RAB Series The R Story

By Ribhu Ahuja

“Respect the teachers. They are like gods.” This was taught to me by my mom, who is a teacher.
“Respect the teachers for sure but if they don’t behave like teachers, take you for granted always and start behaving like unethical monsters, then don’t forget to make them realize by your actions that you are also human as they are, and sometimes you can also make mistakes as they did.” This was taught to me by one of my mentors who is a school principal. I agree with both of them, because that’s how the life is supposed to be lived.

“Respect the teachers for sure and but if they don’t behave........and all the above I agreed to, but those who mentor you – your teachers, your parents, your peers, your bosses, even your juniors, trust me they are all biased for the one reason that they are all humans with one heart on the left side which can’t be right for most of the practicalities of life and a brain at the top of their head which makes them think – sometimes for you and is most of the times trained naturally to prioritize for themselves and their people, and occasionally you might also be a ‘rit’ in their favorites so they are thinking in favor of you. I am no one to judge anyone’s parents or teachers or bosses or relatives but why, why one of the kids becomes a better child for parents and why the teachers say, ‘o that kid is not ranked high in my list?’ Life in itself is a practice and you learn to live it better and better as you learn its principles and understand its simple complexities – just like playing a guitar, like playing video games, like understanding the female sex – the more you practice, the more near to perfect you become. But there is one more thing to it and that is that if I am intelligent and if I am mentally strong then I could not become anything – neither bad nor good, neither crook nor candid, neither a hero nor a zero. I can only curse myself sitting in a corner of a dark and shady room criticizing myself with a bitter and entirely rubbish but absolute truth and that is ‘an intelligent and mentally strong man can NOT seriously become anything and that a fool and a weak can only make efforts to become something, to gain and to achieve and a lot of weakness and foolishness is required to run this world.’ What achievement is an achievement, what mission is a mission without any challenges? And weak and foolish only MAKE themselves better, prepare to become strong and intelligent and plan to face the challenges and break the code. History is the biggest proof that everything that’s done without planning could let the strongest loose easily and proper planning, accompanied with a long smooch of confidence and a touch of zeal could make a weaker be victorious. That’s what I had learnt throughout my life after facing so many situations and problems till now and I am still learning the lessons of the game called life, not to win the wars but the hearts and that, my dear friends is this story for.... and this book is dedicated:

To all those people who made me realize how delicate, beautiful, important, strong, powerful and deadly –

IS the game of LOVE.

I said ‘game’ of love because it is believed even in today’s world, that love is strong and it’s the strength of any relationship and it wins over all the obstacles and the ones who are against it; though it requires genuineness and sacrifices, but even that way, don’t its definition makes love a game, with its own properties and rules? ........... Every love story generally has a common theme - we see you meet, face challenges, fall in love, face challenges, even get married, face challenges and it’s all a predictable dream. The last shot will show you and your lover with a family. That’s it right? Well no. because I believe in mentioning something which is real, something from somewhere me and you belong – this real world. And there, love do not wins – not always;

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ribhu Ahuja
• Release date: Dec 28, 2019
• ISBN: 9780463805374

Book preview

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RAB Series

The R Story

A novel by

Ribhu Ahuja

Copyright © Ribhu Ahuja 2008

Free Gift – some poetry!

To write poetry (good poetry), a person should be heartbroken, not just once but several times. And a man's or a woman's heart don't just breaks when (s)he is ditched by his/her so called life partner; people's heart breaks when they don't get what they expect from someone - be it a living being or be it the almighty creator. Their heart breaks when they eagerly demand something from themselves and they repeatedly realize that they are not capable of fulfilling their own expectations even after attempting all possible efforts and going through different ordeals and pains. It breaks, when they have to prove that they are right, but despite proving their correctness, their proofs are not considered legitimate or not accepted socially. Their heart breaks when they don't get peace or they are offended or bullied by someone. Most importantly their heart breaks when their loved ones don't understand them and start opposing them.

