Category: Articles

Dr. Suresh Kumar Mishra ‘Uratript’

Dr. Suresh Kumar Mishra, widely known in the world of satire by his pen name ‘Uratipt’, expresses his emotions and thoughts with profound honesty and depth. His multifaceted talent is evident in his contributions across various literary genres. He is not only a renowned satirist but also a poet and a children’s author.

His satirical writings have earned him a special place in the literary world. His satire, ‘Shikshak Ki Mout’, went massively viral on the Sahitya Aajtak channel, garnering over a million views and reads—a monumental achievement in the history of Hindi satire. His collection of satires, ‘Ek Tinka Ikyavan Aankhen’ (A Straw and Fifty-One Eyes), is also highly acclaimed and includes his timeless work, ‘Kitabon Ki Antim Yatra’ (The Last Journey of Books). Other celebrated collections include ‘Mayaan Ek, Talwar Anek’ (One Sheath, Many Swords), ‘Gapodi Adda’ (The Gossiper’s Den), and ‘Sab Rang Mein Mere Rang’ (My Colors in Every Hue). His satirical novel, ‘Idhar-Udhar Ke Beech Mein’ (In Between Here and There), is a unique and groundbreaking work focused on the third world.

His significant contributions to literature have been widely recognized. He was honored with the Best Young Creator Award, 2021 by the Telangana Hindi Academy and the Government of Telangana, an award presented by Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao. The Rajasthan Children’s Literature Academy also honored him for his children’s book, ‘Nanhon Ka Srijan Aasmaan’ (The Creative Sky of Little Ones). Additionally, he has received the Vyanga Yatra Ravindranath Tyagi Sopaan Samman and the Sahitya Srijan Samman from Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Dr. Uratript has also played a pivotal role in writing, editing, and coordinating a total of 55 books for the Government of Telangana for primary school, college, and university levels. His work is included in university textbooks in Bihar, Chhattisgarh, and Telangana, where his satirical creations are part of the curriculum. This recognition underscores that young readers can identify and appreciate quality and impactful writing.

Key Accolades and Works

• Viral Satire: ‘Teacher’s Death’ (over 1 million views)
• Satire Collections: ‘Ek Tinka Ikyavan Aankhen’, ‘Mayaan Ek, Talwar Anek’, ‘Gapodi Adda’
• Unique Satirical Novel: ‘Idhar-Udar Ke Beech Mein’
• Awards: Shreshtha Navyuva Samman (Telangana), Sahitya Srijan Samman (PM Modi), and more.
• Educational Contribution: Authored and edited 55 books for the Telangana government.

Some precious moments of life

1. Honoured with ‘Shrestha Navayuvva Rachnakar Samman’ by former Chief Minister of Telangana Government, Shri K. Chandrasekhar Rao.
2. Honoured with Oscar, Grammy, Jnanpith, Sahitya Akademi, Dadasaheb Phalke, Padma Bhushan and many other awards by the most revered Gulzar sahab (Sampurn Singh Kalra), the lighthouse of the world of literature and cinema, during the Sahitya Suman Samman held in Mumbai.
3. Meeting the famous litterateur Shri Vinod Kumar Shukla Ji, honoured with Jnanpith Award.
4. Got the privilege of meeting Mr. Perfectionist of Bollywood, actor Aamir Khan.
5. Meeting the powerful actor Vicky Kaushal on the occasion of being honoured by Vishva Katha Rangmanch.

Today we present his satire The Wedding That Lagged Out: When Love Timed Out On Wi‑Fit.  

☆ Witful Warmth# 64 ☆

☆ Satire ☆ The Wedding That Lagged Out: When Love Timed Out On Wi‑Fi… ☆ Dr. Suresh Kumar Mishra ‘Uratript’ ☆

At the very first hearing, the whole city sobbed—on the court’s streaming screen, the judge’s face froze into polite squares, and the bride and groom’s love jammed at “Reconnecting… Retrying…,” like a dying harmonium wheezing for breath. The boy pleaded, “My Lord, we upgraded the data plan,” the girl confessed, “I placed the router near the basil plant and waved incense,” and yet the seven firewalls of matrimony vanished into packet loss. The priest had sent mantras as voice notes; rice emojis showered like confetti; the garland fell, not on necks, but into a server’s hungry cache. Witnesses lived inside a WhatsApp group; someone typed “Jai!” a hundred and eight times, someone pasted “Om” like cheap wallpaper, but the priest’s last “Sampannam” burned to ash in buffering. Love these days is like signal strength—five bars displayed, call still drops. The court ruled: “Where seven steps were promised, seven kilobytes did not move—marriage annulled.” The attempt of affection rides a hotspot; the sacrament sulks in airplane mode. The clerks stamped a PDF, the registry hiccupped, and two families learned that romance has a progress bar now, and it spins longest when hearts are most afraid to look at each other.

