Death in disguise

What is a man’s responsibility towards history?

Figures, benevolent as they are, pop up every now and then from the pages of history. One cannot but hope names extend beyond numerical imagination. Each and every man is a history with their own quests and livings. Nietzsche’s idea of Superman faces stern opposition if one digs down the soil of humanity. Lenin is immortal but so is the ordinary soldier fought for the Red Army. Ordinary voices remain trapped under the ruins of history but they all have individual sense of destiny, responsibility.

This leads us to reflect upon the basic human predicament. Just relocate the macrocosm of universality to the microcosm of a single poor family living in horror. The time is one of anticipation, freedom bell tolling in the air but somehow insanity leads an absurd dancing--a dance towards death.

Migration for that family was and still is a reality. What really leads to migration? The answer is somewhat simple. Desperate parents trying to provide their children with proper schooling hardly available back home, the defeated in their own land trying out for a better life, or a youthful voyager voyages to a land of plenty reassuring parents back home with a false sense of well-being.

Can love lead us to migrate? Let us ascertain the possibilities. Unrequited love can lead to the greatest of journeys as in the Divine Comedia. Dante followed Virgil to one of the grandest of journeys through hell, purgatory and heaven after being jilted by Beatrice, his crush. Finally he ended up meeting her in heaven but still unable to touch her. Beatrice was waiting there with the boldest of purity imaginable. His passions remained locked within his heart as it was in reality. But this non fulfillment made possible one of the most brilliant journeys. It seemed as if a migration to the nether world was good enough to forget the pains on earth. Dante’s migration must have been traumatic; so are the modern migrations. It’s a wild goose chase that will be pursued.

Rana’s father hardly thought of migration. He knew things around him were quickly changing. The country was no longer safe for them to live. Politics had taken it’s toll on the public sphere. They thought the heroes were leading them to Paradise but in fact, they were heading towards Hell. A new world order was soon to be established with few hopes and aspirations for the poor whose misery seemed now to be extended to infinity.

Then there emerged a new evil.

Rana’s father heard about a man walking through Noakhali to stop such an evil turning into reality. The man he heard was lovingly called Mahatma. Events unfolding hardly effected Ramnath Som. He was entirely a family man with a humble job at the municipality. Politics hardly ever touched his life before. But now it had to be reckoned alongside bread and butter. The neighborhood had also changed. Families living together for many years hardly have seen any communal malice. This poor neighborhood celebrated Eid with as much commitment as it did Durga Puja. But now ‘love thy neighbor’ was the least expected ethics a priest in the nearby temple delivered.


Finally a single night was left to sever the embryonic cord that strangely joined hindus and muslims under the same flag for hundreds of years. Today the night beheld something ominous. Wailing cries were constantly heard from not too distant places. As a part of the historic moment Ramnath’s municipal office was declared a holiday. He sat beside his ailing son since evening. Rana often confronted these bouts of fever. The mellowness of his face disappeared; it bore the signs of pain as the fever wrecked havoc in his joints. Rana was rheumatic as a modern day doctor would have said. Night fell. Ramnath sweated watching him suffer and also dreaded the possibility of death if he stepped outside of the house for Dr Malik. His wife Kamala Devi gently washed his son’s head. It seemed the only cure in absence of a more precise treatment. The eight-year old boy suddenly fell unconscious.

Hordes of men had marched through the streets some hours ago. “They won’t force into any house”, he reassured himself. The men were shouting and swearing to avenge the deaths of their brothers and sisters in Calcutta. It was as if a solution springing out of an oracle. Hindu blood from the east while muslim blood from the west. Nobody seemed to have the power to stop such bloodshed.

The bazaar last night also gave ominous signals of impending deaths and looting and vandalism. Ramnath heard no body will be spared. If you want independence blood must be sacrificed. Over the years this very event was a distant possibility. White-skinned men from a distant European land were ruling the country. At least, from the time when Ramnath’s great grandfather was born. His grandmother would often tell stories how the white men revered as shahibs . He heard stories of torture but also of unique boldness. Then there were jaminders to cripple the poor. They enjoyed all the privileges possible along with their English masters. They would levy poor farmers on high rate and share the ill-gotten money with those awfully white men whose face turned red during scorching summer days. Ramnath thought they were deities only next to the stone-gods in the temples. But now, he heard, they were being driven out to the sea. But the English-speaking suave natives hardly left. They declared themselves new gods and demanding bloodshed in lieu of being new rulers and benevolent rulers at that.

