Chapter 11: The Mentor’s Dilemma
947 Words
The room was buzzing with voices, pens scratching across paper, and quiet murmurs of correction. What once was a workers' relief room had now become a writing space, with walls decorated by handmade posters:
“Write so the world can’t ignore you.”
“Truth isn’t dangerous. Silence is."
Aarav sat in the back corner, pretending to revise something in his notebook, but really watching the boy across the room.
Ravi.
Seventeen. Tall. A restless mix of brilliance and defiance. A former factory apprentice who now came to every workshop, every circle, every late-night tea gathering to write.
His stories were raw and wild. He didn’t know grammar, but he knew pain, and that made his words sharper than any academic’s.
That day, Ravi read aloud a piece about a co-worker named Pintu who had gone missing after speaking up about toxic chemical exposure.
“He said it burned his hands. They laughed. Said it would ‘make him stronger.’ Then one day, he didn’t come back. The supervisor said he ‘must have left.’ But we knew. We saw the ambulance. We saw the blood. We just didn’t see him again.”
The room was silent.
No applause. No tears.
Just a weight in the air.
Aarav leaned forward. “Have you shown this to anyone outside?”
Ravi shook his head. “Why? It won’t change anything.”
Aarav said nothing.
Because once, he had believed the same.
Later that evening, Ravi followed Aarav to the tea stall down the alley.
“You’re famous, right?” he asked casually, sipping cutting chai.
“I’m known,” Aarav replied. “It’s not the same.”
“You changed things.”
Aarav looked at him. “We changed things. I didn’t do it alone.”
Ravi laughed bitterly. “I’m not like you. I’m angry all the time. I don’t know how to… shape it.”
“You’re not supposed to shape it. Just aim it.”
“How?”
Aarav smiled. “That’s why you’re here.”
But in truth, Aarav was scared.
Not of Ravi.
Of failing him.
He had spent years carrying voices. But now, he was passing the torch.
And torches could burn if handed wrong.
The next week, Ravi printed and distributed his first pamphlet.
Title:
“What We’re Forced to Breathe”
Within hours, security guards confiscated it from half the factories it reached.
Two workers who spoke about the issue were suspended.
And that night, Ravi showed up at the center—furious.
“They lost their jobs! Because of my writing!”
Aarav didn’t flinch.
“They lost their jobs because someone wanted them afraid. Your words just showed the world their truth.”
“But what if it was too soon?”
“Too soon for truth? Or too soon for consequences?”
Ravi threw his notebook down. “I don’t want to be you.”
Aarav picked up the notebook and handed it back.
“Then be better. That’s the point.”
For days, Ravi didn’t come back.
Aarav felt the familiar ache of helplessness again—the same feeling when Meera went silent after their father’s death. The same when a factory boy collapsed in his arms and the shift supervisor did nothing.
He had seen what silence did to people.
And now he feared Ravi might choose it.
But on the seventh night, as Aarav walked back to the center from a talk, he saw a small crowd forming at the entrance.
Voices rose. Curious ones. Hopeful ones.
He pushed through.
There, on the center wall, was a giant sheet of paper—pasted in strips, handwritten in bold black strokes.
Ravi’s handwriting.
The title read:
“If My Words Hurt You, Maybe the Truth Is What’s Sharp”
Underneath were testimonies from fifteen workers. Not just about toxic air—
But about fainting, vomiting, lost skin, bleeding lungs.
Each story had a first name.
None were anonymous.
Ravi stood nearby, watching people read.
He turned to Aarav and said, “If I’m going to write, I want to stand behind my words. No more hiding.”
Aarav nodded, a quiet fire in his eyes.
“Then let’s teach others how to do the same.”
In the months that followed, Ravi grew into more than a writer.
He became a mentor.
He taught younger kids how to speak in metaphors.
He hosted his own circle called “The Angry Ink.”
He wrote a piece titled “My Factory is a Poem of Wounds,” which went viral online—shared by activists, poets, even a Member of Parliament.
And when the media called to interview him, Ravi declined.
“Interview the people I wrote about,” he told them. “I’m not the story. I’m just the voice.”
One evening, Aarav and Ravi sat on the roof, watching pigeons land near the antenna wires.
“You were wrong,” Ravi said.
“About what?”
“You said you weren’t a mentor. But you were. You are.”
Aarav smiled. “Then I hope I taught you the most important thing.”
“What?”
“To teach others. So I can disappear someday, and this—”
he waved at the city below—
“still continues.”
The road beyond the storm was never meant to be walked alone.
And Aarav, once the only boy with a chalk and a name that no one spelled right, now stood beside a generation of writers who knew their names mattered.
And that was his greatest legacy.
Not that he survived the storm.
But that he showed others how to write through it.
- Writer
