just gave me a chance out of kindness. But you know, I've learnt something today. Everyone is unique. We should explore and understand our body clocks and circadian rhythms and be in sync with them. We owe it to ourselves to live our lives to the fullest."

"Aren't you trying to justify all the classes you've bunked by lazily slapping a cliched moral to your sad adventures?"

"I guess that's the advantage of telling your own story."

Baseline Wolves: A Day in the Life

This is the second post in the Baseline Wolves series. Link to the first post here.

Out of all the movies I made in the movie-making courses during my undergraduate years in IITK, A Day in the Life is closest to my heart. Though it is a bit difficult for me to explain why. It could be due to the personal nature of the story. It could be because when we started thinking about this movie, we were bursting at the seams with ideas. This was the first long (10+ minutes) movie that we made in the course, and hence it gave us the opportunity to put many of those ideas to the test.

The Story and Cast

The assignment was to show the life of an entity for a day. This could be a living person, like a teacher or a student, or even a tree or a piece of rock on campus. Following an inanimate object and giving it a personality would have been interesting, but we decided to follow an IITK student as we had many ideas and jokes we wanted to use in a college setting. 

At this time, I was absolutely in love with the TV series Scrubs and it was the main inspiration for the plot. I wanted to capture the fuzziness that good episodes of Scrubs bring out. I wanted to have three or four parallel story lines which merge in a meaningful and poignant way in the end. I and Saketh were writing the script, and we decided that the main character would solve problems that his friends bring to him. To give the plot a little twist, we wrote it so that the main character inadvertently causes the problems in the first place.

As we were not a super-rich production house, we could not afford to have a round of auditions for casting. Instead, we went around asking our friends to join and act in the movie out of the goodness of their hearts. We were too lazy to think of fictional names for the characters, so we decided to use real names for the most part (except for Savita, who plays a girl called Mira, don't remember why!).

So, the main character was played by yours truly, and Aditya, Shashwath and Saketh were the three unfortunate people whom I would rescue in the story (after putting them in trouble myself, of course). The next step was to think of the problems they could have. So, we wrote Aditya as a bright student who misses an exam, Shashwath as a devil-may-care truant who hides his bad marks from his family, and Saketh as a hopeless romantic who can't express his feelings towards Savita (Mira), a girl he likes.     

Now came the most challenging part of the writing. We had to figure out how my character (Ashish) causes these problems for his friends. We made Aditya and Ashish roommates and decided that Ashish would turn off Aditya's alarm accidentally making him miss the exam. One down, two to go. We then decided that Ashish would get a phone call from Shashwath's mom inquiring about him and Ashish would unknowingly spill the beans about the exam papers being shown. Two down. Saketh's problem was a bit difficult to weave in the plot. But in the end, we decided to use that classic element of humour, the switcheroo. Ashish would accidentally give Saketh's gift to Savita on her birthday. This will make Savita avoid Saketh and force him to express his feelings. Mission accomplished.

The Dialogue and Music

After we finalised the structure of the plot, most of the dialogue came rather quickly. We wanted to show the audience the different types of crazy people you might encounter at IITK, as well as the ebb and flow of a day here. Through our main character, we wanted to show the audience all the usual IITK meet-up spots: the Hostels, the chat stalls and MT, of course. (MT is the place on IITK campus where you get tea and cigarettes at 4 in the morning, from 5:57 in the movie)

Some of my favourite dialogue in the movie is during the "saying things that make no sense" scene in the first half (2:40), because it encapsulates the various kinds of characters you might run into in IITK, which makes it such a fun place to live. I also like the "84 mm at a time" dialogue at the MT, (6:25) kudos to Mohit for that.

I've got to say, writing the dialogue is one of the best parts of making a movie (as long as you've decided the plot beforehand). The thrill of creation really comes alive when you are writing the dialogue. You can glorify the things you love (cryptic crosswords, Arrested Development and gaming) while making fun of the things you hate (Himesh Reshammiya, sadistic professors and KSBKBT), all in your own special and stylish way with your own music playing in the back. The sense of freedom is exhilarating.  

