THE LAST EARTHQUAKE……..a short story by RoshanC

September 18^th 2011

Darkness was falling on a hazy mid-September evening and the residents were preparing for blackout.  At the corner of the house, the frequency was set at S/W 60.04 MHz and the All India Radio host was bellowing the weather forecast for the next 24hrs. The ground outside was still wet as a result of the previous night’s torrential downpour and the wind outside was perpetually on the move making boisterous reverberation. The mud walls of the house kept the interiors warm and the thatched roof silenced the rain hitting the house, making it the coziest alcove for catnaps. Old Dataram cuddled himself at the corner of his bed, making sure not to budge his ageing wife from her peaceful hebetude. He was waiting for the local news at 6:40, a customary activity that he’d been religiously following from the day he got the radio, possibly the only notable item he got from his in-laws along with his wife. The only other room of the house was occupied by his two sons, who at the moment were already into deep hibernation.

A sudden jolt woke him up, his sluggish eyes reacting to the ground shaking under his bed. There was a grim silence for the next few seconds until this time the slight tremble was replaced by a strong jolt. Before he could clear his mind of the mayhem, a huge chunk of the mud-wall adjacent to his bed, perilously close, came crashing down.It was the third time the Earthquake had struck within seconds, and the century old mud walls had fallen prey to it. With a slight stutter he gestured to his wife showing the only exit door.She was already up on her spine staring sullenly at him like a rabbit caught in the glare of headlights. It struck again. Rising unsteadily on his feet, he followed his wife towards the door only to be joined by his two sons, like ants scurrying down a hole. And when the quake struck the fourth time in the ten minutes or so, and just when the family managed to make their way out to the open, the house came crashing down before their eyes. He looked back and stared sullenly at the rubble and a groan went up. A big drop of rain hit like a spear on his forehead. This purgatory night was to be sealed with the rain, and it saved him the shyness to hide his tears. And then it rained.

Old Dataram stood outside in the rain, unbroken and unnaturally still. His small thatched kitchen survived the nature’s fury, and from its shelter he could see the rubble of his house under the faint moonlight penetrating the darkest of the clouds. He heard the bleating of the goats in some distance, and then he realized that it was not just the humans affected. The shed which kept the goats was now just a pile of bamboos, and with the help of his sons he got the goats inside the kitchen. There were seven of them which cramped the tiny kitchen with eleven lost souls. He shut his eyes in despair; the worst would only be seen in the following morning. The whole night it rained heavily. The fire was lit and everyone crumbled around the fireplace, the wait for the first light of dawn was not far away; but was somehow not even anticipated.

This fateful night he found shelter at his neighbour’s house and he humbly obliged to the request. When he woke up the next morning after being offered tea, his eyes were still red and moist, a sign that he couldn't catch sleep as well as his tears. He didn't have the courage to go, or even look at the direction of his house. Everyone knew that it were all pile of mud and wood. Less than twelve hours and his life had completely changed having come to a standstill. The hot tea touched his lips at a very slow pace, all the while he was thinking. How could he rebuilt his life again, his house again, which had took him more than five decades to build?  The time in the clock said six and how Dataram just remembered the same hands of the clock the previous night had proved disastrous. Someone had just switched on the radio. The Earthquake had struck the entire state and the casualties were piling up. Old Dataram looked at the radio and silently cursed. Life would never be the same, not for Dataram, and not for many more like him.

It was still raining outside. And when it stopped for some hours in the afternoon, Dataram (instead of even looking at the direction of his house, which no more stood at its previous place) directly headed with other men towards the village to take an account of the damages incurred. The heavy rain had caused severe landslides and almost all the houses in the village had suffered some kind of damages or the other. But more than that, it was the fear that was clearly visible in everyone’s eyes. And this fear would certainly remain in their hearts too for many more days, if not years.

The whole day it rained and also in the evening until night slowly started falling in this small hamlet. Dataram had still to knock him back to senses. He was still lost, having not knowing yet what would be his next step. In small villages and with daily wage earners, there’s nothing known as a Plan “B”. It is only applicable to those who have a bank, or a bank manager as a close friend. For the next three days that followed, Dataram and his family quietly took shelter at the neighbour's. Only on the third day, and when the rains finally stopped, he, along with a group of villagers, starting scavenging the piles of his ex-house. They also constructed a makeshift camp for the family, strong enough to keep them safe for the next few months, for, rebuilding would certainly take much more time.

