Mother... I’m sorry, forgive me,” muffled Ravi.
“Babu...” Harilata choked as she spoke.
As she caressed his forehead, his head on her lap, Ravi’s words sent an unbearable chill down her spine. She could not speak but a word or two before she broke down completely. All those who had come to her room to attend to her alarming shriek broke down as well. Some audibly, others in a silent stream of tears that rolled down their cheeks.
Ravi was sliding nimbly away towards placid, eternal repose, forsaking all sinister misgivings destiny seemed to have thrust upon him when his face illuminated in a sudden, mysterious glow. It was as if he were rejoicing in a subtle blessing bestowed upon him by an unidentifiable energy. In another, quite abrupt movement, he shuddered, wrenched his body and relaxed; his mouth gaping, and his eyes staring fixedly into the vacuum.
lll
After his father was killed in a road accident two years earlier, Ravi, merely 12 years of age then, was assigned the obligation of winning bread for himself and his polio-stricken mother. He attempted several professions but none of them were accommodating to his predicament. Eventually, he began working as a hotel boy in a filthy restaurant frequented mostly by construction labourers. The roadside hotel served raksi, along with a few buff delicacies. The owner was a raucous, plump, middle aged woman who seemed to possess not a speck of human compassion in her saggy bosom. She worked him without respite for almost 14 hours a day, chiding him for every accidental show of childish indifference towards work, and scoffing at the faintest lethargic wrenching of his body.
You scoundrel.
You’re good for nothing.
A beast of a human.
These were some of her favourite phrases; ones she aimlessly darted at every person who did not submissively conform to her own moods.
She did have a celebrated phrase for flattery as well, but this was reserved to her favourites—those who visited her routinely, surrendering their earnings and themselves to the Dionysian sensuality of the restaurant. She could sometimes be heard, speaking in that wanton tone of hers saying, “You pride of my place! You’re the lifeblood of my restaurant.”
At times, Ravi was enflamed with rage at her callousness and would ponder over, with brisk determination, the prospect of quitting the job, of abandoning the corrupt vulgarity of the place, once and for all. But when he thought of his mother, her pathos and utter helplessness, his body would squirm with remorse at such vengeful thoughts.
Six months elapsed and Ravi continued to work at the restaurant with subdued indignation. On the first week of his seventh month there, as he was ferrying a huge gallon of the ominous liquid, the raksi, on his fragile left shoulder, he tripped over the randomly stretched leg of one of the woman’s favourite customers. The jar slipped off of his shoulder; the stinking liquid splashed all around, even on the sweating face of one of the customers. The man rose abruptly, roaring a plethora of filthy words.
‘You moth..……. Have you gone blind?’
‘You…….. from the gutters!’
Before Ravi could make sense of things, the man pounded upon him; a slap, and two, and three, resounded as his hands came down on his thin, delicate cheeks. Ravi, utterly overwhelmed in the chaos of the situation, could produce but a few pathetic words of excuse.
“Sorry sir, sorry…. It was a mistake, an accident. Forgive me malik. I will wash your clothes if need be. Please forgive me,” Ravi pleaded persistently. But the man was determined not to let him go.
“A lesson should be taught to such a rogue of a child,” retorted another drunkard, in a feat of intoxication.
The man clutched Ravi’s head by the hair and dragged him towards the cash counter where, Ravi knew, the devil of a woman was mounted on an old wooden armchair. She would offer him no solace. As he approached the counter, the man roared still more monstrously; his tone rising and falling, his lips quivering in enormous rage, as if someone had attempted to strangle him to death, but to no avail.
“What a waste of a boy have you employed!” the man exclaimed. A rogue! A petty, useless creature!”
By now, the man had involuntarily released Ravi’s head from his clutch. Ravi got some respite, but that lasted only a couple of seconds. Even before he had regained his composure completely, the plump women snarled, “You…….Scoundrel! You’re good for nothing. Did I hire you to serve or to spill things into chaos? Get out of my place! Immediately!”
Ravi did not budge. He stood shivering, like a cat cast outside on a rainy evening by its callous master, all drenched; incapable of mutiny yet bearing the maltreatment in passive rage. Seeing him standing there as if transfixed, the plump woman shouted again; this time more intently, “Get out of here right now. Out of my sight. Now!”
As he was about to exit the restaurant, he thought of his mother. His conscience would not let him leave. He felt his leg lose all vital fluids. The marrow in his bones melted into a void and his feet, unable to sustain the weight of the moment, declined to move. As his final act of resignation, he knelt down on the concrete floor, joined his palms together and pleaded.
“Please! Aunty forgive me…. Give me a lone chance. Please! Pardon me,” he appealed in his muffled voice, tears rolling down his smeared cheeks.
“Don’t dump me like this, madam. My mother………….”
But before he could complete what he was saying the women shouted in her shrill, ugly voice. “You scoundrel! Get out of here at once or I will teach you a lesson.” She sounded as if she would be willing to commit a crime if Ravi did not conform to her command. Threatened, Ravi rose and was out of the restaurant in no time. He wandered aimlessly, oblivious of the destination, for about an hour. Then, quite suddenly, he paused and stood stiff for a few seconds. He turned back after a while though, and resumed his former pace. Now, he began to take lofty, resolute strides, as if his legs were being drawn by a mystifying power. They were following a mysterious guide, as if in a state of trance.
lll
Ravi headed straight home. Harilata was confused by his early arrival but became instantly aware of his unusually illuminated face. It was a face that signalled an unwelcome crisis; a tempest perhaps or a tsunami that might engulf her sole lifeboat of existence and inundate her altogether.
“What happened? Why you so early today? Is everything all right?” she inquired quite impassively. He did not speak a word, stood motionless, stared at his mother with eyes that were stiff and frighteningly lifeless.
“What happened to you? Why are you looking at me so dreadfully?’ Harilata prodded him, as, with each passing moment, her fear of the tempest, a tsunami grew harsher, more vivid. But Ravi did not say much. It seemed as if his neurons declined to communicate what his senses perceived.
Then, with an impromptu jerk, he collapsed onto the floor; a solution of blood, mucous and saliva flowed out of his mouth. Harilata shouted loud in an amalgam of emotion; fear, shock, confusion.
People in the neighbouring room arrived in an instant, for Harilata’s shriek foretold of the imminence of a catastrophe.
- Megh Raj Adhikari
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