This is the story of Ravi, which I would write, as if he is writing it.

Today is going to be a day full of activities. Election results are to be announced today. My Netaji, who is my mentor, I have been living at his bungalow, the MLA residence, here in the capital city of the state, for over 10 years now.

Netaji is from my village and have been MLA for 3 terms now, he is considered to be quite senior and respectable leader in the state, whether his party is in power or not.

I remember the day almost 10 years back when I had done my graduation and Netaji was at his home in our village, where he kept visiting since his family lived there only and it was his constituency. Netaji personally knew my family, like so many other families in his village and also his constituency.

I had scored good marks in my graduation exams and my father took me to the Netaji residence to get his blessings on my becoming a graduate. Netaji had been a witness to my academic record, I also received awards in my school from him.

My father informed Netaji about my result, I touched his feet to get his blessings and while my father expressed his worries regarding my future, Netaji proposed that I can live at his MLA residence, attend to his works as his Personal Secretary and the salary he offered was nice, such that I could not think of  at that time, while I had mostly been confined to my village.

It is since then that I have been living at the official residence of Netaji, looking after his requirements, making his travel and stay arrangements whenever he visited somewhere. It was mostly during the sessions of the assembly only that Netaji lived there otherwise it was I only who lived at the bungalow all the time.

I do not carry very good image about political persons, now that I have lived over 10 years in the capital city, but I still feel that Netaji who is considered among the old guard in politics, still carries some values and has got a good image among the people.

Netaji have been winning elections almost in one-sided way, it was considered that there is nobody in his constituency who could give him a good fight. But it was not so this time. A young person from the opposition had served the local people in many ways before being declared the candidate against him. He put many proposals before the people regarding development and progress in the area and it was considered to be a tough fight this time.

In the meanwhile, politics have become quite dirty, there are fights among the supporters of various candidates and use of undignified language also by some people. Anyway, this time it was being felt that Netaji might lose the elections for the first time in his career. An incident which happened during the campaign actually changed the situation. Netaji had gone to campaign in his area when some person in the crowd threw a stone on him, he was hit in the forehead, was hospitalized and had to skip campaign for 2-3 days and this incident created a great sympathy wave among his electorate, who had been electing him term after term till now.

Anyway, it was almost a month back and by now elections were over and results were to be announced today. Many people would be visiting today and I have to make necessary arrangements for the guests, who are all sure about the victory of Netaji.

An incident happened last night however which have changed the image of my well-wisher and employer Netaji. He has been quite concerned about his image. He sometimes drinks but alone only, may be in my presence. But yesterday some of his friends and campaign in-charges had come they enjoyed drinks and also requested him to join and being thankful to them for their efforts, he also joined them.

He took whiskey in limits only however while they were discussing about elections somebody said ‘that very incident changed the situation completely’, on that Netaji suddenly said, ‘Your people should have acted more wisely. It hit me so hard that for a while I felt whether I would survive or not!’. The person replied, “ For reaping such benefits, this much is necessary, thank God it would get you elected this time.”
On listening all that I felt that I would suddenly fall down, it was such a sudden and big blow for me. It was too late to do anything when I found out who was behind it.

This is my humble submission on the #IndiSpire prompt-Write a short story that starts or ends with-  “It was too late to do anything when I found out who was behind it.” #shortstory

Thanks for reading.

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