Judgement – Chapter 4

Please read the previous chapter here

Name of the author:  Vikas Singh

Note on the author: Blogger, Satirist, MBA, almost an Engineer, wannabe stand-up comedian. Now sells breakfast cereal. Extremely conscious of his Adam’s Apple.

You can read more on his blog here

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Chapter 4

One Hundred and Ninety Nine Red. One Green.

About five miles from Risok stood a dilapidated old building which was once a church: the largest in the Parish. The building had clearly seen better days. One of the gates in the main entrance came unhinged when the driver of one of the trucks transporting the furniture to the new church failed to read the message printed on his own rear view mirror: objects in the mirror are closer than they appear. The spire had tiles falling off at a rate matched only by the speed with which the moss had now plastered the side walls. The courtyard was covered with knee high Parthenium. The place appeared haunted. Yes, even God himself had fled the Church. Hence, it was the ideal venue to house one hundred and ninety nine thugs, arsonists, murderers and innocents, and one ex-serviceman who sat with his head in his hands at the back of a military truck with armed sentries on either side.

As the trucks rolled into the compound and onto the knee high Parthenium, the sentries undid the safety on their guns: just in case. One by one, one hundred ninety nine inmates and an ex-serviceman, who now had his eyes fixated on the unhinged gate on the main entrance, got off and were made to stand in two queues with a sentry making up the front and rear of each. For a vast majority of the inmates, it was the first glimpse in a long, long time of a world that they once used to live in: breeze, sun, open skies, trees and a boundary wall only 2 foot high. Buffy, the savage, hadn’t felt this much elation in years! In fact he didn’t even remember what elation felt like. Accused of murdering his promiscuous wife and her twenty-two year old lover (and duly gouging out their eyes, hence the name Savage) he had spent the last fifteen years of his life in prison; the last five at Mwalisso22. He did contemplate turning around and running off at a tangent at the rate of knots, but in burst-fire-mode Carbines these days fired seven bullets at almost a thousand metres per second. And so he stayed put.

There were exactly a hundred and twenty two shabbily, and hurriedly, arranged mattresses for the two hundred inmates: luxury. Buffy, the savage, this time, did run off at a tangent at the rate of knots and took into possession the largest of them all, right under the only window inside the Church. ‘Food will be served in the next thirty minutes’, yelled the Supervisor. ‘No funny business or my men and I will not hesitate to shoot the first mother-fucker who creates nuisance’. Buffy, the savage, didn’t care about food. He hadn’t had a bed, or a window since the day he took revenge on his philandering wife. ‘Food can wait’, he thought, ‘let me catch up on some sleep’. A few paces ahead, lay the private praying room which once doubled up as the chambers of the Head Priest. For today, though, this room would house Kwon. As the sentry guided him inside, he gave Kwon a sympathetic he-made-me-do-in look, pointing to the Supervisor who had his eyes fixed firmly on the two.

The room was a ten by ten, with a solitary rocking chair occupying half the floor area. The movers had forgotten to take it along when the other furniture was being shifted. As he sunk into the chair, images of thousands of prisoners that he had personally packed in like sardines, in trucks like the ones that brought him here, flashed though his mind. He felt extremely anxious, helpless, and for the first time in his life, mortal. Is this how it felt to be on the other side? Is this the tremor a stupefied deer experiences when it sees a pair of headlights approach? Is this what his brother, Rusty, felt on that fateful night?

‘The subject is a Montpelier based agent known only by his initials, R.T. His exact whereabouts are unknown, but it’s almost certain that he is an underground operative for the KGB. He is a neuro-scientist of some kind who is testing a drug that essentially undoes and opens for reprogramming the part of the brain that induces the feeling of loyalty. In the past two weeks, there have been instances of three insubordinations within the army ranks in Boise, Madison and Denver. All three soldiers belonged to the same city: Montpelier. Their modus operandi was the exact same: shooting the Brigadier of their respective units in the head with their service revolvers in front of the entire platoon, and then shooting themselves through their mouth! It’s almost certain that R.T is behind this. Your mission is to locate and eliminate R.T and retrieve the formula for the drug’.

‘Please have your food sir’, said the sentry, as he slid the plate from under the door towards Kwon. Kwon wasn’t particularly hungry, but eating was certainly a welcome distraction from the ghosts of his past. The bread was fresh, but dry. The soup tasted a little funny. ‘Par for the course’, thought Kwon.

‘Yes!’ exclaimed Kwon! The secret Secret Services was being considerate, he thought. Having spent almost all his life in Iraq and Afghanistan, any assignment back in the States was definitely a welcome change. That the location of the next assignment was Montplier, his hometown, was a windfall! While his commitment to the cause of his nation never gave him time to start a family of his own, he really looked forward to meeting his brother Rusty, who worked in the Neuro Sciences department at Montpelier Govt. Hospital, his lovely wife Melissa and the person he loved the most in the world: their only son: Rusk.   

‘It’s time’, said the Supervisor. It indeed was, realized Kwon. He had been daydreaming for two hours. The leftover bread was almost black. The soup, however, was now completely green. ‘Strange’, he uttered.

To his utter surprise, the hallway of the Church was now deserted. Only about fifteen minutes ago, the last of the batches of the one hundred and ninety nine thugs, arsonists, murderers and innocents was shipped to the basement of the Risok Lab Facilities where they were supposed to undergo some tests. As he was escorted to a solitary van parked in the courtyard, right in front of the unhinged gate, Kwon couldn’t help but notice some hundred odd red coloured plastic packets littered everywhere. ‘Risok Lab Facilites’, read the stamp on the one he picked up.