As far as the music goes, I and Saketh were (and still are) huge CCR nuts. Bad Moon Rising had a nice, relaxed groove which fit well with the light first half of the movie. In the second half, we wanted a more emotional and fuzzy song. Aditya suggested Collide by Howie Day, which was incidentally used in Scrubs as well. We tried it and it fit great.

The Movie

It's been around six long years since we made A Day in the Life but many happy memories of creating it are still fresh in my mind. And I would like to thank all the people whose contributions made this possible, where ever you may be now.

Link:

Baseline Wolves: Circuit Man and Transistor Boy

Sometimes you are lucky enough to make a decision that, in hindsight, enriched your life in many different and beautiful ways. I had the fortune to make such a decision, which was taking the movie-making humanities course as an elective in IITK. I love IITK for having so many humanities courses as part of the curriculum; they were among my favorite subjects. But there was something special about ART101, the first video making course. It was to start quite an awesome journey.

The first assignment was to make a video showing a person going from the gate of his hostel to the academic building. The catch was the length of the video: it had to be around 10 or so seconds only. Before we started discussing ideas for the movie, we had to come up with a name for our production studio. After long and careful deliberation, we decided to go with Baseline Wolves. We all loved to crack cryptic crosswords and anagrams, so the name is a reflection of that. It’s an anagram of some words. I’ll let you figure it out.

So, back to the video we had to shoot. I remember discussing about speeding up a running sequence. Then the conversation turned quite naturally to super heroes. But which super hero should be chosen? Copying one is just too boring. We are more interesting than that. We came up with the superhero-sidekick combination ‘Circuit Man and Transistor Boy’, which is a kind of tribute to Mermaid Man and Barnacle Boy, characters in Spongebob Squarepants, one of the most epic shows of all time. But how were Circuit Man and his sidekick to get to the Academic Building in less than 10 seconds?

I don’t remember it now, but we probably would have realized that a superhero called Circuit Man would have some awesome electric beams and lightning storm attacks (and of course, he can repair your fuse). But going fast? Maybe it is not his domain. Somehow, we decided to give Circuit Man another ability, because, why not. He could copy superpowers of other superheroes. Anytime he wanted.

These creative licenses really helped the practical problems of what to shoot. With all the superheroes’ arsenals available to us, the ideas came along nicely. First, we wanted to use the idea of a super jump. Someone, I think it was Aditya, found a video on Youtube showing some awesome special effects one can make by simply playing the video backward. One of the effects was a super jump: basically a person jumps down 10 feet and lands and crouches and then stands and walks backward. Then you play it in reverse and it looks like he is crouching down and then jumping 10 feet straight up.

We decided to use this at the beginning, showing Circuit Man jumping to the top of the Hostel Wall. After that, we decided to use Nightcrawler’s power of teleportation. It would be easy to show from Circuit Man’s point of view: one shot of him pulling his cape (maybe this is why we gave him a cape?) over the camera, and the next of him pulling it from over the camera, in a different location. The two shots will blend into each other because both of them have the cape on the camera. So it will not look too jerky. That was the idea anyway.

We also wanted to use the running sequence we discussed earlier, so we decided to teleport Circuit Man to the gate of the academic area, where he would assume a runner’s stance and start sprinting. I and Ketan went to the top of the flat roofs of the Academic Building and got a nice aerial shot. I wanted to do a running sequence through a tunnel sort of walkway in the academic area, in first person perspective. It would have a nice effect because the tunnel had pillars on both sides. Speeded up, these pillars would fly by giving a great sense of speed.

Finally, we had to tackle the problem of how to get Circuit Man to the top of the building. Spiderman came to mind here. We were too amateur to even think of showing a slinging web and a person flying using CGI, so we kept it to the user’s imagination. We did, however, have a faithful recreation of the sound of the web sling, courtesy Gaurav I think.

Finally, a quick shot to show he was all dressed up under his superhero suit just like Spiderman himself. Overall, we ended up taking a bit extra time I think, as it was supposed to be around 6-8 seconds. But we didn’t feel like sacrificing any part of it. The superhero music, in a nice referential way, is the theme of (who else?) Mermaid Man and Barnacle Boy. Oh, and speaking of Barnacle Boy, he had to be omitted in our video and could not assist Circuit Man in his perilous quests as we had but one person available to act. It was probably too soon to start thinking of double roles that Saketh could play.

