I
I’ll leave you
with the court room for some time, imagine it in your head, make a picture of
what a court room looks like in your opinion, We’ll come back to it later.
The person in the chair on a raised platform looked like he was in his late forties.
Magistrate, without details as to at what level, seems to be a
better word than judge here. We’ve had too many stories about judges or
involving them. This one is not about judges or judgements anyway. It is more
decisively aimless.
“Why did you
kill them. Now that you refuse to refuse admitting killing them, that’s the
only question that remains. None of them remain to speak about this question
that remains and it is very important to know why you killed them before I
decide how stern the punishment should be. So Adwan, why did you kill them?” he
asked the man sitting in the dock presently. This person, in turn, seemed to
have unlocked his lips multiple times already as his lips looked dry and the
voice that’d follow shortly sounded a little hoarse too. He spoke; still;
again,
“Third law of
mechanics” he said, in a clear reference to some sort of an action-reaction
scenario, but what followed was not as obvious, not without prior knowledge of
the context, which the magistrate seemed to be having trouble with too,
establishing the context. “Sometimes context can’t be separated from reasons”
he had thought to himself some time back, he had yawned too.
“Smell, the
smell” man uttered, stammered a bit, as if knowingly and added,
“Rose Bud!” and
laughed, clearly, audibly, first looking up and away, at the people sitting
behind the public
prosecutor’s desk and then finally at the person on the chair. Sound of his
laughter was way clearer than his voice had been so far and so far had it reached that a crow sitting on a
branch of a tree in the quadrangle somewhere hesitated for a moment in his
small, confident leap before the flight. He flew away anyway, wayward to start
with, wayward still before settling into a hoppy yet smooth short burst
characteristic of any crow of reliable pedigree.
“Rose bud,
hmmm….., well, since I know it is difficult to know if you know what I am
alluding to, let me clarify. It is a joke. It doesn’t mean anything no matter
if you have seen the movie or not. Name of the movie is Citizen Kane. ” he
explained further.
Magistrate on
the other hand, looked at him, straight faced, looking offended and conveying
his displeasure at something, may be that he indeed had seen some movies and
Citizen Kane could very well be one of them, or may be he was just pretending
to be offended so that he could cut straight back to the point. It couldn’t be
figured. It could also not be figured if the likelihood of him being offended
was because of constant disregard to his question, which he seemed to have
asked a number of times, or if it was because of the assumption on man’s part
that the magistrate hadn’t seen the movie. But since we can’t figure if the man
was offended at all, we wouldn’t bother figuring the why out.
Out in the canteen, Sachin Tendulkar just square cut someone to the
boundary and some claps could be heard, even inside the court room and it was
this sound that finally managed to wake the teenager who served tea to the
staff here out of his slumber. He slurped a little, wiped his nose and eyes
quickly, erected himself and left as if jolted out of the revery that was to be
followed by his employer scolding him.
“Don’t test our
limits and answer the question Mister” the magistrate said finally, putting so
much emphasis on Mister that it seems appropriate to spell it fully.
“I know you are
acting, I know you are in your senses alright and are behaving this way just to
evade a tough judgement” he continued.
“So now let me
know why you killed them. Eight of them, have you any realization! You have
killed eight people in cold blood.” And now he started to look a little
flustered as if he himself had this realization just now.
“Well, firstly,
when I killed them, they were normal, hot blooded mammals and secondly, when I
last counted, the number was six, but then I didn’t
count after killing the last two. I haven’t had the time, first I was busy
convincing myself not to run and let them catch me and since then the smell,
you see, it’s stuck there, the smell. Nausea equates to that smell these days.”
“Are you trying
to be funny here!” responded the magistrate, his throat sounded dry, his lips
looked so. So it can be deduced that the exasperation was a result of something
more justifiable than impatience.
“Now I can’t
hear you,
the disease is
back,
the disease is
back,
the disease is
back,
the disease is
back
……………………
……………………”
Man seemed to
have gone into a hysterical trip of sorts. Two policemen, standing on either
side of the dock, moved their jaws abruptly yet slowly, one because he
swallowed the beetle leaf he had been chewing on and the other as he was about
to call out to him to help him do the usual routine of dragging this man back
to the van.
“Take him away.”
The magistrate said
“Scoundrel”,
he murmured, pulling his sleeves up and exhaling forcefully, expressing his
displeasure at being left with no choice but to wait for the next hearing.
Adwan, in the meanwhile, and
amongst some degreee of chaos as some papers were dropped and collected and
some voices were raised and hushed, was dragged out of the room towards the
van.
“And yes, I want
a complete report from the doctors tomorrow. I am not going to sit on this case
forever” he demanded and moved slightly in the chair he was sitting on.
