NAME: VISHRUTA.

S
CLASS: IX C
SCHOOL: ARMY SCHOOL R.K
PURAM

FICTION SHORT STORY

The Dream from The Past

PROLOUGE

Summer was at its peak, and a particular boy sulking under a

huge banyan tree was feeling it the most. Aneesh had never
liked summers, and this one was particularly trying to him. He
had endured exactly thirteen summers since his birth, and felt
that the stickiness and sweat summers brought with them were
most annoying. He was not a sulky or grumpy child, but the
situations he had recently been through made him one.
He could hear the trickling of the
water of the river flowing in front of him, and tried to find some
solace in it. He was not successful. He wondered if he would
ever be able to go back home, to his parents. He had fought a
lot with his parents over trivial matters, but now regretted his
actions. He missed them terribly, but it was his own fault he
was stuck here, in this place where he knew no one, and could
go to no one with his problems.
You see, Aneesh was sitting under
a banyan tree that had been cut in 1969, exactly 29 years
before his birth, and the local people told him that the current
year going on was 1871, which was exactly 127 years before his
birth. So how did he end up in this unfortunate condition?
Read on and you’ll see…..

*************************************

“Aneesh!”
“Coming, Mom!”

“You’ll be late for school!”

A skinny, tall thirteen year old boy ran down the stairs of his old
Bangalore bungalow and quickly grabbed a sandwich from a platter
containing about a dozen sandwiches and headed toward his school
bus, whose driver was impatiently pressing the bus horn several times.
He ran towards the bus, with a hurried “Bye Mom!” over his shoulder
and climbed into the bus, which drove off such speed that you’ve
thought there were rocket boosters attached to the end of it.

Aneesh sat beside his best friend since first grade, Harsh. They were
both quite different from each other, Harsh being chubby and short,
but as they say, opposites attract. Together they had the reputation of
being the biggest troublemakers of his school. The teachers, the
principal and even their fellow schoolmates were quite tired of them,
but that did not have the slightest effect on either Aneesh or Harsh, as
they both believed in having as much fun as they could.

“So, what’s the troublemaker plan for today, huh?” Aneesh asked Harsh
in a whisper with an impish grin.

“Nothing much, the usual you know, annoying the teachers, disturbing
our classmates, and oh! Count in bullying that timid looking newbie,
Rakesh.” replied Harsh with an equally mischievous smile.

“Good, today’s going to be fun then!” said Aneesh.

“What are you two idiots up to, huh?” interrupted Deepika, the topper
of their class and a nerd, at least in Aneesh’s and Harsh’s opinion.
“Watch who you’re calling idiots, Deepika, you don’t want to end up
with a lizard on your head!” warned Aneesh.

“As if you have the guts to do that!” said Deepika with a smug a smirk.

“You never know Deepika, you never know”, said Harsh, nodding his
head gravely.

“Whatever, you losers bore me” said Deepika pompously and stalked
back to her friends.

“I think we should really drop a lizard onto her head, that’ll teach her a
good lesson.” said Aneesh to Harsh.

“No time to do that, we’re on a tight schedule, remember?” Harsh

reminded Aneesh.

“Yeah right.” Said Aneesh, his devilish grin reappearing.

And so with their minds full of quite non-studious thoughts, the boys
trooped into their grim looking school.

Their first class was Physics, which was a subject Aneesh hated to the
core.

“…And so, to travel through time, either to the past or to the future, we
need to create a situation in which we can move faster than light, that
is, faster than three times 100 million meters per second, which is the
fastest speed in the entire universe to our knowledge..” Sourabh Sir
was saying, with an animated look that certainly did not reflect on any
of the students, except Deepika, that is.

“Excuse me Sir, but is there any other way to travel through time other
than this?” - She asked, with her hand raised high into the air.
“Well, a lot has been said about time loops, worm holes, paradoxes,
and even Bermuda Triangle being a time transporting region, but
nothing has been proved yet” said Sourabh Sir.

