Broken Hug

More Suicides

P.O.V. Charoen

I felt a funeral in my brain/and mourners, to and fro/Kept treading, treading, till it seemed/That sense was breaking through…

            Yes, there was this something, you know, like a funeral coach, a funeral gig, with FUNERAL printed in flowing letters as if in her Kathkali dance movement, and while holding the brush in her hand, the dancer swept each and every word with ease and paintingly-dancing, produced the word on the body of the carriage.

            This is what gradually appeared in my head, as I lay in the early hours of the morning perhaps around dawn when the mynah, perched at my window, called.

I opened my eyes, not anyone of the pair of eyes, but my eye of imagination. And there I saw this black carriage, standing inside my living room, near the single couch. The golden Buddha on the corner, perched on the stand, continued with its wise gaze on the coach. On its body, on the door, the word stood bold, straight and angled, leaning towards the right in its retro font. I got up in slow measures – all in my brain – and turned my head and fixed my eyes on the coach. I had gone to bed in my undergarment and a loose tee, but when my right hand brushed my left arm in a nonchalance manner, I felt a smooth feel on my fingers. I looked, and there I was in a white silk gown, the kind that drapes the dead who has returned from church after the funeral service and now had come to visit her home. Home, for the last time, to fix it in her mind that this was her temporary abode for nineteen years and now she was all prepared and ready to leave for her journey to the other dimension. I stood outside the carriage, peeping into the world inside.

            There was a dark-glow light within and my heart moved with a soft-thud, soft-thud against my ribs. Someone thrust a white notepad and on the unwritten page, I wrote Fai-Cha. I stepped in, closed the light door gently, and in moments after, my carriage shook gently – readying to leave – and moved. I passed my house, and my neighbours’, I passed the tea seller’s stall. He was placing the aluminium kettle on the mud oven from which a steady flame of red glowed out. He had merely placed the kettle when we – I, me and myself – passed him. Next the carriage zoomed over the 2nd Hoogly Bridge – the waters below was a dark grey – the cable wires taut as a string of worms laced together to hold our carriage. The wayside flowers winked as a final Au revoir to this Mongoloid featured Fai-Cha.

            As we travelled, the carriage bumping over the stony country road, a smooth-skinned hand, rusty brown, gently took form. Its slender fingers were holding a book. It showed page 99 and the chapter heading DEAD PIGEON and below in common brackets A story in two parts. It spoke about a man.

            The police came around seven, in a red and white jeep; a red light on the roof which didn’t work; a constable got up on the chair, held him tight with one hand, loosened the blue nylon rope with the other, lowered him down

            He’s very light,” the police said. “He’s so old he would have died anyway, why did he have to kill himself?’ he said to his fellow policemen.

            The constable took this question and walked around the neighbourhood, to as many people as he could, but no one had the answer. No one knew where the old man came from, whether he had any relatives in some faraway village. or whether there were some people in the city who would cry themselves to sleep that night.               

            The chapter went on narrating that this man was seventy, he could have been eighty and no medical college needed a cadaver so old. This was one of the four suicides in the city that day; it would become, by the end of the month, one of a hundred and fifty. By the end of the year, the chapter continued, one of over fifteen hundred. Multiply by fifteen for fifteen years and what do you have left?

            And see, there is death all over. Coming from above the horizon, blackish-and-pointed-tooth, bared, the face scream in my head.

*

I got up and having prepared coffee and while coffeeing it, my eyes fell on the bold headlines of The Sun Standard. And there, the news about the old man and about Samita. The news said about the four suicides in the city that day. The article below it said if guardians and/or parents/wards or relatives and near and dear ones do not give company to their loved ones, then by the end of the month, the suicides would count up to one hundred and twenty.

            But Charoen, if there are one hundred and nineteen, in that case, will you fill the last gap?

            I swung around. The couch at the window corner was unoccupied. Not a single chair was disturbed at the dining space. Was that someone behind the curtain; it waved for a while and then poked out a part of the cloth, as if someone had bent his/her knee. I gave a few quick short shakes to my head. You are dreaming, Charoen! You are drunk without having consumed any alcohol. You are mentally drunk. You need Prof. Rohan.

But I swear someone had whispered. Slow voice. Hollow.

I went to the wash basin and sprinkled cold water into my eyes. I looked into my reflection, went closer to the looking glass and penetrated my gaze into the black pupils staring back at me. I smiled; the reflection smiled back. I said, you are okay, Charoen. Nothing has happened to you. I looked behind me in the reflection. Only the passage leading to the living room appeared and it was empty. I tiptoed back.

