Many a times I have wondered how life would be if I was not me; if I was not Chetan—the loner. People look at me with awe when I stroll across the neighborhood. They perhaps whisper what an alien is doing walking all alone. I am 5 foot 7 but my body is so lean that my shoulders droop towards the ground. I have big hands. So, whenever I shake hands with someone, I have to bend my palms so as not to embarrass the other person.
I left my village when the Maoists threatened to kill me if I did not stop talking my mind. The army was no less abusive. One evening, they came to my home in civil dress and beat me for nothing. My old mother stood at the front door and cried.
I have been hearing my mother cry after my father died of an unknown illness. It was unknown because hospital was one day’s walk from my village and the local clinic did not bear a doctor. Now I hear in the city that most of the expired medicines are donated to remote villages. “Those ignorant”, they say, “they can digest anything.”
I left my home a year ago, not of choice but of desperation. Desperate, that’s what I am of my life; this aloofness that haunts me until dawn and thwarts me of love, friendship and acquaintance. The room that I have rented lies alone as me. There are no windows and the door smells of dog’s piss.
For one year I have tried to manage my expenses with 2 thousand rupees that I earn working as a guard every night for a rich businessman. His shop sells imported textiles. I do not know anything about his business exchanges or customers because when I arrive it is already evening and when I leave in the morning, nothing has happened. My master is very professional. This is what Kumar told me when I was new here. He has opened a small teashop in the pavement across the road where I receive a cup of tea every morning. I am glad that my master has pardoned me a cup of tea.
My loneliness grew after my mother died in the village. The villagers said she was taken down with grief. For the first time I felt what the villagers meant. My father died when I was very young. His absence for me was felt only in financial matters. I felt remorse when my friends’ pockets were giggling with marbles and I had to use pebbles for the game. But my mother was my everything. She tried to buy me sweets by working on her sewing machine until midnight. I still remember how beautifully she sang along the sound of the machine.
Her songs used to take me to a wonderland where I was provided with lots of new sweets, new cotton clothes that sparkled my body and clean sports shoes. I played and ate, and laughed so loudly that my stomach ached. All my friends gathered around me to look what I had to show from my pocket. They knew it was something new, something never seen in the village. When I was awake, I found my mother in the same position I saw the other night. Sometimes I felt she was a god with divine powers, always working on her machine.
Last year when my mother left me forever, I was in the tenth grade.
Thursday, October 22, 2009
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