Making a funny disclaimer was on the cards for a long, long time. It is one of those parodies that just have to be used. So, we ended the video with it. Then a small scene, meant to contrast his aerial entry with his normal boring departure.

I remember the night I was editing this video. We would always edit them on Thursday night, as the submission was always in the Friday 11am class. And this was one of few videos where I and Saketh did not stay up the night editing. Actually, I did not edit this video at all; I did not even know the software. I caught a friend, Soumil, to explain it to me and he edited the video as he explained. He was a great teacher and since he had kindly done the work, I drifted off to blissful sleep, forgetting to put the music in the video.

When I saw the video in class, I knew that it would have music, as I was told in the morning that it had been put. But I didn’t actually know what music it was. So that was a nice surprise. Overall, it turned out much better than I had imagined and I was very happy with it. And, I was quite excited to move on to bigger movies where the script would play a greater role.

The video:

The Desire to Write Shakespeare

Anger is definitely a thing that feeds on itself. Have you ever felt that moment when you are angry and you like it? It often happens to me. My mind then starts its ritual process of writing wonderful epics, like Shakespeare. It starts assuming things about the situation that made me angry, all to make me angrier.

An example? I meet a girl for five days in a row. For around 3 hours a day. We have great conversations. I cook dinner for her. And hot chocolate. We listen to the same music. The Beatles. Led Zeppelin. The Rolling Stones. Good old rock ‘n roll. We have a lot in common.

And then you start expecting things. And if a signal does not come, you mind pursues its desire to embellish. Who does she think she is? You start imagining things from her perspective, anyone else in her place would be floored with the amount of time and attention you’ve given her! And not even a bit of interest in return! Suddenly, you’re the forsaken hero with a heart of gold, in your own little movie, where you act like an ideal serenading man in spite of the female tearing your hope to shreds.

The mind makes a bigger deal of it than it really is. Maybe she was just busy that day. Who knows? There are too many assumptions made to reach the conclusions formed in my head. But can I blame my mind? With the amount of stories and heroes I throw at it, in the form of books, TV series, movies and video games; it is quite obvious that my mind would start treating everything as a part of a dramatic tale.

But the desire to write Shakespeare has a good side too. It makes things better in retrospect. The human mind is a wonderful thing. It filters out the bad memories and stores the good. Add to that the need to write a fable, and suddenly all your good times seem like paradise when you reminisce about them. Have you ever looked back at the past actions of your life and felt that they followed a kind of logical pattern, like a story? Have you ever looked back at a great week of debauchery in college and felt that it was the best time of your life? Well, there’s the mischievous mind at work. 

The Dangling Conversation

'I got my first computer when I was in fifth standard. Guess the size of the hard disk.'

'Wait.....(thinks)...10GB?'

'Wow, good guess. it was 9GB. I used to game on that.'

'But dude, in your fifth standard, there weren't any big games. People just used to play Road Rash, Lion King, Alladin, Bio Menace, Zool and Art of Fighting.'

'Wow, nice recollection. But I played on that comp till I was in 8th. Mafia came out then. 3 CDs. 4.6 or so GB. I had to empty half my hard disk for that. I still remember, I removed Grand Theft Auto: Vice City! Anyway, how did you guess that well?'

'Arre, there is this rule which says that technology improves by two times every eighteen months.'

'Ok....so one and a half years ago it should be half as good, and three years ago it should be one-fourth as good.'

'And i had a 40GB hard disk in my ninth standard. So...'

'So in our sixth standard it should be 10GB.'

'And nine is quite close to that. And I can't imagine the size going down any more than that!'

'Wow, you calculated that very fast. Say, weren't we just discussing the computers and home-theatre systems we will buy once we get our jobs. That will be around 5-6 years from now.'

'My hard disk is 320GB right now. So in six years it will become four times, around 1Tb.'

'Yeah, no wait it is six years. In three years it is four times so in six years it is sixteen times. Which is around 4Tb.'

