The Final Call

“I fled to Meerut one night.”

Rabha’s nonchalant reply catches me a bit off guard. The forty-year-old constable who has been with me for the last two years does not appear to be a man who has a lot of stories to tell. A stout figure with a muscular build, his mongoloid face does not give away his emotions raging inside, if at all such emotions exist in him. He wears a khaki shirt, khaki trousers and black heeled shoes. Three stripes on the arm of his shirt with the initials ‘H.G.’ on the shoulder blades make it clear to the innocent passer-by that he is a constable working as a home-guard. His primary job is to protect my home in case some adventurous folk decide to sneak (or barge) in and hold me hostage (or kill me). 

A question that has always struck me – why would anyone want to kill me instead of looting the meagre stuff I had? I don’t have an answer. Apparently, it has happened in the past, which is why the folks in the government felt it wise to post a home-guard in my house. 

It is not my house, technically. It is the official residence of the sub-divisional magistrate. The SDM, as he is widely known in this part of the country, is essentially the guardian of this subdivision, or that is what I tend to think of my role as. A guardian – acting for the welfare of my people, unattached to the travails of the lust for power, unencumbered to the conflicts of interest and working only for the common good – that is what I have been taught to do; that is what people around me think I do; and that is what I know I do not do. I know that I am paid by the government to maintain the law and order in the subdivision of Gossaigaon. That is more or less what it is. Yet, is maintaining the law and order of the place by mustering the force of the police and unleashing the violence of the state on those who wish to veer off the course of established social and cultural norms not working for the common good? To my rather bored but intellectually stubborn mind, it is. 

After all, just a decade ago, this subdivision had denigrated itself into a lawless abyss with the insurgents – young delinquents with guns dangling from their shoulders – virtually dictating the life and liberty of the people here. What started as a fist fight between two drunkards coming from two different communities quickly snowballed into a violent and bloody skirmish between members of the two tribes. Nights after nights of arson, guns and bombs apparently had the effect of numbing the people into a sense of helplessness. It was one of those nights when the then SDM was shot to death in the residence that I currently inhabit. The insurgency is no longer there, but the stories are. 

It is these stories that frequently accompany me in my errands through the subdivision. A year of brutality, bloodshed and catharsis has been etched in the collective psyche of the populace through the folklore that has evolved over the decade. A woman I met at a village on the foothills of the Himalayas that border the northern edge of the subdivision narrated how her son was dragged out of her home on a quiet sunny afternoon, only to have been returned in the evening, lifeless, with blood oozing out from the ears whose lobes had been cut and boxed together with the body. Like many stories of gore and violence I had heard, this did not bother me much, till she went inside her thatched hut and brought out the jar containing the ear lobes, still preserved in a substance that smelled of vinegar, but its pungency stinging my throat and nostrils to the point of nausea. The lobes had visibly wrinkled, dangling slowly inside the yellowish translucent liquid. The reddish-brown cuts that separated the lobes from the head were still vivid, probably a few threads of condensed blood still sticking out of them. “These remind me of him,” she had said with a smile that reeked of grief and despair. 

As the subdivisional magistrate, I get called to carry out inquests of bodies that have had the misfortune of dying unnaturally. One such evening, I was called to the forested area in the south of the subdivision. “You might not want to see the body, sir. The report has been prepared. You can sign it here,” said the police constable waiting at the spot where the body had been found. It was a bit late in the evening, and I could see the white cloth taking the shape of the body a few yards in the bush ahead of me. I only understood the constable’s consternation for the magistrate’s inconvenience after lifting the white shroud and seeing the partially decomposed body. The person had been shot in his head, the skull fragmented into smithereens at the back and the femur bearing cut marks. I did not vomit this time – I had seen lots of these bodies by then – but what struck me was the violence that this person was subjected to, something that was so common a decade ago. “A fox must have dug it up. It’s from those days,” said the constable, alluding to that year of unrest. I wonder whose son this unlucky chap must have been. Is his mother still searching for him? Is his mother one of those who visit my office once in a while, with a photograph of the boy and an application, asking me to declare him dead so that she can at least get the compensation from the state to look after her other children who miraculously survived?

