Abhimanyu Raisingh had always been a ruthless go- getter, the only detail further to be mentioned is, if he could not get them, he snatched them away, “Chuck Bass” being his idol and inspiration, the statement claiming him to be an egomaniac would be devoid of any hyperbole usage. Since childhood, he’s always aspired and endeavoured to achieve the best. He was merely 17 years old, but his intellect was much beyond that. Calling him a full-time villain would be erronious, he simply had some villainous traits which he utilised only when required. Till now, he had always achieved everything that he desired for i.e. everything that came under the tag: “the best”. One such thing was the position of the head boy of VGS, one of the most prestigious schools in the entire nation. From the time he was 10, he had been preparing for it. Establishing himself as able, blameless and proficient in the eyes of all the teachers, procuring straight As in all the fields , offering to carry the whopping cluster of books when he came across Mrs.Arora getting wearied in an attempt to make it to her faculty room, facing the books and her dwindling strength due to old age as the impediments. The list is crudely unceasing. Yet, all these efforts, he later got to know, had become downright otiose. One “fine” day he became acquainted with the recent vicissitudes in the decision making procedure for selecting the headboy and it whacked his heart with no less vigor than the Great Tsunami itself. As it now happened to be, the head boy was to be selected by the student council members. It would be no surprise to know that amidst his crest in establishing the reputation of being the “best” in front of all the teachers, he seldom made an attempt to form bonds with the fellow students. Now his mission was to sculpt the status quo in such a way that the majority of the students in the student council namely Raghav , Kabir, Latika, Aman and finally Ayaan voted for him. Obviously it would be too late to bring into being any ties of camaraderie now so he decided employ, what can be called, his forte – the modus operandi of manipulation. Just like the protagonists of Shakespeare’s novels, all of these “too good” students had some or the other black spot in their character . It took Abhimanyu no time at all to find them out. Raghav had a very bad habit of smoking and a very very good ability of concealing it from others, but that certainly did not work with Abhimanyu. He promised Raghav that he’ll never ever speak of it in front of others or spoil his good boy image if he voted for him in turn. He replicated the same process with Kabir , with the only discrepancy of the weapon being alcohol instead of cigarettes. He was astonished at the ease he was feeling while doing all this, wondering at the same time : isn’t this supposed to be hard? Latika knew him very well and had always detested him from the beginning so he decided to forget about her and focus on the other two. He had seized 2 votes till now, he certainly could not vote for himself, so now he had a week left to conquer at least one more vote. This would authenticate his success. Aman and Ayaan were best friends, moreover, none of them had any sort of material flaws that he could exploit, so he decided to manipulate their feelings instead. For this he “used” his so- called friend , more appropriately described by the hindi term- “chamcha”. They decided to use the same old trick and started chattering loudly exactly when they were sure Aman could hear them. Aman was not the type of person who approved of the habit of eavesdropping, but when two people blabbered loud enough for you to hear without any intention to lower down their voice, and on top of that talked about your own best friend, what else would you do? Hence he listened. Abhimanyu carried on.... “... and he even indirectly asked me to vote for him. I thought he might want me to vote for that other chap, you know, his best friend. But I suppose friendship changes when two best friends aim for the same thing. Anyways, I’ve heard he has convinced the other 4 to vote for him as well. I feel really bad for his friend, I think I’d rather vote for him, at least he is not roaming around asking people to vote for him, but don’t tell anyone. I don’t want to be called a chatterbox spreading secrets around.” He noticed that Aman was disappointed. He decided to initiate a flame on the other side as well before this side decided to have a confrontation so he repeated the same process with Ayaan. Soon came the news of their supposed argument, he had concluded that perhaps they had a fight since they had stopped talking to each other. Yet, he definitely didn’t presume that this would be adequate to complete the job, since he was well cognizant of the fact that they were no fools. He knew such petty quarrelss won’t last long or make much difference. But it happened otherwise, just one day was left and they had not yet reconciled with each other. Abhimanyu had certainly not expected this from them, but then again, what was there to lose anyway. Finally the day came, the ultimate finale, and Voila, everything went exactly the way he expected, if not better. 4 votes were on his favour. He finally achieved his goal. Now all he had to do was focus on his next and the most significant goal : get into IIT. He decided to start the preparation right away. But fate had other plans. His schedule had got so tight-packed that he couldn’t even get time to breath. His multitudinous duties as the headboy like the meetings, the reports, the functions, the tours he had to get involved in as the head of the council, the seminars, (etc , etc, etc) And his preparation for the 12 boards, the class works , the homework , the tutorials (etc, etc, etc) and his IIT crash course gave him no time at all to rest. Just one month had passed since his “new life” had commenced and he was already certain that he was looking forward to a year of hell.