Deepika opened her mouth to ask another question, but the class was
saved the torture with the bell ringing, and Sourabh Sir leaving with a
promise of teaching about sound waves in the next class.

“Oh God! I’m bored to death! How could someone even find time travel
interesting? It isn’t even real!” Aneesh moaned loudly.

“I have a plan, let’s propone out plan of beating Rakesh to a pulp, let’s
do it now!” said Harsh, rubbing his hands together eagerly.

“Great idea! I’ll bring Rakesh to the school grounds under some
pretext; you can wait for us there.” Said Aneesh ecstatically.

“Right ho!”Said Harsh and made for the school grounds.

Aneesh made his way over to Rakesh, who was sitting alone, and said –

“Why are sitting all alone? I and Harsh are going to the school grounds
to play, would you like to join us?”

“But isn’t the second class going to start now?” Rakesh asked
nervously.

“Nah, I know Lekha madam has not come to school today, the second
period would be free.” Aneesh tried to convince Rakesh.

Finally Rakesh relented. “Alright, let’s go” he said.

And so the boys made their way to the school grounds where a very
unpleasant surprise was waiting for Rakesh, and perhaps, for Aneesh
too…
 *****************************

When they reached the ground, Aneesh ran to Harsh’s side and they
both rounded upon Rakesh.

“Wh...What’s happening? Aren’t we going to play?” asked Rakesh.

“Oh yes, we are going to play, but I think you won’t consider it as
playing.” Said Harsh.

“I’m warning you, I’m a karate champion, don’t touch me, or else…”
Rakesh said, backing away.

“Or else what? Huh? You’re going to fight us are you? We’ll about
that.” Said Aneesh and pushed Rakesh so hard that he fell down.
Rakesh jumped back to his feet and punched Aneesh hard on his head.

Aneesh staggered back, his head reeling, he couldn’t anything clearly,

and everything started going round and round. He could only hear a
voice calling; it seemed to come from long way, it was saying –
“Aneesh! Aneesh! ”…..

And then everything went black.

***************************
When Aneesh woke up, he was lying on soft grass, and he could hear
someone yelling at him.

“Wake up, you black dog, wake up!” – Someone was kicking him on his
stomach, and the pain registered soon after.

“Ow!” screamed Aneesh and stood up quickly, with the intention of

yelling back at the person kicking him, but his curse was cut short when
he looked at his assaulter. In front of him stood the whitest person he
had ever seen, and he was dressed in a kind of soldier uniform, and
more importantly, he looked furious.

“You filthy Indian! I’ll get you hanged for this! Don’t you know that this
path is used by British official? How dare you sleep here!” and with that
the soldier gave Aneesh another mighty kick on his chest which sent
him flying.

Aneesh stood up, shaking. He started open-mouthed at the soldier.

Was this some kind of a hideous joke? He was about to shout at the so
called soldier when he felt a hand on arm, restraining him. He turned
around, surprised. The person clutching his arm was a thin, frail looking
old man. The man shook his head and gestured that Aneesh follow him.

“What?” asked Aneesh.

The old man said nothing and just shook his head and again gestured.
Aneesh rolled his eyes and started to follow the old man, and then
stopped to turn around angrily at the soldier, only to discover he was
gone. Fuming that he had not got a chance to shout at the man, He
asked the old man through gritted teeth-

“Why did you stop me?”

The old man looked at him and said-“Are you crazy? That was a British
Official! Had I allowed you to do anything to him, you would’ve been
hanged by now!”

“But what are you talking about? This is the 21st century! You can’t just
hang a person like that! It’s illegal! And what’s with all the soldier
costume huh?”- burst out Aneesh.

The old man stared at Aneesh as if he were from Jupiter. He slowly

backed away from him, and said “This is the year 1871, and that was a
British Official. What rubbish are you talking? Look, I just saved your life
and you should at least thank me for that!”. With that he turned
around and walked slowly away, leaving Aneesh slightly confused and
for the major part, horrified.

