Murder

A Story by Agnishekhar Chakraborty

Prologue

Black. He felt a certain warmth on his hand. He knew he had to touch it, to be sure, but something

stilled his actions. He had heard the scream. In all his years of expertise he had learned to be

selectively deaf to the scream. The final rattle. The knife lay beside him...

Pulak was writing furiously. He was writing like he had never written before. He felt so alive with

ideas and if he didn't get them down on this torn piece of paper... he stopped. It was done. His

masterpiece. He had even decided on a name. Flowers That Never Bloom. He folded up the little

piece of paper and put it in the only place he would remember he kept it. In the small tin box his

grandfather had given him for candies on a long forgotten birthday. A big smile spread across his

unshaven face. His crooked smile seemed more of a gash. He left the small, room-sized apartment and

walked out.

He knew he was early, thirsty, sweating and very nervous. His draft had been selected. A dusty

old novel he had started as an amateur, and although none of his works had published solo, he did

consider himself to be an evolved writer, if not literally a professional one. ‘Bhanga Megh’ he had

named it. The Broken Cloud. Just the name would bring to his nostalgic mind the picture of a dry

cracking mud road. The sound of the wind rustling through the eucalyptus leaves. The reflected rays

of the sun, dancing on the broken ragged surface of the river...

‘Mr. Ghoshal?’, the female assistant threw her words out at the general public waiting out in the

hallway.

Pulak stood up. Mustered the weakest smile in the book and walked towards her. She smelled of

fresh flowers. Her fingernails had been manicured but it had been a while. Her straight hair tied in a

ponytail, moved from side to side revealing a kiss curl at the nape of her neck. It took him sometime

to realise he had reached a mid-sized room with a large oaken door across from where he stood.

‘Through there, sir.’ the woman said with a tone that meant, that was as far as she’d go.

‘Thank you.’ Pulak replied, his smile portraying genuine gratitude.

As Pulak walked towards that door, he rediscovered oblivion. He reached the heavy door and

turned the knob to push open the door. He found himself peeking into a room with an extravagantly

large desk, and a disturbingly small man behind it. Sitting across the table from him was a man who

wore too many stones to appease the planets, than the planets cared for. There was a stench of burnt

tobacco.

Pulak sat in his apartment, disturbed. He felt humiliation, isolation... hunger. His mind kept

returning to the conversation he had earlier in the day. The office door had seemed to be taking a

lifetime to close. The grey brown light mingling with the dimmed sunlight that sneaked in through the

blinds had seemed to be choking him. He felt trapped, helpless... hungry.

He took the pillow lying beside him, put it to his mouth and let out the most horrid scream he had

heard in ages. It sounded like pain, anger... hunger.

He swallowed down the tears welling up behind his crimson eyes, searched his pocket for a

glimmer of hope with tremors of defeat running through his fingers. He found it, put it to his mouth

and lit it. The smell of the bidi and the reassuring taste of the tobacco flooded his brain.

He felt the hunger in his stomach subside... giving way to its distant cousin... Pulak couldn’t fight

any longer. He let it take him and it did, like a tidal wave of darkness, it washed over him...

The room was explicitly bright. Almost vulgar. Like a drop of ink on a white piece of paper, a

creature stood holding out his book. It stood still. So still. Red dripped through its fingers. Pulak

walked towards this wrecked creature. He saw a smile slip through the creature’s lips. It somehow

passed onto him. He smiled. He reached out for the book but it was just out of reach. He inched closer

and felt a hand choking him. It was gagging him so hard that he could feel the swelling of the veins in

his temple. He looked to the creature in front of him. Its expression had become that of horror. It

looked scared. Despair bursting though its reddened eyes. For a moment, Pulak saw the flames

behind its quickly dimming eyes and then it engulfed the creature. The heat Pulak felt on his face, he

knew, was emanating from himself. The death-grip around his throat got tighter, as if it would snap

his neck in two...

Pulak woke up gasping for breath. His pillow and shirt drenched in sweat. It was dark. The air

seemed heavy. All the windows and doors were bolted shut. He had to get out of there.

The wind seemed to gently flow through his hair, caressing him as it slipped past. The ghat had

some eerie comfort in its babbling waters. The ripples seemed to speak of some age old secret only

they knew. The Ganga was, forever, to him a place of escape. He could ignore the pains of the world

as if it existed only on a reference frame. He could ignore the burning feeling in his abdomen that

pushed him to near madness. He had had his cup of tea. His ration for the entire day. And now he

could ignore his hunger. A cold worm seemed to climb up his insides. In his mouth, it felt bitter. He

turned around to look at the shops filled with edibles. He picked up his bag and walked home.

The room, it seemed, had shrunk during his absence. The walls were determined to crush him

when he wasn’t looking. He walked over to his bedside drawer and yanked it open. The business card

was lying there as if it had been waiting for Pulak to come around. He put it in his pocket and walked

out. He had to make a call.

Eighteen hours later, he was in the same room, with the same large desk. The same small man and

the larger man with the rings on his hand. The walk down the corridor hadn’t seemed like the way he

last recalled. It felt like consciousness. He listen hard to hear his heart pound but all that he could feel

was the fear. The fear he had seen in a dream. It came to him like a call from a distant time…

retrospective.

‘Ah… Mr. Ghoshal. I must say, as much as I was glad to hear from you, I was a little

disappointed on how long you took to reconsider.’

‘I hope, sincerely,’ the small man continued, ‘that you have considered everything you had been

offered by Mr. Parekh here’, raising a courteous hand towards the larger man.

Pulak attempted at a smile and a nod, but all he could manage was a little bit of the latter.

