ASSAMESE SHORT STORY

This is a translation of an Assamese short story by a young and highly talented writer, Manoj Goswami, who writes short stories in Assamese and is editor of an Assamese news daily, JANASADHARAN. He has won numerous literary awards including prestigious Katha award.

Homeward Bound



Manoj Goswami





Hurling a solid kick to his scooter, Anadi stood in disgust on the dust clouded street. Hopeless; the fucking scooter would not start- absolutely out of whack, bloody lifeless. The city was abuzz with the typical morning noise and the breath-choking traffic. The day was rather hot, his shirt sloshed in sweat, and his underwear clung to his body to suffocation. Right in front of him was the red traffic light forcing the vehicles to screeching halt. Amidst all this chaos one could see a flabby woman was busy applying a lurid shade of lipstick on her lips sitting inside an air conditioned car of recent model; the bike rider was ensnared by the arms of his lady pillion rider; noises of animated discussions between two Marwari businessmen came out from the Gypsy nearby; and beyond all these the impatient sound of honking horns by the annoyed and irritated drivers rolled off freely onto the street, as it were. Pulling up his scooter on the stands in the middle of the road, Anadi left the unruly scene. A couple of them looked at him brusquely. One of them screamed out, ‘Why the hell have you kept the goddamn scooter there?’ The Punjabi truck driver, right behind the scooter, went for a long irksome blow of his horn. ‘Hey you, where are you going?’ shouted the traffic police from a distance. Without bothering to look at him, Anadi murmured, almost to himself: ‘Home.’

Leaving behind the scene of commotion, Anadi found his desired object- a public telephone booth. He had spotted the phone slinging in a relatively quiet bye lane. He had no changes, but for him to make the call was of paramount importance. He proceeded towards the stationery shop, brought out a hundred rupee note that was already bedraggled in his sweat in his wallet. Amidst countless pieces of papers; address chits; phone numbers; tiny crumbs of slips with meaningless, illegible scribbles; and sundry other tit bits lay one lone hundred rupee note in his wallet.
‘Get me a cold drink’, Anadi said offering the note.
The man sitting behind the counter, almost without bothering to raise his head, looked at the hundred rupee note over his spectacle rims and said nonchalantly, ‘No change.’
-Just check it out, I’m so thirsty, believe me.


-Didn’t I tell you, It is too early to get the changes?’
The man at the counter was visibly irritated; he was rather too busy examining some of his odd accounts.
Anadi was fagged out and was absolutely drained by now. He had no changes in his pocket; on the other hand the call was so urgent for him; besides, he was genuinely thirsty. As if he was overtaken by a blinding fury. He walked towards the man inside the counter with quiet and calm strides,
-‘No changes? Why? You refuse a customer just like that?’

Anadi stared on the eyes of the man and hurled those questions. Anadi’s jawline hardened, the veins in his face were sticking out. The man in the counter was petrified and looked at him bewildered, as if he was looking at a creature from another planet. Anadi yanked the cash box opened with a single pull where the changes were normally kept, threw in his hundred rupee note into the box, deducted the price of the bottle of cold drink and picked up the changes himself. ‘Thanks’, said Anadi to the man thunderstruck by such unbelievable turn of events. He then opened the huge refrigerator, picked up a bottle of cold drink and made for the street. The day was boiling under the scorching sun coupled with the waves of blistering wind. The road in front was being repaired. The repressing smell of bitumen seized the surroundings.

‘Hello, Oly.’ Anadi screamed at the receiver in the telephone booth by the road.‘Hello...’
There was no response from the other side of the receiver. Anadi knew that this was Oly who had actually picked up the phone. His voice in the phone, amidst the typical morning chaos, might have shocked her to an uneasy pause. She might be holding Pinu with her other arm. Pinu would be in his school uniform, yet to comb his hair, tie up his shoe laces.
‘Oly-- how are you, Oly?’, Anadi would intently make the enquiries. ‘Hasn’t Pinu gone to school yet?’
There was distressing silence in the other end. Is she weeping? Anadi made fervent efforts to hear the sounds over the receiver. ‘Oly, Oly…’ Time wore on, then a cluck. She put down the receiver. Anadi leaned against the glass pane of the telephone booth. He brought out the handkerchief from inside his pocket to wipe his face sopping wet in sweat. He quietly dialled the numbers once again. The phone rang for quite some time, but there was no response. Oly would no more pick up the phone. Finally the phone turned dumb by itself.

