OPIUM

Opium

An opium-eater! Was he really? It was hard to believe. But the doctor was sure. Quite high sounding; as for his selection of words. And they had no point contradicting him. “Diagnosis shows no part of his body unaffected. Lungs, heart, kidneys and what else; all damaged” one doctor said. Evidences were enough to make them believe. A completely mysterious world of letters and images must have been the truth they were telling. Mind was also there. But it was not a point. It had nothing to do with his death. And, anyway, mind had no role in his life. Probably they believed so.

He was the first child to move out from his family. Responsibility of the eldest. To imagine a big city was itself something big for him. The end of all miseries. Childhood was there in his face. But the promises it bore made him to outgrow it. He promised to send money regularly and end all her worries. Even though she wept, she couldn’t think stopping him. After a good for nothing husband he was her only hope. He left with a person who owned a shop in Delhi. A tea stall in a busy market place.

Every time Raju carried the cups of tea he muttered something. He didn’t know Hindi. And he didn’t know Delhi’s Hindi. And he had to learn it. Clothes had done bit of the job. Red and yellow shirts made a worth doing servant. ‘Raju’ sounded good. He began a new job in new clothes with a new name. Obviously the place was also new. He was excited.

“No amount of work is more than money. And he is merely a loss to the business. He is lazy. He is not a grateful servant. And now he wants more money. Every time some new need at his home.” But they never sent him back. Were his employers so generous or he was worth that? He had seen the money that business brought. He knew the labour he put- carrying tea to the surrounding factories and shops, washing pots and cups, and cooking food for all. He stayed with his employers. The shop was run by two brothers. He thought it was worth more. He missed his home. He missed his family. He missed his mother. He felt sick. He didn’t work there anymore. He thought his patience over. He was out in a big city to make his life. Only problem that he was hungry and had nothing to buy food. He felt miserable. And he felt angry. Angry?
He was walking along the pavements. He saw many like himself. In age. Some were collecting something important from the garbage bin. One got something, another snatched it … and there was a fight. Flow of mother and sister related adjectives. He felt low. They were like him. And he despised them. He hated them. He saw some others. Begging around a red light. Poking their dirty faces into the closed car windows. He almost laughed when he saw a little girl clung to the feet of a girl who was with a guy. The girl was screaming and the guy was trying to hoot that little girl away. Getting free they almost ran away. And then he realized that it was a prank. All those dirty faces and half-naked bodies were laughing on that successful prank. May be that little girl really wanted something from them. But she was also laughing now. He also smiled. But couldn’t laugh. He was hungry and he had nothing to eat. He felt pain in both his stomach and his heart. He had nothing to eat and no money to buy his food.

He knew how to make tea. He knew how to carry tea and how to talk. He had some, very little in fact, experience as a farm labourer. He used to accompany his mother during the harvest season. But all these skills were of no use as there was neither a tea stall nor any farm for him. “I’ll earn lots of money. I can work and also know the things.” The hope or the dream, whatever it was, was giving way to heaviness of mind and eyes. Hunger dulled him to feel sleepy. He could not see or feel his shattered dreams.

He found himself surrounded by many half naked bodies and blank eyes when he woke up. It was somewhere in the night and they were standing to know who he was and from where. He felt some hostility in their eyes. He pretended to be asleep. Stream of abusive words and some less harmful kicks gave him enough to forget his hunger. Hunger made him to forget his hopes or dreams and now fear relieved his hunger. But once they were gone everything was back to torment him. Shattered hopes or dreams, hunger, fear, and a sense of being insulted. His poor birth, his failed words, his helpless situation, and now the most recent treatment received from those children like himself; he felt insulted by everything. Yes, he had a sense of self- respect. Hunger, growing darkness and cold, and this added burden. He felt something moving near his waist. Some hand, trying to figure out something. It was darker now. He felt his paint pulled down. Warmth entered his body through his naked butt. Something heavy was moving behind him. He felt hurt. He felt afraid. He tried to ignore that. Tried to think about something else. He tried to think about the morning when he would have some work to do, some good money to buy some food and to manage some place to live and sleep, and the beginning of a new and good life. The man behind and inside him was moving so rapid and hard, heaving so loud and smelling so bad that he could not think or feel anything else. It was painful.
With a fresh noise around, he opened his eyes in the morning. It was a night of bad dreams. His worn face said how bad it was. He saw people looking at him with shock and then moving away as if from something stinking or contaminating. Only those naked, half-naked, bodies again standing around him. They were giggling, and pointing to him and one part of his body in particular. Suddenly he became conscious of his body. A swarm of flies was around him. With a particular interest in the part down his waist. Suddenly he felt the whole world vanishing. Rather he wished it. To be invisible to all those knowing and mocking eyes. It was no bad dream. His paint was still down and some strange stains on his paint and his butt and when some mocking finger pointed he felt those stains on his face as well. He pulled up his paint frantically, cursing all those, those like him and unlike him, around and started running. A few quick steps, and one against a brick lying on the footpath, a sudden darkness, and he felt himself floating in air. He fainted.
Apart from the fast moving traffic, carrying a whole world from one place to another, there was no other sound. He felt cool breezes, a memory of his left behind village and his mother caressing his head. He recognized the faces. Those like him. One was fanning him, another was caressing his head and another was holding a cold drink bottle filled with water. His eyes were moist. They gave him something to eat. He was one of them. A strange way of becoming. But this is how people think destiny is made. He had no mind to think about such things. Things had changed. Drastically or disastrously. No matter how.

