Somesh Nanda
August 2010
THE MAKING OF A MONSTER
Mythology talks of times when our world had been violently savaged by demons and monsters. They have been depicted as vicious characters mercilessly plundering all that came in their way and tormenting the innocent inhabitants. When all mortal efforts had failed to cease their rampage , an eventual divine touch had to descend from the heavens to counter their wretched acts of malice.
So far as myths can be held credible, these savages had allegedly perished since the day Noah had pulled his arc to safety. But believe me, as you will, they are aren’t dead. The fiends have somehow resurrected into this very world upon which we now breathe. Today, they roam among us, sit beside us, dine with us in human guise and at a moment’s notice, assume their true forms with their age long mission dedicated to the spread of chaos. Peel off their human skin and I’m sure you’ll find a satanic figure gaping out. The dailies today bring to our notice the horrifying acts of malefaction ( think about the most shocking news you’ve read in a day or two and you’ll know what I’m talking about) . Having witnessed such acts, we may only hold our belief in horror that…..They are back. Here I recount one such shocking tale that made its way to my senses via urban gossips.
Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh , throngs with activities , with wheels wheezing up and down the roads, with pedestrians imbibed into something productive or the other,swarming down public stairways and pavements, with incoherent honks from at least a thousand vehicles together. People here talk business , talk work , argue opinions or idle over the bestseller in news. If that isn’t idling for you, then you aren’t welcome here.
Amid this perpetual spirited disarray, ran a modest neighborhood, wherein stood a modest building, which contained a modest room, which sheltered a modest lad.
Arvind Dubey had woken up to one of the most promising mornings of his life. No wonder, there had been many, for our young man was gifted. He had a way with the pen and the page that had earned him quite a reputation even in these early years among his locals. Lucknow public school had hailed its writer, throughout his sixteen years of reign, marveling at every piece of work that his pen had carved over the void. But today was different. Today, Arvind’s decade long aspiration was about to take shape. The capital city awaited our aspiring prodigy’s arrival. “…….expecting you soon”- thus had the letter from the elite university concluded in response to Arvind’s application. Now finally, his wait was over. Some years from now readers across the nations would behold his lines garnished under the university’s tutelage.
At half past three, Arvind was loading his luggage onto the top seat of the compartment. The mother and the father and the lil' sister had all been there to see him off. It was probably the twentieth time in three days his mother had been chattering about adjusting to his new life in Delhi. “Don't you ask another person for help dear...and don't be a bother to another either...” she would say at least twice in every ten minutes. The sister seemed uninterested in the affairs and sat meditating on the shapes over the train ticket. The father had busied himself in a conversation with a seemingly middle-aged couple in the adjacent seats . He often did that, a garrulous man. Kind people, they must have been for they nodded with genuine acceptance to the father's blunt talks which Arvind would have chosen to ignore.
“...and that is when he came running to us with the letter in his hands. Yes, yes we were delighted. He has always delighted us. Yes he has. He is an outstanding lad ,you,see. But i never talk high of him to people...no no....never. People see it for themselves.”
“Oh. You are a lucky father then. Not all of us have children with such gifts. Our son is just twelve and he's a nice little devil too. He's doing well at school. He's pretty good with colors. But he's nowhere close to a prodigy.”
“Hmmm...True true..prodigies aren't found everywhere. Did i tell you that Arvind never scored a grade lower than A? I had some other plans for him. But his dreams vary and i do believe that children should be allowed to pursue their dreams....yes i believe it... i do..”
Arvind dearly wished the train would move and his father would stop embarrassing him. And it did. After the waves and wishes had concluded, he pulled out an unfinished piece of work and began scribbling.
“ So? Moving to the University at Delhi, aren't you?” the husband asked.
“um...yes uncle.” Arvind replied, looking up.
“Good to know you'll be giving us company.” the woman said.
Arvind smiled and returned to his writing. Moment and then, the couple jovially talked with the lad, and Arvind seemed to enjoy these brief interruptions. In about an hour he had talked a good deal about himself and his family.
“There's something on your collar, boy. Bend down a tad bit. I'll remove it.” with that, the man bent forward and brushed the collar with his thumbs.
Then, suddenly, Arvind felt a sharp needle piercing down his neck. An immediate blur spread over his vision. His head wheezed. He tried to scream, but words wont come out. Shivering vigorously for some time, he collapsed. His vision was failing fast. He rolled about on the ground. In his last traces of sense he perceived a small crowd of the compartment occupants gathering around.
“ Oh my God dear! Our son! It must be the fits again! We need to take him immediately” the woman was crying.
“The next stop is close.. We'll hospitalize him there. He'll be fine till then.”
In Arvind's blur, the few heads that had gathered around, were disappearing. Busy people. Must have been convinced.
