The Best is Not Enough

As he looked at the crumpled note for what must have been the fiftieth time, Raju heaved yet another tremendous sigh. It seemed to me that his lungs would burst if he kept doing that. “Maybe you should have some water. Or go back home and rest”, I suggested.

“No sahib, I wouldn’t be able to do that,” he replied in a low voice.

“Raju, my name’s Anand, not sahib”, I reminded him yet again, knowing it was futile. He looked annoyed.

“Well, you are in a fancy suit, and you have a fancy title adorning your fancier office desk, so you must be a sahib,” he replied, not without some rancour.

I wanted to say, “But Raju, we are friends, remember? We used to play gully cricket together, not so long ago.” Instead, I keep quiet. It is obvious that the passage of time has implanted a far greater divide between us, than his dirty clothes and street talk ever did, when we were children. Raju made a move to look at the note again, and I hastily plucked it out of his hands.

“This will be needed for further investigations,” I explained.

“Hah. Investigations. What will you be investigating, sahib, that you already don’t know?” he sounds very sarcastic as he says that. I don’t blame him. He has lost his closest friend, the one person he could perhaps call a brother and get away with it, and here I was, talking about investigations into that soul brother’s death.

Raju, Karim and I grew up in the same city. We lived in the same neighbourhood, except that my residence was a lovely bungalow with a huge garden, while theirs were shanties in a neighbouring slum. Raju’s mother worked at my house as a maidservant; she would bring Raju along on school holidays or when he complained of tummy aches or chills. That is how I got to know him. And Karim. Karim was Raju’s neighbour in the slum. He was roughly the same age as Raju and I, but infinitely more mature. A quiet boy, he was always gentle with others and more or less a peace lover. While Raju and I squabbled about incomplete overs bowled, or lbw decisions, Karim tried to restore peace. He told me once that the only thing he even wanted, was to improve his station in life.

“I have had it with this poverty and this hunger, Anand bhaiyya. I want to do become rich. Do you know how?” I was all of thirteen. I gave him some sage advice about studying hard.

“Do you think that will suffice?”

“But of course, look at my father. He is a renowned doctor, and he is rich, isn’t he?”

That seemed to settle whatever doubts Karim had. So while Raju whiled away his time playing truant at the government school they attended, Karim laboured diligently. He wasn’t a scholar by a mile, but he persisted with his hard work and managed to finish school with a decent score at the final examination. His mother suggested that he take up driving lessons and continue with their family tradition of becoming a driver, but Karim wanted to do better than that. When he asked me for advice, I suggested that he study some more. By then, we had outgrown our passion for gully cricket, and rarely ever met. There was an air of awkwardness, and the innocence that accompanied our games and camaraderie in childhood was amiss. Nevertheless, a college student myself, I advised Karim as best and in the only way that I could… to continue to study and work hard. In retrospect, I wonder if things would have been different if he had never asked me for advice.

Three years and a lot of hard work later, Karim was a graduate in commerce. When he came over to tell me the good news, I had felt very happy. At that time, I was a trainee in the police department, having cleared the public service commission exams. Karim had more questions for me. This time, they were about potential jobs for a commerce graduate. I had not the faintest idea, so I suggested that he register at the employment agency. That was the last time I saw him in person. That was two years ago. Today, all that there is left of Karim, is a shattered body lying in a morgue. And a crumpled note that was found next to it, on the railway tracks. I steal a glance at it, and by the end, the tears flow out without restraint.

“I tried hard ammi. I tried so hard, and I tried for so long, to give you the best. I tried my best, ammi. But that was not the best for any of them. Had I known that a college graduate is as hapless as a school dropout when it comes to gaining employment, I wouldn’t have enrolled at college, ammi. I wanted so much to become rich, and a successful person by my own merit that I decided to give it a shot. I am so sorry I didn’t listen to you and become a driver instead. Perhaps I would have saved myself from the disappointment of being rejected countless times because of my inability to speak fluently in English. This college degree that I had hoped would be our saviour, has become the biggest headache in my life, ammi. I hate going to the employment agency and repeating my sorry story about being a commerce graduate to the sahibs in there, every time. I wish I could give up on the degree and the dream ammi, but unfortunately, I can’t…. And so I must go, ammi. Because I haven’t got it in me, to be the best that these people want. My best is not good enough for anybody, ammi…”