In the first few months of my joining the subdivision, my journeys led to such encounters with people who had stories to narrate from those days.  Tribes killing each other, young men raping middle aged women in their very own homes, bombs shredding bodies to pieces and limbs scattering in the open market. I think the people at one point must have gotten used to this as well. After all, one has to live. And worrying about getting killed by a roadside bomb at the weekly market would be of no help in getting food to the plate. One was jumping from the frying pan to the fire, every day. With time, the young lads probably realised that if you have a gun slung on your back, no matter how much power you perceive to wield in front of the woman you are about to rape, there is always the chance that a bullet is about to pierce your back with an intensity fiercer than the one you are using to thrust yourself into her. The militancy abated; the stories live on. 

To be honest, while the barbarity being narrated initially caught my attention and my mind twitched and turned to the intricacies of the relationships that got ruptured in the process- say, a mother getting raped in front of her children, a son getting lynched in front of his parents or a father vanishing in a second after stepping on an IED – the initial curiosity gradually gave way to heightened boredom as I probably realised that these stories were sprinkled with much more masala and topped with far greater savagery than the actual act itself just to gain my sympathy. “You need this contract from the government. Just say it.” I remember this college dropout going on length about how his father was kidnapped by militants and never returned. “So what?” 

That Rabha did not have such chronicles to narrate was, in a way, both a relief and an initial surprise to me. I can sit next to him for hours without having to hear a single whimper about how his family was subjected to indescribable brutality at the hands of delinquent savages as a means to squeeze out some sympathy from me. He probably understood that that sympathy in me would not have stirred up my emotions to grant him that long leave he had been asking for the last six months. He had family issues which he never opened up about. I did not prod further, obviously. Any additional question from me had the possibility of stirring up a hornet’s nest in Rabha’s familial issues and might force me to accede to his prayer for a long holiday. It was not as if Rabha was indispensable; the government always had reserves at the home guard battalion to send to my bungalow in his absence. The only predicament holding me back was Rabha’s rather stoic silence when it came to stories from the insurgency, a luxury I had begun to revere. 

At the same time, I still find it a bit incredulous that his family was not a party to the action that happened a decade ago. How can that possibly be true?  Again, I thought it was better to ask no question. Is it because the village he hails from is nestled in the deep interiors of the forests near the mountains? Those tracts that are still shadowed by the canopies of the tall trees, dense bushes and inhabited by beasts which still crave for human blood? That one visit I did on a hot summer’s day made me balk at my own decision halfway through the riverine track that led to Rabha’s village. Vehicles stopped a good five kilometres from the habitation, we walked through a muddy tract, with the humidity soaking us in our own sweat. The occasional leeches sticking to my pants, the subsequent itching followed by uncontrolled bleeding made me cry out at times, albeit inside my mind. I was the S-D-M, after all. Signs of fear, however evident, had to be surreptitiously controlled, the failure of which would make it a talk of the town, and worse, a question on my perceived sense of authority. On reaching the village, I was welcomed by elders who had prepared a feast consisting of duck curry, mutton fry and a lot of rice. We ate in the open, as the mud huts with their thatched roofs were too small to accommodate my contingent of officers who accompanied me. Rabha too did not want his master to feel claustrophobic, knowing very well my love for open empty spaces. Interestingly, no one talked about the insurgency of the yesteryears that day. And of course, I did not ask. 

I would not be surprised if the militants found it wise to skirt this tract. It is possible that one of the more adventurous ones might have taken the occasional risk and ventured into the muddy road only to have made a retreat halfway down. 

Tonight is one of those nights when the unusually cold winter wind sweeps down from the mountains into the valley underneath. Not just the chill, the fog and the mist bring with them their own share of the misery. I wonder what is it that make writers and poets romanticise this season. There is nothing fascinating nor romantic about a piercing chill that numbs your limbs and makes you shiver. And definitely not inside a rickety bungalow that has lost even the faintest shade of insulation. The foundation of the SDM residence was laid more than six decades ago. Over the years, different residents have modified the structure that has more than ten rooms in the aggregate. Without a wife or a child to loiter around, most of these rooms have remained locked during my tenure. The high humidity of the summer months has, over time, saturated the house with an odour that smells of emptiness, a pungent fragrance pervading the corridors mainly from the fungi that have had the luxury to propagate in the darkness. The wood and plaster have worn down, in some places, only a thin layer of plaster holds the wooden pillars in their place. A small earthquake is all it would take to bring it down like a house of cards. 

