Against All Odds

Chapter 39 Mr Manipulator

Author's POV

Competition:- The activity or condition of striving to gain or win something by defeating or establishing superiority over others.

That's the meaning given by any dictionary. But what they fail to mention is that competition starts at an early stage. Do you know twins compete with each other in the womb in order to survive? So it is common to have a dominant twin who is fit and healthy while the other barely survives.

Abhijay Kantilal Patel won the competition in the womb and was born as a healthy baby while his twin was declared deceased within five minutes of being born because of being undernourished.

He was the fourth kid born after two sons and one daughter in some municipality hospital in a small village, into a very poor family. His father was a farmer who gave birth to kids just so that he would have more helping hands. No one was depressed that one child couldn't survive and that whatever their mother ate, which wasn't much anyways, was all mostly consumed by one kid in the womb.

Abhijay was sent to school only till fifth grade, that too because it was free and their sarpanch had made it mandatory for all kids to attend.

Being a farming family everyone from the family dedicated their whole time or whatever time was left after school to farming. It was a tedious job and not everyone's cup of tea. But when you do it right from childhood you are bound to get a hang of it. And so did Abhijay.

While no one in his family complained about slogging day after day, Abhijay did not like it. Not because he had to work too much but because what they got in return was as good as nothing.

His schooling till fifth grade had taught him the difference between poor and rich. The first question he asked was why does the Sarpanch have a bigger and nicer house than theirs? That's how his fascination with nicer objects started and he was ready to go to any extent to achieve it.

His habit to bend rules started from an early age. No one knew was that he would sit outside the school window without anyone noticing and continued his studies even after his father had discontinued it.

Sneaking into the school was easy. Which small school has guards or security systems? All he had to do was figure out where the sixth grade class was and sit outside it's window. The difficult part was sneaking away from his family. He was supposed to work on their field, not attend school. So he would attend afternoon school when his family would take a lunch break and nap, as the sun would be too hard to work on.

Mind you, it isn't easy to study when you have no books to read from or write into. The only book he could write on was the soil by using a rock or a twig as his pen. He had no one to correct his mistake or to solve his doubts. But what no one knew was that Abhijay was an intelligent boy. He picked up fast and his memory was super good.

Somehow Abhijay spent his childhood studying and working on his father's farm without getting caught. Then came the toughest part - college. He wanted to study but college wasn't in their village. He would have to go to the city for that. It was a two hour ride by bus, but that wasn't the problem. The problem was even though he had passed school he didn't actually pass it and had no certificate in his hand to get admission in any college.

But when Abhijay set his mind on something he would go to any lengths to achieve it.

He found out that the headmaster of the school was cheating on his wife with a school teacher. That was all he needed and that was how he initiated his journey into the world of manipulation or blackmailing, whatever it may be called.

So not only did he have a school passing certificate he was also recommended to the college principal, to be given admission without any donation. Head master wasn't so happy to make a call to waive donation but he didn't have much choice once Abhijay knew that the Principal was headmaster's friend and it was his wife that he was having an affair with.