A short story by Avishkar Sengupta
CHAIRMAN MAO Zedong said “power flows from the barrel of the gun”. My class 8 flunked brains couldn’t make much out of Biplobda’s wisdoms and his quotes, but this one really inspired me. And when I first ran my fingers through the textures of my 9mm pistol, I felt power creeping through my spine.
Biplobda says I have potential because I have no fear, no weakness and mostly no emotional obligations. He says, “Together we will bring the change. We must end what Chairman Mao had started.” I never asked what Chairman Mao had started and why we should end his work because his words had wisdom. And I never sought wisdom, I sought power.
Biplobda was right. I had no fear, no weakness, and no emotional obligation. I saw my drunken father beat ma every night and random guys come and go every day. We cursed ma for dying because without her food wasn’t forthcoming, beating was. Things got worse when sister fled with some guy; I didn’t know who because then I was busy learning pick pocketing as the only thing I was best at was getting beaten. I couldn’t afford any emotion. My only emotional obligation was anger. I was angry with ma for selling herself, father for beating me every night, sister for selfishly leaving me there and the local liquor for making everything happen. Out of this hatred I drank one day. And since then, it subsidized my anger till the day I killed my father. With a blood stained stone on my hand and my father’s pathetic corpse lying in a pool of blood, I saw my next addiction. I wasn’t afraid anymore; rather I saw fear in neighbor’s eyes. And with father, my last obligation; anger also died.
Fear is epidemic, and I found it spreading rather fast amongst the villagers. Soon I induced gossips and awestruck gazes. People feared me. But then, Biplobda happened; so did my 9mm. After that, whenever I walked on the alleys with the pistol tucked in my belt, I used to get respect. People fear you when you are a threat to them, but they start respecting when they know you are unbeatable. Me and him; we were two different kinds of person, but somewhere, we struck the same cord. He was the creator, I was the destroyer. But in an overpopulated country like India, you can’t create without destroying. So we had a very symbiotic, natural and cordial friendship. I used to kill whatever bothered him and he used to make sure I didn’t succumb to guilt; both in the court of law and to the conscience. We were perfect. He wanted to change the world, and I just wanted it to be done by my hands. There’s one thing about those who seek to change the world. They think of cleanliness, but the sewage must be done by somebody from the gutter.
Those were the best times of my life. I killed the local MLA, few ex-SPs and few of the local party’s workmen. Of course the brain behind the plot was Biplobda’s. He says it’s for the revolution; the poor must rise against the rich. We must learn to seize what we don’t get. So I guess the once coward kid who used to fear getting beaten every night has seized his position out of fear. But the only bad about good times is that they don’t last long. Biplobda died in a police encounter lead by the new SP Shushil Munda.
I heard Munda had been posted as a Maoist and guerilla combat expert sent to terminate the insurgency problem in our zone. I warned Biplobda about this, but he ignored. He said, “We can’t waste our time in these petty things, we are this much close to our goal.” But who knew that he would die on the penalty kick? The rage was uncontrollable. The last words of Biplobda kept ringing on my ear, “Is this the end? All my efforts… all my dreams, do they end here? I feel pity Bablu, you can’t see the world like the way I see it… and am sad because this world of mine dies with me.”
As always, I couldn’t make much even out of his last words, but it had a peculiar saddening calmness. And it made me more determined to avenge his death.
Death is evil. People get blinded by rage, revenge or power and invite death, unaware of the consequences. I should have killed this new SP had not Biplobda restrained me, but now his death was imminent. All I needed was one moment with him alone, and darkness which was delivered on a silver platter by his drowsy night guard. I went to his house, shot him, emptied my magazine, and then kept hitting his head with the butt of my pistol till his brain popped out of the skull. His bloods on my hand and on my face, the warmth of his blood, the sight of raw gore gave me a hellish pleasure. I didn’t bother to wash myself. I began dragging myself out of the scene when I saw a photo frame, the normal happy family type picture of that bastard, his two children and wife, and that’s when I realized I had killed my brother-in-law.
As I said, death always invites misery. I saw his tormented body led to the funeral pyre. Though I hated my sister from the day she left me, I couldn’t bear to see her clad in a white sari, crying. I never meant to see my niece abandoned. I told myself this is karma… she’s been punished for abandoning me. This escapade would have worked if I hadn’t faced her on my way back home.
I began hating her even more for robbing me of my sleep. I couldn’t get rid of those questioning eyes of my niece. I saw fear in their eyes; the fear once in mine. I have led them to the gutter from where I came from. And then I realized Biplobda was wrong. I never cleaned the gutter. I just created another.
I never sought wisdom, I sought power. My class 8 flunked brains was never good in wisdom. It wanted to taste power for the last time. I recalled Chairman Mao’s words and put the pistol in my mouth.