American Karna

I had been walking to my second week of class, when I strode across his door. That was the first time I saw him. Legs upfront on the desk, and huge earphones that looped around his ears. No, this is not a story about love. It is about those first few seconds that lead me to being completely fatigued by this intriguing personality.

Let’s call him K. Well, I would look up at K every time since then, as I made my way to class. Each time, I would hunt for answers to questions that I hadn’t even consciously framed in my mind. Occasionally I felt he looked up too, and maybe that made a difference. I do not know.

That was last semester. This spring, I actually have classes with him. Perhaps there was too much dopamine being fired in my brain the first time I saw him enter through the door, that somehow fudge my ability to recall that moment. Although I try to pay attention in class now, I almost involuntarily look in his direction ever so often. He is strategically placed relative to me – to the rest of the world, glancing at him would only mean treating K as another point in my loci of vision. Sometimes, I am given the impression he looks at me as well. In fact, I believe I have caught, and have been caught looking at him. But this arcane game stays between us. It is our special ‘thing’.

I finally got the chance to google him by using a not-so-clever search thread, and found he was a genius, academically so. This was the first bread crumb that I picked up as cue to his character. Over these two months, I have picked up several others, and I can offer a more lucid description to the man that is K.

K is THE expression of arrogance. But it is a kind of arrogance I have never seen so handsomely portrayed. It is subtle, yet it is explosive. It is not the kind of arrogance that diminishes wisdom (as the Arabic proverb goes), since it comes naturally, rather than out of demand or need.

As an analogy, I could present Karna, the famed warrior of India. In Karna’s case, although the arrogance is consciously played, it is of such a perfect shade, that even today, the debate continues: Who truly is the greatest character of the Mahabharatha – Arjuna or Karna?

Well, that's K for you.