An Old Story

Once upon a time there was a child. He was the youngest one amongst his five siblings - four sisters and one brother, Purab, who was the eldest of them all. Ramlochan and Meera wanted another boy. Towards that end they kept on producing offsprings - Shanti, Preeti, Priya and Kamini - in that order, till they were finally blessed with Rajkumar. The intermediate ones were really so unnecessary that even their mother would hardly need an occasion to mention that. They were really unnecessary. They were too young now and they would be such a burden on the poor man's shoulders when they grew old enough to be married off. However, of late, in the months following Rajkumar's arrival in the household, such concerns about the future were washed away in the waves of joy and the air of achievement that Ramlochan had after begetting another male progeny. Achievement, indeed it was, considering how woefully unaware Ramlochan was of the probabilistic nature of chromosomes produced by meiosis. This sense of achievement was heightened by an unexpected visit of the village headman, who was not exactly famous for being close to the lower classes, leave alone let his shadow darken their dwellings. Impurity can spread through shadows too, he used to think, and think aloud.

This sense of achievement turned to bewilderment when the headman paid another visit to their humble quarters on Rajkumar's first birthday, and to Ramlochan's pride and amazement, the baby was grabbing all of Ranveer Singh's attention. Rajkumar, Ramlochan thought, was such an appropriate name for his child. And, though it was not customary for him to do so, he began to publicly thank Meera in front of guests and relatives for finally being able to bear him another boy. On these occasions, Meera would just put on a demure smile befitting an obedient Hindu wife and ascribe the success to God, or more specifically Hanumanji. Why she did that was quite mysterious, because uneducated though she was, she had enough knowledge of mythology to know that the monkey-god was a confirmed bachelor. But, when, all of a sudden , Ranveer Singh gave Ramlochan an artificially warm pat on his back and said, Rajkumar is like my own son, see? , the latter was too overwhelmed by instantly fabricated reveries of his son inheriting all those rice and oil-mills and unknown businesses of his guest-of-honour to utter any word of thanks for his wife. Poverty anyway makes one dream too much. Add to that the pat of a thakur.

That night Ramlochan went to the local hooch shop and drank a week's worth. There were rumours that this shop was anonymously promoted by Ranveer Singh himself. Though Ramlochan was a firm believer in this subaltern propaganda, he couldn't care less today. He was celebrating something but he couldn't express what it was. Back home, he mistook Shanti for Meera and rained the customary blows on her. When Shanti started screaming, Meera came running, slapped Shanti hard enough to make her stop her bawl and cursed her for existing in this world. Then she braced herself to handle her husband.

News of Ranveer Singh's special attention for Rajkumar spread sooner than Ramlochan could imagine. He probably wanted to cherish his private dreams a little longer before it became subject to the ravages of rural reactions - ranging from ridicule to jealousy to disgust. Public discussion in rural fora can be really democratic, in that, it encompasses all shades of opinion about the most trivial of subjects, something that the bourgeoisie are clearly incapable of replicating. Ranveer Singh, on his part, did nothing to reinforce nor weaken the wild conjectures his folks were having. He had all his energies focussed on some major business decision he was apparently taking too long to take. Or so the village grapevine said. Or rather the banyan tree.

Thirty kilometres away in a dilapidated factory shed nimble fingers were at work. There were scores of hands from which protruded those emaciated fingers. In the darkness of the ambience, one could hardly notice the faces corresponding to those hands. These were hapless children of the human kind destined to have a faceless existence. For softer people like us, our television channels would often blur out their faces, not just to save their identity but to save our sanity which would receive a serious jolt had we got a chance to look at those faces maimed by poverty, exploitation and the occasional occupational hazards. And occupational hazards are quite painful when your occupation is stuffing a precise mixture of saltpetre, charcoal and sulphur into crude country-made bullets and hand-grenades. Oh that's gunpowder, this bright ten-year old on our side of the television screen would say. And his parents would look at him in awe. But when Rajkumar was traded at eight to Ranveer Singh with the condition that he take two more of his sisters too, Rajkumar definitely couldn't spell the word "gunpowder". By the way, Ranvir Singh made a wise decision by choosing Shanti and Preeti. They had almost become of age.

Rajkumar was a fast learner in his almost two years of apprenticeship, which passed without any major incident. Only some minor irritants like the boy getting injured by shards of glass kept on recurring, which according to the factory manager would actually temper the boy to take on more serious challenges in the future. It was part of the learning process. Spare the glass and spoil the child. Ramlochan wasn't allowed to ask the whereabouts of his three children who were with Ranveer Singh, but he was quite happy that he did not have to spare much thought or effort in feeding the remaining five mouths at his home or for that matter moistening his parched throat every night. Little did he know that his beloved Rajkumar was soon going to commit parricide.

Rajkumar didn't kill his parents. No one can prove his direct or indirect involvement. The bullets manufactured in his factory did not have batch numbers and unique identifiers. But everyone knew it was those bullets that killed 38 people of the lower classes, including his parents, just months after he finished his apprenticeship. Purab was away from home, so he escaped death. Priya and Kamini were spared by the attackers, well, only their lives. Fortunately, Rajkumar was spared the pangs of remorse too.

It was one hot summer afternoon when some of the older hands of the factory, boys in their late teens were transporting crates of gunpowder from a lorry and pouring the contents into a repository at a corner of the shed. There was a pump above the tank of gunpowder which let out a stream of dry, hot air to keep the gunpowder from getting damp. The gust of air it provided used to blow along with it fine grains from the surface and diffuse it through the entire shed giving it an eerie smell like that of a battlefront. No one knows if it was the excessive heat or pressure of gunpowder piling up that set it off, but the tank let out a small burp and a huge boom. Rajkumar was sitting nearest to the tank nibbling at his fingers, ingesting a lot of gunpowder in the process. His hands and his head flew off in divergent directions. In all, eleven children died, ten more were severely injured and almost all of the rest, including the factory manager had multiple injuries. The Establishment sat up and took notice. Mediapersons and media-savvy activists began to pour in. People had started talking about exploitation and Ranveer Singh in the same breath. This was the time. Hardly anything was lost. His existing stockpile of ammunition could wipe out, he thought, all of the dregs of humanity who dared to point a finger at him. His men could wipe out only thirty-eight of them. But it was, nevertheless, a great achievement, both for him as well as for television channels, for being so close to the second incident that they could almost catch it live. The new story would definitely sell more then the previous one.

Of course, who likes to hear the same old story that the child is no more?