Mourning happened through memes. Grandma sighed, “In our time, the hearth lit the rounds; now even the hearth is smart—ask Alexa to blow and it learns your sorrow.” The groom’s uncle lifted a jalebi like a philosophical question: “When the net fails, bonds fail; when it works, relations jump the railing and land in the DM.” The lights twitched on the shamiana, the DJ pounded drums like a debt collector, and the beat broke exactly where the bride’s netted sari snagged on a button of fate. This is the new society: mangalsutras weighed in cloud storage, vermillion calibrated by user interface, tenderness filtered to match the venue lighting. Autocorrect turns “in‑laws” into “in‑lows.” An old villager said, “Good it ended; at least no loans piled up.” A city boy whispered, “Bad Wi‑Fi bricked my heart.” Hearts, ah—upgraded to devices, never catching the route, only stuck in routing. Children asked, “Grandma, what is love?” She shut the phone and said, “That which connects even without signal. That.” Outside, a florist tied petals into silence. Inside, two mothers waited for the next notification: grief.

Government studied the crisis systematically; a committee rose like a damp monsoon: The National Commission for Marital Connectivity. Conclusions were visionary: replace seven circumambulations with seven backup networks—two telecoms, two wifis, a neighbor’s password, a brother‑in‑law’s hotspot, and the temple’s free bandwidth as holy prasad. New curriculum for priests: Chanting With Latency, Blessings Under Low Bandwidth, and Handshake Protocols For Shy Routers. Dowry modernized: mesh routers, signal boosters, surge protectors for in‑law tempers. A muhurat app blinked: “Your karma is 5G; your Mars affliction reduced to 2.4 GHz.” Behold the reconsecration: relationships tested by ping; lifelong commitment rebranded as speed test. Will the first night be Netflix And Marriage? Or will bandwidth, like virtue, return to buffering at the decisive moment? The aunties formed a focus group: what’s the right incense for packet loss? The uncles formed a panel: whose terrace gets the external antenna? Reform marches on: priests get boom mics, brides get ring lights, and grooms get tutorials on holding eye contact without checking the chat. The great question of civilization is now a small cogwheel: will it ever stop spinning?

Harishankar Parsai would have chuckled and stabbed: “We modernized marriage so thoroughly that the human inside it went obsolete.” Now, the temperature of love is printed on the router’s heat sink. The shoulders that carried society have been replaced by a plastic pillar with a blinking green confession light; in that soft pulse, we hung our trust. The dharma of bonding lives inside the terms and conditions—all scroll, all accept, none read—like a groom nodding yes without hearing the vow’s grammar. This era does not want truth; it wants signal. Not even honest signal—just the illusion, those proud, lying bars. A good day is when all bars glow, and a bad day is when the soul realizes a full‑bar lie still drops when the room goes quiet. The tragedy is basic: where conversation breaks, the first death is not Wi‑Fi but truth. After truth, humor. After humor, patience. Then, in the rubble, a toy—plastic, blinking—pretends to be hope. And the city buys three of them, one for each floor, so that disappointment can sync.

A counselor appeared with the tone of a rainstorm promising a harvest. “Virtual marriages do not fail because of technology,” he claimed, “but because the social design forgot the spinal cord of intimacy.” Quite right. We extracted the marrow of selfhood and turned union into content. Rounds became “status,” henna a “story,” vermillion a filter that stains nothing but the memory card. The sin was never a dropped line; the failing was that two minds had been offline for months—performing together, speaking alone. Seven vows turned into seven slides—Our Journey, Our Pets, Our Sunset, Our Sponsors. The QR code trembled under the weight of laddus. In a one‑second lag, a thousand days of planning folded like a cheap canopy. The bride didn’t lose kohl; the cloud drive leaked. The groom did not change conviction; he changed passwords. Parsai’s question stings: “After slicing love into pixels, how dare we file a complaint that the image came out blurry?” If a vow echoes only into a microphone, the god of acoustics, not conscience, officiates.

