Resistance

The gentleman sits with his feet pressed between his knees. A quadruped creature, one would think, crouched in slumber. Like those odd figures in advertisements for isabgol. Upon an oval-shaped commode sits the gentleman. His face is engulfed in a forest of black and white beard. Age, roughly sixty-five. Let us call him Vibhishan.
 
No need for further introduction. Entry there is forbidden. From afar, it is not easy to tell exactly what he is doing. Yet, peering furtively, one perceives: he sits with his knees apart, his face lowered between them, his stern expression suspended over the womb-shaped pan. From his nostrils the insects of stench flutter and buzz, for he spits repeatedly into the pan. Around him an aura of foul odor coils into being, traveling in and out through his nasal passage. He knows himself that rot has spread inside for many years. Its outcome — this half-dead, half-dormant state. Yet within the bathroom he feels secure, as if this private cell were his sanctuary. Here no external agent intrudes, no alien disturbance breaches the inner perimeter. This is his beloved, bulletproof lavatory.
 
Now he raises his head, stands carefully upon both legs. His belly folds as he stares intently at the straight white wall before him. Slowly, gradually, the environment settles into its natural state once more.
 
Some days earlier, he had stood beside the Maidan, gazing at a political platform. Upon the dais, men in dhotis and panjabis. Around them, a small crowd: office-goers on their way home, curious old men, a few vagrants, tea-shop regulars. A handful of hired men were there too, to stir up the assembly. Like chickens they sat or stood idly. The leader, veins swelling on his neck, poured forth rage into the microphone. He seemed to be of the people, and yet against his own profession. For his tirade appeared directed not at any specific rival, but against the system itself. The very system of which he was a crucial cog — a cabinet minister.
 
Vibhishan thought: A politician always speaks against another politician. And each claims to speak for the people. Their professed hatred for their own craft, their sudden tenderness for the common folk, made him smile. Yet he liked the leader’s face, his bearing: almost like a true Marxist. The radiance of his words illuminated the world, promising a total upheaval of civilization itself. This was no man to retreat without birthing revolution.
 
At a street corner, Vibhishan halted. His chest swelled with courage. The leader declared: There is no democracy left in the nation! We must call for mass movement to bring it back! Yes — such truth. The crouching, quivering creature between his knees, with its choking dread, shattered into pieces in that moment.
Suddenly Vibhishan felt the urge to urinate. Ah, the bliss of stench once more — that comforting filth. Religion dissolves into irreligion beside the tramlines of Dharmatala. In the middle of sacrilege, he thought: There goes the tram to Sealdah, leaving me behind. Swiftly, as swift as age allowed, he hurried forward, cautiously — a performance of balance. Each step must fall exactly upon the line. Else: abyss. His feet upon tramlines, or perhaps upon a wall three inches wide, or the thin rope of a coconut palm stretched in air. To slip would mean certain death. Yet cats do not die when they slip. From the sky a crow’s excrement fell upon his head. A sign, perhaps, that protection is but illusion. Fate’s betrayal comes from any direction.
 
In his hand he clutched a small birthday card. Upon it: “Three Years Birthday.” It was for his only grandson.
 
The trams stood still, one behind another, in frozen queue. Amidst the crowd he was immobilized. Legs apart. Between them a blade of steel.
 
Sidhu and Kanhu, like mid-afternoon human bombs, thundered through his mind. Vibhishan climbed aboard the tram. As the tram rolled along, he saw beneath a tree a foreign figure: long beard, solemn presence. Karl Marx himself, it seemed, smiling faintly at him. Or was the face stern? Around the statue, jungle. The philosopher kept smiling, or perhaps his lips were grave. Upon Vibhishan’s face lingered a veiled ache.
 
Not far, only twenty kilometers from Sealdah. At last he found a seat. The tram lulled him into drowsiness until it reached the destination. Evening light flickered faint. The coconut rope shrank into a thread. He pressed his pension money, folded in a secret pocket beneath his shirt, close to his ribs. Strange world. What if it vanished? He gripped his umbrella tight in both hands. On the platform a poster proclaimed: “Jai Shri Ram.” “Ram, Ram,” he muttered unconsciously. He stepped down the down-line, prowling forward like a cautious cat, measuring each step by its quotient of safety.
 
