Idiot- #ATOZCHALLENGE – I (2026)

 

“You’re all here today because you are IDIOTS!”

“I.D.I.O.T – Intellectually Driven Individuals of Talent” The dean clarified before he continued with the rest of his speech. Our slightly bruised egos were reinstated, and it triggered a brief chuckle from us all.

“But you are here for serious business. You will need to set history right. You may think why the past would have such a bearing on the present. But it does. Our past shapes who we have become today, how things affect us, what norms we form, how we relate with other people, what are our goals and ambitions, what do we fear, how do we garner the strength to fight back, and overall, how we think. So, a little retrospective change has the potential to start a revolution.”

We all agreed! We did have a task ahead of us and we couldn’t afford to fail. A whole generation depended on it. We the students of history and political science in the University were called upon to revisit the ideology of this political figure called SK. Just SK. Nothing more, nothing less. This is exactly how the people knew him.

SK was accused of controlling Now News, the country’s main news channel. He’s introduced RFID cards for all public places and transport to keep a closer look at his people, and yes, he would incarcerate anyone who dared to speak up against him. Every big decision with regards to the treasury and armed forces had to get his nod of approval. So was he a dictator or a visionary?

It was dangerous to tag SK as either. Any misstep by our team could trigger public uproar if it got out. He had his die-hard loyal militia in place who were more or less on par with the local cops.

“What should we consider as data points?” I asked the team.

Did he keep up to his promises?

Was there anything suspect or murky, or anything controversial?

Also, the big question is how much people benefited from his policies. Or did his allies benefit more?

Very many intellectual discussions later I craved a coffee and a low-IQ interaction. My brain could not take any more analysis. The more we talked, the more confused my High-IQ Brain got. The more like an idiot I began to feel.

When I got to the café, I saw that familiar face again. My darling frenemy.

We exchanged quick Hi, How have you beens, that I didn’t really care about. But she actually, did. My life had always been her business.

“So, you’re still in the research team right. Some silly name it has, isn’t it? IDIOTS?” She was loud enough to let the whole café know she was ridiculing me. As long as it got her attention she didn’t care. Did I feel offended? No, that wasn't even a thing.

The drama didn’t stop there. My fatigue led me to rat out a part of the discussion we had. “He didn’t keep up his promises for the economy, and then he blamed his failure on the epidemic that happened that year. It had put all his supposedly well-thought-of initiatives out of action.”

She faced her audience yet again and declared, “See, I have been telling my customers this same thing. It was a government failure; the epidemic was a mere smokescreen.”

Irked by her dishonesty, I decided to put her in place. “You did say this, right? Then why don’t you elaborate a bit more. Tell me what were his exacts points of failure.”

She would obviously not say she didn’t have data points, so she became hostile and lobbed it back at me. “That’s not the point. Why should we blindsight all the good he did for the unemployed? So, what if a few things didn’t go as per plan.”

Exasperated from the duality pat came my question, that was more to question her integrity than for the discussion at hand. “So, was this a government failure or not? Was he good or was he bad?”

When she felt cornered, she decided to even the score her way. My cocktail took the longest time to come, and the lime in it was positively bitter from rotting. Not just that, a bit of ridiculing me was still left to be done.

“Don’t your ‘IDIOTS’ teams have confidentiality clauses? Are you supposed to discuss this in a public place?”

“You’re right! I spoke. I should leave before I say any more.”

An insidious smile of victory weaned on her overly made-up face. My sense of values scorned her position. I wasn’t keeping score at all. It was for petty folks like her.

 

The next day, when I recounted this to the dean, he asked me a simple question. "What drained you more? The café conversation or the heavy discussion we had here?"This was a thinking point.

“Professor,” I said. “When exchanging ideas, you always stand to gain from another's perspective. But when we have a me-versus-you conversation, the only thing that gets exchanged is emotion--negative emotion for a positive one. And most of us would choose to take in a negative so that another feels positive. Hence, it’s draining. It is for me."

“Spot on! Said the professor. Not-so idiot after all, I see. And I am glad to have you on this team. Empathy has its own place when analyzing people and their policies. You need to be fair. Moreso if there are exponential consequences of being unfair.”

We both smiled and nodded in mutual agreement. I went back to the café again. To unwind, I read a book instead, to take in more ideas I could exchange elsewhere, and gain some better insights in return.

No drama, just life.