Peter is a 17 (seventeen) year old boy from a small village nestling amidst the green hills of Ukhrul District of Manipur.

He appears to be a quintessential tribal boy but yet not so, for he dared to dream of great achievements and nurture lofty ambitions- the ambition to be a world-famous surgeon, a dream not so very common amongst the children growing up in this all but unknown hamlet in a remote corner of NE India.

Peter’s earliest memories were those of the small log cabin in which he was born, the view of the rolling hills stretching ‘over the horizon, the magnificient sunsets viewed from his rope cradle suspended from the old banyan tree in the courtyard, the squealing of the piglets in the nearby sty and the noise of the family of six in the cramped cabin.

And others were of his bed-ridden grandfather; his wrinkled grandmother, bowed with age, but willingly taking on the burden of the household tasks so that her son and daughter-in-law could work in the few acres of land they farmed; his father- his thin kind face nightly creased with worry as he pondered how to repay his debts; his mother - with his baby sister strapped onto her back, holding his hand as she trudged towards the fields.

Peter’s parents were poor but proud, unwilling to ask any of their relatives for help, working hard to payoff the debts incurred during his grandfather’s medical treatment.

After a prolonged battle for life, when the old gentleman succumbed to the widespread carcinoma invading his body, Peter was eight years old, then an impressionable age, when he decided that he would become a doctor and ensure that no one else’s grandfather suffered a similar painful death.

Despite of their straitened financial position, his parents, endeavoured to secure their son’s dream by scraping together enough to send him to the local missionary school.

Peter studied hard, determined that his parents’ sacrifices should not be in vain and indeed the glowing reports of his teachers spoke volumes for the dedication and application of the boy who topped his classes year after year.

Tall and well-built, the twinkle in the eyes of this otherwise serious-faced youth, betrayed the fun-loving gregarious boy, well-liked by his peers and elders alike, a superb athlete and an enthusiastic participant in the NSS activities of the school. Another future pillar of the nation.

Then came the moment of truth. But now it’s about war of syllabus. The year was 2006.

The rival factions claiming the rights of governance over the hill districts of Manipur had extended their hands towards the educational bastion as well, and the schools hither to fore under the Board of Secondary Education of Manipur were directed to apply for affiliation to the Nagaland Board of Secondary Education.

The conflict which had ripped the peaceful lives of the simple hill folk and made their present a nightmare of extortion, threats and constant fear now contrived to lay a finger on their hopes for the future as well, as the children in their final year at school suddenly found themselves facing the cha-llenge of mastering a completely new syllabus with barely months to go before the examinations.

Peter was one of these children attempting to cha-llenge this sudden hurdle to his dreams. His teachers and parents alike had been confident of his success in the examinations but now, just six months before the Board Examination, his school changed its affiliation from the BSEM to the NBSE and Peter was faced with a syllabus he was ill-prepared to handle.

Days and nights of feverish study ensued, Peter’s father dipped into his failing resources to engage tutors for his son, his mother scrimped and saved from the household expenses so that her son could have all he required for his studies- the new syllabus ca-lled for new books and they were often one too many for this poor family with big dreams.

The examinations commenced and much to his despair, Peter painfully realised that his preparation had been far from being adequate nor complete. Under the aegis of combined student bodies who took up the responsibility of providing accommodation near the examination centre, the children were crowded into rooms where they had little or no opportunity to revise their lessons.

Dogged by home-sickness and a persistent cold head which the freezing conditions of living did much to aggravate, day after day Peter sat in the examination hall trying to recall what he had crammed into his head in such a short time period while not understanding and assimilating the know-ledge but just attaining the ability to parrot-like recite the data.

After the first couple of days of despair, the overwhelmed teenager completed his hurriedly prepared papers in a haze of misery, certain of his failure in the board examinations.

Peter’s fears were realised when the results were announced and his name was not to be found on the list of successful candidates. He had, however, not reckoned the effect this would have on his father; the quiet, kindly man who had been his support throughout, who had strived day and night in the small-holding and deprived himself of all comforts to ensure that his son lacked for nothing.

A day after the board results were declared, Peter’s father died of shock and heart attack, unable to bear the painful reality. The son he had placed all his eternal hopes on had failed him and the father was unable to face a wretched life in which he imagined his neighbors and relatives laughing at him, ridiculing his absurd dreams of having a well-known surgeon for a son when everyone knew that the son’s destiny was a hand-to-mouth existence like his fore-fathers before him.

His dreamy world came crushing down. Peter was shattered by his father’s death. The careworn face of his father in the coffin seemed to accuse him of patricide; he, Peter, had as surely killed his father as if he had placed the noose around his father’s neck himself.

He cursed the system in vain, the unfeeling system where political games took precedence over people’s lives, where affiliation of schools to Education Boards could be made into political issues with scant regard for the difficulties faced by the children who were taking their first step towards a meaningful career, the first step towards achieving their dreams.

Did India and the world lose a brilliant surgeon who wo-uld have saved thousands of lives with his skills? The answer is blowing in the wind of change.

We shall never know, for the vacant eyes of the teenager looking out from his tiny room in the local drug de-addiction centre tell us only of the vast anguish of a tortured soul.

The image of shattered dream. A victim of socio-political circumstances.

Victimised on earth, will they be pardoned in heaven?