The judgment was both historic and clownish. “Unstable net, unstable knot,” wrote the law, tucking morality into a side drawer and spooning the warm body of technology for comfort. Courts go live; life is recorded. The bench inquired, “Did you try alternate connections?” The counsel argued, “My Lord, we had premium romance subscription.” Observe the cartography: love once spent centuries mapping a garden; now it is confused with tariff slabs. The champa of memory has been replaced by the blue of “connecting,” not tears but a screen that refuses to learn the taste of salt. Still, in this absurdity glints a splinter of sense: when a bond is perched on a signal alone, justice turns into a traffic light for data packets. The human stands at red until the joint venture of telecom and fate flips to green. That wait is not justice; it is queueing theory performed on a heart. And in the queue, every polite citizen grows old, then civilized, then slightly cruel.

Families, veteran improvisers, kneaded sorrow into discounts. Relatives sought a refund under the “Net‑Fellowship Package.” The caterer offered sweet diplomacy: “Hot milk jalebi—your sadness will caramelize.” The photographer smiled without mercy: “No classic candids, sir, but many candid errors—memes guaranteed.” Bridesmaids formed a parliament; verdict: “Men who live in airplane mode will one day actually take off.” A mother wiped her daughter’s face with the end of a future and said, “Find the Wi‑Fi of the mind, child—the one that crosses rooms without a router.” That sentence was a loaf of compassion and a pinch of satire, baked for a hungry generation that mistakes speed for promise. Society, measuring its most private ritual with bandwidth, will suffocate its vows like lungs learning to be modest in a polluted city. We will hunt for chargers during ceremonies where ancestors hunted for courage. And every socket will be already occupied by the decorations.

Solutions? Parsai’s needle pricks where it heals: don’t replace devices; replace habits. Two lessons for the couple: first, thirty minutes of talking without screens; second, lift a complaint only after looking directly into the other’s eyes. Let the rounds happen, but in the temple of the chest: seven offline vows—listen, speak, pause, hold, yield, change, keep. Priests should lace mantras with four pockets of silence—where the soul, not the signal, answers. Build a “slow lane” into the celebration where cameras are blind and memory has the room to grow tall. Even the state can legislate poetry: “Where laughter resonates, keep the speakers fewer; where conversation is true, microphones are redundant.” Bake patience into the menu; print humility on the invite. Make one friend the keeper of gossip, whose only duty is to let it starve. And plant basil next to the router if it pleases the elders—but water the basil more.

And if, in spite of goodwill, the net falls again and the courts chant that old chorus—annulled—remember this: love is not the court’s clerk. It does not stamp, staple, and file; it reads pulses like a musician listens to rain. Bonds that collapse when a router sneezes were never engineered to withstand weather. Bonds that sit together after the outage keep a quiet backup on the threshold of the mind. Let tears go where they must—they mourn not the loss of network but the loss of nerve. One day, when the sun sketches a gentle geometry on a sari’s edge, a knock will happen—no OTP, no login—and someone will ask, “Sit?” That is where the real marriage begins, with a blue circle that says “understanding,” not “connecting,” and with signals that come from chairs pulled closer, not towers pushed higher.

A last small note to society: stop turning weddings into tech support. The priest is not an IT helpdesk; the bride and groom are not customers; the family is not a call center. And love is not a data plan. Love is either unlimited, or it is counterfeit. Today’s annulments “due to poor Wi‑Fi” are case studies of our inner low coverage—where the towers of trust, restraint, and dialogue have collapsed. Raise them again—not brick by brick, but shoulder by shoulder. Then watch the weakest signal work wonders, because sitting near and speaking softly still performs the miracle that seven rounds once promised. If someone asks, “Got net?” smile and say, “Got heart.” That is the only password worth remembering, the only prasad that doesn’t expire, the only plan that never throttles at midnight when the house grows honest.

