Short Story First Prize wordweavers.in (2010)
Every Man, an Island
By
Mahendra.
The man who was going to kill himself stayed in the same cottage as mine.
He was at least 10 years older, shorter and fatter than me. I had never seen him standing up but he could barely be five and half. I saw him every morning before I went jogging along the smelly seashore. The man was some sight for my young and earnest eyes; he was like a comic book character with his bare, flabby stomach the size of a loose potato sack spilling over his scarred leather belt and shapeless corduroy trousers. His faded pullover hanging on the armrest had seen better, cleaner days. Irrespective of the time of the day, he was always slouched in the porch chair, right under the tacky paper lantern, with a glass of beer waiting in his swollen hand. The bloodthirsty mosquitoes of the island didnât seem to bother him much. He looked like a bitter, middle-aged tourist catching up with his quota of drinks and boredom. Someone not too rich; someone not too happy with the drudgery of the daily grind we call life. I would never take a liking to a downslide character like him. His eyes. Those eye had bothered me for some reason. They were gray, blank, almost lifeless eyes of a dying frog. I had seen him crying that morning and he didnât look bothered by my steady stare.
What was keeping me there in the island so small that most maps do not acknowledge it? I wouldnât be caught dead in a dreadful place like that but I was stuck. Korucha is about 300 miles from the Bombay coast. At some point of time, probably in the early part of 18th century, it was considered a strategic location for the British navy. After a decade or two, it was the ideal place to lock up the anti-empire nationalists and hardened criminals awaiting their end. This tiny desolate ghost of a place has the abandoned and crumbling jail from the mighty British era. There is a small but functioning port with huge warehousing facilities and a dozen sea facing cottages originally built for naval officers. Now the cottages serve as a hotel for weird tourists like him and trapped executives like me.
I was there because the custom inspectors in Bombay had seized a god awful expensive CNC (Computerised Numerical Control) tooling machine my company had legally imported. They had transferred the metal container from the ship and locked it here on islandâs warehouse. The officials had followed some strange government procedure to prove a point. The stuffy bureaucrats had a field day about this perticular consignment because the import documents were in German. Despite our repeated pleas, our counter parts in Frankfurt werenât forthcoming with any more documents or verifications. The Ministry of Commerce couldnât care less either. The machine had left the German shore and reached India, that shining fact was good enough for them to sleep without worrying. Until and unless the local port authorities and stuffy custom duty officers were fully convinced (and sufficiently bribed) they wouldnât let us take the delivery of the precious machine.
By the time we got around to comprehending the situation at our company HQ in New Delhi, our production schedule had gone haywire. The marketing managers who had committed orders were yelling their lungs off. Some of them had developed ulcers. Not to count the daily demurrage they were charging for keeping our cargo in their warehouse. As a young recruit in charge of imports, I was immediately dispatched by the chief of production to facilitate the delivery. My bossâ instructions were clear: do whatever it takes but donât come back without the machine loaded on an express delivery truck. This was my chance to look good and rise a step higher on the company ladder. I tried to find out who could be pushed, who could be greased and who could be bent. I met one custom authority after the other with new set of papers and started to bang my head on various tables. It took me one more week, endless arguing and phone calls, thirteen faxes and as many emails but I did it; to make things easy for the government fatties, I got the documents translated and photocopied at my companyâs expense. I fed the clerks. The warehouse manager earned more than triple my salary in a day. That was for shifting my cargo for convenient loading. I still had to wait until their superior came back from his leave and signed the necessary papers.
So I was still stuck in this dingy cottage hotel, watching my bare beer belly neighbor everyday. Apart from jogging, there was nothing on the island I could occupy myself with. I had to wait it out most of the time at my DDT-smelling cottage. It was depressing enough to see the man drinking the whole day. By the look of him, our man was probably drinking at nights also. This morning I walked out to hang my towel on the porch railing and saw him crying. A grown man sitting rigid in his chair, with tears rolling down his creased cheeks is no material to make a joke of. Not even for me. I am super-glib by nature and training, I can talk my way out of cannibalsâ crowd, but the sight of his streaked gray face made me tongue-tied. Couldnât think of a thing to say. He looked so neck deep in his private misery.
I didnât feel any better after talking with my fire-breathing boss in Delhi. I drank my sugarless coffee and again left for the port office in the afternoon. The senior officer in charge was already behind his battered, felt covered table. My papers and consignment miraculously got through the same evening. The middle aged lizard stamped and scrawled his signature on the yellowed government papers, removed carbon copies for his records and finally handed me the illegible but prized gate pass. After two weeks of spirited haggling, I saw my machine-loaded truck leaving the custom authoritiesâ gate. I returned tired but buoyant. I sent an all-okay fax to HQ and collected the keys from the reception counter. On the way to my cottage, I met the old waiter who told me about my neighborâs quiet, senseless death.
âUsed that leather belt of his for a noose and hung himself from the ceiling fan. The rotting beam has nearly come off because of the body weight. No after-note, no blood, but you should have come earlier. Seen those popped-out eyes. The island police took the body for autopsy, just 20 minutes before you came,â the waiter said. This has been an exciting day for him.
