Sunday, 16 December 2012
Tuesday, 11 December 2012
HALF ALIVE
By: Dr. O.P.Sharma
“Sarathi”
Translated from Dogri
to English by: Col. Shivnath
In one corner of the road crossing lay a half alive man. A few days back when he had hobbled to fall at
this spot, many boys had collected in no time. None of the boys had a book in
his hand. Boys with books in their hands always scared him. The boys mad a lot
of noise. Soon several people joined them and standing in a circle around him,
started enjoying the tamasha.
As a matter of fact, none of them knew that the fallen man
had himself cut off his feet and then made an attempt to walk. He, like many
others, was in fact, the victim of a joke. Somebody had told him that, in order
to join the race of present times one had to hack away one’s feet; one can run
faster then. But that somebody who had told him this did not tell him that the
feet that were to be cut off, were different from the feet on which one walked.
And he himself could not think that one should not cut the feet with which one
walked and should not walk with feet that were meant to be cut. He had kept
looking at his feet for a long time, thinking that these feet which carried the
weight of his body, had never allowed him to walk. He could get nowhere. He
could never participate in any race. It occurred to him to cut away his feet
and run. He hacked both of them and broke into a run. While the wounds were
fresh, he did not realize that he had no feet and was running. But after a
while, when the heat and speed slackened, he fell down. And he fell on the crossroads
where just in front, was a shop of pictures displaying pictures of several nude
women. Among them was a large picture in which some devata had cut off the head
of a rakshasa and the torso of the one without the head was running.
Perhaps this was the reason why he was still breathing. If a
rakshasa without a head can run why can’t a man without feet.
He is no more a tamasha for the people. Because lying there
for so long his limbs have become lifeless, his legs have turned like logs and
his hand have become senseless, with occasional bouts of a burning sensation.
After falling at the cross roads and with the slow rotting
of the body, he has begun to feel that his city is a strange place. It is
becoming stranger. Its ways are becoming topsy turvy. It is true that he has
never helped anyone to his feed, has never accosted anyone. But he has sensed
the malodour of a rotting man. He has shouted that a man, who falls, becomes
senseless and starts rotting and should be removed to some forest. Now looking
at the picture, he is seeing other things too. Nobody is bothered that he is
dying, that he will die and rot and stink. The stink will spread. Germs will
disperse. An epidemic will spread.
There was not a single look of concern for him. Not a word
about him. Otherwise there was a lot of word-ban-dying and title tattle at the
crossing. Many voices. Much toing and froing . He was able to catch snatches of
conversation. When he tried to follow one thing, some new thing came up like a
new wave drowning the old one.
He had been a hakim. He had a feeling that he had only been
playacting as a hakim, wearing the mask of a hakim. Then it was a matter of
making a living. Now it was a matter of death. He should not think of the lies
he had lived. He understood nothing of pulse rate, of breath count, of lungs
and liver, of disease. He had been treating people superficially and through
this had been trying to pick patients pockets.
Quite some time ago, a practioner like him had told him -
“The biggest cure of a person like him is gold and diamond.” He had joined in
with a loud guffaw. “If a person has gold and diamond, where is the need for
practicing hakimi?”
The other hakim had got exasperated. Don’t you know that
these days you can’t get gold and diamond dirt cheap?”
“What did you say?” he had jumped up from his straw mat,
How? Where?”
The other hakim, one of whose eyes was always blinking,
winked with that eye and said, “By filling up a small bottle with dust and
putting a label over it.”
“Yes, I have got it. Powdered gold. Powdered diamonds. But
even after doing all this, I am not able to rum fast like the others…..
“You want genuine gold and genuine diamonds/ mixing dust and
selling dust, my fingers and toes have developed cracks.”
“Have as much gold as you wish?”
“But where from?”
“Forget about where and how. Just gold, cheap like dust. For
less that half the price. Pay today and get the biscuits tomorrow.”
Next day he was looking at his stiff fingers when his wife passed
by. Going a short distance she turned back, came and sat beside him. A whiff of
scent floated from her towards him. Never before had such a whiff come from his
wife at any time before, day or night, never.
“If you need anything I shall fetch it for you.” She said so
sweetly and lovingly that it occurred to him to tell her, “Give me the curse of
dying.”
“Call him to me. I want to talk to him,” he said instead.
Meanwhile some vagabonds and rogues had collected around
them, staring at the woman.
“Whom should I call?” the woman said casting her eyes from
side to side.
“My hands are of no use. Only my eyes can indicate. There is
still life in them. There, that man,’ and he moved his eyes in the direction of
a man.
“That man? All right. I’ll call him”
The woman changed colour and went and came back with that
man. He tried to shout but the movement sent streaks of pain through his being.
