Fate

Not so sure if this story really works. But here it is anyway. Comments much appreciated.

We meet, as appointed, in a park in the center of the city. You survey our meeting point with a lifted, quizzical eyebrow. I see your lip curl, from the look on your face I know that you don't think that this dry, brown strip of land, bounded by a low gate and roads on either side, could be called a "park." Buildings rise, blocking out the sun. The few plants that grow are stumpy, withered things, accustomed to noise, pollution and darkness.

But it is not this that I wish you to see. Look - here, this is the spot. Right under that dessicated stump of a tree, that looks like an ogre's fist, branch-like fingers rising from the earth. Bend with me, here. Kneel. Thrust your fingers into this dark barren ground, and dig.

You ask me why we dig. I tell you that when we dig, we will find the answer to the question you asked, a year and a day ago, as we watched the silver hood of a mercedes, glistening with blood, crumple as it smashed into a wall. There was a body, dead in a car, and another one, sprawled on the ground, innards spilling onto the tarred road.

You had shook your head, as you snapped a picture ("For tommorow's newspaper" -you told the policemen who pushed you away).

I watched you walk to the other side of the road. You had bought a cigarette from the tiny kiosk on the corner of the pavement. As you lit your cigarette, you exchanged words with the kiosk-owner. You both wondered at fate, at tragedy. You had asked, as you watched those young, fragile bodies borne away - strangely, bodies of the same age, faces, that despite the blood and the broken bones, looked distrubingly alike - you had asked whether a man's fate was ordained from the moment he was born, or whether it was something he made?

The kiosk-owner had shaken his head. He didn't know. You didn't notice me, standing in the shadows, by your shoulder, listening to you speak. Even then, I knew the answer to your question. I have dogged your steps for a year, even as you forgot the sight of those crumpled, bloody bodies, the answer on my lips. For a year and a day, I have waited to tell you.

And the time is now.

Yes, you've found it. That piece of plastic, torn - and that condom, dirty and brown, after twenty-five years in the ground. It was this packet, this condom, that Ashok Lal carried in his pocket, as he drove past this park.

I see you frown. The name rings a bell. Who is Ashok Lal, you ponder, and why is he important?

Step with me into the past. The years swirl past us, and now we stand on green, verdant grass. The ogre's fist is hung with leaves. The park is bigger and wider. Couples stroll. The sun is begginning to set, and the couples start to disappear into quiet, dark corners.

Walk with me to the edge. You see that woman? The one in the pink sari, with matching pink lipstick? Look at her closely. Memorise her face, her shape, her smile.

Careful, don't step on that bush. See, it shakes, in the twilight. There's a couple on the other side. You can hear them groan.

Aah. Here he comes. Ashok Lal, in his red maruti 800, with a sputtering engine. He doesn't look like much, in his faded trousers and white-grey shirt. I see you start, as you stand next to me.

Yes, you've recognized him. He has changed his name, to the far more numeralogically correct and astrologically favoured Kumar Ashok Lal Singh. He looks different in your time - the years have fattened him, lined his face, thinned his hair - the years have turned this diminutive looking young man into the stout, fat, khadi-garbed politician, with a following of thousands.

But right now, as he, steers his maruti 800 onto the bylanes of the park, he's plain Ashok Lal, a sales manager in a tiny export office. But his day will come. His cunning, miserly mind will help him plot his rise. His hard work will see him promoted. Eventually, he will seduce his boss's ugly, impressionable daughter. He will marry her and inherit his boss's small business. Under his leadership, the business will grow, lakhs will turn to crores, as he seeks shadier, illegal means of making money. His belly begins to grow, keeping pace with his bank balance. When you finally see him, for the first time, he has completed his metamorphosis and turned into the politician you hate and revile, whose perfidy you seek to expose.

But now, watch him as he slows his maruti 800. Yes, he's looking at the women clustered by the pavement. They are all whores. He stops by the one in the pink sari. Her name is Rani - but that's not the name she was born with.