“Where, Vibhishan? Returning home?” A familiar old man, democratic face, addressed him. “Tomorrow is Saturday. Holiday. There will be a bandh. No trains, no market. Don’t leave home. Do your shopping today, then go back.”
 
Vibhishan had not noticed. Tomorrow, in protest of central policy, Bengal would shut down. Lights would go out before dusk; he must rush. Safety pressed on him. In the kerosene shop, brick queues stretched long. Human beings thinned out. Already the place hollowing into emptiness. Yet he had to go forth. For today was the date his pension must be withdrawn.
 
The event was already two days old. Panchu, Shidam, Kalia, Napla—four of them, a pack of hyenas—had come at midnight to the house of Mandar Babu, Vibhishan’s neighbor. They had shouted the name of his son, dragging him from sleep.
“Get up, bastard son of a whore!” one yelled.
“Tonight we’ll make peace with your whore-wife,” Napla sneered.
The old father Mandar stood petrified, clutching the door. His son Shambhu opened it, trembling. Inside, Shambhu’s aged parents froze; his wife’s clothes were being torn away by one of the intruders. The young woman tried to resist, her cry piercing the dark.
 
The whole neighborhood heard—the scuffle, Mandar’s cries, the thud of random kicks.
“Strip, bitch! Strip!” a voice demanded.
“We’ll impale your wife before your eyes, you swine!”
 
Mandar’s desperate pleas rose in the night. His wife wept aloud. Children shrieked.
 
Meanwhile, Vibhishan sat in his bathroom, knees apart, head lowered. Around him—stench of urine, blood, vomit, clinging to his body. The smell thickened, ranker, as if the rot of society itself seeped through his pores. His whole being trembled under the empire of fear. His face flushed with shame. He felt like an animal, a quadruped in hiding.
 
The cries awoke his three-year-old grandson. Inside their house, his son, daughter-in-law, and he himself remained awake, trembling.
 
“Any bastard got courage? Come out if you’ve got strength in your thighs!” the marauders taunted.
 
Silence. The whole neighborhood silent. A city possessed by ghosts. Whose chest still held blood? The child wailed.
 
From the bathroom Vibhishan moaned aloud. His sigh bounced off the walls and struck back at him. His daughter-in-law stuffed her breast into the infant’s mouth, lulling him into sleep. The child knew no more. Neither did the elders. Their eyes, ears, mouths—gifts once given by God—had been withdrawn again. Darkness thickened. Only the whimpering of Mandar’s daughter-in-law remained. Until even that fell silent.
 
Then, by the natural law of the world, morning arrived. The neighborhood reeked—stench everywhere. Vibhishan knew it would stink. All around, the odor of rotting flesh-men. And yet within him, like Sidhu and Kanhu roaring rebellion, a sly satisfaction grew: My little garden has not withered. Others may perish; I remain. What of it? My struggle for existence is the greatest of all. Class struggle—go to hell!
 
A double murder. A gang rape. A scene of “mass movement,” grotesque parody. The young woman’s legs were nearly torn apart. From her womb her entrails seemed ready to spill. Another corpse lay, head severed, for eighteen hours. All knew. Yet no one knew. Police came at last. The corporation’s garbage truck arrived. Cheaper if they dumped the bodies in the landfill. Postmortem was too troublesome. Soon the police silently sealed the neighborhood.
 
That very morning, Vibhishan went carefully by the banyan tree to fetch milk from Harin Ghata—for his grandson. Next, the market. Then shave, bathe, eat. At ten, school. Since retirement, he taught part-time at a private school nearby.
 
At the market’s mouth sat a boy, Shelly, with newspapers spread. A carnival of headlines. Newspapers and political parties now indistinguishable. Thirty-two fried items for sale, all spiced with theft and deceit. Greg-da, member of the local civic committee, rifled through the sheets. Could Kolkata’s papers ever carry mofussil’s grief? No—better to know what Hema Malini eats, or which shirt Aamir Khan wears. That is what people craved.
 
The neighborhood reeked of decay, a stench like meat left to rot. Vibhishan walked the pavement like a cautious cat, darting away from acquaintances, avoiding faces. His stern mask bore no words. He forced a smile, like mocking the world: See? I still live!
 
But as he neared home, unease grew. Around his house, men in khaki uniforms.
Quickly he slipped through the back lane, skirting the pond, and entered by the wicket gate. His legs heavy. Straight to the bathroom he went, dropping his market bag. Already he had bathed. Finished his morning ablutions. Why again? Yet upon the pan he sat, and felt safe. Excitement churned his belly into gurgling. He crouched in quadruped posture and peace spread in him. Through the universe rang the sound of excretion.
 