I am sometimes advised to relish the chilly nights under the warmth of the blanket. Curling up under the blanket is relaxing indeed, but not at six in the evening. I would rather sit next to the fire and let my facial skin dry up from the intense heat than to waste my time scrolling through my phone under the darkness of the blanket. 

So, the fire is lit up today. About an hour ago, we placed dry wooden branches that had fallen from the trees in my backyard into a small heap and placed old newspaper shreds in the spaces in between. Rabha’s lighter ignited the paper and the yellow flame surreptitiously crawled inward like a snake into the pile of wood. A few minutes of blowing with the mouth was necessary to give the right dose of oxygen to fan the fire hot enough to light up the wood. The portico in front of the veranda bears the signs of the fire, the flickering flames and shadows dancing on the walls while we sit under the open sky with our hands stretched out to warm the palms. Rabha’s companionship does not trouble me. 

Why would anyone flee to Meerut, a good two thousand kilometres away? His reply was in response to my question I asked a few minutes earlier about him doing anything interesting in the past. There was something I had to ask to keep the conversation going and not let silence sweep into the surrounding darkness. Clearly, this was not the answer I had expected. There is something intriguing about the fact that this constable of mine has had such an adventure. I am imagining the sight – a stout little man, who hails from an obscure hamlet in the dense jungles of Gossaigaon, boarding a train or a truck maybe, going all the way to Meerut, at a point in time when this area was crumbling under an insurgency and then coming back unscathed, unblemished and now sitting next to me, guarding my house from potential intruders. There is an element of incredulity that makes me grin. 

“Why did you go?”

“It’s a long story, sir.”

“I have the whole night.”

“The army, it’s because of them,” Rabha goes on. His narration takes him through the night one Major from the army knocked on his door, his mother opening the door and the petrified face with which she woke him up, unable to even utter the word ‘army’ as she pointed towards the door with her trembling fingers. Rabha’s narration has a dryness that brings in an element of dark sarcasm to the circumstances that surrounded him that night. “How can I inform them of his arrival? I will be a dead piece of meat the next day,” he says in a deadpan voice, still fiddling with the burning branches with a small stick. He is referring to the army Major accusing him of siding with one of his neighbours who had joined one of the armed gangs in the town. So, someone in his village did join the insurgency, I muse. His village had stories to tell, but they chose not to. 

Rabha apparently told the Major that night that he cannot inform the army about his neighbour’s whereabouts. “If I become an informer, he is going to kill me the next day. The army can’t protect me. I know for sure.” The Major got offended, did not utter a word and left with his men. 

“My mother was shit scared.” And rightly so. The army had been sent to quell the violence, and news of army officers torturing individuals to extract information on militants did trickle in once in a while. “She knew that they would come the next day to beat me black and blue. She asked me to flee that night itself.”

A dense fog begins to sweep in. Rabha stirs the fire with a wooden branch. The embers crackle, the sparks fly into the air and a thread of smoke comes hurling towards me. My eyes burn and begin to water. “So you went to Meerut that night itself?”

“No, sir. I waited for the night to end and left for town at dawn.” 

Rabha recounts his final hours leading up to the departure – the way he paced up and down the house while his mother trembled with fear, not sure where to actually go. After all, the nearest place for him was the town. With the army camps stationed there, he would, in fact, be a sitting duck. 

“You could’ve hidden in the jungle itself,” I say, referring to the dense jungle that surrounded his habitation. I reckon no soldier, how battle-hardened he may be, will be able to find him if he camouflages himself well enough. 

“For how long? These men would usually come in the night.”

He is right. He can hide from men, at night, surely. But not from the large Bengal tigers that roam these forests. At least a third of my inquest duties are of men killed by predators in the forests. Rabha’s clarity while speaking offends and charms me at the same time. He then finally decides on going to Meerut. 

Of all places, why Meerut?

“My father used to work for a farmer there.” 

Meerut is a prosperous town in north western India, mainly from its close proximity to Delhi and the adjoining industrial and agricultural belts. Rabha’s father apparently used to work as a labourer in one of the large wheat farms in the outskirts of the town. The farmer, whose name according to Rabha was Sukhlal, used to come to Gossaigaon once in a while and scout for workers to labour in the farm during the peak season. It remains a mystery as to how Sukhlal found out about Gossaigaon’s cheap labour in the first place. 

