लवर्स बाबू एग्जाम चालू(Lovers Babu exam is going on)

Was it a smile suppressed on her lips

Or was it a tangled thought

In which I was trapped

It was the web of her innocence

This is about those days when I was a simple looking teenager of 12th class. That first day of coaching class and meeting her was nothing less than magic. That drain which even the sweepers who cleaned it did not consider better. Which was very close to my coaching class. I was standing near the drain, not just staring at it but watching it. The stinking smell of the drain had now dissolved into the perfume of love from my side. Suddenly she passed by me. The smell of her sweat intoxicated me. A young girl was standing on the side where she was going. She said to that young man “Khala how come you are here?” Then I heard that it was her aunt. Now the combination of Khala and Nala was fixed in my mind, because Khala was the garland that could take me to the bud of love. And exactly the same thing happened after some time, Khala had put the handcuffs of love on both of us.

She and I became birds of love and started flying in the sky of love. Now both of us were not afraid of eagles and crows. If the phone rang or the sound of a message tolled at midnight, I thought it must be her. The day she did not come to coaching class, I used to bore my friends by telling them stories of love. I had the complete feeling of a gentleman. Anyone in the neighborhood or relatives would ask me “And son! How are your studies going?” I used to tell everyone that everything was fine because now I had become the king of Jhoothistan. I was her Babu and she was my Sona. The passion of love had made me punctual. My coaching class was at 4 in the evening but I used to reach at 7 in the morning and used to sit near the drain and wait for her to come. No matter how childish or bewakoofi she would act inside the coaching class room, I would always feel the fragrance of love. Seven months had passed in this love between us.

The board exams were very near now. My friends used to say in fun that Lovers Babu, the exams are about to start. I don’t know whether it was fun or I was being made fun of. In the last class of the coaching class, the tutor was guiding for the exam. “Whatever I taught was very important. If you still don’t get the question, then write it down by making a similar answer. If the problem still doesn’t get solved, then keep a five hundred rupee note in the exam copy. And for a better rank, keep two five hundred rupee notes.”

I started focusing on the last sentence of sir ji. I saw Aladdin’s lamp in his last words, and I decided. During the exam, I pasted the money in the exam copy through white tape. When the result came, I got 89.5% marks. I started showering laddus in the neighborhood. There was talk about me everywhere. Now my relatives used to make me a doctor, sometimes a collector. And my friend who had got only 61.3% marks was sad that how did I get such low marks. But when I inquired about her, I came to know that she was crying a lot. Because she had got only 91.5% marks.

When I asked her friend, she told me that she had scored only 73%. And she told me about her while laughing. She was bound to get the best marks because she had connections in the college. Her crying and whining is just a pretense so that people think she is talented. And when you used to ask her about such and such boys, who is this, who is that, she used to tell you that he is my friend. You boys don’t understand that a boy is a friend of a boy. A girl is a friend of a girl. A boy and a girl are not friends but girlfriend or boyfriend. If you are deewana, pagal and vagabond and are impatient with the pot, then listen “You are her seventh rank lover, now go and find out properly first” Hearing this, my heart was not broken but it was torn in half. On finding out, what her friend said was absolutely correct.

Time passed by, everything started becoming blurry. One day I got a call from my friend, the same friend who was sad at my happiness. She told me that I have become a collector and her friend has become a government officer. And what have you and she become? Since we are talking about her, I have to tell her that she is married to a rich illiterate and as for me, if I had not fallen for Babu, Sona or Daba Daba Tabassum, I would have also become something. Well, now I only remember her memories, Nala and Khala. How could I tell my friend the whole story that I am an unemployed lover. I graze goats all day and clean their beds in the morning. I am thinking whether I should drive a trolley in the village or a tempo in a city. Will a lorry be better or a ferry or sewing etc.

My intention is not to call any work bad, whatever right work is done honestly for the livelihood. I salute that right work and that honest person. The thing is that the small coaching centers in the local area, especially for teens, co-education (boy and girl studying together) is becoming dangerous day by day. It is now common among students to boast of love at a young age. Creating a pretentious environment is fooling oneself. I think the symbol of love should not be the Taj Mahal but a rattle mobile, because with this thing the focus on studies is less and the connection with love is more. In this concept, aunt is just a character while relatives have many different forms. Which relative of yours is how dangerous for you. No one can know this better than you.

We all know very well that money plays a great role in our life, but money alone does not work everywhere, but status is also a thing. If you get this by studying, you will also earn money. Dear children, whatever happened in life, happened. Now remove the concept of round face and guarding its locks from your life. There is no need for tension but action is required. Start a new chapter of your golden life and allow me to come up with a new concept.

Written by Jaan Nisar Akhtar