The Great Escape

[This is a true incident. The names and places alone have been altered, lest the surviving heroes of this saga suffer social extinction. The story is dedicated to the protagonists themselves.]

It must have been around 1999 or 2000—those years before mobile phones taught loneliness how to glow digitally, before online payments, before food-delivery apps rescued starving dreamers from their dignity. In those days, Guwahati survived on rainwater, political gossip, cheap tea, and the exhausted ambitions of village boys.

Every year, the city swallowed hundreds of them whole. They came carrying tin trunks, harmoniums, theatre dreams, poetry notebooks, parental blessings, and exactly enough money to remain hopeful for three weeks.

Among those pilgrims of uncertainty was Akon. His B.A. result had just come out, and an M.A. held no attraction for him whatsoever. Academic life, according to Akon, had already extracted sufficient suffering from the human spirit. What he wanted now was contract work—real work. Gravel, cement, tenders, labour supply, bridge construction, political handshakes: the full mythology of Assamese contractorhood.

Unfortunately, his father belonged to an older civilization. To that generation, the “contract business” sounded only slightly more respectable than armed robbery.

“No contract work,” his father thundered. “Not one paisa for it.”

And thus began the war. Not the dramatic kind, but the Assamese household variety. Doors were shut with philosophical disappointment. Tea arrived without eye contact. Meals unfolded inside wounded silence. Father and son moved about the house like hostile kingdoms separated by invisible borders, living for several days beneath the cold fog of undeclared emotional warfare.

At last, exhausted by continuous diplomatic intervention from mothers, aunts, and assorted relatives, both sides agreed to a treaty. The father would provide money, but strictly not for contract work.

Now, Akon possessed another dangerous weakness besides ambition: music. He wrote beautiful songs, fragrant with wet soil and unfinished longing. He composed melodies too, and during his college days in North Lakhimpur, had even released a cassette album. One singer—now famous—had first stood before a microphone because of Akon.

So, the family arrived at a desperate conclusion: Send the boy to Guwahati. Perhaps music would save him from becoming a contractor.

History, however, is a professional comedian.

Soon Akon arrived in Guwahati and joined Anupam, another boy from the same village. The two rented a room in Hengrabari and entered that sacred stage of youth where survival itself becomes collaborative theatre. Then came Abhinav, a young man possessed by acting dreams and cinematic fever. Slowly, the rented room transformed into a republic of unfinished destinies. One wrote songs, one chased cinema, and one drifted somewhere between optimism and catastrophe.

Time rolled lazily onward into 2001, and then arrived Akash. Fresh out of matriculation, his eyes still carried that dangerous innocence village boys bring to cities before life educates them properly. He wanted to study drama while attending college.

Barely had Akash settled in when Anupam announced he was going home for a few days. And then, he vanished into domestic comfort with the permanence of a retired monarch.

As days bled into one another, the rent date approached silently, like a tiger through elephant grass. Meanwhile, the money in Akon and Abhinav’s pockets thinned into mythology. What little remained was evaporating rapidly, and their old dues at Deka-da’s grocery shop already stood like a small national debt. If Anupam failed to return soon, starvation itself would become a permanent roommate.

At last, necessity—the greatest dramatist in human history—forced a decision. They would flee. Why remain and receive abuse from the landlord face-to-face when disappearance was still legally available?

Only one problem remained: how does one abscond respectfully while owing rent?

Akon and Abhinav were not ordinary youths. Cornered by crisis, their brains produced strategies with alarming efficiency. As the two scratched their heads and engineered escape plans, Akash entered the room. At first he understood nothing, but then, slowly and terribly, the truth unfolded. The other two intended to flee and leave him behind.

This created a unique danger. Since he belonged to the same village, the landlord would undoubtedly redirect all unpaid frustration, emotional rage, and cosmic resentment directly onto his spine. Poor Akash nearly melted. He pleaded, he begged, and he performed an emotional kirtan before the gods of survival.

“Don’t leave me here!”

Akon and Abhinav exchanged glances. It was true; leaving the boy behind would be like tying a goat beside a leopard’s cave and whispering, Best of luck. Thus, Akash too was inducted into the operation.

Toward evening, Akon and Abhinav came sprinting toward the landlord’s house like men pursued by invisible demons. The landlady opened the door, anxious. “What happened to you boys?”

The answer arrived instantly. “A fight broke out with local boys! They’re searching for us now. If they catch us, we’re finished!”

Fear spreads quickly among kind-hearted people, and the landlady immediately grew concerned. “So what will you do now?”

Abhinav delivered the rehearsed dialogue with a tragic sincerity worthy of national recognition. “Aunty… we’re planning to leave tonight itself before anyone notices. We’ll take Akash too, otherwise those boys may target him since he’s from our village. We’ll come later and pay the rent.”

Ah, the old Assamese weakness: nobody can resist visibly distressed boys. Permission was granted, and the escape was sanctioned.