***************************
Arvind did not know for how long he had passed out. Neither was he aware of the particular moment when his conscious haze died down and his senses tuned together to manifest a decent perception of his surroundings. But when it did, he knew it wasn't in a place he had the slightest idea of. It was a small , sordid room. Completely empty except for the boy. Even in the darkness,Arvind could perceive the neglect that had been inflicted upon it since long. The walls were still damp from a shower that might have lashed months back. The air was one of an offending odour. All this,offered enough providence for an ample vegetation of moss and cobwebs to thrive uninterrupted in this unseen abode.
He heard noises outside. Noises hinting a chaotic scene— women screaming,barbarous anthems in unison, incoherent footsteps ,men yelling. But a peculiar noise caught the better part of his hearing. He knew this sound well. Loud and clear, its origin was somewhere near. But at his present state of psychic upheaval,the recognition loomed just beyond his region of grasp.
Suddenly becoming alive to his situation,an absolute horror seized Arvind. He ran to the door,pushed it, shook it, banged it, but it wouldn't budge. His heart sank. Retiring ,he reclined on the floor beside the wall. While his breath ran slow, with his mind struggling to keep up,this loud and conspicuous whining clung to the boy's attention.
An hour or two must have passed since Arvind's conscious dwelling in the place when the door opened to allow in a shaft of light. The young pupils constricted to piece together two human silhouettes. Heavy and tall, the shorter among them proceeded towards the boy. Arvind stood up in sheer trepidation.
“Please...let me go...father isn't a rich man...he can't pay you....spare me..please...”
The next Thing he knew, he was down,rolling on the floor from a severe blow delivered over his spine. The man at the door, he screamed something, in a language Arvind couldn't understand.
“Ahele Wadle desmi Heleku!”
“Maschevuer, nave ra dantes...amod de kaarro...”
The shorter man grabbed a handful of the boy's hair pulled his head up from over the dusty ground,twisted it in a direction opposite to the door and banged it down again. His vision must have blurred, but he couldn't be sure, for he was now in face of darkness. But the peculiar sound, it had assumed greater clarity. The man moved to a darker corner and the click of a switch was heard.
There.....of course, that was it....that had been it all along. Amid the blackness, now illuminated dimly was a hole,the size of a window. A sort of connector drilled purposely to another room.....another tiny room, a tad bit larger than a vault,blazed upon with yellow from an unwilling source that hung from its naked wires in the center. And right below it lay the abhorrent spectacle. Five infants,dumped into these gallows like abject orts, malnutritioned , the ribs ,the skull, the joints- all peeping out ,like membranes stretched over bare skeletons .The eyes bulged out,reddened at its outline. The sunken cheeks squeezed out the toothless jaws. They had been thrown one over the other and had been abandoned there, crawling and moving all the could in that tiny dimension that was hardly able to contain them. Two of these fiends, buried at the bottom of the upper mobile layer lay motionless. What was yet gruesome to another degree were the shrieks that tore through their throats.
Arvind's head wheezed,he was sure he would faint. His throat ran dry. The shock drove him numb. He breathed heavily through his wide open mouth. A complete enervation of pure psychic origin took over him. The man emerged from the darkness holding a long and heavy rifle. He flung it at the boy. The next thing he knew ,he was gasping at the knowledge of what he was being asked to do.
“Shoot...” hissed the man pointing into the hole.
None moved.
“Shoot..”
The boy remained there,motionless like a corpse. He couldn't do it. Not in his wildest nightmares.
“Shoot!! Shoot you bastard!”
No, he couldn't move. Now he knew, the two babies at the bottom....they were dead. He couldn't kill. He'd be damned to shoot at a corpse.....these were live babies.
There were no more words. What followed was ruthless thrashing. He was dragged out of the room. His clothes were removed , his head banged over the walls,kicked over the face ,over the stomach. He was slapped and whipped and spit upon his bare body. When only another trace of sense was all that was left of him, he was thrashed back into the cavern. No food for him.....He'd survive long enough without it to submit......if he wouldn't.....very well.
Well, for those of us hailing from families of decent turnouts, imagine going without a grain or a drop for a day. The lad survived it almost a week. He lay on the dusty floor dried like a leaf, twitching at the sound of every disruption. He was firm that he would end his life thus, never submitting to the vile act. Lest, he knew his soul would be contaminated and would be secured a wholesome estate in the depths of hades.
But believe me,even such determination fails, at least at the sight of the vital spirit parting from the flesh. Oblivion isn't a great place. Spend as much a second there and you'd do all you could to come back. So did Arvind. He responded to the imperative call. For the final time when the gun was produced, he took it.....directed its nozzle to the hole and....bang!
One tiny fiend dropped off from above the stack....lifeless. There...he had promised his soul to Lucifer. There was no point resisting anymore, for the exalted spirit had demised. Contamination had been done. That was all of what was being sought of him presently. The preliminary ceremony had commenced. Things hereon, would run smoothly. The ravenous lad was handed two loafs of bread of admirable dimensions. He gluttoned over the treat and in a minute,it was all gone.
