by K R Meera
‘The other daughter had cancer. She lived with a big hole in her cheek, causing great grief to all of us. The third daughter committed suicide. Her husband had an affair. She took poison on the day she was to get divorced.’
I listened to him as I sipped the coffee. He made really good coffee. The Beast must have had a gift for cooking. Ever since I had fallen in love with Yudas, sob stories had ceased to affect me. Who has more woes than he? What blade is sharper than our separation? Who is afraid of rivulets and pools when one is already mired far below the muddy layers at the bottom of a lake?
‘Have you had a chance to meet any of the Naxalites?’ I asked casually. What I needed to know was if anyone had ever come back to avenge the Beast. He, however, let out a sigh of relief.
‘Only once. One person. He was the one who pulled out the body of my boy when he drowned.’
The coffee cup slid out of my hands and shattered into a hundred pieces. I stood there stunned.
‘It’s okay,’ the Beast said. ‘Wash the coffee off of your sari, kid. I will clean this up.’
My limbs wouldn’t move. My heart stopped for a while. I could just ask: Who recovered the body? But my hands and legs began to shake as I thought about it. I imagined Yudas hauling out the Beast’s son’s body just like he had pulled out Balu’s corpse from the bottom of the lake. I couldn’t help but holler, ‘Oh, God!’ in the face of time’s machinery of state. When I returned after cleaning my sari, the Beast was scooping up the broken pieces of the cup with a little broom. I insisted that he give me the broom and let me clean the floor. I raked in a sharp piece and it cut my finger.
‘I see blood, kid!’ the Beast cried out. That shocked me more. It was incredible to watch a former cop who had made history by causing an extraordinary number of young boys to throw up blood now go berserk at the sight of a few drops of blood.
‘Blood,’ I repeated after him. ‘When did you begin to fear blood, sir?’
The Beast was taken aback. Then he smiled gently. ‘It was youth, kid. You wouldn’t be scared to shed blood when you are young. It’s different when you become old.’ The Beast spread out his wrinkly palms with loose wobbly skin. ‘It’s been a while since these hands have had blood on them.’
‘Do you feel remorseful?’ I asked eagerly.
‘For what?’ he groaned. ‘The state is a big machine, kid. A policeman is no more than a bolt or a nut in it. We couldn’t have done anything by ourselves. We were just tools. Tools at the state’s disposal. Each one of us was like that. Only the state mattered. It had to stay. Didn’t God, Lord Krishna himself, say the same in the Bhagavadgita? I used to believe that my children died to atone for my crimes. Most of my colleagues’ families were torn apart. Some became gravely ill. The children of a few have gone astray. Others have lost their homes. Were these nothing more than the consequences of a collective curse from the youngsters whom we brutalized till they threw up gore? I don’t know. We didn’t think like that. I was doing my duty.’
‘But there were too many of them. The young men who’d gone under …’ I asked despondently as I listened to the Beast.
‘Have no doubt, they were dangerous,’ the Beast cackled. ‘Unbridled minds. Brash adolescence. Hot blood. How in the world were they going to know the good from bad at that age? Their stupid actions were more than just trouble. We had no choice but to beat some sense into them. It had to be done for the state. I was a different person then. My philosophy of that time was different. Time, kid, time was the sole reason for everything. Those young men and us, we were just tools in time’s box.’ The Beast leaned back in his reclining chair with a deep sigh, and began fanning himself with a towel tucked over his shoulders. He did look like a pale skinny harmless man of faith.
‘The rebel who recovered your drowned son, did you know him?’
The Beast slanted his head to look at me.
‘Hmm. I couldn’t recall him at the beginning. He yelled “Naxalbari Zindabad” at me, throwing his arms up with a folded fist. He kicked my boy’s body and challenged me: “Arrest me if you dare.” I recognized him right away. His name was Das, an innocent lad!’
My heart began to pound. It throbbed out of pride and anguish brought on by my thoughts of Yudas.
‘Then, what happened then?’ I asked anxiously. I felt disappointed not to have been there to see it. My Yudas. The moment when he was exacting his greatest revenge. When was it? How did it happen?
