‘And at 9?’
‘I don’t know about that. Had someone been assigned to replace me, he would have shown up by now.’
Shekhar smiled and asked, ‘Is that whom you were serenading?’
Embarrassed, ‘I was just trying to ward off the fatigue—’
‘Are you very tired?’
‘No, but I am soaked through, and my arms hurt—’
Shekhar immediately felt sorry for the fellow who had done the work of two men and was now doing the work of a third—he felt as though he had found the one man in a camp of 14,000 who believed in his idea of discipline—not just believed but also followed it. First of all, it immediately lightened his heart and, second, he wanted to know what it felt like to stand in the rain, alone, for three or four hours. He came to a decision, ‘You should go. I’ll relieve you.’
‘You?’
‘Yes. I should see what it’s like to be on the night watch, too.’
‘But you don’t have an umbrella,’ said the volunteer as he uncertainly extended his own torn umbrella.
‘This overcoat25 should be enough. Go on, you should get some rest now.’
The volunteer left. Shekhar began pacing, steadily . . .
The night felt long. Shekhar thought about that volunteer for a short while, and then he fell into a conundrum.
It was wrong of them to have beaten up the CID man. But he had identified himself—what would have happened if they hadn’t apprehended him? What would the point of keeping guard have been? If a stranger were to show up here, wouldn’t I ask him who he was? Perhaps he came just to pick a fight—that’s what they do after all. There was a tussle, so he accomplished his task. But how could we have avoided a fight? And if he had begun defacing the statue . . . How much should we put up with? Was the matter finished or were there new blossoms waiting to bloom? We’ll have to see.
That volunteer had been on duty since 3 p.m.—he had to be one of the people who caught that man. So why didn’t he go back with them? Perhaps he thought it necessary to guard the statue—he was standing there as if it were his only purpose in life . . . Would I be able to do anything with the same kind of devotion? If it’s something that I think is important, then I stick to it like a leech, but what about work that has no meaning—work that is only work and more work? . . . Could I lose myself in work, forsaking all worldly distractions?
That’s what Shashi had said, that I worry about my own problems and don’t fulfil my obligations to the world around me . . . ‘Grief only cleanses the soul of one who attempts to drive it away. No one else’s.’ That’s what she had said . . . And ‘pain is everywhere’—I had assumed that it was only in one place—and I am wandering around carrying only my own sorrows . . . Redemption does not come from sharing someone else’s pain, but only in taking the place of someone in pain.
Is that why I decided to relieve him? I had also wanted to do something mindless—I relieved him for my own pleasure . . . and how could one ever avoid such pleasures? They were everywhere. There was also a pleasure in self-destruction—did that mean that people destroyed themselves for the sake of pleasure? . . .
Truth be told, I should have first called that scoundrel of an appointed officer here, given him a piece of my mind, and told him, ‘You should relieve this poor man’s duty. Walk and do some rounds in the winter rain, you might lose some weight’ . . . To suffer injustice is to increase it—was it a penance to suffer for the wrong reasons?
In the distance, the bells rang, marking midnight. It seemed as if the sound of the bells had frozen from being drenched in the rain—it was so faint . . . Shekhar felt as if his overcoat were four times as heavy as before, and if it was once his protection, it had now become his enemy—because of his overcoat, his uniform was also soaked through and small rivulets of water ran down his back, tickling him. The socks on his legs were also soaked through—water filled his boots. The soles of his shoes were ‘waterproof’26—they wouldn’t let water on the outside in, nor would they let water on the inside out . . . Shekhar shivered once and then started walking faster.
It kept getting colder . . . ‘Why hadn’t the replacement come yet? Would this shift be just like the last?’ His body was numb down to his thighs and knees. Now he couldn’t even tell if there was water in his shoes or not, whether he had feet or not . . . It felt as if his hands and shoulders were only being held in place by crutches . . . He thought, ‘If I stand perfectly still, I’ll be stuck here like this statue.’