****

© Dr. Suresh Kumar Mishra ‘Uratript’

Contact : Mo. +91 73 8657 8657, Email : drskm786@gmail.com

Dr. Suresh Kumar Mishra ‘Uratript’

Dr. Suresh Kumar Mishra, known for his wit and wisdom, is a prolific writer, renowned satirist, children’s literature author, and poet. He has undertaken the monumental task of writing, editing, and coordinating a total of 55 books for the Telangana government at the primary school, college, and university levels. His editorial endeavors also include online editions of works by Acharya Ramchandra Shukla.

As a celebrated satirist, Dr. Suresh Kumar Mishra has carved a niche for himself, with over eight million viewers, readers, and listeners tuning in to his literary musings on the demise of a teacher on the Sahitya AajTak channel. His contributions have earned him prestigious accolades such as the Telangana Hindi Academy’s Shreshtha Navyuva Rachnakaar Samman in 2021, presented by the honorable Chief Minister of Telangana, Mr. Chandrashekhar Rao. He has also been honored with the Vyangya Yatra Ravindranath Tyagi Stairway Award and the Sahitya Srijan Samman, alongside recognition from Prime Minister Narendra Modi and various other esteemed institutions.

Dr. Suresh Kumar Mishra’s journey is not merely one of literary accomplishments but also a testament to his unwavering dedication, creativity, and profound impact on society. His story inspires us to strive for excellence, to use our talents for the betterment of others, and to leave an indelible mark on the world.

Some precious moments of life

1. Honoured with ‘Shrestha Navayuvva Rachnakar Samman’ by former Chief Minister of Telangana Government, Shri K. Chandrasekhar Rao.
2. Honoured with Oscar, Grammy, Jnanpith, Sahitya Akademi, Dadasaheb Phalke, Padma Bhushan and many other awards by the most revered Gulzar sahab (Sampurn Singh Kalra), the lighthouse of the world of literature and cinema, during the Sahitya Suman Samman held in Mumbai.
3. Meeting the famous litterateur Shri Vinod Kumar Shukla Ji, honoured with Jnanpith Award.
4. Got the privilege of meeting Mr. Perfectionist of Bollywood, actor Aamir Khan.
5. Meeting the powerful actor Vicky Kaushal on the occasion of being honoured by Vishva Katha Rangmanch.

Today we present his satire The Felicitation Ceremony of Sixty-Year-Old Mischief.  

☆ Witful Warmth# 63 ☆

☆ Satire ☆ The Felicitation Ceremony of Sixty-Year-Old Mischief… ☆ Dr. Suresh Kumar Mishra ‘Uratript’ ☆

From dusty villages to the capital itself, there was a buzz: the Sahitya Akademi was about to host a “historic” program. The declared theme—“The Transitional Phase of Hindi Satire.” But the real spice lay elsewhere: the welcome speech was to be delivered by none other than the Secretary himself, whose mischief had turned a glorious sixty this year. Now you may ask—how can mischief ever grow old? Dear sir, in this land everything is cause for celebration. Some pour ghee in temples, some blow out candles on birthdays, and some—having made people’s lives hell for a good sixty years—get their mischief felicitated. The Akademi was all set to print invitations saying—“Diamond Jubilee of the Secretary’s Mischief.” But then they feared a cart of rotten tomatoes might decorate the hall’s entrance, so they softened it to the safer title of “Transitional Phase.”

On the day of the grand function, the hall looked like a theatre of absurdity. Outside, giant hoardings screamed—“Welcome the Transitional Phase!” Inside, a velvet-red table gleamed with flowers arranged into the number “60.” The Secretary waddled in, belly leading the way, and collapsed into the chair like a crowned king of Mischief on the day of coronation. On the wall, Parsai’s portrait hung, his eyes seemingly whispering, “Look at this—the offspring of my satire adorning with garlands the very man throttling its neck!” The litterateurs seated in the audience muffled their laughter, but not because the joke was funny—because they feared shoes might really start flying. The anchor on the mic boomed, “Today, present among us is a personality of great experience, our venerable Secretary!” I bit my tongue. Oh, to shout aloud—“Experience in what? Theft? Hypocrisy? Or simply decades of mischief?”