Ramnath asked his wife to sit beside son as he decided to look around. The melodious sound of evening prayer was heard from the nearby mosque. He was bending over the vegetables he had planted at the kitchen corner when his wife hollered from inside that Rana is vomiting

“I want water mother”, Rana uttered deliriously in a crippling voice after throwing up a few yellowish mound.

“Dear, I will just be bringing you water”, Ramnath heard his wife’s saddened voice.

He knew time has come to look for a doctor. He had to cross several alleyways before reaching Dr. Malik, just settled here two years ago. This kind hearted, urdu speaking gentleman was born in Gujarat. He left Calcutta to settle here where his elder daughter lived with her in-laws. Dr. Malik’s troubadour-like qualities earned him many friends in this near alien city no sooner than he had settled. He learned his curative trade in London, visited the great European cities before settling down in Bombay after his marriage with a Parsee. Time flowed, two of his sons died and he lost his wife when he was living in Calcutta. Now the city overlooking Buriganga was his fate.


The notion of family has always been difficult to define. On finest of threads they seemed to be hanging on. Sanity that protects a family can vanish any time, any moment. A sudden death or betrayal or irrationality can lead to a fall. Again at times families are made to sail on an outer reality; situations that are loftier than the simpler existence called life or shall we call them irreconcilable. Like the simplest of human migrations for thousands of years. Aryans were thought to have come to the subcontinent crossing Hindukush mountains, native Americans embarked on a difficult journey from Asia to Northern America overcoming ragged oceans and ice. One cannot see rationality being the driving force destroying family ties or ensuing natural disasters. It is as if ‘original sin’ is linked with such catastrophe. Since the birth of family is due to that ancient scriptural sin one is due to pay the price for the blunders of Adam and Eve.

Rana was now under a trancelike state. The abnormalities brewing outside his humble abode hardly interrupted his simple delirious utterances. Illness regularly took him to a different realm. Only he knew how it felt to walk in Paradise. Days were of boundless joy. Gone were the Sanskrit classes of Haridas pundit and tedious mathematics of Jaiswar master. Pleasure flowed like honey dews. Moreover, Rana seemed to lead the study band on. How fascinating those days in the village were. It was a true Paradise with the small river to bathe on, fields to wander, cattle to graze.

The village was always picture perfect. But things changed when his father was forced to bring his family to the city. The sprawling quarter they lived hardly had a better school. Rana was beaten by goon-like pupils when he was admitted to one of the schools. Boys of his age smoked, swore at the mild students, unthinkable to the tenderness of his.

As Ramnath stepped into the streets he felt an eerie lull. The houses just on the other side were already burning. He shivered at the darker smokes curling deviously up towards the sky. Every now and then wailing were heard. Dusk had just paved way for the darkness of night. The local vendors’ shop was looted but not yet gutted down. A lump of despair surged about his throat. He kept on walking.

“Halt”, he heard cruel voices from behind.

Peeping behind he saw a group of men, blood-stained looking at him with malicious eyes. Ramnath’s forty-one years old body trembled with the fear of
awaiting consequences. He had never anything like this before in his life. Suddenly memories flashes before his eyes. Once, he was attacked by water- buffaloes, only to be saved by his father at the last minute. These were men possessed with the same instincts animals would display when let loose.

“Dhuti utaro”, they shouted. This was an attempt they devised to degenerate victims psychologically. Every time a poor man awaited to be slaughtered by the fueling rage of their communal sword he would strip himself naked. They would ask him to perform much outrageous acts. The victim thought it would end his misery but he was killed nonetheless. Each and every man they killed were souls lamenting a body with deformed penis.

Similar events occurred in the other side of the border. Muslims were being dragged to the streets, stripped naked lay dead with chopped penises, women made breast less after being raped, children with severed body parts. A mayhem that now gripped Ramnath. The hordes knew his identity, yet They wanted to make him ashamed of his identity, or at least curse his identity in desperation. Within seconds Ramnath took his decisions. They yelled at him again.
“You can take my life but not my dignity”, he said in a firm voice. That was the signal, a signal to revenge who knows what.

A torrent swept through the almost ghostly city that night. The condensed blood in the streets gradually had washed away in the gutters. Next morning Dr. Malik discovered an almost naked body a few yards away from his house. The face was distorted as was the rest of the body. Signs of grudge were everywhere. Suddenly a blood-soaked dhuti caught the aged physician’s eye. The pure whiteness missing from the dhuti made him shiver. Before his eyes glimmered the psychic horrors the man underwent during the moments of madness; a madness that resulted into his death.

Dr. Malik felt relieved. After all, he is no longer a minority.