“the disease is
back
The disease is
back …” Adwan kept repeating religiously, perspiring slightly, twitching his
nose every once in a whittled while. In the beginning, as the hearings started,
they used to carry him carefully as he’d have such fits, not any more. Number
of policemen accompanying him decreased too.
“Take him away,
take him away, take him away…” magistrate could be heard murmuring.
Soon the court was back in order and I think by now you must be ready
with your image of the court room too. Now add some years to the furniture,
some broken chairs at the back of the room, take most of the blue away from the
cloth stretched at the front of the platform, add some squeaky sounds to most
of the hinges, remove some of the people present and add a couple of ghosts
sitting across each other on the frame supporting the frame. Ghosts looked at
each other once in a while; sternly. Then they looked at the magistrate;
sternly, ruefully. One of them used to be a person killed by the person the
other ghost was of. They both hated the magistrate. One because he was
sentenced to death by this very magistrate and the other because he couldn’t
make it to the court room on time that day and had waited one entire week for
his killer to be presented in the court room for hearing, until finally he saw
the other ghost in the court room. That one week was heavy on him, as he waited
anxiously for his killer to be convicted.
“the disease is
back, the disease is back…”
The man was
tired by now and could only murmur as he sat in the van, which drove away, onto
the road.
II
“Logical sums
can only be done at the bit level” aged voice of a young man sounded. Asylum
looked deserted as most of them were still away for their routine check up.
“They” is how the inmates were referred to as by attendees here.
“So you see,
it’s difficult to do a logical sum if you can’t think at the bit level. You can
multiply without zeroes and as a logical extension can conclude that even
divisions can be done without introducing the concept of zero but summation
can’t happen without nonzero steps. Hence zeroes my dear friend. What’s your
name? hmmm, yeah, Vrind, imaginative name I must say, but sounds like a tired
invention too, as if a writer sat down to come up with something really ambitious, then got bored, sat a little longer and finally came up with a
short name for the protagonist.” the man added, chuckling, twitching his nose a
little in every whittled while. It’s the 30th day
since he was brought here, Adwan, after his last hearing at the court. A report
bearing signatures of multiple doctors brought him here. Nobody could say if it
did him a favour, least of all him.
The magistrate was still not convinced that he was an invalid, but such are the
ways of law that he had to overlook his personal opinion and look at things the
way they were supposed to, which is not necessarily the way things should be
looked at, he had been observed to have observed,
“Since the
doctors' report declares him insane, I have no choice but to send him back to the asylum, though in my personal
opinion man is nothing but a sham, a charlatan, someone with a mind utterly
capable of scheming, but no soul.” He started thus his final statement and
added, as some people looked at the man’s sole,
“and it is
indeed disappointing that there is no scientifically proven method to ascertain
his true mental state. So as I have already said, he can be taken to the asylum
and is to be treated there until he is cured and can be transferred to a jail
for the rest of his term, which is 14 years of rigorous imprisonment”.
Both the ghosts
looked at him sternly as he finished reading the final statement.
Adwan, so, was
taken to the asylum. A police van drove through the bricked quadrangle on to
the dusty, crowded road crisscrossing its way past the other leaner lanes to
the main outer ring road. The van took half an hour once it emerged on to the
ring road to reach the asylum. It was a
big compound with a decently tall wall surrounding a number of small buildings
scattered around. The biggest of all these sparsely distributed buildings stood
in the far right corner. It and all the other buildings were painted in the
same shade of gray and looked like they had been given a fresh layer recently.
Trees were not many in numbers and were numbered, each of them.
“you see the
biggest number on these trees aspires
to outnumber the branches of the smallest tree” Adwan had remarked on one of
the days following his first here. The same day he met Vrind, the only person
he would engage in conversations with. Vrind was a 24 year old from a small
town around 100 kms from the city. A broad, strong frame was covered with flesh
sparingly, a rather dark complexion accentuated his sharp, strong nose and made
his small glinting eyes more noticeable, eyes that didn’t seem to blink too often. He spoke slowly and gently,
taking pauses as if measuring the words coming out, but one thing that nobody
failed to notice was that he had a lot of stories to tell. Actually that is
what brought him to a mental asylum, he did nothing else but tell stories. Some
involved him, most did not.
“Why is he here?
he appears to be alright” a doctor had asked one of his colleagues once as
Vrind narrated one of his stories to him.
“Even the way he
tells his stories points to that” he tried to convince everyone about his
observation, but then he was reminded immediately that it was precisely the
reason why he was brought here, because all he did was tell stories. He
wouldn’t talk to anyone if he didn’t have a story to tell.