When the Secretary rose to speak, even the tube-lights on stage flickered nervously. Behind those thick glasses, his eyes glistened with the polished shamelessness of a thief declaring, “I’m here to dispense justice.” He began, “Friends, satire is going through a difficult transitional phase. We must preserve it.” The hall burst into applause. Just imagine: the man whose antics stick to every street corner like unpaid electricity bills, now sermonizing about saving satire! This is the real infection—when scoundrels start preaching piety. Each word from his mouth felt tugged by some invisible hand of falsehood, and the audience swallowed it whole as if it were divine truth.

The real comedy, however, was the row of writers nodding on stage. One bobbed his head mechanically—as though agreeing was a childhood habit. Another bowed so incessantly it felt like he was attending a villain’s wedding, willy-nilly playing the role of a dancing guest. One writer whispered over his teacup, “Friend, sharing the stage is mere compulsion.” Another muttered, “We’re here for literature, not the man.” It sounded as though they’d equated man with a sewer and literature with the Ganges, and happily stirred both into the same pot. This “transition” was not illness of language—it was a cold in the very soul. Satire, strong as steel in Parsai’s hands, was now wrapped and suffocated in the coffin of silence, while the Secretary sat beaming—his sixty years of mischief officially academic.

The richest satire, though, festered outside in the crowd. People came armed with baskets of rotten eggs, dead tomatoes, and ancient slippers. “This is the true way to welcome him,” someone chuckled. Another whispered, “Wait and watch—the speech will soon be decorated with red eggs.” But the guards were vigilant, standing stiff as if they were democracy’s gatekeepers, confiscating shoes like contraband and tossing them into a lockup. Inside, the Secretary smoothed out the creases in his pristine white kurta, while outside, democracy’s voice was stripped barefoot. Such is the state of satire today: when shoes on your feet are blessed for temple darshan, but the moment the same shoes arc majestically toward a rogue’s forehead, the hall calls it an outrage. The air inside smelled like rotten potatoes hidden under roses.

The Secretary’s speech dragged on and on. Louder even than his words was his laughter—that laughter bought with contractors’ cash, that laughter that salts the wounds of the wronged, that laughter awarded for six decades of perfected deceit. The writers sat listening as though the laughter itself were a bitter medicine they were compelled to swallow. Behind their frozen faces lurked fear. They knew too well—oppose him, and the foreword to their next book will be penned by someone else entirely. Better keep the pen locked in the pocket. Satire was no longer literature; it had withered into the stench of this hall. Each of his sentences crackled like an electric shock—writers clapped, not out of agreement, but as living insulators protecting themselves from electrocution.

If one calls this a “transition,” then this it is: the court silent, the stage dumb, the victim abandoned. Her cries clung mute to the peeling walls like forgotten posters. Each clap in the hall dropped another tear from her eyes. In those tears drowned pages of literature, while floating upon them was the mocking silhouette of his laughter. Shoes waited outside for justice, but inside, satire was lynched. This was no academic ceremony—it was satire’s funeral procession. Only difference—here the mourners showered not flowers but empty words, and the corpse was the pen itself, once sharpened by Parsai, now rusted into a party spoon tucked in the Secretary’s pocket.

When the event concluded, the writers eagerly posed for photographs. The Secretary smiled, flowers rained, and shoes languished in their lock-up prison, denied their rightful protest. Off to the side stood a woman, silent. Swollen eyes, cracked lips, broken heart—she was the one branded guilty. Her tears alone scripted the real text of this ceremony. On stage claps thundered, but within her chest roared endless screams. It was in that scream that satire’s final word was etched: “The Secretary’s mischief may have completed sixty years, but justice remains an orphan.” And as we exited the hall, it seemed Parsai himself whispered from the walls—“Satire is dead, my friends. Not even shoes were granted to perform its last rites.” The echo of that slap still lingered in the air

****

© Dr. Suresh Kumar Mishra ‘Uratript’

Contact : Mo. +91 73 8657 8657, Email : drskm786@gmail.com

Dr. Suresh Kumar Mishra ‘Uratript’

Dr. Suresh Kumar Mishra, known for his wit and wisdom, is a prolific writer, renowned satirist, children’s literature author, and poet. He has undertaken the monumental task of writing, editing, and coordinating a total of 55 books for the Telangana government at the primary school, college, and university levels. His editorial endeavors also include online editions of works by Acharya Ramchandra Shukla.

