LOST INTO A BIG VOID

There are men who believe in luck, but can’t wait for decades till heavens or hells fall from the skies to surge their affairs or bury them. I knew one such man. I don’t know what he ended into by his luck. He selected the gambling racecourse of Pune to start over his business of selling imported cigarettes, beer, and fast food. When I asked him, he said, “I like the 30 minute long storming, bellicose race of horses; obstreperous red hot competing of jockeys and hollering shrieks of betters. Luck has to annihilate or build here in just 30 minutes.”

Later he expanded his business. He tried running a joint outside High Court; but stayed there for just a few days. He shifted outside a gambling house. The visitors there entered the house crass and returned fully done by luck; either blessed or cursed. He liked to see both their elated and sunken moods viewable together. Luck playing with men in complete immunity could hardly be seen elsewhere, he said. For example hospitals had made it too long for the luck to declare verdict in the favor of or against the victims of even obvious fatal vehicular accidents, he would add without a concern for the impropriety for his statement.

Once I succeeded into dragging him into coming along for holidaying in a hill town. I had ignored the general opinion that there was nothing special in this hilly town, and I kept this carefully guarded from my accompanying friend. We started journey in a mini train that kept on travelling without any material change in the outside view. An hour later I started thinking that some obsessive had perhaps got made this unrewarding railway line, which must have taken a decade to build, given the 23 numbers of long and short tunnels on the route, and endless requirement of blasting rocky mountain to have the job completed. The hill town could be anywhere on the route, it appeared. I, in my fear of getting abused or perhaps manhandled by my friend stood all 4 hours at the door of the compartment well away from my friend. So I am not able to tell you how he managed to sit in peace on his seat. But from a distance, he appeared short of getting into a serious fight should a person make an attempt to disturb his surroundings.

I wanted to share my thoughts with my friend, but I was eschewing it as he appeared fully stretched with ennui and unvented anger. The futility of the travel was obvious. The tracks from origin to the destination station appeared a panic run of an obsessive criminal running from hands of law who won’t believe he had distanced him enough from his crime. The ephemeral feeling of security melting away with his next suspiration, he would run again distancing him yet further till when he dropped on his knees, his mind still gripped with fear of insecurity.
So when my friend, Kishen, declared that we were going back by road immediately, I followed him to bus stand without any violation. Later he said before parting that day,” similar to this is what people get in blind long pursuits awaiting good luck to come”.

I told about this journey and about Kishen in general to my one friend, rather a girlfriend in the medical college. She heard about Kishen with plenty of interest. When we met the next time, she declared, “I have read about people of the ilk of your friend. Such people have a natural destructive tendency.” I laughed and asked her to read more about the habits cultivated by people like Kishen.

Kishen and I stayed in Pimpri. Kishen always complained that it was a long way to reach Pune city from there. Later one Sunday we reached Khadki to find a rented room for him. The room Kishen selected was in the midst of Khadki market. The place was little clumsy, but was close to bus stand. Kishen selected the top floor room, as the other vacant room was on ground floor. The 5 story building was surrounded on 3 sides by subzi and fruit vendors. Cows could freely walk anywhere in the market. Kishen didn’t mind the climbing to fifth floor so as to avoid immediate proximity to the subzi market.
In Pune, winters are not as intense as in the north. But a little bit of cold is not unusual.
So one cold morning, I switched on the TV only to find a handcuffed Kishen being led by police from his Khadki room. Channel after channel in TV I changed in my shock and learnt that Kishen was a terrorist participating in plan of an attack on Ammunition Factory, Khadki, the boundary walls of which were just a narrow gully apart from the Khadki subzi market.

As per TV reports, Kishen had taken photographs of ammunition factory interiors from his five story high perch and had fitted these in a general layout of that area showing the schools, post office, main road and Sivajinagar. A diary was also confiscated where he had had written something that hinted a plan of striking the factory with an aircraft on the lines of American building attack. The TV screen showed that page of the diary on the screen;
‘They are all destined to die now that the aircraft has nosedived and is decidedly inoperative in the air at 8000ft from ground. It is falling like a dead bird just above the ammunition factory. The dead vehicle with trapped living souls is taking them fast to the doom in compliance to their luck that nature has in the works for them. The nature has decided to change the course of these trapped monsoon winds, which were proceeding on their trajectory to form clouds of rains. The cursed winds of monsoon are now led to a nihility where they are to atrophy and become lost into a big void. Oh God, won’t you pardon my sin. I did my part for the money that is needed by my destitute people to survive.’

They showed him on the screen again for a short time with camera’s lens focusing only on him. I looked closely at his face, hands and feet to see any signs of bruises or torture or even a conflict between him and the police, but found none. Then suddenly, a hair of a smile crept on his face, which was immediately withdrawn by him. Now he again looked as before, a criminal nabbed by the police in time. A tiny drop of miscible colorless medicine dropped unseeingly and disappeared into a void in the water of the glass beneath, was his smile, which was caught by me alone.