He always had one, his family had reported, tried to have him cured and
then had to give up and bring him here as he grew more and more violent if
people wouldn’t listen to his stories. It was a sunny day, the day he was
brought here. Someone somewhere cried too.
And that is why
it was seen as something rather strange that Adwan chose to talk to no one but
Vrind, but then since it was a mental asylum, everybody seemed to come to terms
with the oddity finally. This oddity was come to terms with on a day that
coincided with the 6th death
anniversary of Salvador Dali. Date read January 23rd 1995
and if one noticed it was also Subhash Chandra Bose’s birth anniversary. Nobody
noticed that, Vrind did, and related a story about this boy who loses his
hearing ability as a kid and
never regains them. Despite this disability he grows to be an excellent
musician, who upon completion of his first major concert realizes that people
need to overwhelmed to be convinced. That them regarding him as a genius because he could create music
without being able to hear was nothing but a complete disregard towards other
faculties.
He also
concludes that music is created
by mouth more than it is created with ears. Vrind added a number of other elements
to make it sound more interesting but the moral of the story was that to be
able to express means to be able to chew and swallow. Some people died too in
the story. And as always happened with Vrind’s stories, this one too was
followed by a conclusion drawn at will by Adwan
“I have told you a hundred times, a cat reluctant to jump on a hot tin roof is
either pregnant or lazy; later in most cases is a more likely scenario given
ubiquitous birth control methods these days”
It was a sunny day,
some clouds were seen the evening before that, but were not heeded to as
generally nobody expected them to rain given it was the middle of a chilly
winter. Air bore a smell that emanated from somewhere and headed somewhere, so
the air was not still. It was the seventh day after they had met for the first
time and fourth since they had had lunch together for the first time and 2nd since Vrind had told a story about a
woman who always tells a story to her husband every time she gets back home
late, then the husband makes it a point to point it out to her and this
altercation is followed by a pointless altercation, which is not focused on
anything apart from both of them accusing each other of not caring for the
child, who is asleep on the bed and is used to pretending being asleep as they
exchange words and stories. Slowly the child grows up, and slowly he grows up
because he can’t do anything about the pace at which human beings grow, so to
say. His mother who has long
forgotten all about telling stories is now more open about her not needing to
come back home late, as now she is divorced and can bring her male friends
along. But she also realizes that the child tells stories about a lot of things
now, and this realization
grows slowly as the number
of stories being told by the child grow. The story ended with the child telling stories and nothing else,
mother calling her ex-husband up and accusing him of being responsible for the child’s condition and finally, an hospital vehicle drawing its
screeching wheels to a halt.
“A man’s van is
a man’s van” adwan had concluded then.
He had also noted somewhere towards the middle of the story that
the man was not justified in not believing in his wife’s stories and that women
are to stories as men are to jokes about private parts, but then he changed his
statement slightly by stating that in fact men tell more stories than women do
and that is why it was even more remarkable that this woman was so deft at
coming up with stories. Finally he attributed the peculiar circumstances to
husband and wife both being drunk by the time she came back home late.
Same day two
more people were convicted in different parts of India and are now part of the
group of ghosts who sit on erections and frames of different kinds inside court
rooms. They look at their respective magistrates sternly.
III
None of the
inmates were given footwear inside the asylum, rooms they lived in were 20x14
square feet halls with a few windows, big ones, on either side of the longer
stretch, beds were lined along the walls leaving space only for doors, some
cabinets where some stuff, which couldn’t be seen presently was kept. In one
such room Vrind and Adway were sitting on their respective beds. Their beds
were next to each other's and now proximity can be taken as the most valid
reason why these two fellows started hanging around together. But since it was
an asylum, everybody gave up trying to figure the reason out long time back.
Still, for the sake of making a statement it can be said that proximity always
leads to something, either a level of antipathy or empathy or both depending on
how indecisive one is. Apathy in such scenarios is difficult to maintain. There
was a window between their beds and it looked on to a wall at some distance and
a few plants planted alongside it.
“Why do they
give windows if they have to have walls!” exclaimed Adwan suddenly, gently
without being too loud. Vrind on the other hand kept looking at adwan
questioningly, the way he had never looked at anyone before, so it was quite
possible that the thoughts going on in his head were not the same as the ones
he generally had as he related his stories. Adwan noticed it too and made
another inconsequential statement to evade a question, which he feared Vrind
might ask for the first time during his stay here,
“You know,
windows and doors were born out of fear and not ennui as most people would tend
to think” he said still trying to look away from Vrind.
“Why did you
kill them?” Vrind asked suddenly, but he didn’t look at Adwan the way he had
been till then, now he looked sympathetic instead.
