ANNOUNCEMENT + THE ANTS MURDER CASE

Friends,

I have an announcement to make. I am entering the film world. By early next year you will see the results, God willing. I will give more updates as and when I can share the details.

Meanwhile, here is a short story for your perusal. I wrote it a couple of years ago. The story is unfinished but it gives you a good picture. This too may be seen on the celluloid, if Destiny wills. Your comments will be welcome.

Cheers.

Rajeev

THE ANTS MURDER CASE

By Rajeev Sharma

My first memory of her was that blazing afternoon when the May sun had turned our little village into a furnace. Our school had just finished and I was walking out of Class V along with my friend Bhuvan. She was there at the school gate, conspicuous not because she had a distinguished personality but because she was the lone parent who was there braving the heat. Her 5’2’ slender frame was wrapped in a cotton sari that had a couple of button-sized holes. But the umbrella she was holding was a brand new one.

She immediately extended the protective cover of the umbrella to Bhuvan, covering him totally and herself partially. Bhuvan introduced me to her and I folded my hands in Namaste. She patted me on the back and inquired where I lived. Even before I could answer she asked me to accompany her and Bhuvan to their home that was just ten minutes away on foot. It was more like a commandment and I followed her speechlessly. For years I kept following Bhuvan and my Pied Piper to their home.

Every day she followed a set routine. She would take us home and after carefully washing our hands would take us to her small kitchen. There both of us would sit on a mattress on the floor and she would serve us food. After we had finished, she would go over to a circular bronze bowl kept in a large water-filled tray. She would take out two sweet paranthas, laced with gur, and serve to us as our sweet dish.

She would speak so little that I was scared of her. While we were eating she would be fanning us with a hand-held device made of bamboo leaves, though I should admit that the air mostly circulated over Bhuvan’s head. I always wondered why she kept the sweetparanthas in a water-filled tray.

Weeks later, I summoned courage to ask her why she did this. Shanti Devi replied in a matter of fact tone: “For two reasons. Bhuvan dotes on sweet paranthas. And I keep them in this tray filled with water so that ants do not get to the paranthas.

Gradually, I stopped seeing her as fire and ice and became fond of her. Our feelings were mutual. She started doting on me as her second son. Though she did not have much of formal education, she was well versed in folklores and tales from Hindu mythology. She started telling us stories every day. Her usually silent self had been replaced by an adept story-teller mother who seemed to have a never-ending stock of tales in her repertoire. Even Bhuvan was amazed by his mother’s transformation. 

Bhuvan was her only child and there were only two of them in the small house. Bhuvan’s father was in the Indian Army and was killed during an internal security operation a couple of years ago. Pensionary and other benefits kept the mother-son duo afloat financially. Shanti Devi supplemented the family income by doing part-time tailoring assignments which she kept getting regularly from the neighbourhood. There was not a huge fortune to be made out of stitching a suit or a shirt because the village was poor. Very often the payment was in kind, rather than cash. So Shanti Devi had to rarely buy grains or sugar or other provisions. This barter trade suited both parties.

It had become a daily ritual for me to go to Bhuvan’s house with his mother. My parents initially remonstrated but quickly reconciled when they met Bhuvan’s mother. She was unassuming, polite and a woman of few words. Every day I would demand her to tell us a new tale, till she narrated the story of Ashwatthama for the first time. From then on, I would ask her to tell me more about Ashwatthama. She would protest occasionally, saying nothing more was left to be told about Ashwatthama. This triggered off intense debates and intellectual discussions about Ashwatthama. Was the legendary Hindu mythological character a hero or an anti-hero or a downright villain?

In many ways, my growth – intellectual or spiritual or both, I don’t know – started with these intense discussions about Ashwatthama. I found her to be a wise woman, who clearly distinguished the right from the wrong and knew why right was right and wrong was wrong. I picked up my skills in building up arguments for or against a subject and also learnt how to debate, two skills that were to help me in my career years later.

Bhuvan, for his part, seldom participated in these discussions. He seemed interested till the point his mother served sweet parantha. After that he was a silent listener to the endless Q & A sessions between me and his mother.

I had forgotten about Bhuvan, his doting mother, her sweet paranthas and her stories of Ashwatthama completely till yesterday when he came to my office. Twenty years had flown by. I had recently been transferred to this town which once used to be a village where I studied. I noticed the bronze name plate as I stepped into my new office: “VISHNU DAS, INDIAN POLICE SERVICE”.

