satire: None HAD entered none HAS entered

 

 

When I was a kid, every time I scored low marks, my parents and teachers had one thing in common: their synchronized choir of disappointment.

“It’s hard to tell what’s inside his head!”

“Something’s definitely has entered his head!”

My parents, of course, were little more specific. They didn’t just say something — they declared with full confidence that my skull was stuffed either with cow dung or dry hay.

 

So, I memorized my defense line early in life:

No…No one’s inside my head! No one has entered inside my head! And I tried my best to prove it.

 

Then came the teenage years. I started writing kiddish poetry — a grave mistake in any low middle class traditional Indian household. My parents were convinced that the girl next door had invaded my brain and that until, exorcised, my life was doomed. I kept telling them, “No one had entered, no one has entered. More I repeated my defense, more they refused to believe me and were convinced all the more. Much like average citizens refusing to believe any politician’s denial in this regard.

 

Time passed, I found a job/my livelihood, and a new set of questions appeared. Everyone wanted to know my salary. When I told them, half of them thought it was too much. “Who knows what spirit’s gotten into him? Such big dreams! A useless day-dreamer!” they’d say.

And I’d repeat my line like a seasoned politician facing the press: ‘No one’s inside, no one had entered no one has entered. They’d laugh. No one believed me. What could I do? Deny it, obviously.

 

Then life gave me new challenges — the lazy kind. My parents would say, “There’s a mouse in the house, we hear noises from the kitchen!” And I’d proudly declare, “Impossible! No one’s in there, nothing’s in there!” I had become so used to saying this line that it popped out automatically, like a reflex. Eventually, people stopped asking me questions altogether. Neither at home nor at work did anyone expect anything from me. 

 

At the office, my boss once said, “Your table is piled with files — urgent ones too! They must be gathering dust in your cupboard.” And there I went again: ‘No one’s inside, nothing’s inside! 'By now, people had started using my sentence to describe me — not the files. of course, every magic trick has an expiry date. Slowly, my secrets began to tumble down— quite literally. The missing files reappeared, the mice in the kitchen multiplied into a full-fledged colony, and worst of all, my wife found out about my old girlfriend. This time I couldn’t possibly say, ‘No one’s inside…’ I was caught red-handed, technically and emotionally.

 

People no longer said anything face to face, but I could read it in their eyes — they knew that whatever I denied was exactly what was true. My reputation, so far as my mice eaten honesty is concerned, it had collapsed and refused to rise like a beaten boxer in the ring. 

 

Even my friends, who once treated me reasonably truthful    began to avoid me. One of them, in his poetic cruelty, quoted some stupid poetry to run me further down. And I could only nod, muttering my eternal slogan under my breath. No one’s inside… nothing is inside no one had entered no one has entered.