“Hahahahaha, now
even you have started. It’s a question beaten to staleness now, don’t bother”
And presently
one could easily sense that may be both the judge and the doctor were right in
their respective observations about the oddity of these two gentlemen being
here at the asylum. Vrind sounded full of sympathy and pity, Adwan sounded
defensive; none, as we know, fails to point towards them being in their senses
alright.
“Why did you
kill them” Vrind didn’t budge.
“Why do you want
to know?”
“Why did you
kill them I ask, why did you kill them..” Vrind insisted again.
“But I have
killed eight of them, which one do you want to know about”
“Don’t pretend,
I know the reasons were the same for all, in fact there was only one reason.”
And conviction in
Vrind’s voice was reflected in his eyes.
“Yeah....Hmmmmm,
the smell, I liked the smell you see. Smell of the gun powder after the shot.
It equated to nausea every time I tried to smell the barrel before I took the
shot, but after the shot, it was different. Intoxicating” Adwan seemed to be wanting to say it all finally.
“I am not the
judge you know, so answer me, why did you kill them.” And now Adwan, for the
first time, could notice that Vrind in fact sounded different.
“But that
doesn’t matter. I have been telling the truth all along, it is the smell of the
gun powder that made me make those shots. Only that the judge could never make
me say the complete truth, he would start not to trust me and once that happens
you know stories happen. You know they didn’t even ask me which gun I had used, as if simply because I admitted to killing those people. They never asked
me any other question but ‘why’ and whenever I said, smell, they would not
trust me and that made it extremely difficult to go on and explain further.
They did not even ask me which gun I used. Alright, may be they knew it already
through post-mortem reports, still I should feel involved, right?”
“Yeah, but am
still not sure why you killed them, you could have made the shots anyway
without killing anyone and could have smelt the barrel, it would have smelt the
same, wouldn’t it”.
“Hmmm…..” Adwan
looked like a confused kid who had just gotten an answer he wasn’t expecting to
a question he held dear to his heart.
Next 10 mins
that followed saw a lot of activities happening; a tree outside the window,
next to the brick wall shed a partly yellow-partly green leaf; a lot of voices
were heard in the parliament in delhi, some were audible, some were barely so
and some offensively so and one of them squeaked ‘please sit down, let him
speak’, nobody in the asylum complained during that period, a remarkable event
in its own right as it was a norm amongst the guards, to complain, mostly as to
how inefficient their superiors were; a girl thinking nervously why her date
was even more nervous on their first date and lastly Vrind relating a story
about a guy who stole pickles because he didn’t like people eating them since people liked pickles and he didn’t
like that. Somebody asked him one day why he stole pickles and he responded by
asking why people liked them and when that somebody said he couldn’t explain,
the guy responded by saying that may be then somebody would be able to
understand why he stole pickles without going into
details.
Adwan in the
meanwhile sat there, looking at a trail of ants and for the first time be
didn’t conclude after Vrind’s story ended. After some time he lay back on the
bed and slept off immediately. Vrind on the other hand went out and took a walk
around the complex and picked some small pebbles on his way back to the hall.
After that day there appeared to be something on Adwan’s head all the time and
he would talk even less now, if fact not at all, as Vrind was the only person
he would talk to and now they didn’t talk. Everybody noticed it, every sane
person that is, insane people around them looked too unpredictable to be said
anything of. Anyway, nobody knew the reason why it was so. Adwan would not come
out of his room except for lunch, daily ablutions and dinner, Vrind would go for unending walks and
would keep collecting pebbles. Days, weeks and finally three fourth of a month
went by like this. Ghosts in the court rooms grew in number. They all looked at
the judges sternly, and judges would often grunt as they delivered grave
sentences.
IV
It was fourth of
a cold December morning when someone complained of an unbearable stench coming
out of the store room at the back of the main building. It was one of the
guards who complained of it and others accompanied him into the room and as
they pushed the door open, they saw a horrible site, Adwan was sitting on his
haunches in one corner and next to him lay Vrind’s dead body, stabbed on the back, hordes of flies
circling around it. His satchel of pebbles lay next to him, one of the pebbles
read, “my next story”. Adwan had one in his hand too and it had, “Story of
barrels” written on it, now as guards entered the room the pebble slipped out
of Adwan’s hands gently.
“I guess I could have kept them alive and could have still smelt
the barrel” he said looking at the guards, his lips shivering and a stream of
tears rolling down his right eye, left one still looked dry.
A pair of ghosts
circled around in joy in one of the court rooms as the judge who they had been
looking at sternly for some time murmured to himself, lying in his bed;
“was he insane,
was he insane,
was he insane,
was he insane”
He was
half asleep.