“My father was dead by then. I didn’t have any contact with Sukhlal. I got a number from an uncle.”

Rabha goes on to chronicle his journey the next day. He went on foot to the town in the early hours of dawn, and boarded a Delhi-bound train at the station. He was ticketless, but that was besides the point. Meerut is a couple of stations ahead of Delhi. He got down, made a phone call to Sukhlal and showed up at his doorstep.

“Did he allow you in?”

“Even I didn’t expect him to, but he did. I got a room next to the cattle shed. In return, I had to look after his cows and work on the field as the markets were opening a month later.” Rabha stayed with him for about two months. He did not get any money for his labour. He had no complaints. All he wanted was food and a roof, things he got for free under Sukhlal’s tutelage. By the end of his stay, the insurgency back home had begun to wane. He came back home one day after he heard of the Major’s transfer from the camp. 

I check my watch. The hour hand has touched nine. I had cooked some khisiri in the evening. Essentially a mix of rice and lentils boiled together, it makes for a quick meal. Rabha cooks for me sometimes. However, his expertise rests solely with mutton. For everything else, the quantity of oil he uses in one meal makes up for three that I cook myself. 

The fire is beginning to lose its potent hotness. The fiery tentacles that looked tantalising a few minutes back have shied down into more manageable strands of orange, yellow and a dash of blue. The embers crackle once in a while, giving out sparks. Better to have dinner and retire for the night. I sense an achievement in my ability to kill the last three hours without the awkward silence I had expected in the first place. 

I get up, an hour of sitting makes me feel a bit light-headed as the blood rushes downward from the pressure in my calves. Rabha notices and places his hand feebly near my right arm. I do not acknowledge it, but the support does help a bit in steadying my posture. An owl or a bat ruffles one of the trees behind us in the backyard. I turn back and see nothing. Just then, a fleeting thought comes over. I say it aloud. 

“How is Sukhlal these days? Are you still in touch with him?”

“Sir, Sukhlal is dead. I killed him.”

Rabha continues to stare at the fire. The tone in his voice still has the banality of the last two hours when he talked about his Meerut story. For someone not acquainted with his deadpan narrative, Rabha’s words might be dismissed as displays of dark humour, or tasteless sarcasm. But I think he means it. I ask him again. He answers in the affirmative. Why would you kill the very person who sheltered you?

“He was beginning to exploit me. He cut down on my ration. I had to work longer hours. I wanted to go home but he wouldn’t let me.”

One fine morning, when Sukhlal was inspecting one of his cows, Rabha used his knife to slit Sukhlal’s throat, dragged his body into the cow shed and covered it with straw. Hiding the body gave him enough time to leave the farm and board the next train to Gossaigaon. 

I do not prod deeper into his murderous episode. The smoke from the partially burnt wood is filling up the veranda. It is open on the front three sides and covered by the door behind, that leads to the living room. I do not want the smoke to permeate into the living room. The pungency has already watered my eyes, even though there is a special musky taste to it, a taste that makes me desire for Rabha’s mutton fry. I ask Rabha to douse the fire and wake me up tomorrow morning at six. I see him going towards the well to bring the water. I close the door behind me once I see him coming with the bucket pulling his one shoulder, while the sling of his rifle rests on the other. 

As I sit on the dining table, the khisiri spread out on the steel plate and the hot steam rising out of it, I continue to picture this stout muscular home-guard of mine holding Sukhlal by his torso, immobilising him and before he can utter a word or even a faint cry, the other hand quickly, and neatly, moves over his neck. The knife tears out the outer lining of skin, then gradually goes deeper into his neck muscles before finally cutting open the carotid artery, all in a matter of a few milliseconds. The blood gushes out, Sukhlal’s lifeless body trembles with the sudden cardiac arrest and subsequent involuntary muscle spasms. Rabha drags the body by his shoulders into the shed, the bloody jet on the soiled floor tracing the movement. He then covers it with straw, the blood spurting all over, but gradually losing its force. By the time Rabha has boarded the train, the family of Sukhlal is probably oblivious to his fate. It must be somewhere around noon that Sukhlal’s wife begins to wonder about her husband’s whereabouts. He should have been here for his lunch by now. As she calls Rabha and finds him missing, the initial curiosity gives way to suspicion and anxiety. Frantic searches take place, the police get called and it is probably late in the evening when a constable tracing the blood in the cow shed finally uncovers Sukhlal’s soiled body. The police intuitively search for Rabha with whom the victim was last seen. Without a proper phone number and without an address, which probably only Sukhlal knew, the police are left high and dry. They call their counterparts in Gossaigaon. They probably wire the details they have with him. 

