Thus, He Kills His Mother

Recommended for people above 18

22 August 2000

Salode, Cannanore District.  

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Heslowly took the hammer in his right hand. His left hand had the pen, a Hero, black ink fountain pen. Blood dripped from the hammerhead upon the pale tiles on the floor, creating various shapes, like stars, creatures with horns and tales, and occasionally flowers out in the vast paleness of vacuum. He came inside the room and sat in front of his desk. The paper in front of him was titled “Page; 108. D”

Raman Pillai heard a knock on the front door, after ten hours. He could very well recognize the neighbor woman’s voice. “She did not come out when I called her for the association meeting this evening. I thought of going round the house and looking inside, thinking she might be busy doing something. That’s when I saw it.”

A stranger’s voice said, “Let’s break the door. Is the psychopath inside?” His voice echoed inside the house and disturbed the peace of Raman Pillai.

Soon, the door thrashed against his mother’s head, with a loud thud. ‘Had the woman been alive, she would have made the whole hell break lose at this,’ Raman Pillai thought.

“The door is stuck!” Someone shouted from the outside.

“Oh my God! It’s the woman’s head!” Another one said. He was trying to get a clear view of the inside through a window in the central hall that had a view of the adjacent house, fifty feet away. “The dead body is lying straight from the door. Don’t push the door, Officer Rajan!” The same person who looked inside the window shouted.

“It seems it’s gone thick from death. This must have happened a while ago.” Officer Rajan said, as he stopped the working on the door for the time being. “I don’t want to break her neck.” He said under his breath. The woman neighbor, who was standing nearby screamed at this, as if she had already visualized the scene.

The man, who looked through the window, came to the front door and helped Officer Rajan, and they open the door slightly.

   

“I will enter first,” Officer Rajan said. Inside, but he slipped in the blood that lay pooled near the body.

‘So reckless,’ Raman Pillai thought. Sitting in his room, folding the pages he had already completed, neatly into the file folder. Then he closed his pen and put it close to this folder.   

Soon, many people entered the house. “Move!” One of them in a police uniform said. Raman Pillai reluctantly obeyed what they said and stood up. He felt at ease, now, after working on the dictionary for over nine hours that day.

“Do not permit anyone else to enter the house!” one of the officers shouted. Three of them were holding hands across the verandah keeping away the neighbors from entering into the house for a peek.

“We are from Kerala Police. You are under arrest.” One of them shouted at Raman Pillai’s face.

The officers entered his room. Raman Pillai’s room had a bed, a double cot, and a long table with a chair. It was a 6.5 feet X 6.5 feet box that he called room. “It’s congested in here,” Officer Rajan said. Three of them stayed with Raman Pillai in the room. The rest of them moved outside.

“You come inside,” a police officer was calling a man from the neighborhood. “Is this the same person?” The officer enquired.

The man nodded after looking at the body. He could not hide a repulsive expression. He ran out, “Yeah! Yeah!” The man said to whomever he came across.

“Let’s take the body out, first.” Officer Rajan said.

Two of the police officers bent down with a stretcher. Then a couple more came inside through the front door. As they took the body onto the stretcher, a part of the skull came down, and its contents scattered. One of the men suddenly took his leg back in fear. Solid contents that came out of the broken skull skid on the floor, along with blood. In his hurry, the officer dropped the left shoulder of the body and the head dangled in the air for some time, like a broken pendulum.  

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Raman Pillai laughed at this one.

“Brute!” One of the officers murmured, but did not voice the words aloud.

After a few moments, they successfully moved the body out, and took Raman Pillai to their jeep. He could not take his manuscript. However, no one had bothered about his pen. Perhaps, they hadn’t seen it.

In the jeep too, Raman Pillai heard the police officers address him “Brute!”

“It’s a word from Old English,” He said to the officer sitting close to him.

“What?” He enquired, displeased.

Raman Pillai did not say anything to anyone in particular. He looked outside through the back window and said, “In Latin, Brutus.”   

