In a letter to his friend in 1887, Lord Acton wrote - "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power
corrupts absolutely."
There’s no shade of doubt that Lord Acton
was entirely spot on with his observation. As a 5th standard student
at Hajo H.S School, I had the taste of power and it did corrupt my young
mind too. I was elected as the Class Captain with an overwhelming majority. The
election procedure was almost a replica of the General Election, someone had to
propose a candidate’s name followed by another supporting the move and there
you went to the election fray. Election date was finalized with a day or two
spared for the candidates to realign voters in his or her favor. Perhaps our Class
Teacher took all those pain to expose us to Indian Electoral system.
As the Captain, my responsibility was to
maintain order, cleanliness and ensuring a spotless blackboard with chalk and duster neatly kept aside the table. Also before summer vacation, all the
classes used to collect contribution from the students and arranged a tea party
with teachers and students. From decoration of the classroom to the menu was
decided by the Captain and his team which also sometimes culminated in fight
over unequal distribution of sweets and others (in Junior classes).
But the most authoritative right of the Captain was to note down the
indiscipline acts of the students and report to the Class teacher.
During that time, my sister received all
the praise from my parents and Grand Parents for her good mannerism and keeping
them informed on my activities. While I was a “Dagabaj” for the Grand Father, his
tone immediately mellowed down to call sister. Perhaps, more of adulation for my sister made
the child in me felt a little rebellious towards the girls. The girls were my
sworn enemy and it was them with few of the boys, not in my good book, who were
asked to carry out all the cleaning activities. Yet, a slender allusion of
defiance to my authority was enough to report their names to the Class teacher for
some fabricated acts of indiscipline. As things turned out, in one rainy day,
when we boys were far outnumbered by the girls, I had a narrow escape from the irate
scales the girls were carrying!.
After a few months, opposition to my
captaincy grew in numbers with a group of boys too joining the other group and
they pressed hard with our class teacher, Sri Bijoy Kumar Das, for changing the captain. After a few days, Sir relented and a date was decided.
The sudden turn of events made me edgy as losing the election meant, I were
sure to experience all those which I was inflicting on others. We were about 18
boys and 15 girls in the section and out of the 18 boys, more than 5-6 were
opposing me.
Intuition told me that the group of girls would
be very hard to split. But the small dissatisfied splinter group of boys held
the key and they alongwith all other boys except few stick-in-the-mud ones, were
the most vulnerable to swing on either side.
In those days, my mother still used the
dressing table her father gifted on her wedding. The dressing glass was fitted
to a drawer with a lock and key arrangement where mother used to store mundane staff
and also sometimes small cash. For more valuable & secretive ones, the drawer
had another closet inside. While keeping cash changes, she used to push small
notes from outside without opening the lock of the cabinet through the gap
between two planks. That day, the sight of a ten rupee note couldn’t miss my
probing eyes getting stuck up a little. I could pull out it after some effort
with a safety pin.
I knew the best utility of the ten Rupee
note. Poppins candies used to be 50 paisa a roll and I bought 21 of them while
going to school on the day of election. The kind shop keeper gave me an
extra as my B’day gift. Eventually to avoid any undue alarm, I lied to him that
it was my B’day and mother had asked to throw Poppins treat to all my friends
in the class.
Things thereafter moved on faster. Candy rolls were displayed to my friends and declared that a party would follow
my win . Boys will be always boys ! Those avaricious tongues
soon forgot all animosity and voted in block for me and the girls again lost it
in a thin margin of 2 or 3 votes.
The guilt of stealing money however kept on
haunting me for a long time. I wanted to bare all to my parents, but couldn’t
out of fear of getting reprimanded. My father, in particular, held me at high
esteem and believed his elder son could do no wrong though mother was often
suspicious as ever and kept a policing eye on me. Of course, the guilt feeling
kept on reminding me to become a better Captain for the remaining part of the year.
The guilt feel was also a stark reminder
that I was no good material for a future Politician. Years after, when opportunities
knocked my door, I was fortunate to hear the inner call to ignore the knock.
As time moved on and a few years rolled by,
bizarre changes kept on happening to me. The girls whose presence, I could
hardly stand suddenly looked irresistible and more so during the occasions like
Saraswati Puja in their immaculate dress up. Didn’t know that youth had finally
crept into me!
From that time onwards, life was full of endless
possibilities till “Mr. Bell rang the bell of alarm” and my Parents awoke up ! The feral horse was
finally domesticated.
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