Ms Shikha Bhat finally got what she had yearned for a long time.  She would have got it without so much labour, though.

      No one had realised the ultimate futility of human endeavour better than Father Benedict.  He seldom took pains to achieve anything in life.  Whatever he had achieved so far had happened quite naturally.  Just like a river gathering, along its meandering, whatever it contained.

“No one can take away whatever’s in your destiny; no one can give you what’s not in your destiny,” Father Benedict used to say.

Destiny had been quite generous with Father Benedict.  At least, that’s what he thought.  He was a lecturer in English at the prestigious Christ King College.  The students found his lectures mesmerising.  They also regarded him as a paragon of human qualities. Father Benedict had reasons to be a contented man. In the evenings destiny benignly bestowed upon him two pegs of whiskey and a few Gold Flake cigarettes.  Father Benedict was happy.  If he wanted he could have more than two pegs of whiskey per day and more cigarettes too.  But that would be like teasing destiny, challenging it to play with you.  That’s a dangerous game which can wreck you. Antony and Cleopatra committed that mistake.  They crossed the limits demarcated by destiny. 

Ha ha ha …

No, no one was laughing at Father Benedict’s theory about destiny. It was old Mr Jain taking his usual evening walk in the garden near the lecturers’ quarters.  Mr Jain’s son, Rakesh Jain, was also a lecturer in the English department. 

Old Mr Jain let out quite a few loud laughs while he walked in the evenings.  Who was he laughing at? Father Benedict had asked him once as he joined him in his walk for a short while.

Old Mr Jain stopped leaning lightly on his walking stick and looked at Father Benedict.  

“Laugh and the world laughs with you,” said Old Mr Jain very gravely.  “Don’t you feel like laughing when you hear me laugh?”

Eventually Father Benedict found out that Old Mr Jain started laughing this way after attending a seminar that some Art of Living group had conducted in the college auditorium.  They were told in the seminar that those who laughed lived longer.  Old Mr Jain’s laughter was very mechanical, though.  Just a series of ‘ha’s.  Like the sounds produced by an old car that has ignition problems.

On another occasion Father Benedict asked Old Mr Jain how long he wanted to live. 

“Someone has told you that story about the Art of Living seminar?” That was Old Mr Jain’s response.

“Isn’t that right?”

“The Art of Living seminar gave me an excuse.”  Old Mr Jain laughed.  That was not the mechanical laugh, though.

Father Benedict made it a habit to exchange a few words with Old Mr Jain every day during the latter’s laughter-punctuated evening walks. 

“Father Benedict has discovered the right company,” remarked Ms Shikha Bhat.  She was sitting in the canteen with her friend, Ms Ritika from the Commerce department.  “He cannot spoil an old man.”

“Do you mean to say spoiling old men is your prerogative?” retorted Father Benedict who was sitting on the adjacent table, TheBrothers Karamazov open in his hands.

“Keep your rotten tongue to yourself.”

      Wars of words were frequent among the members of the English department.  Literature is about human passions.  Maybe, that’s why the English lecturers were all quite passionate about almost everything they said or did.  Currently passions were running very high because the post of the Head of the Department had become vacant and there were, apparently at least, three contenders to the post. 

      The previous HoD was asked to leave.  Passions were the reason again.  He could not control his passion for a girl student.  Married though he was and with two adolescent children too, his passion for the young girl overwhelmed him.  He sent her the amorous lines of John Donne and Andrew Marvell by SMS.  When the poor girl could not bear the weight of the antique love any more she took the matter to the principal. Father Lawrence, the principal, was not only a stickler for rules and decorum but also a man of high moral scruples.  The lines of Donne and Marvell, which he read with considerable difficulty from the tiny screen of the mobile phone, sent shock waves through his spine.  Father Lawrence refused to accept Father Benedict’s explanation that the poets were part of the literature syllabus taught in the class by the HoD.  The HoD was given “the last and final warning”.  But love is blind.  It heeds no warnings.  The waters of love’s passions will overflow, if not burst, the dams of warnings.  To cut a long story short, the HoD’s chair became vacant. 

Christ King College belonged to a minority community.  Hence it enjoyed certain legal privileges.  By one such privilege Father Benedict could become the HoD though Dr Rakesh Jain and, to some extent and by certain twists of the regulations, Ms Shikha Bhat had better claims to the post than Father Benedict. 

The rumours on the campus said that Ms Shikha Buttocks’ (as she was called by some of her perverted students behind her extraordinarily protuberant backside) claims to the post were limited to her hobnobbing with certain people in power and rubbing against their limbs the prominently protruding organs of her body which was otherwise well-shaped by the treadmill.  That was not entirely fair to her, however.  She knew by heart the whole of Webster’s Duchess of Malfi and was an expert on feminist literary theories. She believed that all men were like Ferdinand and his brother the Cardinal, greedy for wealth and power and intolerant of women rising to positions of some significance.

Though Dr Rakesh Jain was the genuine candidate for the HoD he was not interested in the post.  He was having troubles with his daughter who was studying in class 12.  A few months back she had won the Star Singer competition conducted by a popular TV channel which entitled her to a crore rupees.  The judges of the competition were the people who watched the programme.  They voted for the singer whom they considered the best on the mobile phone connections given solely by the company that sponsored the Star Singer programme.  Dr Jain knew that his daughter, Mallika, had spent a huge sum of money for canvassing votes.  She even provided people with new mobile phones just to vote for her.  Worse, she offered herself as a savoury dish to many of her friends who canvassed passionately for her and eventually won her the Star Singer title and a crore rupees.