‘I heard from my father,’ I said, ‘that all the secrets were beaten out of a man called Das. And he was made to toss a couple of bodies into the ravine.’
I was fishing for the Beast’s story.
He glared at me probingly. ‘What is it that you really want to know?’
The Beast now bared the eyes of a cop from old times, making me panic. Then, abruptly, he sighed again. ‘Das was a skinny boy. But he had a steely mind. He didn’t look it, but he got cheeky when we began the treatment. His and my ages were such. I was there for the state. The state couldn’t bow to a criminal, could it? I got mad. I was on my feet for nearly twenty-four hours, skipping breaks even for the loo, so that I could beat him into submission. I tried the belt first, then the baton and then the roller. It was a lot of labour for both the tormenter and the subject. But he never uttered a word. Finally, it became a matter of pride. I poured liquor into him. Water-boarded him. Scalded his body. Shoved food into his throat and made him throw it all up immediately after. Twisted his balls with a wrench. Poked his anus …’
By now I was shaking. Puzzled, the Beast trained his inquisitive stare at me. I was sweating profusely.
‘Do you know him?’ he asked, in a voice that was becoming hoarse.
I was worried that he might interrogate me despite his long break.
‘I know everyone,’ I said, trying to force a smile. ‘I have been listening to all these stories since I was five.’
Oh! I thought—’ The Beast fanned himself again.
‘Wasn’t there a woman? I heard her name was Sunanda?’ I tried to sound as guileless as I possibly could.
The Beast laughed. ‘Yes, she was a good girl.’
I asked him if Das was the one to betray her.
The Beast laughed again: ‘There is that moment, kid, when even the most resolute, strong-willed individual breaks down. At one point Das blurted out a name, Sunanda. That’s all we needed. We brought her in. We realized as soon as we arrested her that he was a mere infant compared to her. She was the real deal, the revolutionary. Couldn’t she have said a word? Couldn’t she have cried at least for the sake of it? We beat her repeatedly, but all that did was tire us out. But Das changed as soon as we began to manhandle the lady. He began to sing like a parrot. He told us everything he knew. Poor chap!’ The Beast laughed.
My eyes welled up. The heaviness in my heart choked me. Since my pride wouldn’t allow me to bawl, I stood there, trying to pull back myself from the brink of it.
‘You people killed her, didn’t you?’
‘We didn’t kill anybody. They all killed themselves.’ The Beast’s voice turned rough. ‘It was war, kid. When you set out for war, what matters is whether you fight or not. It was destiny that decided to declare the war. And it was the same destiny that decided who would win, who would lose and who would survive. What is destroyed is not created by me. What is lost is not earned by me. I wasn’t there yesterday. I won’t be there tomorrow. The post I’d occupied yesterday has been assumed by another person today. Tomorrow he too will be replaced by somebody else. I don’t need to repent, kid. This is the cycle of karma. If I have to start all over again, I might do exactly the same. I was loyal to my job. Showed gratitude to the state for the salary it gave me. I decimated those who dared to defy the state. When I beat them up I put all my heart into it. I was never influenced by tears, blood, pleas or bribes. I was a tool. I am not ashamed of it, but I am disappointed at having been picked as one. Why did God choose to use me for the things I had to do? When my wife and children die
d, I asked myself this question. Couldn’t I be one of those government servants who worked from nine to five to earn a salary, took their family for an occasional movie on a weekend and lead their life in peace? Why did God give me the baton, rollers and pistol instead? Why did my hands have to be stained with blood? I don’t know. Would anything be different even if I tried? No. Perhaps. Who knows? That must have been my lot. Someone had to do it, so I was chosen. Whatever happened, happened for good. Whatever is going to happen will be happening for good. Whatever is happening is also …’
My mouth was filled with the taste of sour coffee and acrid blood. It was hard to believe that an old man with such an amiable face was once a beast feasting on the blood of the youth. That he had made the inmates drink their own urine, pierced needles into their penises and forced batons into the uteruses of young women. Power is a magician’s hat. Humans who wear it inevitably transform.