'Damn, that will be the norm then. Actually my 320GB disk is small for this year.'

'So 4Tb will be less than average then. Our good comps will have 8-9Tb.'

'Wow, even if games become as big as 20GB, we can keep 250 or so.'

'Why will we need that many games? I play a game and delete it. Everyone does that.'

'No! I used to keep so many games after beating them to play the good parts again. No One Lives Forever.'

'Was it a classic game?'

'No. First Person Shooter. 2001 or so. Kate Archer, an awesome she-Bond if there ever was one. You now, there are awesome torture scenes where you can use what weapon Archer should use and then the camera tilts and you can see the shadows of Archer and the poor bastard.'

'Haha, nice. What other games did you not delete?'

'Warcraft 3. Serious Sam- never removed it. Age of Empires 2. Age of Mythology. Even Road Rash, Dave, Skyroads and Fatal Racing! These games would always take half of my 9GB disk. That's why I had to delete Vice City.'

'Nice. Lots of memories.'

'So coming back to our discussion on 9Tb disk. I just thought of something. When I buy the computer after my paycheck with its 9Tb hard disk, I will remember the 9GB one in my first comp.'

'Haha, very nice!'

'And I will be in awe of the fact that I have something a thousand times more advanced, literally. Technology has gone this far in less than half my life span. I have so many wonders to see ahead.'

'True, true!'

'And I will marvel at the intelligence of humans, who have made so much progress so fast! All that talk of humans destroying themselves, I think the world and humanity will be all right.'

'The kids are alright, huh?'

'Haha, indeed. Let's hear that song. The Who!'

The Quintessential Poem

This was my entry for a creative writing contest in Galaxy, an intra-college cultural festival. The task was to write a poem such that the first letters of the lines spelt out QUINTESSENTIAL POEM. Also, no line could have more than 6 words. There was no restriction on style or meter.

Quickly he dashed under the branches,

Under verdant bushes and grasses tall,

In rapid pursuit the law's arm.

Never having taken the fall

The killer absconded without fear.

Every virgin would tremble and say

'Slippery Sam is near!'

Slippery Sam murders night and day

Each virgin corpse he takes away.

Ninety has he butchered till date.

They preyed and preyed for revenge:

'Isis, please doom his fate!'

At last Sam kidnapped Penelope,

Laughing, thrust the dagger inside her.

Penelope, Isis's biggest devotee, was unscratched.

'Oh, you heathen mangy cur!

Every virgin's prayer answered,' she said.

'Monsieur, you are already dead.'

Dark Variations

"I'm not talking about spit balls or jelly in the teacher's desk or shit like that. We have to do something big!" said Saleem, glancing at the other three.

They were sitting on the brown benches next to the school football field, sheltered by the fir trees nearby. A traditional hang-out place.

"Yeah, something all the bachchaas remember for a long, long time. Some ground-breaking spectacular stuff that will rattle everyone." replied James.

"Hmmm, we don't have much time, do we? It is Monday today. Only one week left for our farewell." Ankit added.

"Yeah, we have to come up with something quick! Anyone got any new ideas after our last meeting?" Rahul asked.

Everyone pondered for a while. Saleem spoke first.

"Hmmm...let's see. At what time during school should we do this to have the maximum impact?"

"If we do it during class hours, we will have to do something loud enough for the whole school to hear. Or..." Ankit's face suddenly lit up "...we could use the intercom! Then we can make some sort of false alarm, get school cancelled or something."

"No, that won't be possible." Rahul said, shaking his head. "It is in a crowded section of the office, it would be impossible for us to get in without being seen. No, I think it would be more efficient to do something during the assembly when everyone is together."

Saleem suddenly sprung up. "Hey, that reminds me. Remember reading something like this on the internet. Why not cause a huge disruption during the assembly? Create enough chaos and pandemonium to get school postponed or something."

"Seems like a nice plan. But how do you propose we do that?" asked Rahul.

"Rats. Lots of rats. There is a pet store close to my house. We can pool together a bit of cash and get enough of those furry critters to give the bachchaas a proper shock."

"Nice! If well-orchestrated, it can cause some serious disruption, especially amongst the fifth and sixth grade students." James stated.

