Remembering Paul

"Do you have a drafter"? The husky voice from behind woke me up from my dreamy sitting. I was on my heavy iron chair, my legs on the table in front, looking somewhere to the distant through the small window, room no.2, HS2 hostel, Kothamangalam Engineering college, my second year there. I turned back, a short, fair guy with a finely trimmed moustache and a sweet smile, stood there. I have seen him couple of times in the campus, in the mess hall as well. In fact that was only the first week in the new hostel. Mine was the first room in the long ground floor corridor and always thronged with people for some reason or other. I dusted out my old drafter from the shelf top and gave it to him. He thanked me with a smile and left the room without a single word.

Paul later became a frequent visitor in my room. He often spoke in a low tone, never argued with any one, whenever we were in any serious discussion, he would soon camouflage but listen silently in the corner, with a typical smile. He always had a bizarre inferiority, I felt. He referred all others as successful and himself as incompetent. I did not find much logic behind that thinking, though. He always considered himself as notwithstanding in the professional competition, it was true that he was average in academics and always had couple of backlogs in each semester, which he desperately cleared soon. His only aim was to join the merchant navy through one of his uncles working there, the only reason why he joined Mechanical Engineering. He was a stereotype introvert.

An ardent rock fan, Paul had drummer Vishnu as his roommate. Guitarist Renju was in the room opposite to mine and Paul would always be around to get some cassettes or CDs exchanged or simply to listen Renju humming with his six string in the late night boozing parties.

Paul Bhai, as he was known among friends, was never very close to me, as was the case with many. You can call it a Friday if Paul is found crossing our hostel gate with a large bag on his back; he was somewhere from Tripunithura. Now he would appear on early Monday morning, weekend hostel fun was never his matter of interest.

In the fifth semester I shifted from the hostel to a house outside. Chances of meeting Paul Bhai reduced. The short meetings in workshops and IT centre lasted only a few minutes and formal ‘hi-byes’. We both were busy in our own worlds and I was never that very attached to enquire as what news in his personal space.

Through my other friends staying in the hostel I came to know about another interesting face of Paul Bhai. He was an Anti-Christ follower, a term which I heared first time in my life! One day along with other no-sense updates from the hostel we heared that Renju had a fight with Paul Bhai for his blasphemy when he denounced the Bible and tried to spit on the holy book. We just laughed, we had lot more to discuss, campus, exams, politics, colours, girls, life..Paul Bhai and his beliefs were too insignificant for our busy ‘engineer-in-the-making’ life.

Once on a visit to his room, I noticed on his table a holy cross, marked upside down. Out of curiosity I asked him what it was. “It is our symbol”, he said, “of the Anti Christ followers”. “We have” – he started explaining after a small pause “strong people base internationally and have centres in Cochin and Trivandrum.” I was bemused, saw the shining in his eyes when he explained, the otherwise dumb Paul Bhai was talking hard, he spoke for a while about their organisation, beliefs and ways, about the divine powers which were guaranteed to the followers and the means to achieve them. Unfortunately I could not continue that conversation and never got a chance to resume it again. Drum beats, high voltage Marilyn Manson song blasted from the sub woofers in his room, with some uneasiness; I closed the door behind me and walked my way out. Let me confess that I had my faith in higher ideals. At the same time I had great feeling of delicacy in giving utterance to them.

Sessions, semesters, exams, labs life was fast track. Paul Bhai and his beliefs were silently archived to the fancy corners of our oblivion. A rainy September Saturday, a happy cricket match in our backyard and we were waiting for a little break to resume the session. I saw Didheesh, our batch mate in electronics came running with an umbrella and whispering to Justin, my room mate. The gloom in the air imparting to Justin, Didheesh’s words blurred our vision, shaky chats, silent commands, we locked the doors and got ready soon. We have our eyes which relate to us the vision of physical presence. We have also an inner faculty of our own which help us to find our relationship with the individual, the personality. It started raining heavily outside.

The whole batch assembled silently in front of the hostel. Poignant faculty members too started pouring in. Black flags were hoisted and wreathes were prepared which read in bold, neat letters the batch, department and college names. Buses were arranged and the whole 90 minutes journey was a torture. Thick silence filled the air. His hometown was Udeyamperoor, a small suburb which is hardly 20 minutes drive from Thiruvaankulam. It looked like the whole village was gathered there. His house seemed like a middle class one, we learnt that his father was a contractor and mother a home maker. He has a younger brother with whom he played computer games late in the Friday night before he hanged himself on the ceiling fan. Some of the angry neighbours were found questioning the first set of students from the college alleging ragging be a motive behind his foolish deed.

There in front of the mourning hall slept our Paul Bhai, with a holy cross in hand, in a brown coffin, white fresh smart clothes, thick fumes of incense sticks and Bible chanting all around in the air, the priest was busily giving instructions to the members of the family. That was a macabre sight; we paid our last tributes, prayed for a while and moved aside. The funeral procession started at around 5:45 in the evening, the church and cemetery were nearby, and Paul Bhai was laid to rest in the true Christian traditional manner. We put our last few flowers and customary handful sand on his burial and came back.

It was his quest for divine powers that made him commit suicide. His classmates remembered his words on Friday, when he last attended the class- “I would soon get divine powers”, all neglected it as normal Paul Bhai crap. None realised the depth of his thoughts, strength of beliefs, and the warmth of his ways he embraced in his thirst for divinity. His parents had no clue what went wrong. They were totally unaware of his journey and the association with the new sect. In the college no one questioned his un usual ways of life or his long browsing sessions in the internet centre where he associated with strange friends and beliefs. The dark dichotomy in his lives outside and the other was neither addressed nor acknowledged. There was not a single friend to nip his thought right from the bud.

Dear Paul Bhai, who was divine, what was right? We cannot frankly answer any questions about good and evil, or about what happens after death. We are the music makers, the dreamers of our dreams, we were defeated, and you defeated us, first with your smile and later with your early, stupid, silent exit.