Disappearance of Pluto

Kundu parked the cab at his owner’s place and returned home. It was already 0830 pm but it was early for him as he would normally get customers till 10 pm through the app. Today there were no customers for an hour.

When he entered his small one-room house with a kitchen partitioned by a thin wall, which could be knocked down with a strong push, he already heard the sound of his little son studying for the exam. He was memorising and the words were tumbling out without any meaning to a listener.

Kundu didn’t understand what he was hearing at first. But, after repetitions of the words and sentences, which is the way children memorize, it struck Kundu, who didn’t go beyond high school, that he had heard these words somewhere and they were very familiar.

The volley of words, which seemed like water gushing out from a tanker, assumed meaning to Kundu. His son had been memorizing that there were eight planets in our solar system.

Kundu didn’t get proper education because he didn’t care about it and no one had time to point this out to him; his parents were hard working with their daily jobs. He did odd jobs as a helping hand at a mechanic shop before becoming a driver. Due to this, he didn’t have any recollections about his school life, either academic or any pranks at school.

But he remembered very clearly that there were nine planets. In a painful way, although! It happened when he was probably a sixth standard student. As usual, in the science class, he was looking outside the window, when the teacher called him by his name and asked him how many planets were rotating in the solar system.

He was not sure for a while — 7,8 or 9. Then he blurted out, “Eight”.

The teacher called him in front of the class near the table. There, he saw the long, brown, shiny bamboo cane. He received exactly nine strokes of canings on his buttocks. Through the tears in his eyes, he could see the mischievous smiles from the first benchers.

That served him well to keep his memory intact for his life. Kundu’s left hand went involuntarily behind his back.

Now it angered Kundu, for some reason, to hear the same mistake from his son. Was it mocking him?

Kundu shouted, “Don’t make mistake, you little fool! There are NINE planets”.

His little boy stopped reading and shivered a little bit. A feeble voice replied, “No Pa, there are eight planets only”.

This infuriated Kundu more. He was about to get up from his chair to slap. The little boy ran into the kitchen with loud sobs.

Kundu heard his wife consoling the little boy. After sometime, the boy started memorizing again the volley of words, but in a subdued voice.

After dinner, his wife unrolled a mat for the little boy to sleep.

When he had slept, his wife came and sat near Kundu in another plastic chair.

“He really got scared of you today. He was not able to prepare for his exam after your scolding. He is now confused whether he should reply eight or nine to the question, if it were asked. Either way, he is going to be punished. Truly, what does it matter to us. Let him go by what the book says. After all, it is prepared by intelligent people in big offices. For us, what matters is the money that you bring home daily. Let him study hard and get a good job. Tomorrow ask him to write eight only.”

Kundu listened and sat motionless for a while. He seemed convinced and nodded his head.

“After all, I was right 25 years back”, he thought. “I also could have studied more”.

He smiled to himself.

Finally, he felt vindicated.