This is a short story with a long message. If you get it, you are blessed, if not, read again.

He called me by the name I had loathed ever since I was a kindergarten student.

I did not know its meaning but I could make out that I was being looked down upon when I had heard this word thrown upon me for the first time by a sneering group of senior boys in the school bus.

And how vividly I recall that day from my early adolescent years when I encountered that situation during an inter-school cricket match! I was humiliated with the word when the captain of my team was run out due to my mistake and we lost the match. I had rushed home and cried silently after locking myself in the washroom. And my mother had made so many futile attempts to know why I was crying after I returning from the school grounds that afternoon. That was the last time I cried though. I used to play really well but I discontinued playing the sport that afternoon.

The number of instances surged over time when someone mocked me, calling me that name. Believe me, it had affected my blood the way quinine affects the blood cells to kill malaria parasites. I have actually noticed mosquitoes dying after pulling a sup from my blood vessels.

And how can you overlook the muscles that I wear today? It’s not that I have been a gym enthusiast from the beginning. It’s only after a couple of those muscle-testing chances when I tried to show some resistance to their bullying that I felt a need to respond. All at the gym envied my weight-lifting capabilities. They could only dream of carrying the weight I lifted in each set.

I understood that others fear you as a result of the power you possess. Nobody dared taking that name in front of me. I overheard the noun at my back sometimes but always tried not to look back and let go. Whenever the fumes of fury began to rise, I would hit the gym or pedal kilometers on a deserted road to discharge the pus that the word would fill in the pores of my soul.

But I had begun to be afraid of the rage sulking inside me more than anything that outside me. I made a promise to myself that I would let the word strengthen me, make me tougher and more patient against the hardships life has in store.

Yet today, when this man called me by the same name in front of my child… the dormant froth of bitter anger at humiliation resurfaced. This was unlike anything I had experienced. It was like  some hormones had taken the backseat letting others to take the wheel. I could never feel that these people I come across everyday are my compatriots, and probably, I did not want my child to begin thinking on the lines I had been made to.

I have never said anything wrong to anyone all my life. They have been doing it, and persistently. I want to know what gives them the right to behave as if they are the primal landlords of the nation, and I some kind of loathsome vermin.

Yes, I hit that man. But it was just a blow. I did not know it would be fatal for him. I could witness drops of my bitter blood coming together in the veins crisscrossing my biceps and flowing down to the fist where the lava of my rage had already accumulated. This all must have erupted together in that single blow.

But judge sahib! If circumcision is a part of my faith, why should one have a right to call me …?