Ashok Lal stops his car. He gestures to Rani to get in. She shakes her head - only yesterday, her friend, Pinky, suffered a bad experience with a client in a car. Rani is wary today. Ashok Lal parks, puts on a steering-lock, and rolls up his window. When he's locked the car, Rani and he walk over to the tree, the one shaped like an ogre's fist.

Yes, you lean forward, eager. You can here them whisper, fiercely. You wonder what they talk about. Nothing much, I can tell you. Ashok is trying to beat down Rani's price.

After some haggling, they disappear into the shadows by the tree.

I know you want to hear, you want to see. But the darkness is too thick, and the air too heavy with sound.

No matter. I will tell you what happens. Ashok lifts Rani's pick sari. He presses her against the rough tree trunk. As his breathing quickens, he reaches for the condom in his pocket and tears open the packet. But, in the darkness, Rani moves and the packet falls from Ashok's grasp. He curses. Rani curses. For a few moments they grope the ground, to no avail. They fail to find the packet, lying on the other side, tucked under a root - the same packet that you dug up.

Rani tries to move away, but Ashok has grabbed her shoulder. Rani shrugs. It's happened before. Why forgo good money, she thinks?

You can guess what happens next.

A moment later it's over. Rani holds her hands out for the money. Ashok refuses to give her the price agreed upon. They stand there, arguing, even as Ashok's sperm swims up Rani's womb.

Rani's voice rises. A moment later, Ashok is surrounded by a bevy of whores. They outnumber him. He looks around - only clients and whores, there's not a policeman in sight. He scowls and hands over the money. He walks away, hands thrust in his pocket, muttering curses under his breath.

Rani tucks the note into her pink blouse. She straightens her sari and returns to the pavement. Ashok is the only first of three clients that night.

By the time dawn comes, she's exhausted. She's no longer in the park - that's her 'freelance' work - she's in Number 8, G B Road, a brothel. By the end of the night,
she's forgotten Ashok and their altercation, even though his sperm has fused with an ovule, and a fertilized ovum now drifts through her fallopian tubes, towards her uterus. She forgets to take her 'medicine' - the nasty concotion Ronny, her pimp, has given her to take immediately after unprotected sex, to prevent pregnancies.

The next day she's in bed with a cold. Ronny, although disgruntled, knows a sick whore won't have any takers. She spends the rest of the week in bed. The ovum takes hold in her uterus and, by the end of the week, a tiny heart has begun to take shape.

By the time she realizes she's pregnant, two months have gone by. Three months go by before she works up the nerve to tell Ronny. She knows he will be upset. A friend suggests she tries an concotion, made for her by the neighbourhood quack, that will definately induce a miscarriage. Rani tries it. She gets a bad stomachache and bleeds. That's the end of the matter - she thinks.

But it isn't it. The child inside her clings to life. It's only a month later that she realizes that she hasn't miscarried. There's a definfate bulge around her midriff. Ronny notices. He beats her that night, but not hard enough to dislodge that little life growing inside her.

See? Can you see? You can't. But I can see that heart, beating inside her, that tiny head, those veins and bones and muscles forming. I can see Rani's smile on that tiny face, I can see Ashok's clever, cunning eyes.

Ronny tells her that he will take her the following morning to Koki Bai, the woman who lives on the next street, who performs all manner of services for the residents of GB Road, services that involve, according to rumour, twisting one, sharpened end of clothes-hanger into one's orfices.

Rani is terrified of this, terrified by the memory of Silky, the nepalese girl with almond-shaped eyes, who bled for five days after this procedure was done to her, then disappeared. Ronny said she had gone home - but what Pinky and the others tell Rani is that Silky died.

Rani packs her clothes that night, and when Ronny is asleep, drunk, the other whores sneak her out.

Rani has some money, from her 'freelance' clients like Ashok Lal, stored away. For a few months, she shelters with Aunty Lilavati, a former prositute at Ronny's, who has now gone solo. Despite Lilavati's advice, Rani refuses to abort. The clothes hanger, with it's twisted, pointed end, haunts her dreams. She is scared of dying, scared of pain.