September 18^th 2012

There was a huge commotion at Dataram’s house. Crowd were swelling at every nook and corner of the house, smokes swirled from the kitchen bringing along smell of freshly cooked meat and other delicacies, the small veranda had chairs placed all over and some village girls were busy pouring tea to the guests. Inside the house, in a room at a corner, a pundit was busy chanting slogans, pouring ghee and various other mixtures into the small fire lit at the centre. Dataram and his wife stayed at one side of the fire, hand clasped in a Namaste, humbly obliging to the priest strange requests, sometimes a fruit, then two coins, next some chandan sticks, white flower and so on. Outside were his sons, busy catering the guests, offering them tea, snacks and finally escorting them to a small bamboo makeshift hut which functioned as the lunchroom for the occasion. It was a very special day for Dataram and his entire family; it was the “House-warming Party”

The Rebuilt

Dataram’s two other sons were in the Indian army. They had just joined the force and had left for their training when the fateful Earthquake had struck. Though the two sons did never witness the night, yet the plight of their family was never hidden from them. It was just a matter of time, and when the boys came back home as men, they had a much bigger task at home before they could think of their country. Then the story began of reconstructing the house. What Dataram lost was an ancestral house of mud and bamboo, which not even belonged to him, what now was been rebuilt was a five room structure of cement and rod, a house which he might have never even dreamt in his wildest dream to own in his lifetime. He was just months away from realising his dream home, a house that would have plenty of rooms for the family, even for a couple of guests, and above all, he could have one room all by himself (which he would happily share with his wife).

The poor man’s day had come in the form of his two sons. He ploughed other’s field, harvested other’s paddy, grinded other’s mustard, yet never let his children go to bed hungry, keeping in mind he had ten hungry stomachs to feed every day. He himself never literally went to any school, but he was among the hundred others from his village that carried logs and stones for the construction of the first school in the village. This poor man knew that the rooms that he was helping to construct would be the classroom for his kids in the near future. His children went to the same school, and henceforth moved ahead in life, and today grew up to take the burden off their father’s shoulder.

The last time I went to my village, Dataram’s house was very much into construction. His family was still put-up in the makeshift camp, yet his wife poured hot tea for me. I was surprised it was sugar tea (if you know what I mean). His son was busy giving directions to the carpenter, and upon seeing me, came to me with the request for the design for the window panels.

Metres away from me stood old Dataram, a big grin in his face. The reminiscence of the earthquake was quickly fading from his life.