Anyways, this is a part and parcel of the package called life - everyone in this world is heartbroken in some way or the other, at sometime or the other and poetry is some sort of an amalgamation of the feeling of heartbreak, sense of cognition and a very basic rhyming. So apparently there is a poet in all of us as we all contain these three elements for being a poet and it's a matter of time when we realize that we can all put our imaginations onto paper in the form of words and rhymes...one day.

Thank you

Respect the teachers. They are like gods. This was taught to me by my mom, who is a teacher.

Respect the teachers for sure but if they don’t behave like teachers, take you for granted always and start behaving like unethical monsters, then don’t forget to teach them a lesson tactfully and making them realize that you are also human as they are, and sometimes you can also make mistakes as they did. This was taught to me by one of my mentors, who is a school principal. I agree with both of them, because that’s how the life is supposed to be lived.

"Respect the teachers for sure and but if they don’t behave……..and all the above I agreed to, but those who mentor you – your teachers, your parents, your peers, your bosses, even your juniors, trust me they are all biased for the one reason that they are all humans with one heart on the left side which can’t be right for most of the practicalities of life and a brain at the top of their head which makes them think – sometimes for you and is most of the times trained naturally to prioritize for themselves and their people, and occasionally you might also be a ‘rit’ in their favorites so they are thinking in favor of you. I am no one to judge anyone’s parents or teachers or bosses or relatives but why, why one of the kids becomes a better child for parents and why the teachers say, ‘o that kid is not ranked high in my list?’ Life in itself is a practice and you learn to live it better and better as you learn its principles and understand its simple complexities – just like playing a guitar, like playing video games, like understanding the female sex – the more you practice, the more near to perfect you become. But there is one more thing to it and that is that if I am intelligent and if I am mentally strong then I could not become anything – neither bad nor good, neither crook nor candid, neither a hero nor a zero. I can only curse myself sitting in a corner of a dark and shady room criticizing myself with a bitter and entirely rubbish but absolute truth and that is ‘an intelligent and mentally strong man can NOT seriously become anything and that a fool and a weak can only make efforts to become something, to gain and to achieve and a lot of weakness and foolishness is required to run this world.’ What achievement is an achievement, what mission is a mission without any challenges? And weak and foolish only MAKE themselves better, prepare to become strong and intelligent and plan to face the challenges and break the code. History is the biggest proof that everything that’s done without planning could let the strongest loose easily and proper planning, accompanied with a long smooch of confidence and a touch of zeal could make a weaker be victorious. That’s what I had learnt throughout my life after facing so many situations and problems till now and I am still learning the lessons of the game called life, not to win the wars but the hearts and that, my dear friends is this story for…. and this book is dedicated:

To all those people who made me realize how delicate, beautiful, important, strong, powerful and deadly –

IS the game of LOVE.

I said ‘game’ of love because it is believed even in today’s world, that love is strong and it’s the strength of any relationship and it wins over all the obstacles and the ones who are against it; though it requires genuineness and sacrifices, but even that way, don’t its definition makes love a game, with its own properties and rules? ……….. Every love story generally has a common theme - we see you meet, face challenges, fall in love, face challenges, even get married, face challenges and it’s all a predictable dream. The last shot will show you and your lover with a family. That’s it right? Well no. because I believe in mentioning something which is real, something from somewhere me and you belong – this real world. And there, love do not wins – not always; I have faced it and seen many others losing to love and then moving on. Aren’t we all becoming like that clever fox who says that it won’t eat those grapes coz they are sour?