My head was half hidden behind a hillock of files when he came in and announced himself as my office assistant. Some minutes of silence later, I realized he was Bhuvan. His stunned look betrayed the fact that he too recognized me, but he chose to be officious and said, “Sir, three files are in your urgent folder…”

“Cut this crap, Bhuvan. How you are and how is your mother?” I said excitedly.

“I am fine, sir,” he muttered.

“And mother?”

After minutes of goading, I could make out that “unwell” would be a gross understatement of her condition and she could actually be on her death bed.

“We are going to your home, Bhuvan, right now. I will deal with the office work later,” I said and commanded him to follow me to my white ambassador car.

I could not believe that I was looking at the same woman who was barely 50 and looked 70-plus. Despite her delirious state, she recognized me and the same motherly smile enveloped her wrinkled face.

And then I noticed the biggest shock of my life which shook my faith in humanity. Both her wrists were blackened. Not by dirt. Not by dried up sweat. But by ants. Live ants. They were feeding at her wounds in both the wrists, perhaps caused by the fact that she was being tied down to the cot. Bits of rope still lying at her bedside were a testimony to this.

I immediately ordered my driver to rush her to the best hospital in the town and instructed my staff to keep me posted about her condition. I asked Bhuvan to be with his mother in the hospital and not bother about office work.

A few hours later I got a call from the senior most doctor who informed me that the woman had died, that she had been brought to the hospital in a semi-dead condition, and that … she had died of acute deficiency of blood. The ants hadn’t left any.

The next day I was just about to leave office to attend Bhuvan’s mother’s funeral when my PS came running to my room. “Sir, Varsha Kohli is on line. Please pick up the phone,” he said breathlessly, indicating to the red phone on my desk. Varsha Kohli needed no introduction. She was India’s best known woman journalist and was heading the country’s most watched English television channel India News.

“Am I speaking to Mr. Vishnu Das, Superintendent of Meerut Jail?”

Barely twenty seconds into the conversation, I realized that Varsha was calling me up for what she described as “the ants murder case”. I was pulverized with this description. It had not dawned upon me yet that Bhuvan could be charged for her mother’s murder by allowing ants to feed on his mother’s festering wounds. The ants murder case!Phew! What ingenuity on part of the media that feeds on sensationalism.

“Yup. What about that?”

“Sir, my OB van is just outside the jail main gate. My reporter is waiting to be called in by you. And I have a couple of questions for you till my colleague gets to interview you live. You know every second matters in media industry.”

“I am sorry I can do neither. I have to go to Shanti Devi’s funeral.”

Before I hung up, I heard Varsha Kohli thanking me excitedly for breaking news to her channel that I was going to attend the funeral of the Ants Murder Case victim.

As I watched Bhuvan performing his mother’s last rites, I could not help but notice how quiet he had become since I rediscovered him a day ago. He was not the chirpy, lively Bhuvan I had known for years during my childhood. What had gone wrong?  How could he do this to his mother who doted on him?  Who else was in his family? Was he married? 

Questions such as these kept circling inside my head till my trance was broken by the sound of vehicles screeching to a halt outside the cremation ground. Within minutes, the entire place was surrounded by armed men in khaki.

The team leader walked to me and informed me that the national media had been going crazy for the past hour about the so-called Ants Murder Case and the Chief Minister had directed the police to act quickly, show no mercy and arrest the culprit – Bhuvan – on charges of abetting his mother’s murder.

Several days passed by. Bhuvan was in my jail as an under trial being tried for matricide. I had kept him in a separate cell, away from the hardcore criminals. I was criticized by the media for being partial towards my childhood buddy. But I was convinced that Bhuvan was not a murderer and therefore had to be kept away from habitual criminals.

I visited Bhuvan in his cell once a day, but found him even more reclusive. I tried my best to engage him in a conversation but each time I got a feeling that I was up against an impenetrable iron wall that answered no questions, exhibited no feelings, spoke nothing. Each time, I exited his cell with a feeling that Bhuvan was burning the candle of his life at both ends without being aware of the consequences.

Two months had gone by. I was in my office handling routine work. By now, I had realized that Bhuvan was the most important prisoner I had in my jail. The media interest in Bhuvan had not lagged one bit. Hardly a day passed when the national media did not report something or the other about my VIP prisoner. His case had become a staple diet for the news hungry media. Whether he was eating or not eating, sneezing or not sneezing, farting or not farting was news for the national media. I could sense that Bhuvan was in choppy, shark-infested seas where he had no friends, no sympathizers. This unnerved me. I could not do anything but watch the fast unraveling events as a hapless outsider. The state government had ordered the case to be heard by a fast-track court. I was praying for a transfer that was still two to three years away.

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