Oh wait, I am immediately reminded of such a telegram I received about a year ago. From the Meerut police. They had placed a search warrant for one Rabha from Gossaigaon who was charged with committing murder in Meerut, nearly a decade ago. This was one of those yearly reminders that go out for those warrants that have not yet been executed. 

“No photo, no address, no father’s name. How can they expect us to find him?” I now remember my subdivisional police officer dismissing the piece of paper which had the decoded Morse code inscribed on it. He was not completely wrong either. Rabha is an entire tribal group scattered across the plains and forests of Gossaigaon. There are more than ten thousand Rabhas here. The single input provided by the Meerut police was, in administrative parlance, not an actionable one. 

The khisiri is no longer steaming hot. A thin layer of water on the top has condensed to prevent the heat underneath from passing out. My fingers dig in only to be instantly repelled by the burning heat stored inside. My mind again wanders off to Rabha’s exploits. There is one question as to why he took such an extreme step, but the other more intriguing one is why he chose to spill the beans in front of me. 

I open the contact list on my phone and begin typing S-D-P-O. I am sure Rabha must be imagining the same – I calling my subdivisional police officer, informing him of what I just heard, and then waiting in anticipation for the arrival of the police. His imminent arrest and possible transfer to Meerut police is just a phone call away. The phone rings, but before my SDPO can pick up, I cut the call. The SDPO calls back, the contact on my screen flashing with the sound of the ring. I decide not to pick up. A missed call. 

Does his wife know that she has married a murderer? I remember him having a daughter. She’s probably still too young to even fathom that her father has slit someone’s throat even if he said it to her. 

Rabha’s mother? I am sure she does: Rabha returning one fine evening to his house, his mother clutching him, caressing his forehead, tears in her eyes as she was beginning to worry about his wellbeing. Before Rabha is able to wipe her mother’s tears off, she holds her son with her two hands, examining his face and then his body, to make sure that her son is completely safe. She notices the faint patches of blood on his shirt. “Did someone hurt you?” No, Ma, nobody did anything, Rabha gives a feeble reply. Mother is not convinced. She pushes on. He finally confesses to the crime he has committed about twelve hours ago. He curses himself for forgetting to change his shirt in the train. He is thankful too – people in the train were too engrossed with their own worldly problems to notice his bloody shirt. Or, maybe he was just too plain-looking for anybody to notice?

I realise that my food is still unfinished. I dig my hands deeper into the khisiri, pick up a handful of it and thrust it faster into my mouth. The SDPO’s contact is still flashing on my phone screen. Am I the second or the first person to have known that Rabha has blood on his hands? Well, how does it matter? It surely does to Sukhlal’s wife. The arrest of Rabha might give some closure to her bereavement. What if she has already moved on? Ten years is a long time. But there is no way for me to know either. 

I finish my food and get up from the table. I turn on the tap and let the water flow over my fingers soiled with crumbs of dried khisiri. The water rubs off against the crumbs, a few remain stuck, while a few others can no longer resist and fall off. Rabha must have done the same that day. With Sukhlal’s blood slowly drying up, he thrusts the hand pump next to the shed with his left hand. The water gushes out over his right arm into his hand, washing off the blood with it. He then reverses his hand. Once done, he wipes off the remaining stubborn stains with his handkerchief before walking casually to his room, collecting his belongings, making sure to not leave anything (evidence) behind, before proceeding towards the station. That handkerchief is surely no longer there. 

Did the police collect any blood stains from the handle of the hand pump that day? Did they even consider it a possibility that the handle was stained with Sukhlal’s blood and Rabha’s fingerprints? The reddish-brown metal handle that must have been covered with rust would not have given off the hint of a possible crime scene unless the investigating officer had the right bent of mind to think through. 