I felt too stunned to react and didnât want to hear any more of this death business. You see a man drinking, day in and day out, regular as sunrise and sunset, you come back in the evening after a bitch of a day and the next thing you know, the man has killed himself for no apparent reason. I felt baffled and disoriented by the waiterâs attitude. For the first time in my life, I ordered a triple whisky and sat down in my porch facing the now-empty porch of my neighbor. It was already cold and dark. The seasonal wind had subsided as if compressed by the heavy weight of the winter sky. Waves sounded tired because the sea had retreated a good 500 meters. I drank till I felt myself floating on a smooth, endlessly warm plateau of untouchable privacy. I repeated the order for drinks.
It was the middle of the week so most of the cottages were empty. There was no traffic whatsoever on this part of the island. The lack of waitersâ cutlery bustle and resultant quiet appealed to my frayed, overstretched nerves. Not counting the chugging of an occasional motorboat in the distance, I had the little entirely world to myself. Despite the kind of day I had, I didnât feel hungry and swallowed some more liquid. Half way through the next round of whisky and I was seeing shapes in the surrounding darkness, fluid shapes in the empty chair where my neighbor had sat and drank with quiet determination.
I lost the sense of time and place. Grainy, irrational images from my distant past floated in and filled my head. The rainy afternoon when I had cut my knees and the subsequent visit to the family doctor. The firing I took from my mother for playing out in the rain. I remembered the bleak day I returned from school with less than respectable results for my 10th standard exam. The heavy pallor in the family about my lack of future. The steady berating I received from my retired old man for doing things exactly the way he did, all the spittle for habits I had inherited from him. A sense of guilty relief I felt when he finally died after a prolonged hospitalization. The awful smell of insecticide in the hospital.
It was probably whisky and nothing else but as the night progressed, I thought more and more about my dead neighbor whose name I didnât know. I knew practically nothing about him; what he did for a living or what made him come here for a holiday in a seedy place like this. Maybe he was divorced recently. Maybe he was a victim of sour marriage or some slow and sure disease. Or maybe he had deliberately planned the whole tragic act right down to the cottage booking and all; just drink for a week or two and die violently to make a personal statement. I saw him hunched, right there in his chair under the lazy, swinging lantern; his dead frog eyes finally shining with a gleam of satisfaction and his head resting on the headrest. Through a comforting wall of thick, misty fog, he waved his fat white palm at me; like some old buddy wishing a final farewell and taking a polite leave.
I swallowed my last gulp of amber liquid and probably spilled half of it on my shirt. I probably cried a little. I cried some more for no apparent reason and let the dark cloud of dense night overwhelm me. I passed out, a young worn out body slouched in a chair, not unlike my dead neighbors.
Results In: The Judgment Day
The results came in on the net at 7.30. I downloaded the file at the cafe and returned home at about 9.30. Only my younger sister knew the exact date and time, most probably. I walked into the front door and froze for a moment because Dad was on his first whiskey, going by the level in the bottle. It was not Friday, but it was one of those nights for Dad. He may have more than two but, there won't be ice or soda in the fridge, mom would make sure. Dad poured a spoonful of ketchup on his chips and sprinkled black pepper on the salad as if there was no tomorrow. He emptied his tumbler. Chini walked in and stood over the proceedings without fear of repercussion because being the youngest daughter, she had some advantage over us.
"Dad, Mom says dinner is ready," she announced as I slinked into my room. I stood next to the door, trying to catch the conversation. Beyond two drinks or 10.15 pm, dinner would be ice cold, my mother's iron-clad rule. Dad wouldn't go out after drinks or bother to turn on the stove to warm the food. Meaning I would go get something for him. That rarely happened.
Chinni sat down next to Dad.
"Shanu results came on the net, a few hours back."
"11nth?" Dad asked and took a sip.
"12th. I am in 10th."
"Of course."
"No college in the city will take him under 90% on the mark sheet.
"Hmm."
"No one in the state will touch him for entrance if it's less than 70%."
"Hmm."
" Are you with me Dad?
"What's his score?"
"Dad, you know this, he tells no one. This is not a test match score we are talking about."
"Hmm."
"You should be talking to the nutjob girl he is moving with. Her dad works in RTO. He can get you a driving license without showing up. Changes his car every two years."
"Is that how you want your license? Without a test?"
"No. I am for the test."
"Later. I'll finish dinner soon."
"You'll forget by the time you eat dinner."
Chini answered her phone and went out to see her friends nearby.
I closed the door and waited behind the wall as the TV volume went up. Finally, my dad walked in and sat down on a chair facing my table, diagonally across the bed. I silenced the game on the phone.
"Chini reminded me. Who knows? But I might forget this conversation or your score in the morning."
Dad has two distinct modus operandi. Immediate marching orders without much regard for the consequences. Or prolonged, studied silence till the moment is ripe for maximum damage to the opponent. I didn't have to wait.
"Do you have the printout or do you see it on-screen these days?"
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