One . . . The sound from the bell was so faint that had Shekhar not been listening with rapt attention to the silence, it wouldn’t have been heard . . .
The appointed officer . . . Everyone had become worked up about discipline—‘It’s violence.’ If that was violence, then it was established on the fundamental violence of duty—of life even. Look at this, the appointed officer should be made to stand outside in the rain all night and that’s called violence, but if he makes countless men stand here all night, drenched and exhausted, without a word or a sound, that’s not called violence . . . If I were to say anything to anyone about this, he would say, ‘What’s it to you? You should do your work dispassionately. You should carry the weight of his mistake yourself. That is true penance. Penance is divine merit. Penance is religion. Penance—penance—penance! I am not trying to suggest that penance is bad, but who are you to demand penance? If you can tell me to renounce things, to do my duty selflessly, why can’t you also tell him to do his duty one way or another, whether it is selflessly or selfishly . . .’
Two . . . This time Shekhar didn’t get angry. An irrelevant smile spread across his face.
Penance . . . Everyone has their stick that they measure penance with—and that stick is a person’s own penance or ability for penance . . . He who cannot renounce anything can be found praising renunciation everywhere, all the time—‘So-and-so has performed such great penance’, ‘So-and-so is so sacrificing’ . . . His stick is so short that everything appears to be extraordinary to him . . . A person who actually performs penance has no idea that it is a big deal. Giving of himself is only one part of his regular, daily routine, which is not strange, surprising, praiseworthy or exciting, and it does not explode with excessive sentimentality . . .
But would no replacement ever come and would this night never end?
Appointed officer . . . Make him stand on a stage and he would thunder out a speech about penance and make it seem much easier than his appointed post . . . Those obese, cursed people . . . Will only unqualified men ever become officers and honest men only ever servants? Each day I hear, the leader isn’t here, the leader isn’t here . . . Society will be crushed under the weight of such leaders, never to rise . . . The load that is placed on top of us can only be a burden; it can never help in carrying any weight, the ability to bear the burden will only be possessed by those that rise from beneath—overcoming obstacles, ties, burdens, fetters; with haunches hardened from wounds and hearts steeled through struggle, proud and free . . . We are fighting for freedom, but all of our leaders—those who will us forward, bear our burdens—are like snow falling from soaring clouds; none have grown from this broken earth, none have broken through the tough soil like new shoots . . .
Freedom, liberty, independence—such beautiful words! But where is the tilled, fertilized soil in which they can grow—the people; where can you find the chemical reaction in that soil to fertilize it—the people and the people’s leader; and where is—
Three . . .
No, there was no use thinking about the replacement—what would happen now? It was 3 a.m., soon it would be 6 a.m. Then someone would come or he could go and call for someone. At 6 a.m. the morning bugle would sound, and he would have to take attendance.
Yes, the leaders reproached the people, but was it the fault of the people that those leaders didn’t come from within their ranks?
Independence is a natural right—those who desire it should appear automatically, they should grow like weeds
. What need of soil or fertilizers or gardening? Then is it right to say that the people are to blame, that there is something wrong with the soil and that we aren’t worthy of independence?
But our forests have been felled, our natural streams and springs have dried up, our soil has turned into wastelands. Whether jungles or orchards, we have to cultivate them again, so it is necessary that . . . And our leaders—they aren’t necessary—there is no juice in those thorny cacti of the desert sands, nor do they have the ability to catch the rains of life or to break down themselves and make the desert bloom . . .
Shekhar was startled—the sound of footsteps . . . Would he really be relieved? There was no need for him now. The rain had stopped and he was as cold as he could possibly get . . .