Anadi made for the road aimlessly with the cold drink bottle in hand. The fresh wrinkles crossed his forty years old face. The signs of his ill health made its mark through the dark pouches below his eyes, the tiny silver streaks by his sideboards would often reveal themselves while combing. Anadi was swallowed by the listless despair of a demolished man.

Leaving behind the main road, he moved languidly towards the park which was like an oasis in the middle of the town. A tramp was lying on one of the benches in that green park. A boy and a girl were taking a stroll on the grassy patch huddling each other. An old man was sitting leisurely under the soothing shadow of a tree, and a pair of darkish horses were standing nearby very much like bronze statues….Pinu had been haunting him. From next month would begin Pinu’s class terminals. Was he studying enough? Or was he wasting time watching cartoons in the TV as usual? Did Oly have enough time to look after all this? He recalled, once Pinu returned home with a wound on his forehead after a brawl in school. It had caused quite an uproar. Anadi even went up to the Principal and Oly to the guardian of the boy with her gripe. It was hardly a couple of years back, wasn’t it? What might have gone wrong within these few days that he was suddenly out of orbit, like that of a devastated man in hopeless ruins?

-‘Hello mister, where are you off to?’
Anadi was stunned by the voice of a stranger. Some street loafers were sitting on the concrete wall with their legs dangling insolently. They looked like college goers. Two motor bikes were parked by the wall. A couple of them were flaunting their beer bottles in their hands, one or two of them were blowing smoke from their cigarette twigs. Anadi was a stranger among them. He made moves to go ahead.
-‘Hey you, where are you going, man?’ The haughty call by one of them forced Anadi to stop. Even his heart cringed in apprehension of some portentous danger.
-‘I am going home’, replied Anadi in his quiet and calm voice.
Soon the air was rippled apart by the vulgar and crude outburst of their laughter.
-‘Going home my boy? Fine, please go ahead, but before you go would you please leave that bottle of cold drink for our benefit?’, one of them said ludicrously. The boy should be in his twenties.
-‘No, no, the oldie must have bought the bottle to entertain one of his sluts. Why you guys are making a mess of it?’ commented another with cocky giggles.
Anadi stood firm. He kept staring at something far removed. The ejar tree was abuzz with the noisy twittering of a flock of birds. The sky was blue, cloudless. Pinu kept haunting his mind time and again. He was raring to go home.

-‘Hello mister, have you become a philosopher or what?’ Someone pushed and shoved him, he noticed one of them even tried to snatch away his bottle. Anadi clung to the bottle with all his force.
-‘Yah,’ hoarsely shouted one of the boys. ‘So brother, you’ve got so much of strength, don’t you?’ Someone had jabbed him sharply, he just fell short of tumbling on the ground. He could feel they were pelting blows on his face, chest and belly. His face twisted in agony. He was flung on the wall. He felt absolutely helpless amidst their chortles, screams and euphoria. He realised that the bottle was still in his tight grip, as if that was the only resort in that state of his wretched destitution.
When the boys boxed him in with inane aggression, all of a sudden his blinding rage reached a boiling point. He smashed the bottle against the wall. The boy with long tresses of hair was his first victim. The sharp edges of the broken bottle smeared parts of his face and neck with blood. He attacked rest of the pack with mad fury. The boys were taken aback being exposed to such unexpected aggression. One of them was nursing his wounded eye soaked in blood; the other had his hand badly injured. All of them made a retreat. Anadi ran after them like a man in trance. They were at their full pelt when Anadi made a wild charge. His hands and shirt were stained in blood; the heady smell of the warm blood got him over.
Soon Anadi realised all of them had fled- there was tranquillity all around. He was all alone in the street. Only then he threw away his broken bottle of cold drink.