The following few days had been uneventful. Now he was fed decently everyday in his cage where he spent all hours of the day. Then in one of those mornings, a woman, a fat and strong woman entered the room and gestured the lad to come along.
Arvind followed the woman with an untainted countenance. He spared himself the hardship of doubt, for he had shed his purity. Soon he was walking on littered grounds bathed by sunlight filtered down the canopies of the lush greenery around. This place was a tiny patch of settlement with smalllhuts scattered around amid the woods.In small clearings, men draped in black crouched, pounced ,rolled, practiced targets- something he was soon to be a part of. This was here they bred.....the monsters. He was recruited to one such clearing .The art was to be cruel beyond measures. The boys in the gathering -some gaped, some trembled,some willing and some totally untroubled. Amateurs. In time , they were taught the tricks of the trade- to handle the rifle,to take lives ,to take the run, to counter and all else. In a month's time, the tyros had very well been trained to fit into the herd. To be among the lot, you don't need a skilled hand, all you need is an unconscionable mind.
*******************************
Fifty minutes. A cab waiting at the site. A fifteen minutes ride in it and they would be at their site of operation. The colossal serpent slithered down the tracks. One bogey had been waiting lonely for the monsters to mount the slain beast. There were seven of them. The man with the dark eyes and the two standing next to him, they were adepts. There were two by the window.They had been on such missions before,Arvind sat on the seat by the door, scraping the nozzle of his weapon with a knife. He and another were on their first assignment. Seven months had passed since he'd been on this very train and that too to the same destination......Delhi. Only then, the purpose had been different. The communists in Delhi had grown quite troublesome. They posed serious threat t the fraternity, openly castigating its beliefs and methods. They had slain Barbari Bhatti; a key pawn of the fraternity. At half past eleven, Mahendar Kohli's address to the public was scheduled, as was the fraternity's mass homicide. The man would pay for his words and acts and so would the people who paid him heed.
One of the accomplices by the door had his gaze fixed upon Arvind in a rather inquisitive manner. Arvind noticed this. Minutes later, he coldly headed over to the opposite end of the bogey to the toilet basin. He looked into his own reflection. That was barely him. There was nothing about the face that resembled Arvind Dubey. The metamorphosis in just six months had shed every single trait that was his. Scars running from everywhere to everywhere, a square and wholesome physique and a cold, pale and unruffled countenance. He sighed and turned to the door. When he emerged from it, the man with the strange gaze was there. The demanding stare hadn't still lost its sign.
“Anna sent me to make sure u ain't up to something”
Arvind shut the door and silently began walking back. But without notice, the man clutched his sleeves and held him back.
“You don't want to do this.”
“Whoa? Do what?”
“Its the same with everybody here. They drag us here , make us do horrible things, turn us into killers. For all of us here, we're all damned. There's no turning back now. They've known us long enough to keep track of us . We take a step outta the line n they hunt us down. There's no point escaping either. Our marks are too deep to throw away. But you can still leave.”
Arvind began twitching vigorously. He hadn't at all been prepared for this.
“What the hell are you saying!”
“Do you want to escape...”
“You're insane!”
“We're all insane. But you're not. Not yet. Go away while you still can.”
“You're being sick! How'm i to get away! ”
“I can help you do it...but only if you'd let me.”
Just then, the man took hold of a fistful of the boy's robes and dragged him to the face of the running train' s door. Arvind was seized with absolute horror. Right before his nose,the door vigorously beat against its frames. The running wind beat against his face clearly hinting the speed with which the train ran. The world outside wheezed past his eyes.
“NO! I could die!!” he screamed.
“Would you rather live to be a monster!”
There was a hustle on the other end of the bogey. The men had been alarmed.Their footsteps were steadily closing in.
Then against the wind, Arvind heard his captor's voice yell out “Anna!! I need help here! The traitor! He's trying to escape! Anna ! Make it fast or he'll escape!”
With that, he flung the boy out. With his infinite momentum Arvind soared out of the rushing train. His hands thrashed about to get hold of something in middle air. Nothing. The next moment, he smashed against something with a tremendous momentum. He shrieked as an unbearable pain seized his body. Then lying on the ground, he let out a deep moan as the whole world faded right before his eyes.
*************************
In case the question has been bothering you, yes, Arvind lived. Now, at the point from which i speak, Arvind is 34. He never made it to the capital.The university admitted another. These days, you'll find Arvind Dubey spending considerable time of the day on the wooden bench at the public park in Lucknow- a place where its busy folks spend their hours of levity. The small patch of land under the oak shade had been the source of all his masterly works of national repute. Dressed in a modest taste of khadi and cotton, with a cloth bag dangling from his shoulders, Arvind still jots down words of admirable composures with his hand.........his only hand. It was the hand that wrote. The other, was gone. It had been amputated for surgical necessities. Pity not Arvind, for he doesn't pity himself. In fact,this very realization alleviates his his miseries. The hand that had slain, was no longer there. The remnant, he was sure, would be spared redemption at the heavenly gates. .