But these were more than a single set of footsteps—Shekhar was blinded by the light of four or five flashlights and torches. Someone said, ‘This is where it happened—this man is the officer in charge of the volunteers who attacked me.’ Shekhar recognized the voice of the CID officer from earlier in the night and saw that a few police officers were standing with him. The officer said, ‘Arrest him. Tell the Congress headquarters in the morning.’ Two soldiers flanked Shekhar on either side. Shekhar asked, ‘Am I a prisoner?’ He got a response, ‘Yes, you’ll have to come to the police station.’
‘What’s the rush? You can arrest me in the morning. Right now, my legs are stiff from the cold; I can’t walk.’
The soldiers caught him under his arms. The CID man who had been beaten said, ‘Do you see his arrogance?’ The soldiers dragged him along. Suddenly feeling insulted, Shekhar broke free with a jerk and said, ‘I’ll go where you want to go—I’m not desperate enough to need your help.’
The officer and the spy exchanged glances. The group advanced—and as they walked on Shekhar saw that the volunteers had seen the hubbub and spread the news and that people had begun to gather.
As he sat in the police car he remembered Shashi’s words again, ‘Pain only cleanses the soul of one who tries to end it. There is no purification in sharing someone else’s pain, but only in taking the place of someone else in pain . . .’
Was he merely a vessel? Was a new chapter of his soul about to begin? Was he fully a man—a conqueror—a master of his circumstances?
Part 2
Bondage and Curiosity
Shekhar made his first appearance in court a full twenty-one days after he was locked up. That day he came to learn that he, along with five others, was charged with battery, assault, conspiracy to commit violence, attempted murder of a government official, interfering in the work of a government official and hiding materials in connection with a legal case. That very day he was transferred from police custody to a prison.1
Shekhar didn’t know that there was a difference between police custody and prison—nor did he know the laws associated with each. Had anyone asked him, ‘Do you want to go to prison?’ he would have answered completely honestly, ‘No.’ When he was being sent to prison, he kept thinking, ‘Is the case over? No witnesses, no testimony, no ruling. Will I be in prison forever?’ He had heard and read about other cases; the process seemed strange to him . . . He wanted to ask his companions, but he was afraid they would laugh at him. At the time, he felt very small, very unlucky, very stupid . . . His companions were sitting in the lorry, laughing, and he thought with some surprise, ‘They don’t seem worried . . .’ Shekhar learned from their conversation that two of them had already been to prison. Was it because they had already been to prison that they were so brave?
‘Hey, Chief, how did you end up here?’
Shekhar surprised himself by how easily he narrated the events of his arrest.
The inquirer laughed. ‘Did you notice his argument—this man is the officer in charge of those volunteers who attacked me—isn’t that something? How were you implicated in the attack?’ Suddenly the inquirer’s face went serious. ‘Your arrest was a drama of sorts—we were all picked up the next morning—and since you’ve been established as the officer in charge, they will place all the responsibility on you. So whose shift did you relieve?’
Shekhar told him.
‘He was the one who caught him. We all got there afterwards. When people were caught and brought back to the camp, he said that he would remain on duty; he didn’t have anything against any bastard CID agent, but if someone had done something to the statue, he’d deal with them.’
‘Yes.’
‘Are you planning on offering a defence?’
Shekhar looked at him silently—he didn’t know how to answer the question.
‘This is your first time, isn’t it? Whatever happens, keep asking to stick with us. Co-defendants in the same case have the right to stick together. A lawyer and some arrangements will be made for the trial—then we can all decide together what we want to do.’
‘All right.’
‘And act really tough. You won’t survive in prison if you don’t act tough. And you’re not a convict yet; you’re just an accused. Nobody has the right to lord it over you, right?’
‘Yes.’ Shekhar smiled. He remembered that he had read somewhere that there was a legal principle that one was innocent until proven guilty. And toughness—he already knew how to do that.
When the lorry stopped inside the gate of the prison, Shekhar got down and noticed that there was a large, iron gate and the handcuff on one of his wrists was joined to a guard at the other end. That is when he understood the meaning of freedom, and he began cursing himself that until now—now that he was twenty years old—he had been uninterested in it. Why hadn’t he ever thought about the significance of freedom as a deeply vital thing like hunger or thirst or breath, a matter of life and death . . .