If Rabha is arrested, would he be convicted? It depends on the evidence collected by the police that day. Rabha, standing in the witness box, is not a man to utter so many words. Extracting a confession out of him, without torture, appears impossible. But for his wife to see him in the witness box, would I be okay with that? What if he has confessed to me in redemption? The last two years with him has made me trust him completely. What if he has reposed the same trust in me, the faith that one reposes on his father? 

I need to talk him through this. I need to persuade him to confess to the police, not just to me. I put my plate in the kitchen. I will do the washing tomorrow. I open the front door and step out into the veranda once again. The fire has been extinguished but ash and half-burnt wood pieces remain scattered on the floor. A feeble smoke dances upwards. Rabha usually cleans up the whole place and not leave it littered like this. The confession has bothered him equally, I guess. 

I see a faint light from his room. The room is on the other side of my backyard, a cubical concrete structure covered by a tin roof. There are two windows, the one on the front is usually closed. The one at the back is where the stove is placed. He cooks only once in the day and sleeps for a major part of it from early morning to the afternoon. His job is mostly at night. I think the room reminds him of his days in Meerut. Do I remind him of Sukhlal? He has been asking me to relieve him from work for the last six months. I have been persuading him to stay. Sukhlal did not allow him to leave either, albeit for just a couple of weeks before it was all over. He had just a knife then. He has a rifle now. I wonder what is holding him back here?

I walk gradually to his room. The light is seeping out through the bottom of the door, the windows must be closed. I feel like a cop going to confront a criminal. Every footstep of mine over the dry grass is riddled with feelings of guilt, anxiety and cognitive dissonance. The Kantian morality in me persuading my mind to call up the SDPO, while at the same time questioning my compassion for Rabha’s wife and daughter. Rabha wanted to leave this place to be able to spend more time with his family. He had his fields to look after. It was me who asked him to go in the next agricultural season, about two months from now. My phone call to the SDPO would land him in jail. Does my Kantian morality allow such a betrayal of trust? Or should I agree with only Bentham and look for the highest good? Can my phone call bring Sukhlal back? If not, then should I not worry more about the future of Rabha’s daughter? What about retributive justice then? My role as the guardian of subdivision limits me to the welfare of only my people here or should I look in the grand scheme of things in my role as an agent of the state?

I slow down a bit. A myriad of conflicting emotions jostles my mind and makes me feel a bit off balance- or maybe I just hit a hard bump in the darkness, I am not so sure. The wetness in the grass greases past my feet over my rubber slippers. The dew is setting in. The fog has cleared and in the full moon cast over the sky, the silhouette of Rabha’s room is visible in the distance. The black treeline of my backyard is faintly discernible. I again speed up. I am sure he is expecting my entry, probably regretting the things he blurted out tonight. He holds his rifle in his hand, steadies the nozzle towards the door, waiting in anticipation as he hears my footsteps approaching. 

Or maybe not? 

I give a knock on his door. Once, twice and thrice. No response. On pushing the handle, the door opens with a creak. There is no sign of Rabha. The bulb on the other end has a glow not strong enough to light up the entire room. On the left is his bed, a bed sheet folded up with two pillows scattered. Nobody has slept on it tonight. On the right is a small study table. I can make out a couple of pens on a cup, and a few sheets of loose paper crumbled. I step inside, treading cautiously. In the third step, my right foot touches a black liquid on a puddle on the floor. I begin to trace the puddle and the narrow thread of the liquid to its source. And there it is, Rabha lying on the other side of the bed. The black liquid is oozing out of the left hand, the right hand still clutching on to the knife with which he slashed his left wrist. Rabha’s body lay crumbled on the floor, his head and upper torso rest on the edge of the bed. His eyes are closed. In the glow of the bulb, his face seems to have a smile, the shadows forming below his nose and chin, creating an image of a young boy who knows that the secret has finally died with him. Sukhlal’s face, on the other hand, must have had fear and struggle written all over at the time he was discovered by the cops. 

I come closer and put my finger below Rabha’s nose. He is breathing!

I run. I run on the grass, not sure of the wetness of the grass or the wetness of Rabha’s blood that sticks to my feet. I run past the partially burnt wood, the smoke still wriggling out. I run through the living room into the dining hall. My phone still sits on the table. I press on the missed call to get it ringing again. I finally make the call, albeit for a different reason. 

“Hello, you need to send an ambulance to my residence. Quick!”