“He is mad, clearly! A mad animal.” Officer Rajan, who was sitting in the front seat, said.

‘Eleven times, I did tell my mother to keep quiet. I want to work on my dictionary, I had told her. Then she asks me to clear my room, and she wants to sweep everywhere. Irritating old lady.’ Raman Pillai thought. He held his right hand in a fist.

‘I’ll wait 8 more times. And then…’                         

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Linked Ways of Intent

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I didn’t have the slightest idea what this conductor would deliver such an awful news at this time. I was returning home after a long day of class. The conductor said; “We will drop you at the old bus stand.”

“You always go to old bus stand?” I enquired. I was thinking about a plan. Never, never to take this bus again. I had to go to the new bus stand. Now, from the old bus stand, I would have to walk about 1.5 kilometers or take an auto rickshaw and pay Rs: 20. Thankfully, I had enough money with me today.

“No, it is because there is a traffic block, and we get very late if we turn around the new bus stand. So we choose to go the old one.” The conductor explained, smiling with an affable face. It was not just about the money, I thought, but also about the time that I’d lose in reaching the new bus stand? I had work to do at home. The book, the blog, and the reading I had to do…

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Suddenly, like the gush of a fresh wind, a thought came to my mind. As I have always argued to my friends, family and readers, thoughts exist beyond human mind. When the mind is tuned to a certain frequency, the thoughts that exist in that frequency is received inside. I thought about going to the public library. I had planned it the previous day, but had forgotten about it. This thought seemed a sign, but for who? I know not.

What happened the previous day too, is nothing short of a magical moment. I was at home, in the evening, trying to relax by listening to some videos. Meanwhile, a Youtube video by Dr. Wayne W. Dyer came up from the jumbled mess of Bollywood songs my sister had watched previously. The Youtube has this problem of giving suggestions each time one opens a fresh page, based on the previous page views. In this aspect, Google seems to be the father of suggestive mannerism.

In the lecture, Dr. Dyer was talking about ‘intentions’. He was not talking about the limited idea of intention, but about the divine, overpowering ‘intent’, from which every living being has emanated. In order to explain his point, he quoted from a book by Carlos Castaneda.

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Carlos Castaneda is one of those writers who intrigue me ceaselessly. If you remember, I wrote an article on returning one of Castaneda’s books to the public library and the auto rickshaw ride, the previous month. This article was titled “The Wretched Riders”. Two other articles preceded this one, titled “The Fire from Within” and “The Nostradamus Redemption”, which included my encounter with this particular book by Carlos Castaneda. However, I could not read the book completely and was forced to return it as I had already crossed the library due date.

So, where were we?

Dr. Dyer, was talking about ‘intent’. “In the universe, there is an immeasurable, indescribable force, which those who live of the source call intention.” Dr. Dyer said that he had quoted from Carlos Castaneda’s book, The Fire from Within.

I had returned this same book to the library, the previous month, without finishing it. The strangest coincidence was that the chapter where I left off the book was titled, “Stalking, Intent, and the Dreaming position.”  

Once I got off the bus at the old bus stand, I walked straight to the library, which was located nearby. Inside the library, I did not even remove my shoes, which was mandatory. I ran towards the back of the shelves, the place from where I first discovered The Fire from Within. As I was searching through the shelf full of books, another thought flickered in my mind. Impossible! I mused at the proximity of this strange behavior from part. Not even once did I consider the possibility of someone else taking the book before me, while deciding to come here and look for it. ‘What if I could not find The Fire from Within here, today?’

I will satisfy myself by taking another book for the sake of it, I settled down my anxiety. Right then, I found it. The Fire from Within. That which is tangled and linked beyond our consciousness is what I feel evident in the experience I had. I would not though, call if ‘fantastic’ or ‘miraculous’, because by doing so, I would be judging the experience and belittling the signs that are engraved in it for the understanding of us.    

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William Shakespeare, Tussi Great Ho!

William Shakespeare’s name in the title is equally misleading about certain things you are soon to come across, as the anger the main character in this fictional narrative experienced surging inside himself.