Rahul jumped up from the bench with some new-found purpose. "Right! Let's do it then! Saleem, go today and find out the prices. We will meet again here tomorrow and finalise the date and method."

Saleem, James, Rahul and Ankit were four tenth grade students of St. Teresas High School. Every school has some students who are more famous than the rest, the ones getting good marks, the ones in the teacher's good books, the ones having lots of friends and getting hooked up and indulging in vices first. These four fitted that bill pretty well. They also had a reputation for being mischievous, playing gags and joking around with others but never in a bad way. When school came to an end, they naturally took it upon themselves to do something big, to go out with a bang.

They met the next day and finalised the plan. It would be done the next morning, on Wednesday. On the big day, all of them got into place. While the mike was being adjusted and the speaker was preparing to start, they released the vermin from their bags.

It went like clockwork. Surrounded by the large crowd, the rats got confused and ended up going in circles, scaring a big chunk of the students. Within a minute, the hall was filled with screams and confusion. People fought with one another to reach the exits, dropping their bags and water-bottles which spilt water everywhere. People slipped and fell, creating even more chaos. The prefects tried to restore some order but it was futile. Half of them were scared themselves. Once the rats found their way to the exit the people standing there got petrified and started running away. A lot of people were laughing as well, enjoying the absolute anarchy which was created. After everyone was sure that all the rats had exited the school building, they went to class directly. A lot of them were still scared to go up, thinking some rats may be left over. It took hours for things to get back to normal.

That evening, after the school got over, the four of them met to celebrate a job well done, partying well into the night. Rahul barely made it to the assembly the next day on time. All the students were getting ready for the national anthem when their principal, Michael De Silva came on the stage. He wasn't looking pleased. He spoke in a stern voice,

"I am extremely saddened and disappointed with yesterday's events. This is an institute of learning. Here you are supposed to inculcate values that you will carry towards your adult life like discipline and a sense of civic duty. Yesterday's prank was in stark contrast to the very principles the school stands for and what I expect you to follow. I know the seniors are behind this, the smaller students could not have pulled off something of this magnitude. I am not going to let this go unpunished. Certain people need to be a taught a lesson in correct social behaviour."

He paused a little for emphasis, letting them know tacitly that the worst was yet to come.

"The farewell party for the tenth grade students, scheduled on Sunday is, as of now, suspended. It will continue to be till the perpetrators come to my office and admit their ill-behaved act. If that does not happen, then Saturday will be the last working day for the batch passing out. That will be all. The assembly will now continue."

"I don't fucking believe it!" said Rahul "Has anyone ever seen De Silva so fucking pissed?"

The four of them met at the regular hang-out place the next morning.

"I can't believe we didn't consider something like this happening. We so calmly went forward with the whole charade, not thinking about any backlash we may face from authorities." Ankit said with some distress.

"No, you idiot, we did! You think we would do something like this without making sure that there are no loose ends? On the very first time that we talked about doing a big prank we all agreed De Silva is cool enough to not do anything about it. He has laughed off such incidents in the past. Fine, maybe our prank was a little more impudent but we all expected him to not do anything serious." James reminded him.

"Yeah, but nice guys have a breaking point too. And nice guys are the ones who get pissed off the most when they do get pissed off." Saleem endeavoured to explain.

"That is true, he must have thought we took him for granted or something and all the anger of the past few years must have come out at once." James added.

"Well, he was really angry during the assembly. He is not going to let this one go easily." Rahul observed.

"He won't be satisfied unless someone gets punished." Saleem replied.

"If we don't come up with something we very well might have to. The other students of our batch are all extremely angry at what happened. If they somehow get wind that we've done this, we are all going to be in a lot of trouble. We will be antagonised by them for a long time, we will be remembered as the ones who got the farewell cancelled. And we know all what a big school tradition it is. We'd been looking forward to it for months." said Rahul.

Saleem hesitated for a while after Rahul finished before replying.

"Actually I was thinking that we get someone else punished, not us. A scapegoat. We tell his name, the principal maybe gives him detention or something but allows the rest of us to attend the farewell."

"And just who would be our scapegoat? Who can we pin this on without feeling guilty and without seeming like we're lying?" Ankit spoke up.