Hero….a short story by RoshanC

                                                                  Hero

     "Eight feet road and I am in the middle, how dare anyone touch me", the turbulent voice of the drunken man broke the silence of the night. Summer colds are always a little trying, and the entire village had retired to bed after a hard day’s labor. I could still hear his voice for the most part of the night. 
     The next morning as I strolled out for my daily jog, I found him lying besides the drains, near the corner of the street, half awake and still shaky from his previous night’s chore. His face looked like “stool-for-sample” and he smelled rats. There was nothing in the world he required more than a shower. He quickly recognized me with, "Hello, Two-by-Four!” I was 13 then and it was his accustomed greeting. He was still in his uniform, which meant he was on Patrol- Duty, not to forget "the Petrol" in which he had plunged himself the previous night. It was very early in the morning and the stillness still there in the streets. I offered a hand to him and helped him to his room, the Police Staff Quarters. While the Police Outpost was on the second floor of this rented building, the ground floor were occupied by shops and most importantly, a major portion by a Restaurant cum Bar. Someone said it very true; “One who sits by the well will never go thirsty.” This was mostly where he quenched his thirst.
     The walls in his room were so close to one another, like we can call it a Lilliputian Emporium. If he wished, he could light the gas with one hand and close the door with the other without taking the eyes off the reflection of his tonsure in the mirror. Except for a pair of uniform dangling recklessly on a rusty nail, a small table only to hold a gas burner (the rust screaming how it missed to see a spark from a light for ages), and a charpoy  which never embraced his body for more than a minute at a time.  The only window in his room never opened, his colleagues had hammered nails into it (his screams at regular intervals in his inebriated condition had been enough to the neighbors). No one ever visited his room, quite literally not even himself. 
     He had a “Bahadur” as his middle name but he looked senile. He had a ruddy complexion and potato nose, enviable black whiskers and a fine sonorous voice. When he was sober, he was a man of few words, I considered him to be a sort of cross between an old Country Singer and a Lion Tamer from a circus. The two most prominent features in him were his great sense of humor and the knowledge that he had stuffed inside his fragile skull. Knowledge he had kidnapped from his various sojourns and interactions with humble men, he could tell the proportion of water and muscle required to bake a thousand cookies, the count of nails required to scale the balance to a kilogram, the shortest verse in the holy “Gita”, the last king of Burma, the salary of the railway post-officer in the village and the number of bones in the foreleg of a cat. He had a laugh like a medium-sized dog. He adored kids, used to be seen throwing packets of candies on the streets for them, blubbering and cracking jokes. I still have a friend back home he nicknamed “hairy” (pronounced “HARRY”). He used to say,” Though we can hardly see him under his thick body hair, still he can have a western name”. Except for his drinking habits, everyone focused on his plusses. And that he had plenty.
     He was on the verge of his retirement after serving the police force for almost his entire life. He used to say he lost his virginity before the” Tricolor” fluttered at the Red Fort for the first time. With only a handful of teeth left, he could hardly chew a gum; liquid went easily down his pharynx. The last few years of his professional life thus went by whipping his steps in and out of the bar; the latter one hardly required his limb. But he was earning few thousands per month, which he needed to support his feet whether his feet would support him or not. And every night he went around with the same chores, high on methanol, hooting like some “Yankee “fan. If someone managed to catch him in broad daylight, he would be found grinning at almost anything and everything that crossed his path, with only two teeth prominent behind his dark parched lips, far apart from each other like some couple on the verge of divorce. And his punch lines were simply intoxicating. A cat was always a “pussy” for him; the village dhobi was always at his receiving end; his wife for him was but an “old -farting-lady”. And   his grin always buttered his sarcasms. 
     One evening I met him at the market, which always felt strangely deserted at late hours. The sun had just slid down the horizon, leaving behind magnificent arrays of red and blue over the mountain top. The day itself was reminiscent of what was left in the lonely evenings of this small village town, where men seem to have gone out like the flame of a candle, leaving not even a trail of smoke as a witness. I almost didn’t recognize him that day. Since I was still yards away from teenage-hood, it felt like, “if it’s not him, then I never saw him.”For some inexplicable reason, he was not wearing his uniform, had kept unusually long beard, his hair ever seemed longer to me and his eyes as red as ruby. He took a gander at me, like the last soul he had seen, grinned the same old “toothless-baddie” type with the accustomed “Hello, Two-by-four!”  Shaking me warmly by my hand, he added; “How come you got up so early in the morning today?” I believe I stared at him for too long that he had to repeat it again. I moved my eyes far towards the horizon and mumbled. “Or is it late evening?” he answered himself and drowned himself into a breeze of laughter. His laugh always followed with a brief dancing, the “Cameroonian” dance in the soccer field types, like he might have just stumbled on the elixir of youth. He realized he had gone to bed but in the morning and missed most part of the afternoon. Even as I left in haste, I could still see his twin tooth from a distance. That is the last memory I have of seeing him in person.
     I was constantly tipped off about his stints in the town by someone or the other even while I was away. My friends found him one early morning bemoaning about a rather funny incident. A huge crowd, concoction of young and old had gathered around him. His anecdotes were almost always jocular, no one dared missed it. The topic of the day was his daughters. And since he had three, all of them eloped in successive months, the last one still a juvenile- the youngest of them all. As a father, he surely missed the opportunity of marrying them in great grandiose. But his concerns were relatively adverse. He was behind the “rednecks”; he (informally) called them opportunists. And the victims here were his “roses”. “Are my daughters’ rose? That just when they started blooming, someone just plucks it and vroom! Off they go.” The whole crowd burst into peals of laughter. His was the loudest. Even if he was liquored up, sober, blissful or in doldrums, he still could revive a smile in his face and in many others, a skill that takes years to develop and hone.