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“I beseech you!” One of the characters from one of the plays written by William Shakespeare said to another. He did not remember who exactly the character was. Neither was it a significant quote to which he needed to produce a proper source. In any of those magnificent plays written by William Shakespeare, any of those characters might have said this to anyone else. It’s such a common way of making a request in Elizabethan English.

A poorly cordoned off class room, adjacent to the National Highway 17 would sure to be a hard task for the teacher to manage. The noise from the Highway often rises above levels of compromise, and students often find it hard to focus on their subjects. But in an otherwise neat and efficient college, the young teacher taught English contentedly. The young man mentioned here, was not particularly a fan of William Shakespeare, the Swan of Avon. However he had often felt that the indelible influence William Shakespeare has upon his times is unquestionable.

One day, he was teaching in an afternoon hour. His class was about critical thinking and its uses. Shouting at the top of his voice, he felt he would almost faint and fall down, if a break hasn’t been awarded to oneself, quite soon. He moved left and then right, tried to work the MW pattern of eye-contact strategy. Before long, he realised that every bit of energy left in him was slowly dripping away. His throat felt like he had gobbled a handful of splinters.

Suddenly, a noise outside the classroom grabbed his attention. He was pulled into a conundrum of laughter and shout. They were the senior students, making themselves at home outside his classroom, on chairs near the partition that separated the class with the verandah. The young teacher showed a gesture at them, to  make less noise.

He awaited result. The camaraderie soon resumed and this time, it was unbearable for him. A hot nerve on his forehead gave a push. He felt he would surely lose ground. He ran towards the entrance of the classroom, and shouted at them; “Didn’t I tell you to quiet down. Your noise is all inside the classroom.”

The young man wanted to say; “I am doing a job here,” as well. However, he refrained from that comment. An awkward sense of insecurity overwhelmed him. He realized that he was angry, and being angry meant that he was vulnerable. The thought prevented him from uttering anything further.

He went inside the classroom and resumed teaching. The noise continued. Once again, the young teacher thought of making a confrontation with the gang of orderless brats. He came outside. There was no point in raising his voice or exhibiting extreme irritation towards them, he thought. This enabled him to settle down with plan B. He played the mysterious stranger, by just staring at them. It was a technique he often used in order to control situations that included student delinquency, on previous occasions.

Find out what you may, certain situations would never bend when you desperately want them to. The shouters kept shouting and merrymaking in their group. He stared at them through five long minutes. When, finally, he realised this would not work, the young man came inside again. Right then, for some reason, a lady-teacher passed through the corridor and the troublemakers followed her, imploring for marks and asking questions.

The young man thanked the teacher inwardly and continued with his teaching. He thought of filing a complaint letter against the students to the Head of the Department as well as the Dean of the college. Meanwhile, all of a sudden, as if a bird had found a tree to perch on, a thought settled in his mind. That’s when he thought about William Shakespeare’s quote. It was an insignificant quote to remember, although within the play it may have carried tremendous influence. 

“I beseech you!”

The young man stood silent for some time, then smiled to himself. His body relaxed and countenance elated with a beaming peace. ‘Why did I ignored this before?’ He thought. He had clearly missed a possibility that could have been useful immensely.

He could have used the strategy of solicitation, a request. The unruly guys could have been thwarted through a request. 

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Note: This story is told by Subhashin, a friend of mine and a mysterious being, on a rainy Wednesday evening, sipping a strong tea near one of Kannur’s famous monuments. I asked him, what is the assurance that a request instead of an imposition could have made things work. He replied that he was among those students, who were sitting outside the classroom. It happened when he was a student himself. He also told me that he was trying to hone his storytelling skills, by trying get inside the head of the teacher.

“You have the skill,” I told him. “Keep telling stories.” 

Post Postum: Call it a weird story, for the sake of a genre.