Later, as I walked towards the bus stop, a large car displaying ‘Kerala State’ on its front board raced down the road, the potholes slowing its progress. A convoy jeep carrying cops followed the car. The cop sitting on the left side of the jeep stared at me for as long as he could. It struck fear in me for some reason. It was a revolting stare, which only a cop was capable of. I felt a horseshoe descend on my chest. The nipples from my breasts were about to be ripped out. People around me seemed to be staggering about with penises impaled with needles or uteruses into which batons were rammed that they couldn’t get rid of.
Ill health had confined Sunanda’s sister to her bed now. She struggled to get up when she saw me walking in. I made coffee for her. She had no news of Yudas any more. It had been two years since he had shown up. He had sent some money to her last year, but there was no word after that. Dejected, I stood up to leave. She asked me to wait for a bit; she had something to show me. She dragged herself up to the attic with great effort and returned with an old box. Inside was a diary. It had belonged to Sunanda.
Bursting with impatience, I snatched it out of her hand. A passport-sized photo was tucked inside the pocket cover of the diary. I gazed at the photo anxiously. A seventeen-year-old girl with wide eyes stared at me. I decided to confront her stare.
‘I won’t admit defeat,’ those eyes seemed to declare.
I fumed. ‘You lost when you died,’ I whispered vengefully. ‘I am alive. To be alive is the real victory.’ I turned the pages, reading the words with smouldering eyes.
There was a quote on the first page:
‘O Liberté, que de crimes on commeten ton nom!’ Madame Roland
Oh Liberty, what crimes are committed in thy name!
There were shorthand notes on the next few pages. I came back to the cover page to ponder on Madame Roland’s words for a long time. I read them many times over, then confronted Sunanda’s stare one more time.
‘Can I have this?’ I asked.
‘This is the only thing I have left of her,’ Sunanda’s sister said as she strained to breathe again. ‘Or you may keep it? Leave just the photo. I need that. It is my wish to have it enlarged and framed and put up somewhere on the wall. At least I hope to.’
I unglued the photo half-heartedly. I returned home at night in the commuter bus. As I sat in the bus, I suddenly remembered the letter my father had written to the Beast with a plea to find a husband for me. I pulled it out of my purse and slid it inside Sunanda’s diary.
I didn’t need a bridegroom or a husband. Yudas is all I needed in my life. I would swim far and deep into the lake until my limbs went numb and sank to the bottom. I would die in the crimson mud from where Yudas would recover me. This was how he would get over the grief of a betrayer. I opened the first page of the diary again. ‘Oh, Liberty, what crimes are committed in thy name!’
It took an endless twelve hours to reach home. My fellow passengers dozed off in the bus. I pushed the shutter open. Outside the window, garish street lights ran backwards while I reread the shapely letters from the diary as they clashed to break out beyond the cold blast piercing through the window.
Oh, Liberty!
SEVEN
‘I couldn’t sleep at night. I’d hear some sound—a footstep, the revving of a motor car’s engine, or a bell from a bicycle—and I’d suddenly be on my feet. The thought that they were here for me was terrifying. I’d be on my bed, frozen. Didn’t I have those documents with me—the blueprint for the planned action? I wasn’t part of the organization, yet when Das asked me to keep it, I agreed. My house was safe; no one would suspect anything. But ever since, to tell you the truth, child, I haven’t been able to sleep at night at all. I can only sleep during the day. I know the Emergency has been long gone. Everyone has forgotten all about it. But I am yet to sleep in peace for once. I am worried that those days might be coming back. Maybe with another name … Sometimes I think we are already there. We just aren’t able to recognize it.’
My mind was ablaze as I walked alongside Surendran mash who wore a saffron cloth. He didn’t say anything about Yudas. Whenever I brought up Yudas’s name, he would go on about the dark days of that period. I was here to attend a wedding. Sunanda’s sister’s daughter was getting married. I had no doubt that Yudas would come for the ceremony. So I ignored my ailments and uncertainties on the road for a long-distance journey. It had been five years since I met him.