But two months later, during her seventh month, her labour pains start. She's taken to the hospital. Just as she's wheeled into the delivery room, another couple enter the hospital.

You stiffen beside me. You recognize the man leading the pregnant, sad-eyed woman inside the hospital. Your breathing quickens. I hear your heart beat a tattoo in your chest.

You watch him hustle her, tenderly, into a wheel chair. You watch her grunt, with pain, tears coursing down her face. You watch her in the delivery room, as she finally squeezes out a frail, tiny scrap of flesh. A baby, two months premature. A nurse rushes with an incubator. You watch the baby, gently lowered in. You watch as the sad woman, sweaty, tendrils of damp hair plastered to her forehead, cries. She turns her head to watch as the baby is wheeled away.

Come, tear yourself away. Come with me, to the ward next door - where Rani is, her feet splayed, a head emerging between her thighs. A shriek, and the baby slips out. It's two months early - but it's still a lusty, bawling thing. Rani sinks back onto the pillows, weakily. Her eyes close, as the baby cries.

A moment later, just as the nurse exits the ward, baby in hand, she is dead.

It's midnight now. The nurse on duty, watching over the premature infants, is the one who assisted at Rani's labour. She frequently glances at the the baby in the right crib, a weak, fragile child - the one born to the sad-eyed woman.

A few minutes past midnight, and the machines connected to the right crib begin to beep. The nurse darts across the room, leans over the crib. There is nothing she can do. She sighs.

It's then that she looks at the baby in the adjacent crib. Rani's baby.

A thought flickers.

Should she? She resists, for a moment.

She bites her lip and glances at the crucifix hanging over the door. It could be a fault of the flickering tube light - but it seems, in that moment, that the body nailed to the cross, moves, the head lifts, and the eyes stare at her directly.

She jumps back, startled. She looks, a second later, at the crucifix. It is still now, a piece of dead wood. Did she imagine the movement?

But her mind is made up. Her arms extend of their own accord. It is almost as if she in a dream, or a hallucination. In a minute her work is done - the infants have been exchanged, and Rani's child has taken the place of the dead baby.

It's then that nurse hears a gasp. Startled, she turns around - to look into the bespectacled, myopic eyes of the sad woman's husband, father of the dead child.

The minutes tick by. Finally, the man turns, to look at the squealing infant who has taken his son's place.

He nods - curt, brisk - and walks away.

The nurse exhales, finally, relieved.

I feel you tremble beside me. You pull away. Your eyes are filled with pain, with hate. You tell me I lie, you accuse me of distorting the truth.

That's what they all say. But I look at you, and in the pain in you face, I see doubt.

Come, take my hand.

The walls shake, the lights flicker, the ground moves. The years tumble past, as we travel through time. Finally, the movement stops. The walls have been repainted, the floor is smooth marble instead of rough concrete. It is day now, people scurry past. The cries of new born infants and women in labour fill the air.

We walk past rows of infants, and ascend the stairs. The floor above is filled with the scent of death, filled with wasting faces, inert bodies, beeping machines and IV drips.

You beg me to stop. You grip the bannister with one hand. You tell me that you can't continue. You try to wrench your hand from my grasp.You plead with me to desist.

I can't. You must know. I pull you to your feet, pull you past the dying. We stop in front of a door. I push it open.

Inside, your father lies on the hospital bed, thin and shrunken. His words are a whisper, his breath a rattle in his chest.

I see the tears stream down your face, hear sobs choke your throat. You stumble. I hold out my hand and you grab it. You turn your face to mine - and I see it, tear-stained, stricken.

You see yourself, sitting by his bedside. He beckons you to come closer. His breath is hot on your cheek, as you lean over him.

He speaks, but you can't make out the words. He moves back, stares in your face. The machines start to beep. He still stares at you. It's only when the nurse rushes in, followed by the doctor, that you realize that he has died.

But even then, as you stumble out the room, tears blinding you, you feel his eyes following you, his glance burning your back.

