ONE’S SORROW DOTH BENEFIT ANOTHER

Sunny hated school and considered it a waste of time but his parents like other parents of the time insisted he must go to school and therefore he would act like he was going to school though he actually bunked classes and spent his days with friends loafing the streets or watching a matinee in one of the innumerable theatres that dotted the city. Sunny was fifteen years old and in the crucial tenth grade at an eminent school in the city of Madras.

Sunny’s parents were too busy with their own professions and never bothered to check on his scholastic activities. He was therefore gradually emboldened and used to tell his parents that he had special classes in the evenings and would go to the movies in the evening as well.

Since he needed money for all this he began dipping his fingers into his parents’ wallet and handbag. One thing led to another for all bad habits are a vicious cycle like the swirling waters which suck everything into its vortex and soon Sunny was smoking more than ten cigarettes a day and an occasional stick of Mary Jane too.

His name was Kinky Mixmoney and he was Sunny’s class teacher. He had been asked by the Head Master to raise funds by selling tickets for the school play and procuring advertisements for the school Souvenir. The Head Master had also said that the class teacher who raised the maximum funds will be given a fee trip to Singapore and this had set the adrenaline rushing up to Kinky’s head. He had fifty nine students in his class and he decided to target each of them and their parents to contribute the maximum.

While systematically working his way through the roll list he found that a pupil named Sunny had not been attending classes for more than three months now. When he inquired from the other boys in his class he was told that Sunny had been ill for over three months and had not been seen. Kinky therefore decided to visit Sunny’s home that evening to show his concern for the sick boy and also exhort Sunny’s Father who was a government servant in regular touch with big businessmen to obtain advertisements for the school souvenir.

That evening Sunny had gone for an evening show of a World War II movie with a couple of his friends, smoked a couple of cigarettes and returned home at nine p.m. to find a scooter parked outside his house. As he parked his cycle in the compound, Sunny’s Mom came out and he asked her whose scooter it was to which she mumbled about some uncle who had come to visit and then went back inside.

When Sunny entered the house he was horrified to see his class teacher grinning smugly at him. Needless to say Sunny got his butt kicked black and blue while his class teacher obtained his free trip to Singapore…

One’s sorrow doth benefit another…