     It was quite late in life that I heard him retire. He came back to his village (which I shared with him), but it was only some time recently that I met him. 
     The day was relatively hot. The sun had stopped in the middle of the sky, refusing to move, firing missiles of heat down lying there unbroken and unnaturally still. My younger brother walked ahead of me as we crossed the dense orange orchard and reached our farmhouse. It was deserted, but obviously. Village life is strenuous, everyone busy as a beaver. It was my first visit to my village in years, and I yearned to make the most out of it, visit as many of my relatives, neighbors and my childhood “snot-licking” friends.
My uncle was out in the field and the farmhouse was deserted for the day. So we had to hop-in to our neighbor’s kitchen for a cup of midday tea. This was where I met our old-time baddie; couldn’t be for the last time. Since seeing him after a long hiatus, let me give you a modified description of him at present. Weight, 60; complexion, hair and brain, dark; height, five feet five; age, about seventy-three; dressed in a Rs 1200 suit of greenish-blue serge;  containing a bunch of keys and a packet of cigarette protruding from the only front pocket. He was balancing a stick on his one hand as he sauntered by in the lawn before making his way towards us in the kitchen. He carried a “ninety- nine- dollar” grin on his face, as if silently mocking us and sat down in a wooden chair beside me. A fancy Chinese goggles loosely dangled down his rabbity nose. That "Hello, Two-by-Four!” was missing.  The change silently irked me. I smiled back and carefully studied every wrinkle on his face which looked so familiar. “I observe that you are of a studious disposition” he said.  A strange smile ran across the kitchen, off the window and all over the place. I could sense that he still carried his charm with profound glorification and his best was yet to come.
     I offered him a smoke and that broke the ice. For the next three hours and over several cups of tea, I was still to be found gaping at his idea of bliss, which was different. When I told him that he looked younger, he went ahead comparing his age with every “fifty plus” in the village, and in the end, convinced us in positive assertion that he at seventy and three- was indeed the stripling. He closed it with; “And I intended to retain it, come hell or high water”. It seemed his every comment was finely measured, crafted and calculated. When I inquired about his drinking habits, my neighbor jumped into the conversation, mocking that he ceased as soon as he retired- with “peanuts”. Ignoring the flippancy, he gave us a competent figure that he was drawing as “pension-money”, and his motive of abstaining from booze was rather complicated. He was hardly frugal, his voice became softer when we spoke to us, and his jests were lighter; making him all the more alluring.
     To bring the best out of him, I chose to start our tete-a-tete in rather satirical phrases.  So when I noticed his teeth multiplying as he added numbers to his age astronomically, prompt came his reply; “Money buys everything these days. If only I could sell, my wife would surely fetch me a few extra bucks.”  His recriminatory remarks was so manifest here, yet he grinned, putting an effort to make evident that he had bought the whole set of 32. He initially had the first two incisors replaced with the fake ones. The only problem he had was while brushing them in the mornings. Since he had to manually remove them for the exercise, he could'nt hold water inside to rinse his mouth fully. You should have heard him say how the little water to rinse used to make its way out of his closed mouth through the gap, irritating him for the entire  morning for years. That is when he plucked out the remaining few and bought the whole set of 32. “I only feel younger, so much so that they gleam at the slightest sight of our village cougars.” 
     His transition from an alcoholic to his sober-self seemed too good to be true. He had no specific reasons as to how, when and what made that happen. Money he had enough, leisure was all his own, fetching a bottle would be at a stone’s throw from his house, yet he chose to opt out off the league. Spirituality? “Nah! Came his reply. I am yet to see a God in flesh and blood.” I tried another ploy,wanted to know more about his Police-ing days. " We were herdsmen in the begining,not policeman", is what he told me. And even before I could ask, he came up with his explanations of the same. He was posted in the extreme borders of the state towards  China , where Yaks were plenty and humans few. And since Yaks had unblemished records, the very few humans had nothing to do to outrage the policeman. " There were herds of Yaks that travelled from the Tibetian Plateau towards our side, and since these lost-herds were mostly unattended, it was our task, rather "job" of the police to round them up and guard them for days, sometimes even months until the owners turned up. Many a times they never did. And what do you do when you see hungry yaks in the morning around the camp? Take them out to graze right?  That is what we ended up doing most of the time of the year in the Himalayas. Now you tell me, were we policemen or herdsmen?" So he was a herdsman in uniform for almost a decade when he was called off towards more civilized parts of the state. In the himalayas, they had yak butter, yak meat and plenty of  yak milk to drink. The city had nothing better to offer him, and that milk was sold in bottles here: Brandy,Whisky and Rum.
     He almost jumped like a kid with his stories, talked a lot about his recent tour and pilgrimage, pressing hard on the fact that the most voyageous part of his life was only accomplished after he shed the uniform. He could barely read when he joined the force but he reads alongside his grandchild today, that he is now accustomed to see his wife in bed every night beside him (without getting scared in the morning), simply loves the way his fellow villagers treats him with profound respect, and not the least, he still finds humour, somewhere between everything he speaks and hears of. I mysely lost the count on the number of times I got an eye-full of his false teeth.
     The tea cup was still on my hand, dangling between my thumb and the index finger, the sun outside was but faint and ready to hide beneath the giant mountains as if they were scared to shine any longer, the room was already dimly lit with a 40W and the entire village gleamed in orange. He got up from the bench with a little support he got holding my knees and straight headed towards the exit door. He was still all smiles and I didn't need to know the reason why; maybe he was born that way. I took a look around, everyone had their eyes transfixed on him, as if we all were waiting for something more, something to seal the day with. Upon realizing that my mouth was half opened, I quitely closed them. I swear it didn't miss his eyes, for, upon seeing me gape at him relatively close, he dislodged the goggles, wiped it over the shirt near his bosom, put it back to his eyes and grinning the grin of a hyena said;
  "And I am the "Dev Anand" of this village."