What was he trying to say?

This gift I give you - his answer. His shade comes to us, stepping forth from the shadows, wearing his gaunt, withered face. He raises his bony hands to touch you. He speaks now, the words have lain waiting on his tongue for years, the words that he feared to speak, the words that came too late. He tells you now that you are not the son who was born to him.

For years he believed, that this knowledge would not alter your fate. He loved you. Did the truth matter? But now, in the presence of death, he realizes differently. He realizes that you can not escape fate, that it will pursue you to your end. The fabric of his life is spread out before him, the things unknown and invisible revealed. He knows a man's life is shaped by his birth, and that your fate is impossible to escape. There is a neatness, a pattern, a shape to it. By with-holding the truth, he has condemned you to your fate.

Come, take my hand. Time flashes past. We return to the park, a few moments before we our appointment.

Look up. The sun dazzles your eyes. But do you see those figures, meeting on the rooftop of that building? Look closely. You see yourself and you see Kumar Ashok's henchman, Chand Lal.

And there - in the distance, do you see Kumar Ashok? His bulk seems to block the sun, throws a black, menacing shadow. His face is impassive, although sweat drips down his forehead. There is venom in the glances he darts at you, there is pure hate in the look you return.

He hates the pieces you've been writing about him. The ones that accuse him of corruption, of nepotism, of bribing the electorate. The pieces published in Indian newspapers and foreign publications. He pulled strings - he's got you removed from your job. He thought that would silence you. But it hasn't.

You revile him. He has come to symbolize everything you fight against. The way the 'system' works in favor of the plutocrat, victimizes the down-trodden and enriches the already rich.

But it's more than that. In fighting him, you feel you are avenging the ignominious death of your father - an honest man, a small man, who lost his job as an engineer in a factory due to Kumar Ashok's wheeling and dealings. You fought for him, you used your pen and your camera to evoke his voice, to capture his despair - the despair of the individual, lost in the larger scheme of things, of a small life destroyed by the whims of conglomerates and Big Business.

And yet, you both fail to see the similarities - the clever, cunning eyes. The persistence that characterizes every endeavor. The ambitious, ruthless streak. Father and son. It's genetics that causes you to confront each other, to battle for supremacy, that has equipped you with the skills to fight each other. But you don't know that.

And it's fate that has brought you here.

Chand Lal opens a briefcase. It is filled with wads of money. He pushes it toward you.

You take it. You turn, to the parapet, and shake the briefcase. The wads of cash fall out. You see an urchin, far down below, jump up as he tries to catch a note, as it flies past, borne by the wind.

Kumar Ashok grabs you from behind. He is furious. His veins bulge, his face is contorted in a grimace.

Your eyes are bloodshot. You're at the end of tether. You wrestle him to the parapet.

For a moment, you are lost from sight. Next to me, you squirm, impatient, eager to discover what happens next.

You pull out a gun.

The sound of a gunshot rips through the air.

A moment later, a body falls from the rooftop, past eleven storeys, and lands, face down, in the park below, by a tree shaped like a fist.

Come, come with me. Help me turn this body over.

We turn over the body. Blood stains your hands and mine.

You start. You scream.

It's your face, squashed and broken, staring back at you.

You hit me. You scratch at my hands with your nails. You curse me.

I'm used to this. Your hands, your curses - they have no affect on me. Every one screams, at this point. Everyone curses.

Eleven stories above us, Chand Lal checks for a pulse on Kumar Ashok, and tries to staunch the blood flowing from the wound in his chest. Some one else calls for an ambulance. It's futile, I can tell you. I have an appointment with Kumar Ashok in a few moments.

You stare at your body on the ground, and then at the tree shaped like a fist, a few steps away from us. You finger the broken, brown packet in your pocket. You see the beginning and the end of your life, a few steps away from each other.

You asked, a year and a day ago, whether fate is ordained.

You have your answer.

Fate is cruel, you say. I call it a sense of humor.

You ask me who I am.

You don't need to ask. You've guessed - haven't you?