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The Fire from Within

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Much like a woodpecker, I was on my incessant attempt to penetrate the outer bark of reality and to reach into the soul of the Cosmos. It was a sunny day and I was in the city. Something in the mind and a tickling sensation on my skin was undoubtedly the signs indicating the presence of a portal opening into the world of Awareness.

The usual process to tackle such a sensation is to walk aimlessly, which in turn is the best way to locate the portal to Awareness as well.

As I was taking the left turn on the road to the Beach of Solace, a familiar face greeted me. On the right side of the road, there was a shawarma shop. He was standing in front of it. Not eating, of course, but having a chat with someone in the shop. Subhashin, has a lot of friends in the city, both cooks and eaters.

It is not always that I meet Subhashin on the road. Perhaps, the opening of the portal and the psychomotor impulses I felt had some relation with the appearance of Subhashin, an old friend of mine, and in fact a guru.

“We must talk about this!” He stated off as I went near him, as if it was part of what he had been talking about to the cook in the shawarma shop. Confused, I stood there for a second, silent. Comprehending from the lack of acknowledgement to his suggestion, he delivered one more sentence; “You know, the situation, the unholy relationship between the politicians and writers, in India?”

I shook my head as if I knew everything he meant by that question whereas actually, I was clueless. We started walking towards the city. “Could you please fill me in on the discourse that you were about to begin?” I asked.

After this prodding, he was silent. Then after a moment, which I failed to measure in seconds or in minutes and so let us simply call, a moment, he said; “I was thinking about these contemporary Indian English writers. Some of them are eager for politicians to endorse their books. Nevertheless, think about those old writers in India. They never maintained a cover for their book with a politician’s quote on it, but always secretly, supported and at the same time admired by political parties and ideologies.”

The topic seemed to catch fire at any moment, so I tried to dissuade him from pursuing the topic further. Because it was politics and because politics was a very sensitive issue around here, I thought it best to cool the conversation off. He continued, though; “some of those old writers wrote for political parties and ideologies, in an attempt to populate literature with enough propaganda literature. They never had an existence of the true artiste.”

“You should not forget there are others who always stood by art.” I said intervening.

He conceded.

Subhashin was a short person, about five feet, two, but had enough fat to balance his figure and to give him the moderate shape. His neck was short, but thick and he kept his hairs trimmed to spikes. Perhaps, due to these features, his head always gave me an impression of being round, like a football. He shook his head, on that thick, small neck of his, wildly, conceding to my point. “There were writers, cherished by both the capitalists and the proletarians, disregarding the mortal differences. Great writers!”

Subhashin had a great point there, I thought. On the left side of the road, I found the board of the city library. That the library was about three kilometers away from the sea, and I was about two kilometers away from this place, when I met Subhashin, instilled wonder in me. How did I reach here in such a short span of time?

Perhaps, the reason for this amazing slippage in time was the pull of the contents of the conversation Subhashin delivered. Suddenly, I felt that I should go into the library and check some books out. I turned to look at Subhashin. He was not there. He did not say good-bye; neither did I hear him talk about anything else, while I was pondering over the slippage in time. They say time is a fabric. I did not know what made the fabric of my life.

Subhashin seemed capable of creating magnificent warps in time and dimensions. I always felt this way about this young man. He must have appeared from the portal that felt opening somewhere in the city, bridging different worlds.  

I went inside the library. After spending about one hour, found Carols Castaneda’s The Fire from Within. The book started speaking to me, then. Glued to the spot where I was, inside the library hall, among the bookshelves, I listened. It said, “Seeing is a peculiar feeling of knowing, of knowing something without a shadow of doubt.”

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For me, the book’s words were hard to grasp, mostly because in order to understand something we need two poles of sensation: the feet and the head. Our feet should be on the ground and head should be in the sky or vice versa. If you bring both together, that is, if you are aware of only one side of knowing, you know nothing. I thought I should ask Subhashin next time when I meet him. But when? The truth is I did not know where Subhashin came from or where he went.  