‘What was that?’ wondered Aneesh to himself. Could the man be

telling the truth? He suddenly remembered that he had been with
Harsh and Rakesh. He touched his head, it hurt very badly. ‘I guess
Rakesh wasn’t lying when he said that he was a karate champion’-
thought Aneesh as he walked down the street.

But where was Harsh now? And Rakesh? And the rest
of his school? How did he end up here? With many questions bubbling
inside his head, Aneesh reached a kind of a bazaar, only looking as if it
was from the 19th century. Thoroughly confused, Aneesh walked up to
kindly looking woman in a white sari and asked her-“Err... excuse me,
but could you just tell me which year is it going on?”
The woman stared at Aneesh and then answered-“It’s the year 1871,
and if you don’t even know the month, it’s May 1871.”

“What? But it was January 2011 going on, wasn’t it? Is this some kind of
a joke?” exclaimed Aneesh.

“No, it isn’t and if you think you can be smart and play pranks on me,
let me warn you, I can spank naughty boys very hard!” she said and
stalked away.

Aneesh stood there, looking dazed. ‘Wow!’ he thought to himself, ‘I’m

really in the 19th century, and all this looks like it too!’ He looked
around. All people around him were as black as coal, and were frail
thin, as if they hadn’t had something to eat for months. They looked
like the Indians he had seen in his history textbook, while studying
about the 19th century India.

‘But how was this possible?’ thought Aneesh. What

about moving faster than light? Worm holes? And he hadn’t even been
to the Bermuda Triangle!

So that is how Aneesh ended up beside the river, sulking under the
banyan tree. His initial pleasure at being perhaps the human to time
travel had turned into panic, panic about how was he supposed to get
back home? He didn’t want to be stuck here, getting kicked by some
stupid British Official. Life was extremely boring here; at least it seemed
to be. Children seemed pretty stupid over here, when he tried to go
near other boys of his age, they ran way, and perhaps thinking his
clothing was strange.

Aneesh looked down at his clothes; he was still wearing his school
uniform, though now it was torn at some places and bore faint
footprints of the British Official, which Aneesh had tried his best to
remove.

He was getting really desperate now, and didn’t know whom to go to.
He regretted being such a misbehaving child, and wished he could make
up to his friends, his parents and his teachers.

Suddenly he heard a sound behind him. He turned around, expecting

someone who could help him, but saw that it was only a small boy,
some years younger than him, maybe ten years old. He was smiling at
Aneesh, and his smile reminded Aneesh of Harsh, and he couldn’t think
why.

“What do you want?” Aneesh asked the child, his back to him, facing
the other side. No answer came. When Aneesh turned around the
second time, he could catch only a glimpse of the stone hurtling
through the air towards him, and had only started shouting “Hey!!…”
when everything around him went blank.

*******************************
“Aneesh, Aneesh wake up!”

“Huh?” said Aneesh and sat up. His whole family was sitting around
him, and his mother was looking at him with a worried look on her face.

“What happened?” asked Aneesh.

“You’ve been unconscious for two hours! I’ve been so worried! What
happened? Harsh refuses to tell us anything and that other boy Rakesh
said that he punched you and you went unconscious! I’ll see to it that
he is punished, I’ll...”- his mother was apparently very much disturbed.

But Aneesh felt wonderful. He was back to his old life again! Back to
good old 2011!

“It’s okay mom, I was the one who had hit him earlier, and it’s not his
fault.” Said Aneesh.

Before his mother could say anything else, he hugged her tight and
said-“I love you mom, and I won’t ever misbehave from now on”.

You could say that Aneesh’s mother was greatly surprised, and so was
his father. ‘I wonder what he dreamt of when he was unconscious’
thought his father.

But that only three people will ever know, the first of course is me, then
Aneesh himself, and the third, You!

****************************************