[Fiction] Run
One fateful game of “Gulli-Danda” started it all.
When blood streamed out of Keshavan’s blinded eye after the gulli stuck his face, my friends panicked. “Run, or else the police may arrest you,” they said.
I have been on the run ever since.
I landed at a road-side eatery. I fetched water from the well, chopped tree trunks for use as firewood and cleaned utensils. One day, when I wearily closed my eyes, the eatery’s caretaker Sunny Pillai sneaked up and tugged at the cord of my pyjamas. I stabbed him with the kitchen knife, the only thing I could lay my hands on. It was the turn of the sympathetic eye-witness to shout: “Run or else the police may arrest you.”
Pulishekharan’s house was the next stop. I was assigned household chores. He made his writ clear. “Bastard! I hope you won’t steal. Do not stay if you do. And remember, I won’t pay you anything.”
The place was like home, though. Mistress Shantamma treated me like her son. One day their daughter, in the fourth grade asked me: “Hey boy, can you oil my tresses?”
This time it was my turn to warn myself. “Don’t. Now, run or else the police may arrest me.”
I breathed next when I thought I was safe, crouching beside a stinking lavatory on a train. Then, much ticket-less travel and some pick-pocketing later, I accomplished myself as a chain-snatcher.
I once laid my hands on a gold chain adorning a sleeping lady’s neck. Startled, she awoke and latched onto my shirt. I was aghast. The racket of the speeding train drowned her screams. I tugged at the gold-chain with all my strength as well as the emergency chain overhead and dissolved into the darkness enveloping Jolarpettai before people could find her lying slit-throat in a pool of blood.
Wading through the night, I slept in a railway wagon abandoned at the end of a railhead. The morning sun came with a realisation that the secluded wagon was, in fact, a courtroom in transit to try offenders traveling without tickets. Black gowns were everywhere.
Imprisonment for six months, merely for sleeping inside a courtroom? It wasn’t long before I graduated to being a lifer.
After many incarcerations, some wily escapes and nearly having felt the noose, my hair hasn’t grayed yet and bones are all in tact. I am hungry now. To douse this fire inside my belly I have to return to the prison. Who should I kill next?
[417 words]
Vijay © 15th April, 2006
Inspired by “Police Lokatthil”
A poem in Malayalam by V. Muzaffar Ahmed
P.S: I acknowledge the inputs and insights my friend Rajaraman has given to this piece
When blood streamed out of Keshavan’s blinded eye after the gulli stuck his face, my friends panicked. “Run, or else the police may arrest you,” they said.
I have been on the run ever since.
I landed at a road-side eatery. I fetched water from the well, chopped tree trunks for use as firewood and cleaned utensils. One day, when I wearily closed my eyes, the eatery’s caretaker Sunny Pillai sneaked up and tugged at the cord of my pyjamas. I stabbed him with the kitchen knife, the only thing I could lay my hands on. It was the turn of the sympathetic eye-witness to shout: “Run or else the police may arrest you.”
Pulishekharan’s house was the next stop. I was assigned household chores. He made his writ clear. “Bastard! I hope you won’t steal. Do not stay if you do. And remember, I won’t pay you anything.”
The place was like home, though. Mistress Shantamma treated me like her son. One day their daughter, in the fourth grade asked me: “Hey boy, can you oil my tresses?”
This time it was my turn to warn myself. “Don’t. Now, run or else the police may arrest me.”
I breathed next when I thought I was safe, crouching beside a stinking lavatory on a train. Then, much ticket-less travel and some pick-pocketing later, I accomplished myself as a chain-snatcher.
I once laid my hands on a gold chain adorning a sleeping lady’s neck. Startled, she awoke and latched onto my shirt. I was aghast. The racket of the speeding train drowned her screams. I tugged at the gold-chain with all my strength as well as the emergency chain overhead and dissolved into the darkness enveloping Jolarpettai before people could find her lying slit-throat in a pool of blood.
Wading through the night, I slept in a railway wagon abandoned at the end of a railhead. The morning sun came with a realisation that the secluded wagon was, in fact, a courtroom in transit to try offenders traveling without tickets. Black gowns were everywhere.
Imprisonment for six months, merely for sleeping inside a courtroom? It wasn’t long before I graduated to being a lifer.
After many incarcerations, some wily escapes and nearly having felt the noose, my hair hasn’t grayed yet and bones are all in tact. I am hungry now. To douse this fire inside my belly I have to return to the prison. Who should I kill next?
[417 words]
Vijay © 15th April, 2006
Inspired by “Police Lokatthil”
A poem in Malayalam by V. Muzaffar Ahmed
P.S: I acknowledge the inputs and insights my friend Rajaraman has given to this piece
posted by Mahfuuz | 6:13 AM
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