In the meantime I had changed my job twice. Having been on leave for too many days due to my chronic ulcer, my employer at my first job dismissed me. I then took up a biller’s job in a shop, but the heat and dust on the premises worsened my condition. After that I became a scribe to a wealthy woman who had writerly aspirations. She lived in a waterfront home near Lake Ashtamudi. Her husband was an affluent industrialist. The job was comfortable. She would recline on a chair facing the lake, from the morning onwards, and discuss the story she had been thinking of writing. There was nothing much in it. She wanted to write a book based on her own life. She believed she had an extraordinary tale to tell. Let’s just say even if it had been truly extraordinary, she didn’t seem to have the courage to bare it all. Anyway, I got good food and time enough to sleep well in that house. I was lodged in a room in the guest house which overlooked the lake. Visitors and guests walked in and out of my employer’s house all the time. I noticed that excess food was thrown in the coconut grove in the yard behind the kitchen where it would rot. Whenever I saw it I would worry about Yudas. Was he getting enough food for himself? Or was he wandering around, high on ganja on an empty stomach? And filling it up with pints of toddy?
Sunanda’s sister brought up Yudas in our conversation as soon as we met even though I hadn’t asked her about him: ‘Did you know? Our Das isn’t well. He is bedridden. Please go and see him.’ I was dazed to hear the news. Before I could prod her further, it was time to begin the wedding rituals. As the sounds of drums and flutes reverberated and the rites were carried out, I was burning inside, thinking about Yudas. I could imagine him curled up inside a makeshift hut at the edge of a reservoir whose name I didn’t know. Where could he be? I inquired after his whereabouts from Sunanda’s sister at the first chance I got. Fatigued from the bustle of wedding activities and the persistent heaving to fight her asthma, she looked at me and said, ‘Sethu mash must know. He received a letter from Das.’
I had heard many stories about Sethu mash. When I asked Sunanda’s sister where I could find him, she gave me directions to Surendran mash who she said knew Sethu mash. In fact, Surendran mash was not a Naxalite. He hadn’t been arrested either. But he had checked into a mental asylum by the time the Emergency was lifted. It was unsettling to think that he’d still lose sleep on a piece of paper that Das had purportedly given him years ago. I too wished to see it. But in reality he had never been given any blueprint. Sethu mash confirmed that other than his delusion of its possession, there was no such document.
Sethu mash’s house was close to the medical college. Walking along a narrow alley that barely allowed a bicycle to pass, I stopped in front of a tiled, sma
ll but neatly maintained house where I found Sethu mash chewing on a betel-leaf blend. He was wearing a flowing white khadi shirt that could have accommodated four more persons of his size. He laughed heartily. ‘That is how fascism wins,’ he said. ‘The fascists scare people to their bones until they no longer want to be themselves. We all have a bit of a fascist in us, my friend. Take the example of a mother and her child. The mother does have a fascist strain in her. She wants her child to never leave her, love only her, and continue her lineage and so on.’
He laughed again, his whole body shaking along the length of his laughter. ‘Just wait and watch. Do you see what is happening all around us? People have become thieves. The total worth of gangsters in our tiny state has crossed fifty thousand crore now. They produce illicit hooch, operate murder syndicates, and sell off girls … God save us!’
‘Please talk to me about Das, mash?’ I pleaded. ‘Where is he? What illness does he have? I need to meet him. You have to help me, mash.’
Suddenly mash became silent. My voice cracked. My love for Yudas must have soaked my voice completely.
‘I’ve got no one else, mash. My love for him began when I was fifteen. I could never forget him in this life. Mash, you must help me. Please make him understand. I want to live with him.’
‘That is not possible, dear,’ mash said. ‘He wouldn’t be able to. He has no deliverance from the past. For that matter, none of us do.’
I stubbornly insisted on meeting him.
He chewed some more betel leaves, laughing heartily. ‘Let it go. Don’t see him. He is no more. That’s how you should think about him.’