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Interest Rate

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“The young and energetic secretary or clerk or someone, I don’t know what she exactly is, is the only reason I went to the Sloppy Bunk of India.” Racer (name imaginary) said with a conspicuously agitated temperament. He was talking about a bank. He said “Bunk” in order to avoid any legal problems. He was very careful, especially in public.

“You know what, she—that secretary__”

“Clerk.” I cut in.

“Yea, clerk; she is pretty, you know. I mean beautiful. Nice eyebrows, nose and all.” Racer brightened his façade with a smile.

I did not know that my childhood friend Racer could be such a connoisseur of feminine appearance.

“I go to bank only to pay the exam fee. I don’t even take the concept of ‘savings’.” I said.

Racer did not seem to hear what I said. As I was about to rephrase my point, Racer with dreamy eyes and an amorous mood stumbled back upon his topic.

“I was in the bank the other day with a handful of money.” He said.

When Racer says a handful of money, he means his monthly salary; INR 6000; USD 110.66 (as on 6^th May 2013); Euros 84.48 (as on 6^th May 2013). Racer should sustain himself the whole month with this meager amount. He was a temporary guest faculty at a self financing college. Among the community of Guest Lecturers, his kinds are the least fortunate ones. The government colleges offer a better pay. Those who work in the self-financing colleges are literally squeezed by the management, like galley slaves.

“I ask the guard in the bank, the guy with a gun and a faded khaki uniform, which receipt I should fill, in order to deposit money.” Racer continues. “There are forms aplenty; receipts and bills are many on the counter.” He said.

“Aplenty…hmmm…” I thought.

“There are white ones, red ones and green ones. Sometimes, there are even grey receipts too. Many of these have multiple purposes, it seems. But most of them ask for the same details from you—your account number, amount in Rupees and in words and date.

“The guard, the gate keeper of that whorehouse of money, doesn’t respond. There are other people; people with rich smells, in white shirt and white dhoti, or in sari and with a lot of gold, and with the keys of their vehicles worn on their fingers like wedding ring, extracting some extent of playfulness with it and also those who work inside the cubbyholes. The guard attends only those affluent folks.

“By the time I fill the bill or receipt or whatever you call that pitiful lifeless leaf of paper, which asks the same information over and again…that dumb piece of bureaucratic arrogance, it is about twelve pii em.”

Racer paused for effect.

“So it went well?” I enquired, already bored.

“Went well? Ha!” He scoffed. “There were six or seven counters for transaction.”

“Did you go to Cannanore branch?” I cut in, once again.

“Yes,” Racer said.

“Then six counters.” I stated.

“Ok, six. I don’t remember, exactly. Man, it is hard even to think of the crowd. Neck to neck, you know. Someone stepped over my feet. I got very irritated. I was standing in the tail of one of the lines. I was getting a bit hungry too. Then I saw that the clerk in the counter I was standing at—a young man of about twenty six, in counter 4—was chatting with the female secretary I told you about.”

“Clerk!” I said.

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“Ok…ok…that female clerk. She was cooing with the male clerk on the desk in front of the queue I was standing half a mile away. It hardly seemed a possibility that I may reach the starting point and deposit my cash. And over the top is this chitchat! Wasn’t this on our patience that they are building their castle of romance? Well, I didn’t know if they were romancing for that matter, but I got really infuriated!”  

 “Then?” I blurted out, without waiting, eager to end his bluff.

“Then what? I went straight to the beautiful creature,” Racer said with a smile. “I told her to shut up! These bank officers, they are nothing but helpers with our money. The common folk are the authority of the money these clerks sit on and enjoy and eat.” When racer said this I noticed his fist going tight, rising a few feet and reaching his shoulder level. “So I told her to keep her arrogance inside her purse, and not to shove it upon our face. ‘You help us manage our money. You don’t own us,’ I said. And that pretty clerk went pale and red. She was around in her twenties too, you know.” Racer paused again.

“Then what happened?” I said with some interest in his story from the turn the things in the bank took.