Dr Jain, a pure vegetarian and a conservative, was unable to digest his daughter’s ultra-liberal tastes which spread in diverse directions after she became an icon for the youth in the city.  The evenings found her in the Hard Rock Café with a group of boys, her breath stinking of tequila. When she returned home late in the night her Tommy Hilfiger T-shirt bore a strange mixture of body odours and her Gucci handbag concealed many a secret. 

Dr Jain became more and more moody and Old Mr Jain’s laughs became more mechanical and less frequent. 

“Father Benedict does not deserve to be a lecturer, let alone the HoD,” declared Ms Shikha.  “He’s a disgrace to the teaching fraternity, I mean teaching community.” She had an aversion to the word ‘fraternity’ as it carried a masculine flavour.

“What makes you think so?” The principal wanted to know.

“He’s an alcoholic.”

“Have you ever seen him drunk?”

“But everyone knows it.”

“Has anyone ever seen Father Benedict drunk?”

“You can’t ignore people’s opinions. They also say he smokes a lot.”

“I’m afraid, Ms Bhat, your ears are a trifle too selective.”

“Nowadays there’s another rumour too.”

“I hope you have not originated it.”

“Father Benedict has some unholy alliance with Mallika Jain, the Star Singer,” said Ms Bhat ignoring Father Lawrence’s taunt. “The girl was seen coming out of Father Benedict’s room on more than one occasion by many people.”

“Many people go into Father Benedict’s room and they come out too. What’s wrong with that?”

“But Mallika and her father are not like other people.”

“Her father?” Father Lawrence was visibly shocked.  No one would point an accusing finger at that man. 

“How can you appoint as HoD a person who allows his daughter to be a slut?”

Father Lawrence looked into the eyes of Ms Bhat for a while. Then he said, “Good day, Ms Bhat.”

Ms Bhat met Ms Ritika at the latter’s residence in the evening.  Having condemned the principal’s arrogance in unequivocal terms, she said to her friend, “Let him see, one day I’ll be sitting on that chair, the principal’s chair.”

“Perhaps you shouldn’t have levelled such a serious allegation against Father Benedict,” said Ms Ritika.  “Everyone knows Father Benedict is a good counsellor.  He’s only trying to help out that girl.”

“Yeah, may be, but counselling can turn in any direction at any time, you see. Or we can make it turn.” She winked an eye.  “If you keep gunpowder and a matchbox close by, it needn’t take very long to start a conflagration.”

“But Father Benedict is a wet matchbox, dear.”

They laughed. They chattered.

“When I came in I saw you booking an air ticket on the Internet,” said Ms Bhat. “Going places?”

 “Keep it to yourself, I’m going to New York.”

“Wow! Just you? What’s the idea?”

“To bring a ingenious gift for my husband on our twentieth wedding anniversary.”

“Hey, I’m dying to know, tell me.”

“Plastic surgery.  To tighten it.  Hubby says it’s become too loose. And in New York now there’s a procedure, they can make it absolutely virgin!”

Ms Bhat, like many other people, was aware that there were too many men in Ms Ritika’s life.  Her husband was a rich industrialist who had to spend many nights away from home - for business-related reasons, he said.  He loved the body massages provided by pretty nubile girls in the spas of elite resorts.

When Ms Bhat returned to the lecturers’ quarters Father Benedict was walking with Old Mr Jain in the lawn. “Counsellor with his grandfather-in-law,” she mumbled to herself with a twisted smile.

“Don’t worry,” Father Benedict said to Old Mr Jain, “Mallika will understand. Give her some time.”

Father Benedict didn’t want to tell the old man that his grand-daughter had started experimenting with drugs. The old man had already lost even his mechanical laughs.

“I doubt, Benedict,” said Old Mr Jain. “She’s coming to you merely because we all force her.  The fact is she remains obsessed with herself.”

“Obsession with oneself is the beginning of one’s doom,” Father Benedict was delivering his lecture on Antony and Cleopatra to the final year students.  “When Antony said, ‘Let Rome in Tiber melt, and the wide arch of the rang’d empire fall! Here is my space,” he was ignoring the whole wide world outside his own lust.  And where did it lead him?  In his own words, to ‘Ten thousand harms.’”

Ten thousand harms.

Mallika was slipping into ten thousand harms.  Mr Jain’s moods were becoming unpredictable. Old Mr Jain had lost his laughter and now he was losing his evening walks; his health was deteriorating rapidly.  Ms Ritika was in New York getting her hymen reinstated.  Like Cleopatra destiny had infinite variety.

Father Benedict drank his second and last peg of the day and lit his last cigarette of the day.  He opened The Brothers Karamazov .

Remember, young man, unceasingly, that the science of this world, which has become a great power, has, especially in the last century, analysed everything divine handed down to us in the holy books. After this cruel analysis the learned of this world have nothing left of all that was sacred of old.  But they have only analysed the parts and overlooked the whole, and indeed their blindness is marvellous…

Tomorrow Ms Shikha Bhat will be officially appointed the Head of the Department. Destiny may have many more important positions in store for her.

Father Benedict closed the novel, got up, walked to the window and looked out.  Darkness had enveloped the sky.  He could see the powerful beams of the headlights hurled by the vehicles that rushed and screeched on the road at some distance.