Anadi ambled down a relatively quiet lane by the city suburb. He was getting hungry. He was sweating and feeling terribly tired. His shirt was marked with blotches of blood, his hair all tousled up. The pedestrians looked at him aghast. A police man was casually strolling at his post nearby, Anadi decided not to make towards that direction. Not even a drop could he drink from the cold drink bottle. Just as he thought of drinking some water from the municipality hydrant, he saw the motorcycles coming towards him with two pillion riders each. One of them pointed towards Anadi. He made a dash in utter desperation. Yes, he guessed it right- he could see it well, the boys on the bikes were racing down towards him. They were brandishing sharpened weapons dazzled against the sun. The motorbikes zipped past him with grave noise and then they swished back to confront him head on menacingly. Anadi kept running to save himself. He thought of rushing towards the police man at the cross road, at that he just could manage to avoid a collision with a speeding city bus. Before he could get to the cross road, he was virtually crushed by the two motorbikes from either sides. As Anadi tried to wriggle out off the first bike, he could manage to hit the second one with a kick using the entire force of his body. Both bikes went into skid with their pillion riders tumbling down. The two sliding bikes hit on the pedestrians and knocked them down. There broke out a pandemonium. Two of the boys were rather seriously injured. They screamed their heads off with horrifying wail. The wheels of the upturned bikes kept whirling with incessant whine. The police posted at the cross road came running to the spot. Anadi went towards the police man.
‘Hands up, you son of a bitch.’
Anadi was startled at this sudden outburst. He saw the skinny police officer flashing his revolver at him. Pointing the gun at him he tried to get hold of Anadi. The officer was tottering in excitement. At that moment Anadi came back to his senses. He had his shirt with the blotches of blood; his hands too were muddled in blood. He looked like a typical villain in the movies. Anadi felt helpless. The officer in front was repeatedly screaming with the revolver pointing at him, ‘Hands up.’
Anadi was clueless about the immense strength that suddenly overtaken him. With ferocious vigour he pushed the officer. He did it with so much of strength that the act even had Anadi’s head reeling. He could only see with his bleary eyes the police officer falling on the ground, his cap tossed off his head and even the revolver slung off his grip.
Anadi was dumbstruck. He was motionless for a while. The revolver was lying right by his feet. He never saw any live arms in his life so far. Picking up the gun carefully, Anadi realised the weight of the arm was much more than what he had actually presumed. It was not as easy to play with it by the sleight of fingers the way the heroes in the movies do. Yet he carefully picked up the gun from the ground. Then he tucked the gun in the waist of his trousers and hurriedly left the spot.

***



Mr. Bhadra Phukan would retire from his service today. After a long career in police service, he would retire as an O.C. from this police station itself in a few hours from now. An eventful phase of service life would come to an end. The country had turned into a land of thieves and rogues, the common citizens were in constant fear of the terrorists and the kidnappers. He had to work too hard during the last ten years of his life in police service. On occasions he would feel the pressure of fatigue and exhaustion. Sometimes he had to give in to the lures, yet Bhadra Phukan had not turned into an amoeba like creature unlike plenty of other policemen in the department. Still he could stand straight on his spine, would think of the denizens of the under world with compassion and sympathy, but at the hour of need his hands would not shake to pull the trigger of the gun. For his valedictory, his colleagues in the police station arranged a modest party with tea and sweets. One of them even offered him a bouquet. Mr. Dutta, the newly transferred Sub Inspector to the police station, said with dottiness,
-‘Sir, you should not sit in your desk at least for today. You must enjoy the day with madam, go for an outing together. Rather we’d come to your place in the evening.’ The enthusiastic Mr. Ravi Dev added, ‘We’re actually planning to arrange for a small sitting in the evening.’
The telephone in the police station was ringing with regular intervals. Information about murder, rape, kidnap –barbarism of man against fellow human beings-poured in incessantly. Sub Inspector Bipin Dutta picked up the phone and informed the office, ‘One unidentified man at the Club cross roads had attacked one of our officers, snatched away his service revolver, four to five people were injured. It seems to be an act by extremists.
O.C., Mr. Phukan, jumped off his chair. ‘Lets go. Is the vehicle ready? Mr. Dutta, come along.’ Everybody jumped on their feet. ‘At least for today no need to be on your duty, Sir.’
Mr. Phukan just smiled in response. He took Mr. Dutta along and hurriedly got in to the jeep parked inside the compound.

