The real world is sometimes so real that at times it can get
galling and suffocating. Going to school, sitting through 8 hours of classes,
coming home, playing for an hour, then studies, then 9.00 pm DD serial and
finally sleep. Again next morning you get up and go through the same routine. The
only relief comes from books, where exciting things happen and the characters
do things that you have always wanted to do but have never been able to. Some
are content to live their fantasies in the books and then get back to the real
world. But then there are others who want to make the fiction the reality of
their lives. During my school days, I was of the second kind.
At that time my favorite books were the 3 investigator
series and I had 2 friends who were passionate about the series as well. Our
friendship started with discussion of the books but clearly that was not
enough. Then one day, we heard some rumors about an abandoned construction site
near the school premises where some fishy activities were supposed to be going
on. We decided to go and check out the place. It was a large construction site –
possibly an apartment complex or a mall. Most of the structure had already been
completed. So we had a proper structure with walls and rooms. This place
totally captured our imagination. There seemed to be a complex network of rooms
and one could easily lose oneself – it almost seemed like a maze. The lighting
was poor and it seemed kind of dark and mysterious – just the place to find
crime.
Immediately our detective club was launched. Sachin, Siddharth
and I were 3 like the 3 investigators. Siddharth
was plump and considered himself the smartest of the gang. So he anointed
himself Jupiter Jones. Sachin was bespectacled and studious - so he was the
natural choice for Bob Andrews. So by default only Pete Crenshaw remained for
me. I was not really of athletic build. Nor did I like the idea of being the
brawn rather than the brain. But then we could not have 2 Jupiter Jones in the
team. So as a good team player, I decided to don the only mantle that remained
untaken.
From the moment we discovered this place, we could not keep
our minds in the classes at all. We took every opportunity to run out of the
school back gate and enter the construction premises. For some reason the
construction had stopped completely. Strangely except a sole watchman, there
was no one else guarding the site and we could easily give him the slip. For
the next couple of months all the lunch breaks were spent at this place. At
times we even skipped classes to escape to our favorite haunt. We began to
concoct theories of smuggling activities happening here or maybe gun running. We even speculated that this could be the
secret headquarters of the Bangalore underworld. We would investigate room by
room and we began to mark our presence with colored chalk pieces. Since
question marks were already taken by the original 3 investigators, we chose crooked
arrows which also were not really original. It was the symbol used by a criminal
gang in Hardy Boys series. I sold off some of the stamps from my collection to
get money to buy some detective equipment – a flash light, a lens for
examining fingerprints and a rope. While
my friends had pocket money, my parents did not believe in spoiling children by
giving them money. So whenever I needed money, I had to resort to spiriting out from home my coins, stamps, books and play items to sell to the more privileged kids with
pocket money.
Some of our classmates had begun to notice our mysterious
disappearances and began to ask questions. That made us even more excited. We
decided to anoint one of the especially curious classmates, who seemed to be constantly
poking his nose into our affairs as Skinny Norris, the bête noire of the three
investigators. It was fun looking smug and important in the class and closely
guarding our secrets while classmates were trying to pry it off us. But then we
also needed the case to progress beyond just exploring the site. We soon had
our adversary – an international criminal who called himself the ‘Dark Crusader’.
After we had zeroed in on the criminal, we began to find strange scraps of
paper lying around initialed DC. He was slowly coming to life!
One fine day Siddharth caught me alone after class and suggested sending
a warning note to Sachin’s home to drop the case purportedly from the Dark
Crusader. He mentioned the example of a book by Enid Blyton – ‘The Mystery that
Never was’ where some boys try to cook up a mystery for their friend and
suddenly the mystery turns real. So he hinted if we try to cook up a mystery
for Sachin, maybe it would become real. I was never the one for half measures.
So I decided to send a warning note to Siddharth ’s home as well.
The next couple of days both of them had a mysterious expression on
their faces but neither of them mentioned anything about receiving the notes I
had sent.
Some three days later, I had an unexpected visitor during the lunch
break: my mother! She was looking very agitated. She held an envelope in her
hand. “Do you know anything about this?”
I examined the note. It said – “Leave this house at once.
Or you will face death; death while the clock ticks.” It was signed DC. Mother had become really flustered and wanted to
report to the police. We had had a bitter dispute with our neighbor during the
construction of their house. Mother wondered if they had something to do with
this note. She had called up father at office to discuss the next steps with
him. But the melodrama of the words gave them a hint of a suspicion that it
could be my prank. So they wanted to check with me once before going to the
police.
I very much wanted to believe in the Dark Crusader. But the
lines were from the Hardy Boys book Siddharth was currently reading. And the
envelope was a ‘Central Bank of India’ envelope. That was where Siddharth’s dad
worked. So it was clear who had sent it. I could not let my mother go to the
police. That would mean serious trouble. So I told my mother my suspicion.
I thought she would drop it at that. But unfortunately she
had been working herself up over the note since morning and she was in a dark
mood. She was not going to spare the miscreant. So she went straight to the
class teacher and complained. When the
teacher took him to task, out came the note sent by me. With adults getting
involved the whole thing took an unpleasant spin and left a bitter taste in the
end that strained our friendship. I was evicted from the club and the
erstwhile Skinny Norris became the new Pete Crenshaw. I became my own Jupiter and found a new Bob
and Pete. But the new ones had not even read ‘Three Investigators’ book and I
found them singularly unimaginative. For some days, our two groups tried spying
on each other and shadowing whenever the other group left the school premises.
But then there was nothing to spy on. The
old spark was no longer there and the whole thing slowly fizzled out. The mystery that never was became a friendship that never was.
Picture Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/discopalace/6858790665/?rb=1