As darkness gathered, the three fugitives hurriedly packed their belongings and loaded them onto a vehicle. Then, suddenly, catastrophe struck. Anupam’s Woodland shoes had been forgotten. These were not ordinary shoes; they were Woodlands, the kind whose price alone could destroy lifelong friendships.

“Ai! Yudhishthira’s royal sandals are still inside!” Akon whispered in horror.

Thus, two shadowy figures once again crept toward the abandoned rented room. The lights had already been removed, and darkness pooled as thick as tar. Mosquitoes descended with patriotic enthusiasm while both men feared the landlord might return any second. Terrified, they flattened themselves against the floor, crawling through the dark and searching for the sacred shoes like archaeologists excavating forbidden treasure.

At last, after donating enough blood to support Assam’s mosquito population for quite some time, their fingers touched leather. Clutching the Woodlands like recovered scripture, the three escaped triumphantly toward their new rented room in Rajgarh. There, using the pitiful remains of Akash’s money, they somehow paid an advance and arranged one final meal for the night. Abusing the absent Anupam with the tenderness only close friendship permits, they surrendered themselves to sleep.

Morning arrived, and with it, cruel arithmetic.

Abhinav went out searching for work while Akon counted the remaining funds. Ten rupees. That was all. From this ten rupees they needed to send Akash to college, arrange dinner, and continue resembling human beings.

Now, Akon possessed many qualities, but among them was one dangerous trait: responsibility. Instead of panicking, he devised another plan. He handed six rupees to Akash for bus fare and left for studio work.

Later, near the Chandmari flyover, as Akon quietly advanced toward the next phase of his strategy, fate betrayed him. From the opposite direction came Akash—hungry, exhausted, and walking with the tragic looseness of a famine survivor.

Akon’s soul trembled. If the boy joined him now, the remaining money would evaporate. Immediately, he pretended not to notice him and tried slipping past.

Then came the weak voice. “Akon-da… where are you going? I’ll come too.”

It was over. The plan collapsed like wet cardboard. Akon attempted diplomacy. “You go back to the room. I’ve got work.”

“No. I’m coming.”

“You’re tired.”

Still, Akash refused. Hunger sharpens intelligence with terrifying efficiency. Back in the room there was no food, and this man was clearly heading somewhere hopeful. Under no circumstances could he be allowed to escape alone.

Finally, Akon surrendered. “Fine. But listen carefully. I’ve only got four rupees. We can go, but we’ll have to walk back. And don’t ask where we’re going or what we’re doing. Just follow quietly.”

Would a drowning man refuse driftwood? At that moment, Akon was not merely a senior; he was destiny itself.

They got down at Ganeshguri. Then, to Akash’s horror, Akon began walking toward Hengrabari again—toward the very area they had fled from the previous night. Akash felt his heartbeat rise into his throat. What kind of man voluntarily returns to the mouth of danger while owing rent and grocery debt simultaneously? Yet he dared not ask questions; the warning had been clear.

Silently the two walked on until Akon finally stopped before none other than Deka-da’s grocery shop. Akash’s spirit nearly detached from his body.

Deka-da looked up. “Haven’t seen you boys since yesterday. Where’d you disappear to?”

“Will explain later. First give me some things.”

“What things?”

“Three kilos rice. Two kilos potatoes. Half kilo lentils. Half kilo onions.”

The groceries were packed. Then came the masterstroke. “And now you’ll need to lend me twenty rupees.”

Deka-da nearly departed from earthly existence. The groceries already totaled one hundred and fifty rupees, old dues remained unpaid, and now he wanted extra cash? For a moment the poor man stared as though witnessing the collapse of civilization itself.

Then Akon unsheathed his final weapon: emotion. “Deka-da… we’re in terrible trouble. We had to flee after a fight with local boys. We’re staying far away now. There’s nothing to eat tonight. Otherwise, would we come all the way here?”

Still, Deka-da hesitated. So, Akon delivered the fatal blow. “What? Don’t you trust me?”

It was a fatal strike, for Deka-da’s entire business rested upon two foundations: faith and unpaid customer credit. The word trust pierced directly through his emotional defenses. Moments later, the groceries and twenty rupees were handed over.

As the two departed triumphantly, Akash finally regained the ability to speak. “Akon-da… you are a terrifying human being. I truly respect you now.”

But Akon immediately crushed his dreams. “Don’t even think about taking a rickshaw. We’re walking back. This money still has many responsibilities.”

Thus, burdened with groceries, exhaustion, and destiny itself, the two heroes marched through the evening streets of Guwahati toward Forest Gate. The sky had begun sinking into dusk, and human faces were barely recognizable.

And then, a rickshaw stopped beside them.

For one horrifying instant, both boys thought the landlord had arrived. Their souls rose straight into their throats. Then, through the half-light of evening, another familiar face emerged.

