Original Story in Hindi: चीख: धीरेन्द्र अस्थाना
The Scream, Translated by: Bhuvendra Tyagi
The moment shone like fear in deep darkness was when I was told that Kunni had left the house.
Has gone? Where has he gone? How did he go? How can Kunni go from home? There were questions that surrounded me from all around; and to avoid those questions, I looked at my wife’s face, sometimes my mother’s, my son’s and Deepak’s, who had not yet returned from work.
Most often, I used to return from office by around nine-ten at night. Ate food till eleven- thirty and went to sleep by the time it was twelve. I was supposed to get up at six in the morning, but I used to get up at eight. Then I had to get ready hurriedly and somehow managed to get to the footboard of the nine-naught-five bus in the morning, which stopped directly in front of my office. Amid such a schedule, where was the time to talk to mother or derive information regarding Kunni? Only on Sundays, I used to meet mother formally. But today I was caught, and that too, with such an information that had handed over my body to silence.
‘When did he leave?’ I asked slowly.
‘He has not been around since noon.’ Mother’s voice was so empty that it felt as if Kunni was sitting inside that voice.
Kunni was my immediate brother, nearly thirty years old. Then there was Deepak, twenty-five years old. He was a photo compositor with some press. Mother, Deepak and Kunni lived in one part of the house and I lived in another part with my wife and son.
Every crafty man, who does not want to get caught up in the unnecessary domestic mess, who wants to see the wife as well as the mother somewhat independent and happy, adopts this arrangement of living together but separately.
Five years ago, our father had collapsed over the table in his office while doing overtime. Shortly after that, we came to know that now he would remain only in images and memories.
‘Amma!’, Kunni had asked in his heavy, fearful but weak voice, ‘Amma! Daddy died?’
‘Get lost from here,’ Mother screamed, ‘you wretched one! Had you died, it would have been better.”Why would I die?’ Kunni protested in the same voice and started loitering in the verandah where the father’s body was kept before the funeral, as he chanted, ‘Listen you, why would I die?’
Outside the house, darkness had reached the alleys and was touching the sky. The lights inside the house were burnt, like a counter-protest. I was still surrounded by mother, my wife and son – and they were cursing my decision to come home early.
‘He got my curse.’ God knows to whom mother was whining. During this time, a dazed darkness had descended upon the soul of mother. Perhaps she was in deep sorrow with her anxious eyes and distressed wrinkles that had developed today only. I looked at my wife, an embodiment of complaint.
‘I searched for him in the entire colony. I did not find him anywhere.’ My wife immediately conveyed her alertness. ‘Now we should lodge a complaint with the police.’
Police? My face twirled in the memory of an unnamed terror. The police, the court and the hospital used to remind me of those sorrowful spirits who can throw anybody out of life, once they cling to him. Just like Kunni, who was gone. First out of the world, and now, even outside the security of home – swirling round and round in the step well of hunger, cold, abuse, stone and hatred, wiping his bloody face, sobbing amid grief, torture and surprise.
I felt like a scream had arisen and was hanging in the darkness of the ceiling. I was sweating profusely.
×××
When someone is absent, we feel how meaningful his presence was. As long as father was there, only his presence was there; when he was no more, we realized how his absence had brought along innumerable sorrows and memories. When Kunni was there, only his presence was there. Now that he was not there, he was present in every nook and corner of house, in every bit of our memories.
On February 23, in the cusp of the evening and night, I had been informed that Kunni had left home. Today is the 15th of March. Twenty-one days have passed after Kunni left. Twenty one days, outside the house?
What didn’t happen in these 21 days? The police report was already lodged. A customary missing advertisement was published in the newspaper. His face was shown on Doordarshan. Deepak and his friends had roamed around in various areas, searching for him. Offerings to the Gods and Goddesses had been pledged in many temples, astrologers had been consulted. My wife used to ask various questions to the mother every morning while identifying unknown dead bodies in the newspaper. But mother was clinging to a small, frail branch of hope. It never occurred to Mother that Kunni could be killed by cold, hunger or even a truck.
‘I do not think that an incapable, weak-minded brother of two capable brothers would die like this, unclaimed. I don’t think so at all.’
Mother would try to throw at us a piece of her faith, clinging to that branch of hope and I felt that mother’s conviction was pushing me behind the cold, hard and stony prison of a crime, a crime which I had not committed, after all. While remembering Kunni’s face, I myself was being faceless, as if drowning and rising in the whirlpool of helplessness and sorrow.
‘Had we come to know that he had died, we would have cremated him …’ Sometimes mother would even say like this, ‘If he had died, he would have got liberation. We would have wept two or four days, what else? After all, your father died too! Everyone is bound to die, but what is it when one disappears? Is not this like torture for a lifetime? If he is alive, don’t know how he is doing?’ Mother kept mumbling and my wife would start searching for the news of the dead Kunni in the pages of the newspaper with more urgency.
