A difficult code

The market place had crowds to suggest the misgiving that the crowds intended to transact in the market. Nevertheless, people in the market arena had quite off the mark intentions. They were on their route to nearby bus stands and railway station. As a result, shops and crowds had almost nil interaction. You look at a 500 rupee note minutely only after which you find a deceptive silver line dividing two parts of the note wrong way to declare it a counterfeit.

Hidden behind this market of Dalton nagar, the little railway station stood with its just two tracks. In a train bound to Lucknow, I was sitting on the filthy floor of a compartment. The night before, they had assassinated Father of the church and his family along with whom I, a recently converted young boy, used to reside.

After the assassins left, I sneaked from my hideout and reached where Father lay with weltering pool of blood still creeping, slicing and killing the whiteness and holiness of Father’s cloak. I had seen him always in this white long cloak, his face always malleable with kindness and smile, reminding one of the white holy smokes oozing out of a dozen incense sticks.

Imtiaz, a student of Lucknow University, was the man who arranged for my shelter in University’s canteen. I had done him a favor. When I was standing in a dilemma near the university building, a bike savagely pulled up; a young man shot a bullet with his weapon injuring Imtiaz in the leg and sped away. I helped Imtiaz to find a dispensary nearby.

Imtiaz and his friends would come to the canteen in the afternoons. Once on Imtiaz’s insistence, I told him my story. Near the end, my visage stiffened in a queer and sudden chill that baffled him. When I asked him to give me a weapon and some help for my going back to Dalton nagar to eliminate assassins of the Father, he just looked on, flabbergasted, as if he had never imagined that an easy looking mathematical sum would, after few steps, need expertise to break the code.

Next day he gave me a packet wrapped well with old newspapers. I went to a solitary corner near a dry tap, and looked into the contents. Immediately I folded back the wraps of the packet. There lay in the packet a hand gun, three 9mm bullets, and few leaves of 100 rupee notes.

The passenger train after leaving Lucknow entered the raw UP towns and villages and stopped without signs of early moving from a small station. The over bridge of the station hardly appeared property of railways; both sides of the bridge were lined with makeshift shops. Coming of a train after a wait of a long part of the day made it appear coming of a festival in a year once there, as the travelers disembarking the train made some purchases before going home.

Two days later, when in Dalton nagar, I held my loaded weapon on the forehead of the inebriated man who had killed the Father, at first glance the victim didn’t know what it was about. Then when the bullet made way into his skull, a few seconds later he regained his senses and understood what it was just before his death; like I was thrown out of my sleep when standing in a long patient queue, by prodding of people behind me to fill the gap made by walking away of a few first buyers of tickets after a long wait in front of the ticket window closed previously for a prolonged lunch period.