They all exchanged glances. It was very obvious who. Ankit took the initiative to speak what they were thinking.

"Naresh."

Every school has its share of unpopular pupils as well, and they didn't come as notorious as Naresh, a person it was cool to hate. He did not talk much with the other students, would mostly keep to himself. He was very petulant and contemptuous of others. He also liked to get other people in trouble but he never kept his pranks within limits and would always get into fights. He did not have the good looks and the charm that the other four possessed. He had often been involved in spats with the other four. He wasn't on good terms with the teachers either despite getting really good marks.

"Well, I guess we will have to do it. We have no other way. If we don't do anything in the next two days, it's all over. Anything worth trying should be tried immediately. We are in a crisis situation." Rahul said.

"So you are suggesting that the four of us walk into the principal's office and lie to his face?" Ankit asked.

"It is worth a shot actually. No one likes him that much, including De Silva. He has run into trouble with the principal before. It will be his word against ours and they have ample reason to trust us. I'm sure the principal would also want to settle off the matter as soon as possible, I don't think he would want the farewell to get scrapped himself, it would make him very unpopular amongst us, and he has usually taken care to make sure he is well-liked and thought of as cool. We should go as soon as possible." James said.

"Or maybe only you should go Saleem. Your father's good friends with the principal, isn't he? He comes to your house once in a while and all." Rahul suggested.

"No, no I don't think that is a good idea." Saleem replied, a little uncomfortable at the thought. "I hardly talk to him when he comes, and even if I do, it is very formal. And anyway, the problem I have is, if any one of us goes alone, he may feel that we have some sort of personal grudge against Naresh and are looking for revenge. It would look much stronger if we all go, he knows all of us as it is and has very good impressions of us as well. He will have very good reason to trust us if we all go."

"Yeah, I guess you're right. Fine, let us meet up immediately after school gets over outside his office." Rahul instructed.

Just then the bell for the assembly rang and they gathered their bags and went. They did not have to wait till the end of school that day to meet the principal. They were summoned into his office by some prefects who had come into their divisions half an hour after the lunch break. Rahul, confused at this new development, was the last to walk in. The other three were already there. The principal wasted no time after he entered.

"I am extremely disappointed with the four of you. You used to be model students. Looks like all those praises went to your head and made you think you were invincible enough to pull off something so insolent."

Rahul felt numb. He had difficulty in finding the feet he was standing on. He could see where this was going, and yet he could not believe it.

"It is a good thing that at least Saleem felt the pricking of his conscience and came to me and confessed your crime. Otherwise, God knows, you would have escaped scot-free after such a bold act of utter indiscipline in school."

You could have heard a pin drop in the silence that ensued. The three of them were absolutely stunned. James' jaw visibly dropped for a couple of seconds. Saleem shifted uncomfortably, staring fixedly at a point somewhere between his shoes. Slowly, the three of them turned their faces to look at his, which betrayed no emotion, looking calm yet a little jittery.

"Saleem, why don't you go back to class? I want to talk to the three of them in private."

"No Sir! Any punishment, any scathing words of anger you wish to slap on them, I will face it too. We are all in this together. And more than that, we are best friends. So I will stay right here no matter what you say and let me just tell you..."

"SALEEM!" De Silva roared, cutting his monologue short. "Out, NOW!"

"But Sir...

"Don't you dare ignore a direct order from me! If you do, you will be in worse trouble than you can imagine. Now OUT!"

Saleem quickly put his right hand inside his trouser pocket and produced a white sheet of paper folded up a number of times. He looked left to Rahul, who was standing immediately next to him, and said,

"Please take this. Read it before you do anything."

"I'm not taking anything from you, you rat-faced backstabbing bastard."

"SILENCE! I will not tolerate such filthy language in my office."

Saleem quickly put the piece of paper on the principal's table and walked out. De Silva continued after he left.

"So, you thought you could take part in such a big act of insubordination and just walk away from it? Well, I'm going to make sure you remember the importance and worth of discipline. You will be coming to my office for detention for a month for 5 hours, from 4 to 9, starting tomorrow."