‘Love is a part of life, just like breathing and eating, although you start getting the feeling and urges and your body parts develop for it at an age near around adulthood and then it becomes the part of your life gradually. But it is a very special thing and a relationship based on it should be developed with one special person, with whom you carry out your entire life with.’ That’s how a lady teacher of biology subject explained about sex to the students of class eight and I was in the audience too. Everybody listened quietly and paid special attention to the first part of the definition of sex where love was used instead of the s word as school is a place to learn values and they tend to hide and filter out words and complete situations just with an aim, not to teach us to cross any limits and live decently. I respect that part of my school life and many others where some things got filtered from the real world but I seriously doubt the teachings of the school life of ours coz it do not teaches how things actually work, how do our system works and what to do when we face a troublesome situation. We all need to figure it out ourselves, learning about dealing with it in a hard way. There is a very good song written by one of the greatest rock stars – Ozzy Ozbourne, I am a big fan of his, named ‘working class hero’. Everyone to learn the real meaning of life should listen…….. God made this life simple and full of love, but we have already made it more complicated than it could ever be. When you are born, they all make you feel small by tagging you a name ‘junior’. They try to teach you everything according to what they think is right, they filter out the things which they feel you should not listen to or talk about. You don’t have a right to teach them anything coz you are yet a junior and you have not brought anything in your tiny brain from where you got born; details of that place don’t matter here much. They make you learn to speak and talk and still when they come and meet you they pull your cheeks and say cheeeeeeeeeeee chuuuuuuuuuuuuu, muchhuuuuuuuuuuuu puchhhuuuuuuuuuuuu and what not all strangest words whose meaning you wont be able to understand ever. They don’t talk to you in the language they taught you but do all this. When you go to school, you are made to learn what the school, the teachers and your parents have to offer. And if you don’t have an interest in mugging up ‘A for apple’ and ‘B for boy’, you are their victim. You don’t have to bother about the pain that gets collected inside your brain; you just have to live the life and continue learning but just what they have to teach. Life goes on and you somehow learn to live with the pressure on you to come first in school and facing humiliation every now and then when you do not do so or especially when you fail in a subject or two. After you grow up, you are expected to become an engineer or a doctor or another form of a bookworm and your parents have high expectations from you since that is their birth right. After completing the graduation, when you enter the real world to start a new phase of life, for which you have been prepared throughout your life by being put into various emotional, physical and mental pressures, you have already lost the capability of thinking your own way – which the world would praise since it would bring in a new idea, a new concept or a new revolution. I am not being negative over here, but I am being realistic because this is what generally happens with our lives. A would be rock star is forced to become a doctor and after so many efforts he or she becomes too, but would he be saving as many lives a good doctor would have? This is a perspective of the person living this life, but there is another perspective to it too – our perspective. There is this truth of life – some things happen the way they are supposed to happen because they are bound to happen that way since they are written by someone already in a book called destiny and the rules of destiny are followed until you and I make efforts to change the present so that a new page could be added to this book of destiny and this may change the story of future a lot or a bit. Have you ever imagined; that whenever you are trapped badly in a situation at the office or at your home and you get more and more frustrated since you seem to find no solution to a problem and it becomes more and more hopeless every second that passes by? Now try thinking your friend being in the same situation and try to see that particular situation from bird’s eye view – jump a thousand feet above in the sky and see your friend trapped in that problem. What do you feel? Since you are not facing that problem now, The solution is quiet simple; you know what he should do now to tackle that situation and come out of it flawlessly; you just need to tell the solution to him or her and your friend will be out of it in minutes, if not seconds. Now, fall a thousand feet down from the sky where you had jumped putting your friend in the problem which actually you were facing. Remove your friend from that situation and put yourself back in there again to come back to reality where you were facing that impossible situation and now you know what to do to change your present that has been written in destiny. Now you know that the twist in the situation is not just a proverb; this is how you deal with someone who has written it bad for you and that’s why they call it a dynamic world – where situations and rules can change all the time. And believe me, there is no exception to it – love, war, hatred, friendship, relations; every dam thing is a game and to win, you just need to know its rules and its weak points and you need to be foolish and weak enough to learn to make a change possible. So next time you face a situation, smile at it because at least you know what to do to change the destiny; weather you are able to change it or not depends or how foolish and weak you are and……on the destiny.