That man laughed loudly, putting his arm around the woman’s shoulder and said,
“You perhaps want to say that when this woman was not
faithful to you, how can she be faithful to me? But, there is pleasure in being
taken for a ride, my friend. You have experienced the rub. Now let me
experience it. Let me tell you, however, that it was she who said that a woman
couldn’t live with a man who had no feet.” Something else had also struck him
as strange. Close to the big bookstore, there is a butcher’s shop. A part of
the wall in between is uncovered. The city is busy all the twenty four hors but
sometimes it gets spells of stillness for an hour or so. That day also, in that
hour of stillness, a bare-bodied man tiptoed to the wall, pasted a poster on it
stealthily and then looked around. Seeing him lying there, he approached him
and sat down beside him. “Look, don’t tell anybody that a poster has been
pasted here.’
“Whom would I tell?” he asked
“Anybody! Any government Official! Any policeman!”
“What can I tell? I don’t know you at all.”
“People say like that. But if I am caught, I am sure to kill
you before I get caught.” Saying this, the bare bodied man disappeared in the
darkness of the night.
Morning had crept in. People started appearing, first in
ones and twos and then in large numbers. They read the poster and began to talk
about it.
“There are strange things written here,” he heard somebody
say. The poster read:
” I am a poster. Man today has loaded me with many tasks. I search for the missing. I provide cures to people. Auction of bungalows and auction of honour whilte lies and black truths. But what you find smitten on me today, is all falsehood. It is a conspiracy to lead you astray. When my user inscribed me, I had pleaded before him also. But in this kurukshetra, who listens to the voice of a beetle?”
” I am a poster. Man today has loaded me with many tasks. I search for the missing. I provide cures to people. Auction of bungalows and auction of honour whilte lies and black truths. But what you find smitten on me today, is all falsehood. It is a conspiracy to lead you astray. When my user inscribed me, I had pleaded before him also. But in this kurukshetra, who listens to the voice of a beetle?”
Some of the men were laughing. Some were expressing wonder
at what was written n the poster. Then three or four persons came to him. One
of them raised his eyebrow and asked, “Who has pasted it?”
“A man came and put it there”.
“Who? What sort of a man was he?” asked the second one.
“This man was exactly like you. There was one difference,
however. You are dressed. He was naked”.
The second man lifted his hands to strike. The first one
stopped him. “He is already dead. To strike a dead person is against the law of
this land.”
By now he had begun to feel that along with his knees and
elbows, his intestines and chest had also started rotting and after a short
while, his whole body would get decomposed and putrefied. But his eyes will
watch the whole show. His eyes will remain conscious till the end, alive.
Two nights back he had felt his eyes becoming heavy with
sleep. He had felt he did not have the strength in him to open them. But after
daybreak, his eyes had opened and he saw a line of people standing in front of
him. The line was so long that he could not see its beginning and end. He had
forgotten the spurts of pain. He felt an urge to enquire from somebody. Why
have these people fallen in a line? But before he could speak, two well-built
men standing in the queue picked up a lean man and threw out of the queue and
he fell on him.
He asked him. “What has happened? What are these people
standing in a queue doing?”
“They are ding something very important. Now all things of
day to day use are sold at one shore-clothes, food items, condiments, oils,
medicines, greetings, hunger and nakedness-at a cheap rate. It is a year since
I have been trying to get into the queue but have not been able to reach the
store. When I get into the queue, some muscleman comes along and throws me
out.”
The man got up in the twinkling of an eye and began to
struggle to get into the line again.
There was a big commotion at the medical shop which sported
a mile long board announcing cures for all diseases. Something appeared to have
happened. People collected and then scattered quickly. A labourer with a rope
on his shoulders came up to him, sat down and started, grinding his teeth.
“What happened at the medical shop?” he asked the labourer.
“Medical treatment. Through treatment. A man has died.”
“A man has died? But men kept dying. They died during my
time also. What is strange about it?” he asked.
“What is strange is the refusal of relatives to own
relationship with the dead man. The hakim was shouting loudly calling for his
relatives. The relatives were standing loudly calling for his relatives. The
relatives were standing there close by.
But without responding. Eventually things came out. Now they sat they
are afraid of the dead body. Some labourer should remove the body and dispose
it of.”
“Why don’t you go? Aren’t you a coolie? Don’t you want to
earn some wages?”
“This is the point of dispute. His relatives, own off
springs are afraid to touch him. And they want to give no more than a rupee for
lifting the body. A quintal heavy body and just one rupee?”
But when the hakim comes and settles a certain amount with
the labourer, he goes along to carry the corpse. It occurs to him that he
should settle some terms with the coolie for the disposal of his own body.
The man who has cut off his feet, who wants to run, who is
stinking, is lying half alive at the crossing the person who and wants to
engage a coolie for the disposal of his own body, is me. That hakim too is me.
Monday, 3 December 2012
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