            Keeping the newspaper as softly as possible lest its rustle and crackle woke the ears of the house, I looked at the little adjoining dining space again and treaded on the wooden stairs case, softly. Reaching the narrow corridor, I peeped into the guestroom on the left. Empty. I moved ahead; opened the door noiselessly. The bed was silent, the bed sheet crumpled as I had left it. But the washroom door was ajar; the sky blue tiles of the wall threw a dead gleam. Then a soft and suppressed voice of a female, followed by a heavy suppressed laugh as a response reached my ears. Sound of water from the rain shower. A female giggle and a male moan.

            I peeped. A pair was under my shower. The smoky beings. Holding each other. Their mouths on each others. The female’s features like mine; the male’s Rohan’s!

*

My God, what’s this? Somebody lying on the road?

 It was afternoon, close to four, when I went to the Ste-Loon Shopping Mall to window shop but with an open mind. If I would come across some dress, I would pick it up. But finding nothing up to the mark, I went to the small and cosy café on the second floor and spent some time over a spiced cola before coming out. Cristiano Ronaldo was dribbling the ball. His right foot spun around it and listened to him. Next rushing towards the post, he shot the ball, and it went sailing into the air, curved gracefully and hit the net. The screen focused on the stand. The fans were yelling and screaming. Their faces opened up in wild ecstasy. But there were two in the stands my eyes fell on. They began enlarging in the screen. The man with a crew cut. He had a silver stud on his left ear. The girl with gun metal earrings of scorpion shape. The girl lifted the video cam and they both zoomed themselves; and they came forward. Larger and larger they became on the screen till the entire forty-eight inch screen filled them. The girl removed the camera and now both looked into my eyes.

I went to the ladies’ washroom, took out the piece of stone from my leather purse, and placing it flat on my palm concentrated into the faded yellow glint. The stone stirred. The light penetrated into my eyes.

A face appeared. Lobes of the ears touching the shoulders, and in the centre of the lobes two copper coins bearing a lady’s face with a crown. Face criss-crossed with wrinkles. One more step, and your power increases. The mouth opened and the voice spoke.

I nodded, returned the stone back into the purse and left the mall, crossing the roadside where vendors were sitting around colourful chinaware. I stood debating whether I should visit the Bata Store across when I stopped short. In no time I edged myself closer and my eyes fell on a knot of people gathered around and poring over something on the road. That was quite unusual indeed. A youth in his early twenties lay on the edge of the pavement, his head smashed.          

My mind raced to the newspapers where youths purposely coming in front of speeding vehicles had become a common feature and a talked-about topic of the city. Some of them even carried razors; and as soon as the vehicles rushed forward, these youths hanging about the pavement, blindly rushed down to the road. And in the split second when the vehicle would run over them, they slashed their throats; they did not want to survive the accidents. And invariably a suicide note would be fished out from their pockets. Every note carried the same theme: This is a suicide. Not one is responsible for my death other than unemployment.

This youth was dressed in a pair of blue jeans and a tee. On the slimmer side, he had semi-long hair but red patches of blood were quite visible against his shiny black hair. His body lay twisted around the chest where, possibly, the vehicle had hit him. People confirmed to the policeman that it was not that the driver hit the youth, but he had rushed into it. The policeman nodded, continuing reading from the small bit of paper in his hand. I craned my neck to read the contents. “I’m going down the roadside/To lay my head on its chest/And when I see a vehicle-a-coming/I’m gonna to pass the test.” Yes, no one is to be blamed for my action. There is no job in the state.

My head gave a slow spin and the world tilted. First a pair of invisible beings predict about people’s lives which the professor told me about and then Samita taking her own life and now this young man lying dead.

There, ahead was an iron railing. I walked and leaning against it looked at the people walking about. I bought a clay cup of tea from the tea vendor and sipped the hot beverage. People were busy in their casual conversation. None had a mark of bother on their faces, which meant they had no young men or women in their house. And even if they did, they did not bother about their lives. But two in the other group had some frustration quite easily etched on their faces, especially in their eyes. It was clear that this frustration stank from the city walls. But was it clear that I will have a troubled night?

The old lady with hanging lobes appeared.   

Yes, Senior Charoen, and I smiled at her. Your power is working.