It was a new beginning for him. Life had started for him but in a new way. And he had realized that. Something was burning down his throat. Then, first time smoking is often so. He had puffed only once from that Bidi. Rest was puffed by his new friends. The called him a child but promised to teach him how to grow up. Yes; teach him how to grow up in that world. That afternoon he begged with them around a red light. Smoked again. Got some money in his pocket. At night a big bearded man came to them. Everyone put a certain part of his/her earning in his box. A boy whispered something into his ears. He also took out his money, counted them, and put some money into his box. He didn’t like it. He sang that night while smoking, after eating some left over food bought from a dhaba.

Everyday was getting the same way. Beginning from the beginning. Every morning he woke up with a sore consciousness and troubled mind. An expecting face of his mother made him feel guilty. Whenever he pulled down his paint to defecate in open, he felt some distant eye watching him. When he washed his ass after completing that everyday routine, he felt somebody else’s touch there. That night was still haunting him. And all this continued until came another night to end this. They managed it. He had to part with some money. Later they told him. That girl was from the same jhuggi. She used to go for some money, or some good food, or sometimes when forcibly grabbed at some isolated place at a dark night. Anyway, that night he was feeling different. In the morning when he pulled down his paint, his hanging tool reminded him something and he started smiling. He felt its increasing hardness. Washing his ass in hurry he pulled up his paint. Too hurried to feel anything else. Now he paid almost every night even if not for the same girl. He had found many of her type. Sometimes it was cold drink, sometimes it was chocolate or biscuit or chips. Once he gave one a beautiful frock. He had some special feelings for her. She didn’t come the next day. Two days later he saw her with a goodly dressed and purse keeping boy. He didn’t like him. He put his hand in his pocket. It had a hole. He felt cheated. He was angry. The man who used to collect money from them, scolded him, abused him, thrashed him. His eyes were dry. Anger had evaporated the tears. That night he stabbed him. Change is the nature of life, people say. His mind was too stuffed to think any such philosophy. He was arrested.
He was put on trial in a juvenile court. Charge of murder: he accepted. A premeditated murder: he remained silent. Involvement in petty crimes like theft, snatching etc: he accepted. Some occupational rivalry with the dead: he was silent. Nobody exactly knew from where he came: he accepted. From where he had exactly come: he was silent. Tears rolled down from his eyes. He cried for punishment. He knew that hanging is the punishment for death. He cried for it. He was denied that. Court showed some leniency and awarded him imprisonment for ten years. He was very young and it was his first big crime. Court took it to be an act in rage. It was the end of his sixteenth year. He was taken to the jail. That night he remembered his mother again. Something was broken inside but he was helpless. It was a process and now it was his life. He wished that part of his existence to be dead or eliminated rather than being broken.
Jail life began with a whole day of labour. Messaging the huge bodies of those prison house monsters exhausted him. A whole day without any word. Good way of correcting the convicts. He got food but no appetite for eating them. Their filthy talk was suffocating something inside him which had remained preserved so far. That night his paint was pulled down again. But this time he was not sleeping but awake. He was afraid, yet he resisted. A slight pinch on his butt and things began changing. The whole world was swinging and gradually blurring. He knew somebody’s penetrating his back while his hand was holding somebody else’s. But he felt nothing. Nothing further. No fear, no anger, no shame, no disgust, nothing else. Just something was dying inside him. Defecating in the morning was a big torture. He wept blood that morning, both from the top and the bottom. His head was still heavy. But he had to do his work. He messaged them whole day in different ways. He was just waiting for his time. And it was to come.

Repentance is the end your sins. I have heard it so many times. Some men, known to be learned in scriptures, have said that the Demon King Ravana went to heaven as he confessed his folly and repented at the end. Confession in Christianity also seems to be of the similar effect. Many Bollywood movies have a reconciliatory end in this way only. But there only heroes or their kins could have such facilities. True villains must die. However, we feel sorry when a villain goes through a moral transformation at his dying moments. How do we feel when see a hero dying due to some villain’s villainy and the villains also dying as the result of the same cause? You may feel very sorry again. For me, I feel nothing. I have seen too many of it and, unlike many, I never forget them.

He was lying in his hospital bed, looking at the banana given in his breakfast. He wanted something else. An uneasiness of his nerves was compounding his bodily pains. Really, his mind was troubling him. he often dreamt his mother welcoming him in her arms. His dreams or hopes often flashed before his closed eyes and their failure pained him. Tears often rolled from his eyes. One of his fellow prisoners, two beds next to him in the same hospital ward, died one evening. They blamed a mysterious sickness caused by drugs. Faces were worried whenever they entered the ward. He was given better attention now. Faces had masks and hands had gloves. Earlier also it was the same but now he got better food than before. He felt quite amused some times. One night he heard a nurse cursing the head nurse for putting her duty in that death infected ward of HIV patients. She also cursed the wretched evil mongers. Next morning he gave them his address and wished to see his mother. He wished them not to say his mother anything about his jail sentence, his evil ridden life, or his mysterious sickness. Truly, he was still innocent if not pure.

His story must stop here if not end.