"But Sir, our exams..."

"I don't care how soon your exams are. You should have thought of that before getting the gall to commit such a fiendish act, shouldn't you? And no compunctions even after it has been committed! Walking around like honest, law-abiding citizens. I pray for the future of this country. Go out and kneel in front of my office. And you will be kneeling a good distance away from each other, I don't want you to pass each other's time with entertaining banter. You can leave when the final bell rings, but after the other students have left. I expect you to be here at 4 sharp tomorrow. That will be all."

He dismissed them with a wave of his hand, his expression and demeanour making it clear that he wasn't in any mood for pleas or justifications.

Slowly, still reeling from the shock, the three of them dragged themselves outside and got on their knees. They stayed there till school got over, each lost in his own thoughts. After the other students had left, they picked up their bags from class. Rahul picked up Saleem's crumpled piece of paper from the table before leaving.

"I don't believe it! He betrayed us! He fucking betrayed us! Just wait till I get my hands on him!" Rahul spoke.

The three of them were walking back home with slow dejected strides. James reminded him of the letter. Rahul unfolded it, his hands shaking with fury and began reading.

"I know that right now more than anything else you three would want to tear me apart with your bare hands. But listen to me please. I was forced to do whatever I did. I had no choice.

"Naresh knew. He knew we were behind the whole thing. He had seen me go to the pet store after school. After the prank, he understood why. He went to the pet store and asked the guy at the counter what I asked for and was reassured that he was right.

"He accosted me during the lunch break today. He said that if I didn't go right there and then and confess everything to the principal, he would. He said he even got a testimony from the guy at the pet store. You know how much he hates all of us. He would go to any lengths to screw us up. I had to tell De Silva myself, if I let him go he would have made the whole thing sound ten times worse, and would have tried to get us expelled or something. And he had proof. And the fact that we hid the whole thing would have made it worse.

"I fought our case properly, appealed to him emotionally and told him we only did it because we enjoyed our school years so much and wanted to do something big in the end. He was very obstinate at first, then he agreed that the only punishment he would give was banning us from the farewell.

"I wanted to tell you three all this after the lunch break but didn't get a chance. So I wrote this down because I realised we would be summoned before school got over."

Rahul crumpled the note after he had finished reading. Nobody spoke for a while.

"Son of a bitch! Naresh found out everything!" Ankit finally said.

"Why didn't he call us when Naresh caught him? He could have at least signalled to us or something that Naresh was blackmailing him before directly going to De Silva." Rahul asked.

"Obviously Naresh wouldn't have given him that sort of liberty with time. He would have told him to go to the principal immediately or he would go himself. And obviously, Saleem couldn't allow that. It would have been a lot worse for us then, like he rightly says." James replied.

"Fine, but why didn't he tell us immediately after that then? He could have found us before the break got over."

"Well, it would have been difficult for him to get all four of us, we are in different divisions and all. Plus it wasn't exactly something he could have explained in a hurry, and he must have been in shock as well."

"I don't know. I still feel something is fishy. I don't see why he would have to....wait a minute! We're so fucking stupid! There is a very simple way to determine if he is lying or not."

Rahul put his hand in his pocket and removed his cell phone. He dialled a number, signalled the two of them to remain silent and walked away from them speaking into the phone in a hushed voice.

"What is he doing?" Ankit asked James.

"I don't know. But from the looks of it, something unpleasant. He doesn't seem to be very pleased to hear what he is hearing."

He was right. Rahul's face was contorted in a grimace of outrage. After a short while, he kept the phone back in his pocket and almost shouted,

"That two-faced bastard! He lied to us again! I was on the phone with Naresh, and he says he did not even meet Saleem during the lunch break today. In fact, he had gone with his friends to eat outside."

Ankit and James' faces went blank as they comprehended this, not knowing how many more such shocks they would have to take today. Rahul continued, seeing they were too jarred to reply.

"Just wait till I get my hands on that fucker. He is going to be real sorry he ratted out on us."

"Maybe he's lying about meeting Saleem." James finally spoke up, still not able to believe what he heard.

