Ghan vs Shyam: A Tale of Foibles

 

Ghan vs Shyam: A Tale of Foibles

Ghan and Shyam are both past fifty now—their hair greying, their knees groaning—but one thing remains stubbornly unchanged: their endless rivalry. They have been locked in a comic contest since the days when their most prized possessions were a clay marble, a wooden spinning top, or a bright red balloon.

It began innocently enough in childhood. If one boy had a shiny new pen, the other had to flaunt a fancier one. If one learned a new trick with a spinning top, the other tried to top it—pun fully intended. And, amusingly enough, if one sported a band-aid over a scratch, the other would stick one on too—even without a wound to show for it!

But things escalated the day they both fell for the same neighbourhood girl, Moosie. She was pretty, clever, and shamelessly opportunistic. Each boy tried to outdo the other with gifts—flowers, chocolates, hair clips—and she graciously accepted them all, professing her "exclusive" affection to each.

Then came the twist: one of them stole the other’s belongings and gave them to Moosie to win her favour. Not to be outdone, the other did the same, pilfering his rival’s things in return. The plan backfired spectacularly when the girl herself was accused of theft. The stolen objects, such as a mouth organ and a toy bioscope, were soon recovered from Moosie’s possession, and the elders themselves took charge of the search-and-seizure operation. Terrified of punishment, both boys denied ever giving her anything and painted Moosie as a greedy liar. The poor girl carried that stigma for the rest of her life, while the boys—rivals just moments earlier—suddenly became allies in the name of self-preservation.

Their fragile truce lasted two weeks. Then came the next skirmish: someone had drawn a cheeky cartoon on the classroom blackboard just before the lady Social Studies teacher entered. The culprit, Ghan, was caught and punished.

Shyam, wearing a halo of false sympathy, brought him a sweet—a lozenge—as consolation. Ghan ate it. Moments later, Shyam danced with glee, announcing that the lozenge had been fished out of a drain.

The teacher overheard. Both boys were punished: Ghan for the cartoon, Shyam for the disgusting prank. But Shyam insisted he’d been punished more severely—“I had stones under my knees for thirty minutes, while you just stood on one leg for fifteen!” Ghan teased him mercilessly, fuelling his rival’s rage.

Revenge brewed. Shyam convinced Ghan that parroting from the textbook wouldn’t earn good marks. He offered to give answers from a different book—from another school’s recommended textbooks—and Ghan, trusting his memory, memorised them faithfully.

During the test, Shyam accused Ghan of cheating. When the teacher checked, Ghan’s answers matched the other book word-for-word. It was only a class test, the teacher remarked, and yet Ghan had copied so shamelessly. If he could resort to unfair means for just ten marks, what would he do in the final exam? Ghan was punished “to reform him,” while Shyam was praised as a vigilant whistle-blower. Their scorecard of rivalry, however, was far from settled.

Years passed in a swirl of small victories and defeats, with revenge as their common theme and constant fuel. Then both married…  and, as if by some divine trickery, each ended up with an equally beautiful wife: Ganga for Ghan and Yamuna for Shyam. The two women quickly became close friends, leaving the men with no edge at all in their imaginary beauty contest.

Meanwhile, Ghan and Shyam left their village behind and moved to the town to pursue white-collar jobs in different offices. Yet when the time came to buy houses, something curious happened. Whether by coincidence or secret consultation, only God knows—but they ended up choosing the same apartment building, on the same floor, in the same wing. Judging by how things turned out, one might suspect that it was Ganga and Yamuna, not Ghan and Shyam, who had really made that decision where to build their nest.

When the old love-rivalry refused to ignite in this new phase—smothered by the easy camaraderie between the two beautiful ladies—even the gods who had been following Ghan and Shyam’s saga of one-upmanship seemed disappointed. Worse still, the two men themselves were let down, robbed of their favourite sport of clever manoeuvres and petty victories.

Then came the next natural arena: inter-child rivalry. However, fate refused to cooperate here as well. Ghan’s wife gave birth to two lovely daughters, while Shyam’s wife had two handsome sons. Instead of competing, they bonded as though they were siblings from the same family—quarrelling briefly over a comic book or a bindi, then sharing a mango slice by slice. They wandered in and out of each other’s homes so freely that neighbours often struggled to remember which child belonged where. The soil for the legendary Ghan-Shyam rivalry, it seemed, had turned barren. Tradition itself looked ready to die out.

Still, their rivalry was destined to take one more unexpected turn. Life shifted course when both men brought their aged mothers from the village to live with them in the city.

Then fate intervened. Within two years, Ghan’s mother passed away, freeing his family from the heavy burden of constant care. But Shyam’s mother, almost immediately after arriving from the village, suffered a paralytic stroke and now required continuous attention. Often, in his heart, Shyam would think—Who knows when this wretched illness will end, and when we will finally be freed from this endless duty of care!

Ghan invited Shyam to his mother’s funeral—it was a matter of customary obligation. As Chanakya once said, “The true test of friendship lies in whether a friend stands by you at the cremation ground.” But Shyam did not go. He stayed away from the funeral, and yet he wept—those tears were so genuine, so unrestrained!

It was truly strange. Ghana, the bereaved son, remained calm, while Shyam—whose mother was still alive—wept bitterly.

“You’re luckier than me, my friend,” he told Ghan. “Your mother is gone. Mine still lives… and keeps us suffering day and night. By sheer good fortune, you’ve stolen a march over me.”

What? One stealing a march over the other? Even over the death of their mothers?

It was the strangest moment of all—the loser mourning the winner. Even death could not end their rivalry; it had merely changed the arena.

And so it goes—from marbles to mothers, from drain-dipped sweets to deadly profound grief—Ghana and Shyam’s rivalry never really ends. Perhaps it isn’t hatred that binds them, but a shared refusal to let the other rest in peace… figuratively, of course.

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By

Ananta Narayan Nanda

Bhubaneswar

24-10-2025

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[Author's Story Book "The Remix of Orchids" is available on Amazon portal accessible here at the link  https://amzn.in/d/f4ndXQ7 ]