As a celebrated satirist, Dr. Suresh Kumar Mishra has carved a niche for himself, with over eight million viewers, readers, and listeners tuning in to his literary musings on the demise of a teacher on the Sahitya AajTak channel. His contributions have earned him prestigious accolades such as the Telangana Hindi Academy’s Shreshtha Navyuva Rachnakaar Samman in 2021, presented by the honorable Chief Minister of Telangana, Mr. Chandrashekhar Rao. He has also been honored with the Vyangya Yatra Ravindranath Tyagi Stairway Award and the Sahitya Srijan Samman, alongside recognition from Prime Minister Narendra Modi and various other esteemed institutions.

Dr. Suresh Kumar Mishra’s journey is not merely one of literary accomplishments but also a testament to his unwavering dedication, creativity, and profound impact on society. His story inspires us to strive for excellence, to use our talents for the betterment of others, and to leave an indelible mark on the world.

Some precious moments of life

1. Honoured with ‘Shrestha Navayuvva Rachnakar Samman’ by former Chief Minister of Telangana Government, Shri K. Chandrasekhar Rao.
2. Honoured with Oscar, Grammy, Jnanpith, Sahitya Akademi, Dadasaheb Phalke, Padma Bhushan and many other awards by the most revered Gulzar sahab (Sampurn Singh Kalra), the lighthouse of the world of literature and cinema, during the Sahitya Suman Samman held in Mumbai.
3. Meeting the famous litterateur Shri Vinod Kumar Shukla Ji, honoured with Jnanpith Award.
4. Got the privilege of meeting Mr. Perfectionist of Bollywood, actor Aamir Khan.
5. Meeting the powerful actor Vicky Kaushal on the occasion of being honoured by Vishva Katha Rangmanch.

Today we present his satire The Demise of a Merit-Less Soul.  

☆ Witful Warmth# 62 ☆

☆ Satire ☆ The Demise of a Merit-Less Soul… ☆ Dr. Suresh Kumar Mishra ‘Uratript’ ☆

The news arrived not as a tragedy, but as a statistical anomaly. It was a Tuesday morning when the principal’s office received the official report on the demise of Student Number 16, a fact conveyed in a tone befitting a clerical error. The student, it was noted, had simply ceased to be. His final moments were not of despair, but of a quiet, meticulous calculation of failure. His mind, having processed the impossibility of achieving a 99.8% average, had logically concluded that a successful life was no longer a viable option. It was a pragmatic decision, devoid of melodrama or romanticism. The school, in its infinite wisdom, immediately formed an Ad Hoc Committee for the Management of Unforeseen Demises. The committee’s primary task was not to mourn or to understand, but to ensure that the student’s failure did not tarnish the school’s pristine record. The chairman, a man with a mind as sharp and as cold as a freshly honed pencil, instructed the clerk to remove the student’s file from the “Exemplary” category and place it directly into the “Statistical Anomaly” box. The whole affair was handled with the same cold efficiency as a bank processing a loan rejection.

The student’s parents, upon hearing the news, did not shed a single tear. Tears, they reasoned, were a useless expenditure of valuable bodily fluids. Their initial reaction was a financial one. “All that money,” the father lamented, “spent on coaching classes, on tutors for mathematics and physics, on the late-night snacks to fuel his futile efforts. It’s a complete loss of investment. The ROI is zero, perhaps even negative.” The mother, ever the pragmatist, immediately called the tuition center to demand a refund. “My son’s demise,” she explained to the bewildered receptionist, “is a clear indication of your teaching’s ineffectiveness. The guarantee was for success, not for a permanent withdrawal from the rat race.” They held a small, formal gathering where relatives offered condolences not on the loss of life, but on the loss of a future doctor or engineer. “Such a pity,” an aunt sighed, “all that potential, all those perfectly good notebooks, now wasted.” The entire conversation revolved around the monetary value of a life that had, in their eyes, become an economic liability.

The neighbors, who had previously praised the student as a diligent boy with a promising future, now spoke of him in hushed, judgmental tones. He was no longer a symbol of hope but a cautionary tale, a social scarecrow erected to frighten their own children into submission. “You see what happens,” a father whispered to his son, his voice thick with implied threat, “when you don’t score well? The pressure becomes too much. It’s better to just study hard now and avoid such an outcome.” The story of Student Number 16 was added to the national curriculum of parental warnings, alongside anecdotes of children who had run away from home for daring to express an interest in art or music. His demise, in a strange, bureaucratic twist of fate, had finally given his life a purpose: to serve as a negative example. He was now more useful to society as a statistic of failure than he ever was as a living, breathing human being. His existence, a brief and frantic sprint toward a finish line he could never reach, had culminated in a final, impactful act of non-existence that served the very system that had consumed him.