From Mandar’s house came muffled sobs. Half an hour later, the police finished their task and vanished.
 
By noon, Panchu and Shidam’s gang began their action again. A few stomachs split, a few heads beaten. In front of the tea shop, chaos, scuffles, uproar. For ten minutes it raged—then running footsteps, panic, scattering. Silence followed.
 
By evening, curfew was declared in the mofussil town. At seven o’clock, the place looked like a ghost city. Flickering street lamps went dark. Load-shedding. All of it, they said, would last until elections ended.
 
The next morning a police officer came into Vibhishan’s house. Soon after, four men sat in the living room, circled like wary animals.
 
The officer spoke: “Two murders occurred in your neighbor Mandar Chakraborty’s house, the night before last. Did you see anything? Hear anything?”
At this, Vibhishan’s daughter-in-law nearly fainted. Regaining composure, she sat staring with blank eyes.
 
The sergeant continued: “It was an organized murder, in Mandar’s house. Miscreants killed his son and his son’s wife. As neighbors, you noticed nothing? No sound? No one entering or leaving?”
 
“What a terrifying situation! We only learned of it when the police came. We are still badly shaken,” said Vibhishan’s son. He pointed to his wife: “She has been fainting repeatedly since yesterday. Terribly frightened. In civilized society we never imagined such things.”
 
The sergeant now measured Vibhishan with his eyes, head to toe.
“You, sir—heard nothing at midnight? Saw nothing?”
 
Vibhishan sat silent. The officer was of his son’s age.
 
His son quickly interjected: “Actually, my father is elderly. Retired five years ago. He taught at college. Once asleep at night, he never wakes. Besides, he takes sleeping pills. His room is next to Mandar’s dining hall, true—but he couldn’t have heard. And those who commit such acts—do they beat drums to announce themselves? My job is in Kolkata; I commute daily. I never heard any noise to disturb my sleep. Only at dawn, when I went to the bathroom, did I stir. Nothing unusual then.” He rattled it off in one breath.
 
“What sort of man was Mandar Babu? How did he mix with you? Any disputes connected with his son’s business that you knew of?” the officer asked.
 
“Everyone here knows Mandar Babu. He was once one of the old elite. Though not so much now. His son is in contracting—family business for generations. Business brings quarrels, of course, but how could we know? Mandar uncle was an amiable man. Lately he kept to himself. I never heard of any quarrels. Could anyone truly be so savage?” Vibhishan’s son replied.
 
“Yes, times are bad. In this area such things are happening often now. We are trying to provide safety,” the officer said, looking satisfied with the statements.
“As for our own safety, we feel helpless. Our entire life—” Vibhishan began.
 
His son cut him off: “Father has suffered mental shock. Such a horror in the night, and yet we don’t know who did it. Such a vile incident. We are all terrified.”
Vibhishan gazed at his son, stunned at his ease in lying. He had never realized his son was so adept.
 
The questioning dragged on for two hours. When the officer left, the household exhaled relief.
 
Truly, none had the courage to speak truth. Bedbugs, all. Vibhishan watched in amazement as the murderers roamed freely around the neighborhood. For days, Mandar Babu was not seen. His only son had been killed before his eyes. His daughter-in-law raped, in front of children. Where they were now, what they were doing, none knew.
 
The neighbors did not offer condolences. They did not even look toward his house. Yet one day, Vibhishan saw Mandar Babu, leaning on a stick, standing in his veranda like a broken statue. Was he afraid? Or furious? Hard to tell.
 
Vibhishan thought he would speak to him. But as he stepped forward, the daughter-in-law called from the veranda: “Father, come inside.”
 
Vibhishan halted.
 
The storm seemed subdued now. The criminals had left. Street cats raced along three-inch walls. His nose was filled with stench. Inside his body, termites gnawed.
“Do you smell anything, daughter?” he asked.
 