"Why would he lie? If that thing that Saleem wrote about actually happened, Naresh would be gloating about it right now, he would be putting up fucking posters everywhere proclaiming that he got the four of us barred from the farewell. You know that we've been sworn rivals for years. He would absolutely jump at getting such an opportunity. He would go to the principal immediately, he would tell the others in school immediately, he would stop at nothing to make sure we get the maximum punishment. He wouldn't give us a chance to mitigate our predicament on a golden platter by telling us that he knows and allowing us to come clean to the principal, thereby getting a shorter sentence. I know him. I'm telling you, Saleem is lying. That son of a bitch screwed us over properly." Rahul said, he voice increasing steadily. He continued after catching his breath.

"It was him. He was the one who came up with the scapegoat idea, wasn't he? He must have realised that the principal wouldn't believe his story about Naresh because we have always been enemies with him. And he had no proof. So he decided to make us the scapegoats behind our backs and got himself excused from detention by being the honest one who confessed. He was the one who bought the rats. He could have very easily proved the whole thing to the principal. Plus why would De Silva suspect him if he was incriminating himself and his friends? That Saleem was always two steps ahead of us. What a clever cover-up, writing a note and all! I'm very impressed." said Rahul with disgust.

"He always used to talk about how awesome it is to pull pranks on those who love pulling them on others, didn't he?" Ankit remembered.

There was a pause again. They continued walking, trying to comprehend what was happening and what they were feeling. Then Rahul spoke, his angry voice shattering the silence.

"No! We are not going to let this one go away just like that. Forget the detention we have to do, the fact that he lied to us, his best friends about such a big thing is unpardonable. We are going to get back at him big. Make sure he doesn't forget crossing paths with us. Follow me."

He took a left turn towards an alley and increased his strides. There was a telephone booth at the end of it.

"No, no, no wait!" James shouted, hurrying after him. "We haven't thought this through. Naresh does have some reason to lie. He'd know that we would fight against each other if he did, that by lying he can create rifts in our friendship. That's exactly the sort of thing he would want. Don't you think we should at least talk to Saleem about this first? What are you going to do?"

Rahul didn't reply. He entered the booth, quickly put in a rupee coin and dialled a number. Through the open door, James could hear him.

"Hello Mrs. Aziz" he spoke in a fake baritone voice, "Look in the middle compartment at the bottom of Saleem's cupboard. Search for a small green notebook. Inside it you will find a CD he should not possess. I am someone who wants to save your son from decadence."

He quickly put the phone down.

"There! Now he will get a nice little shock when he reaches home."

At around the same time, Saleem, having left earlier than the other three, had almost reached home. Everything had gone perfectly, like a dream. He had always wanted to pull a con on the other three before school ended. No sweeter thing in the world than fooling seasoned pranksters, he thought. He was afraid about De Silva's reaction when he went to him with the whole story, but surprisingly there were no problems. He would meet them tomorrow, after he was sure that they had gone through his letter.

He checked his watch and walked up the steps to his door. He rang the bell and his mother answered.

"Someone is here to see you." she said, before going to answer the phone that had just started ringing.

Saleem walked into the hall, and saw him watching television. He had come fifteen minutes earlier than he said he would. Must have come on his scooter, Saleem thought. He sat next to him and said,

"I loved the speech you gave today Sir! It was every bit as impressive and dramatic as the one you gave during the assembly yesterday. I did not know you were so good at this! Also, I must admit, I did not think that you would agree to do this and would enjoy doing it so much."

Laughing, the principal turned to face him.

"Haha, well I was a student too once wasn't I? We used to tear up the campus with our pranks back in the good old days. I was very impressed with your elaborate plan, indeed, we wouldn't have done anything less intricate in our school days!"

He laughed lightly again and then paused, casting a nostalgic look towards the window.

"I've been around students more than half my life you know. You could say I find vestiges of my childhood watching them. That is why I am usually lenient with them, why I am usually 'cool' to use your lingo. Because I can understand them. I was more than happy to do this Saleem. Made me think of my golden years."

Saleem smiled.

They wanted to do something that would be immortalised in the annals of the school. They wanted to do something before passing out that all their juniors would not forget. He did a one up on them.

He pulled off a caper that even they would remember.