A Short Story
By Mesha Oh
He was not yet ten years old when his parents decided to send him to a boarding school, where his elder brother was studying.
The school, which was located up in the hills, more than a thousand miles from his home, was touted about as one of the best in his country. It was supposedly modeled on the lines of elite boarding schools in England like Harrow and Eaton. One of its main attractions was the range of skills it imparted to students beyond the academic curriculum: horse-riding, sports, gymnastics, swimming, trekking, art, weaving, carpentry, sculpture, music, a range of international languages, and so on. His parents thought it was just the place for their sons to get a well-rounded education.
*
One afternoon, he and a friend of his went on a little expedition down a wooded slope below their hostel. They were very excited: his friend had procured a cigarette and they were going to smoke, for the very first time in their life!
At first, he was a little hesitant—he thought smoking was a serious sin—but a little coaxing from his friend was enough to make him agree to take a puff. When he did, he burst out coughing. It was awful!
On the way back to the hostel he felt an enormous wave of guilt overwhelm him. He thought he had done something really sinful. Oh how he wished he hadn’t done what he had!
The next day, when classes gave over and he was getting ready to go to the playground, his brother marched into the hostel. He could make out from his looks that he was in a foul mood. “Come out,” his brother said to him, “I need to talk to you.”
“So, you smoked yesterday, I hear. Your friend informed me,” his brother growled. “How dare you, you rat! What if Mummy and Papa come to know?”
He was shocked! How had his brother come to know about what he had done? And what was going to happen now? What if his brother informed his parents? He imagined the worst. His parents would be really wild with him. His father might beat him mercilessly and might even throw him out on the streets, banning him from their home for good!
Now, you might think this was quite farfetched and that he was completely overreacting, but if you knew how innocent and naive he was then, you might have understood why he was so terrified.
“Oh please don’t tell Mummy and Papa,” he begged his brother. “I promise I’ll do anything for you, but just don’t tell them.”
*
From that day, his life was a living hell. Blackmailed by his brother, he was subjected to unbelievable mental torture and even physical abuse. He had become a slave to his brother, doing whatever he ordered him to, fearing that otherwise his brother would reveal his ‘crime’ of having taking a puff of a cigarette to his parents. With each passing day, this fear worsened until very soon he—a little boy of some 12 years of age—began to contemplate suicide. How he wished he could simply vanish from the world! He just didn’t want to live any longer!
*
Some years later, he and his brother were withdrawn from the boarding school by their parents and were taken back to their hometown (His brother had gained notoriety as a vicious bully and the school authorities, on receiving many complaints about him from junior students, had expelled him from the school).
Not long after this, one day, when things were getting just too much for him to handle, he mustered enough courage to reveal his ‘sin’ to his mother and tell her how his brother had been treating him all these years.
With that act of courage, he was freed from the terrifying thralldom that he had gone through for many years.
*
Many decades later, when he looked back at this phase of his life, he thought to himself that if only he had known one thing when he was a child, he could have saved himself from those years of torment that he had suffered at the hands of his brother.
That one thing was that there is a living, all-powerful God, the Lord of the universe, who brought us into being whom we can have a deep personal relationship with; a God who loves and cares for each one of us; a God who wants the best for us; a God who knows everything we go through; a God whom we can talk to and who talks to us; a God who listens to us and answers our prayers if we pray to Him, a God who guides us if we ask Him for His guidance; a God who helps us if we turn to Him for help; a God who can free us from all bondages if we request Him to—yes, a God who can deliver a 12 year old child from a brutal blackmailer bully of a brother!
Had he known this God when he was a child, when faced with his brother’s tyranny, he could simply have turned to Him for help. It would have saved him those precious years that were wasted in fear and torment, enslaved to a brute.
But he didn’t know this God then. In fact, he had never heard of such a God. And it wasn’t just him. No one he knew—neither his parents (who were supposedly ‘very well educated’), nor his teachers in a school which they claimed was among the best in the country, had ever spoken about this God. Perhaps they too had never heard of Him.
His parents and his teachers had taught him many things, from respect for elders and good table manners to algebra and French, but this one simple fact—of the living God whom one can have a deep personal relationship with and who is ever ready to guide and help people if they ask Him to—was not among them. It would have hardly taken a couple of minutes for someone to share with him the good news of such a God, but no one had.
*
Nowadays, whenever he gets the chance and remembers to, he tells people about this God. He tells them that there is a God whom they can connect with, a God who loves them and cares for them, a God who is ever-ready to guide them if they ask Him to, a God who can help solve every problem they might face if they ask Him to.