***



A huge pack of loaves of bread. Homa was its brand name. The details of the loaf were so minutely painted as if the aroma of the bread was oozing out off the hoarding. A young lady with alluring smile, with her breasts covered by a blue apron, was holding the loaf on a tray. Anadi kept looking at the advertisement hoarding for quite some time. He had not taken anything apart from a cup of tea and a biscuit in the morning. He was terribly hungry. Anadi stood by the showcase of the restaurant and ordered the sales man, pointing at the hoarding, ‘Get me that loaf.’
One waiter brought loaves of bread for him. Removing the wrapper of the pack, Anadi was again taken over by a raging fury.
-‘What the hell is this?’
-‘Why? You’ve got what you’d ordered for.’
- ‘Are you joking? I want exactly what I had ordered for,’ Anadi screamed.
-Hey, what’s up? Hey you.’ The owner of the restaurant came towards Anadi. A fat, short, scanty haired man.
-‘I wanted that loaf.’ Anadi pointed towards the hoarding. ‘I had even paid the price written there in the picture. But instead of that what have you served me? A goddamn squidgy fungal stuff? Look at the picture, how nicely puffed up, how delicious it looks! Look at the body of the bread, how sinuous, and through which all carbon dioxide gets finely released.’
-‘You ain’t crazy, are you?’ the Manager asked Anadi staring at him with a panic stricken look. ‘Can the bread in the advertisement and the one for sale ever be the same?’
-‘Why not?’ Anadi yelled with a shriek. ‘Why not? The price for the fucking thing is exactly what it is mentioned in the picture. Is this a joke or what?’
-‘You, please go out’ the Manager said with a rude voice. ‘Don’t disturb other customers.’
At this Anadi went crazy, went hacked off. All of a sudden he pulled out his gun from the tuck of his trousers, pointed it at the Manager and screamed, ‘You bloody swindler, cheating on people. I’ll kill all of you.’
The bald man turned pale. He trembled feverishly. There broke out an uproar in the bustling restaurant. Anadi found it awkward. He tried to assure them by raising his hands. He said to a couple of young boys and girls, ‘Don’t worry kids.’ He even tore a part of the loaf and offered them to eat. In the tone of a public speech he tried to exhort the customers present there, ‘Look here. The things they advertise they don’t serve us. Are these colourful advertisements of any utility for us then? Isn’t it cheating?’
Taking a bite of the loaf, Anadi came out of the restaurant. The revolver was tucked in his trousers. He was elated to feel the chilled touch of the gun, he thought, ‘Oh, how powerful this thing is!’

He again tried to make a call to Oly from a PCO. It rang for a number of times but there was no answer. He moved about aimlessly like a possessed man. He went to the other end of the city in a city bus. Then he mingled in a procession. One of the city roads was being repaired, an over bridge might be coming up. Huge wells were dug up. A couple of individuals, looked quite like engineers, were giving instructions to the labourers. Some young boys were playing cricket in the ground nearby. The ball kept rolling towards those giant gorges. Anadi came forward, ‘You dug up these wells but don’t bother to put fences around them.’ The one looking like an engineer looked at him disdainfully. ‘What are you doing here? Move it, move it.’ Anadi shouted furiously, ‘You can’t do like this. Stop the work.’ The boys playing nearby thronged the place excited at the prospect of a showdown. Anadi brandished the gun, he was exalted to see the people around him were getting frightened. He tried to blank fire, but failed to do it. The gun was locked. One young boy came running towards him and advised, ‘Pull up that spring.’
Anadi was astonished, ‘How do you know?’
The boy replied casually, ‘Saw it in the TV.’ Anadi opened the lock and blank fired-one, two, three. The young boys were thrilled, they jumped and clapped cheerfully.