‘Excellent. I’m sure your book will make a fine screenplay. The film industry needs stories like

these, you know. What I mean to say is, with strong connections to with the…’

Pulak wasn’t listening any more. His stomach hurt. His insides felt squishy. He hadn’t eaten in so

long…

‘…Mr. Ghoshal.’ Pulak jumped back to the scene in the room.

‘Yes. I agree.’

‘Okay then. Just the formalities to get out of the way.’ the small man said will pulling out a file.

Pulak signed where he was directed.

‘Congratulations, sir. You are now going to be on the credits of a big budget Cinema’

The newly furnished apartment stared back at Pulak. It was pleasing to his eyes. He walked over

to the cupboard and took out his new set of clothes and lay them down on his bed like a mother would

lay down her baby. The occasion was the premiering of the film ‘Protibaad’. Based on his novel,

‘Bhanga Megh’. The story of a boy from the outskirts trying to make it big in the City of Joy.

The premiering was to be held in one of the prominent cinema halls of Howrah, where,

apparently, the producer had childhood and numerological and astrological obligations. Pulak picked

up his fed and fattened wallet. On days, it would seem like a stranger’s wallet to him. He was used to

it being thin and under-fed. Like he was. Was.

Pulak, well fed and well paid, was on a launch steamer, on his way to Howrah. He looked at the

water, playing gleefully at the hull of the boat. Threatening, just a little, to come on board. The river,

to Pulak’s satisfied eyes, seemed welcoming. Like a very friendly under water people were calling out

to him in a language that had the distinct sound of water splashing against the metal of the hull.

Pulak smiled as he realized, it was his own peace that was being reflected back at him by a happy-

after-a-long-time subconscious.

At the theatre, the buzzing of the blackheads, seemed relentless. Out of the crowd created in the

lobby, a voice called out his name. He turned around to see the small man. He was moving rather

sluggishly. His face was rather misplaced with eagerness dripping from his chin. Or maybe it was just

the combination of his short stature and recently deforested facial hair that gave it that look.

Pulak noticed his brow glistened with sweat in the cold the clearly over-working air-conditioner

was creating.

‘Have you gotten your pass? Good, that’s good.’ he said as Pulak waved the pass in his hand.

‘Now listen. Keep some free time after the show. Mr. Parekh has asked me to introduce you to the

star actor that portrays your protagonist. So don’t wander off too far, okay? Okay.’ he said with a

widening smile as Pulak non-verbally nodded in comprehension.

Soon people lined up and headed inside. The lights went dim and then gave up their feeble effort

to stay alit. The show began... ‘Protibaad’.

‘THE END’

The hall erupted with applause from either side of Pulak’s ears. In front of him, people clapped

with great vigour, directed at a well built man, on his feet, some three rows ahead of him.

Only Pulak sat still. His hands flaccid. His face numb. It appeared as though the only feeling left

in him was the bitter boiling waxy feeling in his stomach. Wherever the wax touched would become

waxy too. His dry mouth opened and closed involuntarily.

What were those people clapping at? The logic where a man with reasoning power, falls in

love...on an empty stomach? Or the dance sequence in the rain with his pretty little squeeze, while his

sister is being turned down by man after man because he can’t pay their outrageous demands of

dowry? Or was it how he fights off 50 gundas single ‘handedly’...on an empty stomach?

Was this his novel? And who exactly had the star actor portrayed in the film? He knew it wasn’t

his protagonist. A dark creature came back to him, from the folds of a distant dream. Horror, writ

across its face. Its burning red eyes, seemed helpless. Betrayed.

The bitter wax was creeping up his oesophagus. It reached his uvula. Pulak ran to the wash room.

Keeled over the basin, he retched. He poured out his waxy, bitter, invisible puke on to the shiny

ceramic basin. His eyes were watery. Not weepy. Just watery. He ran out of the washroom and

straight into the street.

His new shirt was drenched. It was raining inside his shirt. His life’s work. His childhood. His

memories. His nostalgic fool of an alter-ego. All of it lay shattered and the creature’s terrified eyes

smothered him. The heat seemed to emanate from him. He had to get away. But where? Where would

he find a world that was oblivious to his embarrassment? His naivety?

Mother called at him. Her lapping waters reaching out like fingers. She offered him solace. The

consolation prize at the end of a lost relay race. He reached out to take her hand. Way past the guard

rails of the steamer. Way past. Mother greeted him with a splash of comfort elixir. The Ganga had

swallowed her melancholy son.

The creature stared at Pulak. Horror and accusation. Pulak faced the hard truth. His dreams would

forever hold him responsible... a dimming consciousness was not a solution. His dreams had to die.

With him. The knife was conveniently present in his hand...

Black. He felt a certain warmth on his hand. He knew he had to touch it, to be sure, but something

stilled his actions. He had heard the scream. In all his years of expertise he had learned to be

selectively deaf to the scream. The final rattle. The knife lay beside him. Bloodied. The gore and the

creature’s unseeing eyes stared at him. Pulak lay down beside his own wrecked murdered body, and

slept…

My Review

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Reviews

Abhishek Sengupta

Okay. This was a highly dramatic piece. I thought you started off quite well. You delved nicely into the emotions of your protagonist - of a much loved poetic creation being sold to be murdered into a melodramatic potboiler. The dream sequence was particularly great. But then, you dragged it a bit too further. I didn't feel this had to culminate in a suicide. The death didn't necessarily need to be physical. The portrayal of a psychological death would have added more subtlety to this piece, since subtlety is the underlining theme of this story.

But there are other aspects to this tale that are quite commendable. Like the concepts of hunger and sleep infused with the concepts of money and peace of mind. That was quite nice!!