‘Must have died, poor fellow!’ One day my wife said with regret, ‘No matter how he was, he used to do a lot of work for me—storing water, grinding wheat … how much trouble I am facing in his absence!’
Trouble? More than the trouble, it felt like the whole house was covered with death.
‘Brother! Give me a bidi.’ He used to come to me every morning with his sole request in his heavy, frightened, yet weak voice, just when I was about to leave for office. How empty everything seems now!
Now the heavy sound of his constantly moving footsteps was not heard on the roof anymore, in his part of the house. Now Deepak lies silently at night. Earlier, there were the bouts of Kunni’s loud scolding and his screams accompanying every scolding, ‘Damn you, I will kill you. I am older than you. Is this how one talks to elders?’ Deepak and mother used to laugh loudly at Kunni’s admonishment. Then mother used to say in an affectionate tone, ‘Talk to Kunni properly, Deepak. He is your elder brother after all. He used to walk with you in his lap before going mad.’
Then a colorful bundle of memories would open in another part of the house and some pieces of it would keep coming in my ears, until I would fall asleep.
Now the other part of the house is immersed in silence all the time. Along with the mother, the voice of Deepak has also been paralyzed.
Where were we, when Kunni went mad? I try to remember. How old was he when he went mad? Probably ten. He had returned after failing again. Father pulled the waist belt and tuned him. The blue marks trembled and twisted all over his body for several days.
‘When I sit down to read, I hear your scream.’ He used to say to mother often.
Those days, mother’s scream was a regular pain during the nights. Every night father used to find some reason to beat mother. Deepak and myself were accustomed to mother’s howling, but Kunni sometimes lost his patience and confronted father with adult retaliation, at that young age of nine or ten years. In such a situation, father used to tune him too.When events happen, they don’t seem as mysterious as they seem in memories, after they have happened. Today, I shiver when I recall my father’s numerous crazy and difficult efforts to cure Kunni! Mother’s scream had got stuck in Kunni’s soul and father wanted to absolve mother of the scream, to apologize to her for his crime.
The guilty feeling must have been growing strongly inside him, so much so that he suddenly passed away on his office table. Perhaps mother’s scream stuck in Kunni’s soul would have overshadowed his tolerance.
‘Who would have fed him?’ It was the twenty-fourth day after Kunni had left when mother got the opportunity and asked me.
‘Mother!’ I was shocked. ‘Do you still believe he is alive?’
‘Had he died, wouldn’t I have known it! I am the mother of that weak-minded boy. He had got mad due to me, didn’t he!’ Mother remembered the scream clinging to Kunni’s consciousness with such earnest desperation that I froze.
×××
On the twenty-fifth day i.e. March 19, Kunni returned. It was nine o’clock in the night, and I went to open the door when I heard a knock. It was Kunni.
‘Brother! Give me a bidi!’ Faced with me, he made his only request in his heavy, fearful, but weak voice.
‘Where did you go?’ My eyes were being overwhelmed with surprise. It was Kunni, exactly like him. He was alive and nothing had happened to him.
‘I? Nowhere.’ Kunni started twisting his fingers.
‘Do you know, you have returned after twenty-five days?’ I tried to scrape him to find an answer.
‘Who, I? No, brother! Give me a bidi’, he requested again.
It was pointless to ask him anything. I handed him over to the mother who still clung to that small branch of hope.
Later one day, he told mother that he heard mother’s scream one fine day and immediately returned home.
How a strange man like him dealt with hunger, cold, thirst, sleep, defecation, bidi, cruelty and hatred for twenty-five days – is still a mystery to the entire household.
Later, for several days, we kept speculating about his whereabouts for all these days. Where did he sleep? What did he eat? Where did he defecate? He has this peculiar habit of drinking water at least thirty-forty times a day and of urinating as soon as he drinks water. There was no scratch on his body. Only his beard had grown and the shirt-pajama had worn had become shabby.
The house became busy, stricken by Kunni’s presence just like before, but his absence for twenty-five days, which seemed mysterious to me initially, later filled me with grief.
The fact that I could not stay outside my house in this cruel, difficult world for five days, leave alone twenty-five days gave me the greatest sorrow. Like him, without arms.
Can you do it?
Don’t you hear screams like I do?
About the Author
Dhirendra Asthana has worked with the renowned media houses of India like the Times of India and Indian Express group. He has been an accomplished journalist and author for the last 45 years. He has published 46 short stories, 8 short story collections, 4 novels and autobiography. He has received many awards including National Culture Award which was conferred to him by painting maestro MF Husain. Contact : dhirendraasthana(at)gmail(dot)com
About the Translator
Bhuvendra Tyagi works with the Times of India group. He is a journalist, author and translator. He has published 12 books, has written more than 2,500 articles, many documentaries and broadcasted more than 250 programs on various radio stations including BBC. Contact : bhuvtyagi(at)gmail(dot)com