***


All the police stations and the out posts in the city were alerted. One dreaded insurgent attacked a police officer in broad day light; injured common citizens; snatched away his service revolver. Soon the news of that tragic incident got the circulation all over the city through telephone and wireless sets. Search parties were posted at all the exit points of the city. According to the eye witnesses, the militant was very violent type; he had already threatened people at a restaurant with his gun, and was spotted at several places in the city holding the revolver. According to one of the vital sources of the police, the dreaded militant was a member of the death squad of an insurgent outfit. Already the abandoned scooter used by the militant was recovered from one of the city streets. Perhaps this recovery would throw crucial lights on the further details about the attacker. An operation was underway under the OC of the police station concerned to nab the terrorist.
The jeep of the O.C., Mr. Phukan, dashed off leaving behind billowing smoke of dust. Mr. Dutta was by his next seat. By the end of the day, his life in the police would also be over. Just for a few hours he didn’t want to be lax with his duties. He had already gathered some information about the man. He was past his forties, married, had one son, was going through a rough patch with his wife, proceedings for divorce was on. A bit mentally depressed, a cynic kind of a man. Lived with his mother in a village, few kilometres away from the city. His father had died when he was young. Through search operation in his village house it was learnt that he worked for a private company. One resignation letter was found, that meant he had resigned from the job a few days back. He responded to the rude behaviour of his boss in that vitriolic letter, but every morning he would leave for his job taking leave from his mother. But the company had already confirmed that he was discharged from his job.
‘How come this man turned like this all of a sudden?’ Bhadra Phukan wondered and found it difficult to comprehend. He had also tried to verify whether the man was actually used by some militant outfit as a stooge. Already contacts established with his wife. She informed that the man had tried twice to communicate with her over telephone, but she did not respond to the calls on both occasions. Nevertheless, his wife had already been warned about the developments and was instructed to leave the house and shift to a safer place to avert any possible unwarranted eventuality. The man had become dangerous.

***


The house was locked. Anadi looked around. Even the windows were closed. ‘Pinu, Pinu.’ Anadi shouted loudly. There was no response. Anadi stood still in the pale glow of the afternoon. He took out the revolver in dismay and with his skilled hand shot twice to break the lock. There was nobody inside. He could feel the smell of Oly’s hair. Pinu’s toys were strewn all over. The house was in complete disarray. He sat there for a while and kept aside his revolver to take a look at Pinu’s toys. He picked up a toy gun looked like an automatic Kalashnikov. He tucked the gun in his waist and stood in front of the mirror. He smiled wryly at his own image. At that moment he heard a vehicle stopped at the front yard. A troop of policemen got down off a jeep. He leapt on his feet, opened the rear door and began to run frenetically. He ran through the intestine of the city. He kept running by the filthy river flowing through the city. He got into a moored ferry boat and tried to hide there. The light of the day’s last sun sparkled in the quiet water of the evening river. Anadi could hear the approaching thud of boots.
-‘Surrender, you have no path to escape.’ He uttered the words in grave voice.
Anadi looked at the man- an aged police office with an authoritative voice.
-‘Move it, raise your hands and come with us.’ He was yet to bring out his revolver from his holster.
-‘I will go home’ said Anadi in exhaustion.
-‘Alright, but before that you must come with us’, said Mr. Bhadra Phukan. ‘Raise your hands. You are under arrest.’
-‘But I want to go home.’ Anadi said again, ‘I haven’t seen Pinu for such a long time. He has become so naughty these days. This toy gun of his….’ As he placed his hand to pull out Pinu’s gun, hordes of policemen rushed to the boat and took position. ‘Hey you, be careful,’ shouted Sub Inspector, Mr. Dutta. Soon followed an avalanche of gun shots. Mr. Phukan could stop none of them despite his frantic efforts with his raised hands.
The river became all crimson in the light of the setting sun. The day came to the verge of a closure. Anadi’s lifeless body meekly rolled off the ferry and fell into the river water.

***





Translated by Dr. Jyotirmoy Prodhani