The local government, ever eager to be seen as proactive, swiftly announced the formation of the “Bureaucracy of Student Well-being and Protocol for Terminal Academic Exhaustion.” The new department was a shining example of officialdom at its finest: an elaborate building, a dedicated staff, and a mountain of paperwork. The first order of business was to draft a 500-page report on the incident, a document that would contain not a single word about the human cost. The report would instead focus on procedural failures, such as the student’s failure to submit a “Pre-Demise Intention Form” and the school’s neglect in providing a “Certified Stress Mitigation Counselor” with a valid license to counsel. The report’s conclusion was not to recommend a change in the education system, but to suggest a new, mandatory module on “Emotional Resilience and the Proper Filing of Grievances” for all students. The student’s demise was thus transformed from a tragedy into a job-creation scheme, an administrative triumph of form over substance.

The media, sensing a juicy story, descended like vultures on the school. A television news anchor, his face a perfect mask of manufactured concern, delivered a dramatic monologue. “Today,” he declared, “we mourn the loss of a young life, a victim of our cutthroat education system.” The segment then seamlessly cut to a commercial break for a new, “stress-free” online tutoring service. The debate on the news channels was not about the pressures on students, but about whether the student’s demise was a political conspiracy or a case of poor parenting. Experts with impressive-sounding degrees were brought in to pontificate on the psychology of failure, while the student’s actual humanity was completely lost in the noise. His life story was edited, polished, and packaged for maximum viewership, stripped of all its complexity and emotional truth. He was no longer a person who had suffered, but a media product to be consumed and discussed for a week before the next sensational story replaced him. The public, for its part, absorbed the drama and moved on, their collective conscience soothed by the brief, performative act of “caring.”

In a final act of grotesque absurdity, the school decided to posthumously award Student Number 16 with the “Pinnacle of Academic Dedication” medal. The principal, addressing a solemn assembly, praised the student’s “unwavering commitment to the pursuit of excellence, a commitment so profound that he was willing to make the ultimate sacrifice for the sanctity of the academic system.” The medal, a shiny, circular piece of metal, was accepted by his parents who, for the first time, smiled. Their son had finally brought them something of value—a shiny token and a fleeting moment of social prestige. The school also announced the establishment of a new “Student Demise Prevention Cell,” but the official notice for the cell’s inauguration was printed on the same page as a full-page advertisement for the school’s new, advanced robotics lab. The cell’s first act was to issue a new, comprehensive set of forms for students to fill out regarding their mental state, a bureaucratic solution to a human problem.

The demise of Student Number 16, in the end, was not a sad event. It was, instead, a logistical success. The school’s reputation was saved, the government had created a new department, the parents had received a consolation prize, and the media had a week’s worth of content. His story became a footnote in the grand, unfeeling ledger of the education system, a small, inconsequential line item in the column marked “Failed Experiments.” His memory was preserved not as a person who had dreamed, struggled, and fallen, but as a statistical object lesson for the next generation of students. He was a martyr to a cause that didn’t care about him, a sacrifice offered on the altar of a system that demanded perfection but offered no grace. The system had won. The demise of the student was a small price to pay for the smooth, uninterrupted functioning of the machine.

And so, life went on. The school bell rang, the students crammed for their exams, and the parents continued to invest in a future of predictable returns. The story of Student Number 16 was filed away in a drawer, alongside other irrelevant documents. The irony of it all was that his demise, which should have served as a wake-up call, had instead been absorbed by the very system it was a symptom of. His quiet exit had become just another part of the noise. And somewhere, another student, with tired eyes and a mind full of impossible expectations, was calculating their own odds of survival. The cycle had been completed, the lesson had been taught, and the machine, well-oiled by apathy and ambition, was ready for its next meal.

****

© Dr. Suresh Kumar Mishra ‘Uratript’

Contact : Mo. +91 73 8657 8657, Email : drskm786@gmail.com