“Then? Well, then finally, the guard approached me, but this time with his gun. You see, he is just a security guy and I am a lecturer. But nothing works there in that parlour of arrogance. Don’t trust them; these banks. They are so…so…arrogant! And they threw me out!”   

“Just like that?”

“Just like that.”

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MLA: Member of__

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Theschool was quiet except the regular high pitch accent from an English teacher, who had been in charge of the vacation class. The April sun blazed above the tile roofed building and the day was hot.

The time was close to midday and the traffic was milder too. Any kid of voice that interrupted the class was minimal, which was a very impressive factor for the teacher, who was actually fed up from the otherwise roar of the traffic and the chattering of the 1500 students of the school.

He preferred the vacation classes to regular ones. 

The teacher’s preference for the vacation class had one more reason, other than the noise factor—time. During the vacation class, he could experiment with his teaching, provide better opportunities for the students to express themselves, and there was more time to do activities in the classroom rather than the regular school days.

The class was under his total control. There was less interference by the Head Master or anyone else, much like the noise factor.

The teacher was also happy due to the fact that he could spend more time talking with the students, the little boys and girls in the seventh standard. They are a bunch of nice little brainiacs,he thought. With all the pressure from the Head Master to finish the course and the syllabus, student-teacher interaction was the last thing teachers were concerned about. This is the chance, he thought.

Next he was supposed to teach English words and their uses. In order to familiarize the students with words, the teacher thought of an interesting game. He gave clues about what a particular word meant and asked the students to locate the correct word.

“Please volunteer!” He said. “Can you give me a word that means ‘characterized by, based on or done by fraud’?”

He looked around. No one moved. Not even a single head turned either left or right. Dead silence.

The teacher knew what to do next. He kept his face pleasant and smiled at the students. “Please volunteer!” He said again, milder this time. The scene lightened.

“OK. I will repeat the question once again. It’s Ok if you make a mistake. I am not going to punish you for anything. Come on guys.” The he paused for a moment, giving enough time to find some order in the newly sprouted spike of activity, once the teacher turned down the knob of seriousness of his face to minimum. “Find the word that is characterized by, based on, or done by fraud?” He repeated.

The English teacher paused again. When he did not see anyone standing up with an answer or any hand being raised, the teacher repeated the question, yet again. “Give me a word that is characterized by, based on, or done by fraud?”

Then a student stood up and said with a confidence; “Sir…Sir…MLA!”

 

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This story is fictional. There is no relationship with anyone living or dead or any organization, governmental or private. Any resemblance is strictly coincidental.    

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City Thieves

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Cannanore will soon become a big city, but right now, it is a small town, where people still prefer having their tea, coffee and meals from coffee houses that stinks of urine, sweat and smoke. This is not the only reason for naming it small.

Every city is like a human being. And like humans, cities have thoughts as well. Cannanore town is small is its thoughts too. Thoughts of a city are its streets. The streets in Cannanore city are quite narrow and thus I deduced my conclusion that it is indeed a small in city, small in size and small in mind.

In this small town, one evening, a coffee house was busy as a slaughter house. The slaughter house imagery partially owes its credit to the way people’s faces looked after their sojourn inside the houses for tea or meals and their puffed up pot bellies and partly it owed to the vast number of people flowing in and out.

A person in a wrinkled grey shirt walked faster towards the entrance. He placed the bill on the cashier’s table and paid the amount with changes. Without stopping there, he paced forward.

And old man suddenly came ahead from behind him and caught hold of his right hand. The man in grey shirt startled and looked back. Once he saw the old man, he dragged him forward and moved out of the coffee house to the footpath that bordered the main road and the coffee house.

“Leave me!” The man in grey shirt said. His voice was hoarse and eyes were staring at the old man.

“I know what you did there in the crowd. I saw you stealing that woman’s gold chain. Give it to me, or I will call the police,” Said the old man.

“No, YOU might have done it. I didn’t. I am not a thief,” the man said. It was not a shout, but his voice was thick enough to convey the message that he was not an easy pass for anyone that came across.