Preface

Well, the most of it, I have already mentioned above but then there is a little more to it. And I found it most effort taking to write this part since I rarely read any books and reading preface of a book…… is like playing billiards and using feet instead of hands in that game. I had done many crazy things in life but one like this……nnnno. This is a story book which starts simple – one guy, a few mischifs and then bang! Love, and then immediate failure, and then pains and then…….. ha ha; you would have to read for the last part, up to the last page, right from the first and then, if you wish to say something to me, if you wish to leave any feedback, you can e mail me on the address below:

[e-mail]

But, I know that everything on the web is prone to change, so if the above address does not work on some odd day then you will simply have to find me via your favorite search engine. Or, you may find a freshwater pond at midnight, thrice recite the magical spell ‘Ribhu…..Ahuja', and then touch this book to the water of the pond and then, wait and watch…….My new and upcoming website address will then form upon the surface of the pool in glittering letters.

You see, this is the problem with reading. Books are where ideas come from. The idea of writing this story also came from reading a book. It started with a mixed feeling of ‘Hey, if thousands of writers can, let me also give it a try’ and a challenge from a friend, who said, ‘What, you are planning to write a novel or what? Ha Ha.’ And that laugh made me accept and win this challenge from my friend from TCS – Sushil Choudhary. Challenge accepted mate!

But why series - The story? Because there is more to it - The story and The story, just wait and watch. And series because, that’s me. I am Singh; that’s what my school friends call me. The story is a story about a simple yet bright guy – Ronit, who after school goes for a civil engineering course when he falls in love. His life gets ruined when he gets to know the reality about his girlfriend and when she betrays him – though she had her own reasons. It’s about how painful it gets when love tends to almost fail. It’s about the tests and tears which Ronit undergo. Life takes the endless and dark route and then what happens, is what the story all about.

Questionnaire:

Where did you grow up and how did you get into poetry?

I was born in Jaipur – Pink city, India and did my schooling from St. Xavier’s Jaipur, did my engineering in Kolhapur, Maharashtra and then moved to Delhi and had been working there for past thirteen years in different domains – I started with BPOs, moved into IT recruitment and finally into IT – SAP technical domain and worked in IT companies like TCS and HCL.

I wrote my first poem when I was seven years old, when I was in class 2 and when I didn’t even know about the vast and deep feelings like immense hate, excruciatingly painful heartbreaks or eternal love, which are required to be present in one’s heart to write a sensible poem. I still remember, we used to get a lot of homework from school for us to finish in summer vacations to keep us inexorably busy during vacations and one of the homework’s task was to write a 200 words essay in Hindi on the topic ‘What if I were a teacher’. I had been doing a lot of school homework in those summer vacations, plus my mom made sure that I write two pages of cursive handwriting practice book each for Hindi and English as I did not have had (and I still don’t, till date ) a good and legible handwriting. So, my plate of unwanted tasks was more than full and I had to somehow escape this essay and needed to relax a bit. My escape plan was to ‘erase’ three words ‘200 words essay’ – from the question the Hindi teacher made me write in the notebook – ‘write a 200 words essay on topic, ‘What if I were a teacher’ with here signatures below the question and replace it with one word – ‘poem’. So now the question became – write a poem on the topic, ‘What if I were a teacher’. This was to escape from writing 200 words and still showing that ‘see Mamma, today's’ task accomplished’ notion to mom.

As I erased those three words, being in grade 2, I didn’t notice the intricate nuances of the pencil marks that were left on the paper and by observing carefully, one checking up the homework (my mom that is), would clearly notice that I fudged the question. Unknowingly, I did write a full length poem of fourteen lines and my mom checked it and instantly, she smiled, looked at me with her raised eyebrows, as if she knew what trickery I had done, and as I swallowed the saliva out of fear, she flipped the notebook and hugged me. For the first time in days, I didn’t get scolded for cheating, because she felt that I did something creative. She tore that page on which I wrote the poem and kept it in her cupboard and asked me to go and play.

Well, that was my first poem and then gradually when my school life was about to reach cessation and I left Jaipur for further studies, I started writing in pain and agony of being aloof and away from home, when I was happy and when I was alone in my room – it gave me a sense of achievement when I wrote something that rhymed and made sense. Poetry gradually got infused into my comportment.

Why do you write poetry?

In order to express thoughts, as a passion and for friends and relatives. I used to be good at expressing things