Under The Influence!

Little did Arvind know that his minor mockery on a transgender would bring forth havoc in his life, he would have never imagined to mock the transgender under the influence of alcohol.

Arvind ,under the influence of alcohol , had been driving back home with his family members, his son and mother who were seated at the back seat and his wife who was seated next to him. While driving ,he stopped at the red signal and had been waiting for the traffic lights to turn green. After few seconds, he saw a guy, dressed in ladies attire, knocking at his window while clapping hands and had been asking for money for the sake of god and its blessings. Arvind thought the guy couldn’t be a transgender because it didn’t seem to be a genuine one and abused him that he had been faking it for sake of money and tried to shoo him off. That transgender told him that if he doesn’t want to give money it won’t be a big deal for them, but requested him at least not to abuse. But Arvind lost his patience and started accusing that transgender for befouling the society and called them the astray ones’ of the society.

“Go sell off your body, I know this is what you’ll do to live up your dual life style, shameful creatures, I wonder who even comes up to you filthy people, in desire of pleasure”, mocked Arvind.

“You’ve no rights to say such things to us, it’s neither our choice nor we’re doing this willingly, it is your so called society which doesn’t accept us as humans. Give us the opportunity and we’ll outperform the conventional ones’ “, said Aarti, the transgender.

Aarti’s words had hurt Arvind’s ego and in that drunk state he accused the transgender community and regarded them as the evil ones who’ll astray kids. Arvind’s son Rahul had been listening to all this quarrel between his father and the transgender, dreaded on hearing their conversation, he had been praying that this fight doesn’t lead to anything worse than this.

It’s often believed that a curse from a transgender can ruin a person’s life, something akin was about to knock down Arvind, which he had to repent for his life time.

With a sudden outburst of rage, Arvind took an iron rod which was kept near the break of his car and with that rod he hit Aarti on her forehead. Blood started oozing out relentlessly. Arvind moved back and freezed for few seconds. Anger often leads to fatal incidents in life, and Arvind ended up doing the same. Seeing blood, Arvind quickly turned on the engine and drove away leaving Aarti near the traffic signal.

Just because Arvind had numerous contacts , the police just interrogated him and gave him clean chit after making him to shell out money under the table.

On her death bed Aarti cursed Arvind that he would suffer with agony and prayed to God to punish Arvind so that next time he wouldn’t insult anyone.

Rahul was in trauma after that incident, he couldn’t sleep for along time and started imagining weird things, the accident left a great impact on him. He had never seen his father accusing and fighting with anyone, but this time it was beyond his reach to comprehend what had happened at the traffic signal. He started searching about transgender over internet and went over each and every article to grasp knowledge about them. The articles he came across portrayed them to be excluded ones’ of the society, he started to sympathize with their community. It wasn’t just sympathy which created a soft corner for them in his heart but he also started empathizing with the transgender community. He started to enact like them and dress like them so that he could inculcate their each and every action, for reason of his own mental satisfaction. Least he knew that he had been dwelling under escapism, while imagining himself like a transgender.

The curse had taken its own course and was about to come true. Seeing Rahul enacting like transgender, Arvind couldn’t help thinking about the transgender whom he had hit with the rod. He knew that as soon as their community gets to know about Rahul, they’d take him away which was the least thing which he wanted. He started smacking Rahul, told him not to come under the influence of transgender, but still Rahul continued to do as he felt like, he kept on dressing and acting like transgender. He was a normal boy, but the crime committed by his father left a negative impact on his mind and he started empathizing with the transgender community.

Arvind took Rahul to consult with a doctor but he couldn’t help him out of this situation by the prescribed medicines as they miserably failed to work on Rahul. Rahul had internalized each and every action of a transgender and started living as one. Rahul left home to join transgender community and things started getting worse for Arvind. Few months after Rahul’s departure, Arvind lost his wife because of heart attack. Arvind was left all alone repenting his action under the influence of alcohol.