The old man stared at the grey shirt man. His eyes were not particularly powerful in their physical appearance, but they were fearless.

“Didn’t you hear me? YOU might have done it! YOU…YOU… I didn’t. Now leave my hand.”

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Still, stare in return.

“Leave…leave me,” and the grey shirt man started puling, and wriggling his hand free. But right then, the old man shouted again, his right hand, tight as glued to the hand of the grey shirt man, “I WILL CALL THE POLICE!”

Silence.

The man in grey shirt stopped trying to wriggle away. It seemed impossible. The grip got harder and harder and more than the grip it was the old man’s staring eyes that did some harm; they were penetrating. Also the man in grey shirt had seen the people around them started noticing their struggle. Although at first it might have seemed a friendly meeting, not it was taking a violent turn.

“OK...OK…If I give it to you, will you leave me then? Old man?”

Even though the thief had addressed him, old man, he did not look above 60. His hair was full white, though. And that gave an impression that the epithet of the thief sounded apt.

“I was a teacher, now retired. It had been my job all my life to tell my students to take the path of truth and love. I won’t hand you over to the police, because I know they don’t know how to treat people like you. But I won’t leave you either. I would want a talk with you, alone. Agreed?”

“Double OK!” the thief said without a moment’s hesitation and gave the old teacher a chain of gold.

“Why do you put it in your pocket? Go and give it to that woman!” said the thief seeing the old man’s left hand going inside his pocket.

“That woman is my wife. She went to the nearest vegetable shop to purchase some goods, after the tea we had. She doesn’t even know that her chain is stolen. It was I who found it. Otherwise, you would have escaped with it,” the old teacher said.  

“Ok. Then talk,” the thief said restless.

“What is your name? And why do you steal?”

“To feed my wife, who is very young and has not learnt any art to survive, yet. And oh, my name is Habeeb,” the man in grey shirt said.  

“Why don’t you do any other work?”

“They ask for religion, cast and contacts and sometimes experience.”

“Don’t you have any of them?”

“Yes, I do have, but what I have, is not preferable in terms of acceptance.”

“What…what did you say?” the old teacher sneered at him. The words the thief said did not fit well coming from his mouth. They were words of the learnt… what I have, is not preferable in terms of acceptance.

“You trying to infuriate with those high words?” the old teacher was angry, this time.

“No, I did not! I am sorry, if it felt that way.” the thief said, that too sounded incongruous. He seemed a man of rough features and lack of any learning, but those words and now this sorry, all seemed out of the world with him.

“You don’t expect me to talk like this? I know. But do you realize now, what those people out there selling jobs might have barked at me with when they listened to what I had to say?” the thief said with a smile.

“Why don’t you find a better job and stop stealing other’s property?” sneering at the thief, the old man asked.

“What job do you mean?”

“Sell something, or try to get a government job. As a person with such wisdom, you sure will get one.”

 “You see that orange seller there?”

“Ya”

“Can you tell me what profit means, for him?”

“The money he earns after selling his goods.”

“How does he earn it?”

“By selling oranges in prices that are higher than what he had bought them for.”

“What do the clerks in the government offices do in Cannanore right now, when it is just half past four in the evening and a lot of works can be done? Night is still hours away.”

Silence.

“I know what makes you quiet, teacher,” the thief said. “Most people in government offices know nothing about the needs of the needy or what it means to be really hungry.”

“So?” the teacher asked; now calm.

“The orange seller tells everyone that his oranges are Rs: 40 a kilo when he had actually bought it for twenty. Do you know what that means?”

The old man tried to think it through. He felt his head reeling. There was a major crisis in front of him. At this moment, everything he had taught his students all his life supporting civilized life, against stealing or any other injustice, turned into a chaos. He covered his face with both his hands and wiped his face hard. Perhaps that had felt good. Opening his eyes, he said, “You are…” but before completing his words he realized that Habeeb, the thief in grey shirt, had vanished.

Also published in: http://yourstoryclub.com/short-stories-social-moral/social-short-story-city-thieves/

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