“Areee… little brother! You here? Ha! Caught you today. Come, come to my room immediately!”

It was Alokesh-da, a large-hearted man and an old acquaintance from the Lakhimpur days. Once he spread his arms and invited someone, refusing him was beyond the limits of human civilization. Akon panicked inwardly. If they went to his room, their entire miserable condition might be exposed; former roommates cannot be allowed to witness such catastrophic poverty. But refusing Alokesh-da was impossible. No human capable of such a thing had yet been born, nor even properly planned by fate.

Thus, wearing a painfully artificial smile, Akon pretended immense delight at this unexpected encounter. Alokesh-da’s invitation was not a request; it was an executive order.

Soon all three were marching toward a nearby liquor shop with military urgency. The mission: pork meat, alcohol, and a glorious overnight expedition into memory itself.

Before long, preparations began inside Alokesh-da’s legendary Forest Gate room. As the junior-most member, Akash had no permission to board this nostalgia express. He was exiled to the outer room while the two former roommates launched themselves into drunken remembrance. Poor Akash lay flat upon the bed like a refugee of history. Even going to the bathroom required crossing the invisible Radcliffe Line dividing the rooms, which was strictly prohibited.

Meanwhile, fueled by liquor and memory, the nostalgia train thundered backward through time. Its first stop was their college days—the era when a handsome, popular Akon received not one or two, but one hundred and fifty New Year greeting cards from girls every season. Entire monthly allowances vanished merely replying to them. After all, there are certain matters of honor; one cannot simply respond to romantic greeting cards with a smile and disappear.

Yet none of those girls truly moved Akon, because his philosophy of love belonged to another galaxy altogether. For Akon to fall in love, two conditions had to exist. First, the girl must already have been loved by someone else. His logic was simple: “If nobody has loved you before, where is the proof of quality?” Second, the girl must reject him brutally.

This logic may sound insane initially. It did to me, too. But Akon explained it perfectly: “Heartbreak creates sorrow. Sorrow becomes song.” And truly, he wrote beautiful songs.

At some point, the conversation wandered toward an old incident from Lakhimpur, when the two roommates had once gone to sit near the railway tracks in order to “experience tragedy properly.” Why railway tracks? I later developed my own theory. Have you ever seen the two rails meet? They run side by side endlessly—never touching, yet never abandoning each other. Just like joy and sorrow in human life. Parallel, unending, and faithful until the final station.

Fortunately for both friends, Indian Railways arrived late that night too. Otherwise, history might have been written differently.

Meanwhile, poor Akash, abandoned beyond the metaphorical Radcliffe Line, lay writhing in hunger. At some point, sleep carried him away toward dreamland. In his dream, he found himself seated inside Ghilamara Kristi Bhavan before a magnificent dining table. Before him lay mountains of rice, and around him sat countless spectators. Just as he stretched his hand toward salvation, a mournful, hollow sound floated through the air—a guttural, rhythmic gr-rumble… gr-rumble…

At first he thought it was background music. Then realization dawned. No, that was not a violin. That was his own stomach crying in agony.

Now, as I said before, Akon was a responsible fellow. Though mentally wandering far away in the kingdom of nostalgia, he somehow detected the fifty-decibel distress signal emerging from Akash’s stomach like ultrasonic sonar.

“Ah! The boy will faint from hunger.”

By then it was one in the morning. The memory session ended there. The two friends entered the kitchen, assembled whatever food remained on earth, and finally fed themselves and poor Akash before surrendering to sleep.

To shorten the tale, the next morning Akon used the twenty rupees borrowed from Deka-da to send Akash to college again. Then, from the five rupees Alokesh-da had given for cigarettes, Akon heroically confiscated two and a half rupees for household survival, returning triumphantly to Rajgarh carrying provisions like a victorious general returning from war.

And Abhinav? Ah, yes. The previous night, when poor Abhinav had returned and discovered neither Akon nor Akash in the room, he immediately concluded the traitors had gone elsewhere to eat grandly. After desperately searching around, he somehow found two rupees. With that treasure he went to the nearby shop and bought rice—claiming it was for feeding dogs. Then he cooked that rice, ate alone, and slept.

Thus ended another chapter in that immortal university called youth—where hunger became philosophy, friendship became currency, and survival itself was an art form.

Epilogue

Years later, the dust settled, and the boys became men.

Akash became a highly successful theatre actor. Abhinav transitioned into film direction and media. Alokesh became a respected teacher and social worker.

And Akon? The boy whose father had strictly forbidden him from entering the tender business eventually became both a highly successful musician and a highly successful government contractor.

Destiny, ladies and gentlemen, is not a poet. She is the finest stand-up comedian ever created, with a deep penchant for ironic punchlines.

And yes—before you ask—they eventually went back and paid Dekada’s grocery dues, and the landlord’s rent, too.