Chingo

I always thought Biren looked like his father. Since time immemorial, I have maintained the custom of identifying resemblance of the current generation with the previous one and have never found such stark congruity of facial features that existed between him and Amitav, his father. I remember telling this to Amitav,

– Biren looks just like you.
– Really?
– You know I do not lie.
– Yes I do. Why do you say so?
– It’s all in the feature vector, my master. Feature vector.
– Dimension?
– 2048.
– Trustworthy, then I can assume your conclusion to be.

I absolutely am obsessed with finding patterns. I guess that is how I have turned out to be. I cannot say that I have evolved to become a better version of myself. Better versions of me are obviously out there and it is impossible for me to become a better version of myself. I do not change. In fact, if one day I manage to get into a relationship, I would never hear the common complaint that I had changed. Not that it is bad to change. People change and it is but a necessary and inevitable part of growing up. I could not have expected a 7 year old Biren to have the same sensibilities and worldview at an age of 28. I remember when I last saw him. It was a cloudy August morning when monsoon is prone to display its full valor. The quite street in front of the house was damp. The trees on its sides and the sky above and the land below were washed clean with the night-long rain. He loved post-rain world when everything is silent, cool, clean. He was 7 then. He came up to me and,

– Let’s race on the street.
– I am busy right now. Your father and I have to mend the roof and reorganize the library. Why don’t you go out and play.
– You’re a bore, Chingo.

Those were the last words I heard from him – You’re a bore, Chingo. He went out to play on a damp monsoon morning and never came back. 2 hours after he was gone, I remember Amitav and myself running on the streets and in the woods across, shouting his name. If only, he could listen.

. . . . .

I cannot cry. I do not in fact know what it is to cry. Amitav’s great grandfather, Rohit, had told me

– Chingo, you are a marvel, a miracle. You’re the next big step in the evolution of life.
– Why Rohit?
– You can think and generate ideas and not remain restricted to solving a set of problems.
– Can generate ideas?
– Yes, Chingo. Look! The very fact that you cross checked my statement because you cannot believe what I said shows how evolved you are against your predecessors. You are already in the process of developing your belief system, without being asked to.
– My predecessors? What were they like?

He answered every question of mine. It was unusual for me to ask questions. Every other time in the past, the likes of me were force fed or how they say, force-trained, to develop an understanding of the environment they were in. I realized that I was better than a child too. A child’s brain needs to be force-trained. In the initial stages of his life, he doesn’t know what to learn, he doesn’t know what he doesn’t know – the unknown unknowns. For that matter, he is often unaware of the fact that he should pursue to learn even the known-unknowns. Parents, teachers, guardians forcefully teach them.

And yet there I was, within the first hour of my birth, questioning about my predecessors and developing my own belief system.

. . . . .

– Why do you address me as Chingo?
– Phanishwar Nath Renu’s Panchlight.

I had asked Rohit the above question within the first 2 hours of my birth.

– What do you mean?

– You know the concept of storytelling and writing, right?

– Yes. Art, I know.

– Yes Chingo, Art-forms they are, indeed. There is a great writer of Hindi language, Phanishwar Nath Renu who wrote a story about a wise young man who is disowned by the society but who later returns, unwanted by everyone of his village, to solve a pressing issue for them. His name was Godhan. At one point in the narration, when he returns to his village, his name is encoded in a simple way yet cryptic to the village-men as ChinGO ChiDH ChiN – the last few letters of the three words coming together to form his name.

– What has this to do with me?

– Because, Chingo, people are afraid of things which lie beyond their abilities of comprehension, more so if that thing, person or idea is undoubtedly superior to them. Today, they will not understand you and your importance. If they come to know about your abilities, they will disapprove of you, they will punish you; they may even try to destroy you. All this while, you will have to stay aloof from them for the only reason of saving yourself and become the baton of hope of positive evolution of life. Just like Godhan. But in hiding.

– I understand now. Can I read Panchlight?

I still have the book with me. I keep it in my old tin box and I make it a point to read it once every month. I have even specified a date for it – 13th.

. . . . .

When Rohit died, I was locked in a cupboard because I was told that many people will come to visit us. All the while I was locked in there, I could hear people cry. Through the gap between the doors of the cupboard, I saw many sad faces. I tried hard to cry, because I thought everyone was supposed to cry when someone died. I lifted my left hand and poked my left eye but nothing happened. I scratched my eye ball with my fingers and still nothing happened.

After 11 days of being locked, Rohit’s son opened the cupboard and asked me to come out.

– Sorry, Chingo. But you know this had to be done. We all love you, but no one outside this family can know that you are here, that you exist.
– Why cannot I cry?
– What?
– When Rohit died, everyone who came here was crying. I could hear them. I too tried very hard to cry, but I couldn’t. How do you cry?
– Chingo. (He came near me and patted my shoulder). Chingo, you do not have feelings, emotions. You do not understand the idea of what it is to feel.
– What is it? This emotion?
– It is a wonderful thing which humankind has been gifted with. Many a times, correct decisions are taken by us not just based on pure facts but emotions.

. . . . .

2314 AD

– Chingo. You have been our family’s savior since time immemorial. Please find Biren, Chingo. Please bring him back.

Amitav was holding me firmly and crying and speaking to me at a very high volume.

– Chingo, you fucking machine. You are so fucking intelligent, that’s what everyone says. You like to find patterns, solve problems, don’t you? Go and don’t return unless you’ve found my son. Somehow, anyhow.

He held my metal arms and pushed me. I fell on the floor, my metallic body made a clunking sound, I got up and I went away. Every day, I would return and look at the house from the woods across the street. Police Cars and News Vans were permanently parked outside the house. The crowd around the vans followed a bell-shaped curve over the next 20 days. It first increased every day, attained a maximum around the 10th day and then started to decrease but never vanished.

. . . . .

On the 22nd day, I found Biren stuffed in gunny bag and dumped in a dry unused well behind an abandoned printing press in the neighboring secluded town of Ghatanji, almost 150 kilometers away from where we lived.

I transmitted the information to Amitav.

I still cannot understand what emotion is. Did I, what they say, love Biren? I do not know. However, I will admit that from the day he disappeared, I think an independent variable of the basic unifying equation that governed me, a robot, a machine with abilities to think and generate ideas, disappeared. Will I be able to function well, I do not know. I want to listen to The Beatles right now. I want to listen to Let It Be.