“No, nothing. Go inside. I’ve left fish on the stove. Don’t delay. Go bathe now.”
Vibhishan bathed, emerged from the bathroom. The mofussil lanes lay deserted for days. He stared around. Noon or midnight—he could not tell. A cat paused, uncertain how to cross the street. For a month his own body had reeked without cease. Election month. In thirty days: thirteen corpses, seventeen street fights, twenty-one kidnappings, twenty-seven rapes. Population: twenty thousand. The newspaper pages were unreadable. Too much violence. Yet none of it had touched him, not a scratch. Panchu and Napla’s “festival of votes” left him untouched.
 
Right next door, a double murder, a gang rape. Yet not one ripple crossed into his walls.
 
Vibhishan sat again in the bathroom, knees apart upon the pan. There, he composed a lecture of philosophy:
 
What is death? Death is transformation of the state. Shifting of existence. A very funny situation. Death can free a man. Kill them, and make them free!
 
These were his thoughts, squatting like a beast.
 
Now he saw Mandar Babu, sometimes, in flickers of vision. He was no longer as before. Rumor reached Vibhishan: his wife had become bedridden. A distant cousin, a widowed woman, had come to care for the children. At the thought of those grandchildren, Vibhishan’s chest trembled. He could not imagine. His whole philosophy blurred.
 
Secretly he watched Mandar Babu. He could still hear the screams of that night when his son was murdered. When his daughter-in-law was raped before his eyes—he had called no neighbor. He had known the rats in the burrows too well. That night Vibhishan had sat in the bathroom, while his own son and daughter-in-law stood trembling at the door, the three-year-old crying.
 
And he thought: If it had happened in my house—what would I have done?
At the very thought, the rice of noon rose as vomit in his throat. He crouched over the pan, knees folded, vomited a little, and felt his body calmed.
 
Stench! Stench! Stench! The stench filled his innards. Yet the days rolled on. Fear did not leave.
 
Panchu, Napla, the others returned one day from a rally at the Brigade Parade Ground. Revolutionaries, they called themselves. Buses and lorries festooned with red flags. At Shyamlapti’s tea shop, they sat—raw-blooded comrades, faces blazing with ferocity. Their eyes, mouths, filled with eternal violence. As if to turn society itself into a jungle of communism.
 
From his roof, Vibhishan watched. The stench within him grew. Wherever he went, it followed. From nose, mouth, eyes, ears, anus, genitals, navel—from every pore—emanated the stench of rotting humanity.
 
A cat perched on the overhead water tank, its green eyes like burning coals. Lurking, restless, it found no place to rest all day.
 
Then Vibhishan saw: Mandar Babu had stepped out of his house.
 
At the tea shop the gang of miscreants jeered when they saw him.
“Look, the whore’s father-in-law!” one spat.
“No, not father-in-law—her old husband!” another mocked.
 
Mandar stood motionless.
 
No—Vibhishan rubbed his eyes—he was not still. Mandar was advancing toward the tea shop.
 
O God! Vibhishan’s heart leapt.
 
Mandar entered the cluster of them. Every face was clear. Vibhishan recognized them all. Passersby halted, or turned away with heads lowered. In this little town everyone knew everyone. Their eyes betrayed hatred, their hearts understood—but they remained silent. Like docile goats.
 
The criminals faltered, seeing Mandar advance.
 
“Hey bastard, you’ll kill us?” one jeered.
“See the old man’s juice—” another began, but his words broke off.
 
Mandar’s stick came down on his skull. The youth flew onto the pavement, blood spurting from his head. Another blow struck another’s knee—he collapsed, shrieking. Mandar rained blows wildly, divinely, upon them. As if possessed by some otherworldly force.
 
Vibhishan saw the cat leap from the rooftop onto the street.
 
Suddenly, strength surged through Vibhishan’s veins. Balance returned to his limbs. He felt his wrists, his jaw infused with impossible force. From deep within, an unknown flood of blood rose, flooding his chest, spreading through his pores.
The stench—gone.
 
From the roof he seized a broken bamboo pole in his right hand. Swiftly he stormed down the stairs.
 
At the door his daughter-in-law clutched him, crying: “Father! What are you doing?”
 
With one jerk he flung her aside onto the floor.
 
Then he stood on the street. Furious, he rushed toward the tea shop, seething with wrath. From neighboring houses others too spilled into the street.
 
And Vibhishan—ah, what a terrifying sight! He was no longer himself. He was another man.
 
Today he would be part of slaughter. He had sworn it in his marrow.
 
Like the Rajputs of medieval times, his blood’s arteries burned.
 
In a moment, like a wild bison, he hurled himself upon the political thugs.