The van sped away on the highway, leaving these packets where they were: in the courtyard of a deserted-once-again church. Kwon had been wrong on two accounts. First, the packets weren’t a hundred odd: they were exactly two hundred. Second, not all were Red.

Exactly one out of the two hundred was green.

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The next author is Tania Malik. All the very best, Tania 🙂

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Please read the next chapter here

Chronicles of Medu Vada- Plum Charades

Because life comes in a full circle. Like Medu Vada.

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Story to this post :

I am a human being of dearth talent. I am musically challenged, don’t have opinions and cannot move a muscle in the body. But, I have awarded myself being good at just two things – incessant cribbing and self-defeating humor. This chronicles of Masala Vada is about me throwing some self-defeating words (which is blah humour) at myself.

If you have chronicles in your life that are funnier and worth sharing, please share the write up at indiawritestogether@gmail.com under 1000 words. I will post it in this blog. So, this is like the Sit-down comedy (and I just make that word from Standup comedy) of the blog!

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Experiences of Subhashree Srinivasan.

In 2003

She twitched her nose under the bright brown eyes, and shouted “brother!”

All the lady’s finger that she had eaten during lunch time gave her the brains. Her secret  to the overwhelming brain was also contributed by me staying in the position of half-ape , half – Egyptian. Releasing myself from the infinite strained bulges of my body, I proceeded to enact the next word.

When she had destructed all words in the dictionary and guessed the name of the movie as ‘O Brother, Where Art Thou ?’  under 2 minutes, we won the round of Dumb Charades in middle of our Botany class. I mentally did a self-appraisal of my acting skills and affirmed that I was good at Dumb-Charades.

Today

Last year, I broke the curse that was spelled on Srinivasan’s family and travelled to a foreign country for the first time. As much as everyone didn’t know where the country was on the map, English language was treated with the same effect in this city by its inhabitants. As an Indian, I have experienced the situation of ignorant person in my own country when I moved towards any other State other than mine. So, this wasn’t surprising or bothersome at first.

But, as I started to mingle with the crowd and ecology alike, I was as clueless as the integral sign on a Maths paper. I would stare at the lady who had her entire devotion on the heavily manicured nails for two whole minutes, at the post-office, before I began enacting. I would draw squares in the air, cup my fingers on both sides, lick at the air and she would understand that I was referring to an envelope. She would finish the conversation with her eyes, nod like we had just agreed on a universal bill in the parliament and hand over me a sheet of paper to write down my name. And my name being pronounced in any other country is a story for another Chronicle.

Even though, I was continuously practicing some words in the native language here by grunting and whistling some words, I had hardly used any translation applications on my phone in the past. Now, in times of desperation where my tongue died of no spicy food, I had managed to write an entire letter to the customs office to let me receive a package of Puliogare mix, by using multiple translation applications. When I received my package looking like a perforated filter paper, I realized that the custom officer had poked extra holes in all the packets under the pretext of inspection, after he had read my translated letter.

Dumb-Charades was, ironically, mostly used in a place that demanded silence and where at least one murder scene in English thriller movies took place – the library. Whenever, I needed any particular book from just one shelf of the entire three storeyed building, I would just write it down on a paper and the librarian would hunt it down for me. But, when I had to ask how much I needed to pay for the books or how much was the fine, I had to hunch like Uncle Scrooge and show the money symbol. Even in my Gollum turned posture, the librarian would understand and give me a number.

Everything seemed like a paradise with my Tom Hanks levelled Dumb-Charades skills.

It was one of those days when I was feeling absolutely positive about everything – bus was on time, lunch was heated uniformly and I hadn’t slipped on the ice. In the self-assured and confident manner, we entered a café that had only people who spoke in their native language. Much to my disappointment, we were able to order French fries and mayonnaise by showing the waitress, the pictures on the menu card.

“What would you like to drink?”,  I asked two of my Indian colleagues , not looking up the Menu card.

One of them answered Beer and, the other Plum Beer.

(If you are alcoholically challenged as I am, plum beer is one of those sweet beers which I assume is made from Plum or has a plum essence. Mentally noting that I need to read more on this)

My services to translate weren’t needed her as the ‘Beer’ is in itself was a universal language. I lumped my weight on the table, and placed the two orders with no interest.

“Plum ?”, she asked innocently , parting her lips and blinking like I had uttered a curse word.

The fact, that she didn’t understand what a plum was, gave me an adrenaline rush.

I sat upright, gave a wide big smile and stared at her for 30 seconds as a preparation for the world’s greatest and toughest word show. I lifted both my hands in air, made a gesture that I thought looked like two small spheres of plum. As awkward it seem as I am writing this, this was also the case when I enacting the plums using two circles.

Everyone was staring at me as the fish that lay dead on our table.

Oblivion to everything that was happening, I continued to show that one of the spheres could be eaten and gestured towards the mouth.

The waitress squirmed her face in utmost disgust.

“No!”, She quipped.

I rolled my eyes in victory, made a face of accomplishment and whispered “Sorry, there is no plum beer”.

It was only after eons that the neurons worked in my head, and with some of my Indian colleagues burying themselves in a non – English menu, I understood that I had matched the anatomy of the plum with a woman’s body part.

I had given the biggest flop of my acting career by being the most disgusting female that anyone could come across.  I wished that everyone washed down this incident with all the alcohol that I was going to sponsor.

The aftermath of the Dumb-charades at the café meant only one thing.

Rest in peace my acting skills and stay buried as long as you can.