When Shekhar found himself locked in a cell, he saw that his bedding lay in a pit on the right, a grinding wheel on a platform on the left, in the back corner was a plate coated in tar and a small clay jug for answering the call of nature, there was a lattice on the ceiling for light, a picket fence through which he could see an iron gate in front and a gap in the iron gate through which he could see more picket fences, and everywhere, everywhere it stank—and suddenly it became important for him to know his geographic location. Where am I exactly? What are the boundaries of the prison and the land around me? It was as if he couldn’t breathe without knowing the answers to his questions . . . He knew what side of town the prison was on, that the gate to the prison faced north. He faced that direction and then turned and turned and turned and . . . So his cell faced east, but after that . . .
The matter could only be resolved the next day. In the morning he was allowed out to walk around which was when he realized that his cell was the twelfth in a row, and after that row was another row of perhaps forty cells, and there were two doors on the wall in front . . . The guard who brought him out into the yard to walk told him that one door opened up into a factory and the other to the barracks2 for the whites . . .
In his mind, Shekhar transposed a map of the world on to the prison and then the location of his current position became clear to him—the gate was the North Pole, the warden’s office was the Himalayas to the north, the factory was Japan, the far cells for the condemned was Arabia; and he, where was he? In some Siberian snowy oasis . . . It gave him some peace—wherever he was. Here the only real fear was that he might lose himself . . .
A little later his pride awoke. Had he been in the row facing the other direction, he would have been in India. But that wasn’t a good row—the guard had said that the worst offenders were kept there, but it was still India . . . He was taken aback at his love for the shape and the condition of his nation’s soil, its name, its map which had sprung up without his knowing . . . It wasn’t like that before—there had been picturesque lands, family, but not India. Where was he outside of geography textbooks? He remembered that while telling stories of Rajputs, rishis and courage, his father would break into them saying, ‘These are the kinds of gems that burst forth from the land of the Ary
ans’ . . . Shekhar felt that he wanted to use his keen discerning talents to determine whether he was one of those gems or not; but that was about some distant, ancient land—about Aryavarta—while in his mind the Aryavarta of the great epics had never been identical with the India of today, which he trampled under his feet . . .
‘Act really tough’ . . . That toughness was growing inside him uncontrollably . . . He hadn’t committed any crime; but those in the cells, the ones in ‘India’ who were completing their sentences, he would be like them, he would get tough and fight . . .
His time for being out in the yard was up.
A full three days later, he had a chance to ask to be moved near his ‘friends’. The warden had arrived for an inspection. Contemptuously he said, ‘So those are your friends, eh?’
Shekhar ignored the sarcasm. ‘We are all defendants in the same trial. We have the right to meet.’
‘Right? Hold on! This is prison, Mister! The only right you have here is to grind flour at the wheel, understand? It’s over there!’ The warden pointed to the platform inside his cell. ‘Don’t worry. You’ll get it.’ He left without responding to his request.
But that evening when Shekhar was taken from his cell, he saw that ten or twelve cells down was another open cell, and the one who had advised him to act tough, Vidyabhushan, had emerged from it, and the three other friends were being led in from the other direction.
He had never imagined that he would be that happy to see Vidyabhushan. He jumped up and hugged him, and then quickly let go and stood back, embarrassed by his excitement.
For a moment the pair sized each other up from head to toe. Vidyabhushan was a twenty-year-old lad of average height, well built and fair-skinned. He had dry hair that was combed back, wide forehead, straight nose, thin lips and a straight and narrow chin—he looked like the studious and stubborn sort, and he certainly had the flickering light of gentle mirth in his eyes. Shekhar decided that the man was like-minded. He asked, ‘You’ve been to prison before, haven’t you? What did you do?’
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