This is an English translation of “Odiya Kalgal” written by G. Nagarajan. Translated into English by Saravanan Karmegam.
****
Exhausted legs (ஓடிய கால்கள்) by G. Nagarajan
This is an English translation of “Odiya Kalgal”
written by G. Nagarajan. Translated into English by Saravanan Karmegam.
****
The heat of the sun had started
scorching him almost half an hour ago. Lying on his back, he tried to move his
body and head to avert the heat. Turning the head wasn’t very difficult as the
movement in neck didn’t pose any problem. It was only his body that went stiff
as if the entire torso below his neck had been tied up tightly. A mere try of
forcible turn on one side sent a piercing pain in both knees, forcing him to
yell out a sharp cry in an attempt to lessen the pain.
The body lay motionless for some while—the body that had
gained the strength of a diamond over a period of twenty years, struggling in
dust and rocks, supporting his two hands that wielded nothing other than some
rudimentary tools of humankind in its fight with nature, obviously for the
return of nothing. It had lost its softness, become dark, and acquired a rough
protective skin instead, as a small seed he seemed to have earned in the course
of his struggles with life. On his arms and ribs were there bars of swelling
that looked unusually odd. Streaks of clotted blood looked like ruby. His body
bore some black lines here and there, especially on his chest, with four or
five centimetres in width; a dirty dhoti below his waist. If your eyes are
sharp enough, you can see his knees were swollen a bit and visible above the
dhoti. They were just immobile. The round-shaped sunlight in the size of a one
rupee coin fell on his hand. Though it played a truant game, the scorch on its
face burnt like a copper sheet. The body moved the neck and got the eyes
opened. His body shook with a big sigh; the tongue dried up, and it emitted a
sharp, shrilling yell, “water.”. The body became him.
“Umm…ater…” the meek sound entered his ears. He turned and
saw a policeman standing beyond the grills of the lock-up room.
“Ayya…please, some water,” his body implored.
The policeman ran to the station telephone that gave out a
long ring and was glued to it for some time. He then lit a beedi and sat on a
chair.
“Ayya, please give me some water. Do you want me to die
without water?” he pleaded.
“You…motherfucker!” shouted the policeman, threw out the
beedi, and jumped off the chair swinging, circling his baton.
“Three of us would have been sacked today. Who could catch
you if it was late even by half an hour? The market gets busy
today. You don’t enjoy the privilege of a regular briber to get us
lenient today. Do you?”
A very pricking fact indeed. He was a prisoner, a prisoner
who tried to escape. He fought with the powers regulating the law and order.
This was the result of not having enough freedom. He forgot his dried-up
tongue. Yet, his memory didn’t fail him. It was an eccentric peril that
happened between nine and ten in the morning. They took him to the hospital
that night, obtained a medical certificate, and brought him back to the
lock-up. He would have got up at half past eight in the morning and understood
that he had been kept as one among the ten or twelve prisoners in a corridor behind
the police station. Others had gotten up much earlier. Seven or eight policemen
were busy walking across in the police station.
Those who were in the police station were going out, and some
new policemen were coming in, changing their dresses, puffed cigarettes, had
some lighthearted fun with others, and sometimes were critical of something,
talking and laughing aloud. All the prisoners who were around him were either
talking among themselves or with people who came from outside or with police
officials. Sometimes they were found arguing with them too. The policemen and
prisoners were busy brushing their teeth, washing it off, cleaning their mouths
after eating the snacks, and standing aside so unconcerned with the big tub
near the corridor, which was replete with water and the water flowing out of
pipes. He grew jealous at seeing them. But his jealousy was the result of
inebriation he hadn’t yet gotten over. He wasn’t gifted with patience. It
didn’t rather appear to be an essential character he must possess.
His curled body that lay under a roof in the corridor
suddenly got up, sat, and paced to the spot as if attempting to separate the
police station from the corridor. The joyous city outside was in its usual
mirth. He crossed the doorway and stepped into the police station. A boy
carrying an empty tea glass holder brushed against him and raced past the
police station. He just followed the footsteps of the boy. Neither he nor the
boy was stopped by anyone. He just escaped from the B-4 police station. Like an
arrow shot through the air without turning to either side, he sped away,
walking fast that bore a near-resemblance to running, completely indifferent to
the sounds made around him, which reminded him of his furtive escape with the
stolen paddy grains tied in his waist pouch when he was a small boy.
Then? A hand grasped him from behind as he ran fast, then he
had a head-on collision with a truck, was then caught, kicked, tied tightly,
brought to the police station, and beaten to pulp with batons, belts, and
shoes. Finally, while lying on his back, he was hit on his knees with batons by
two policemen who would have lost their jobs had he not been caught. All these
thoughts stood outside the boundary of his memory and seemed to be struggling
to find a way to get into it.
He just felt to speak with someone.
“Ayya, please give me some water.” He reiterated his appeal
once again.
“You need water!” The policeman who was on duty went out,
without being overtly bothered about the trouble of going out, ran to the
corridor with all his enthusiasm, filled a bucket with water, and threw it on
his face and body. Though the splash of water caused a burning sensation at
some places on his body, water seemed soothing for him.
“Hello, yettaiya! (Colloquial term for Head
constable), who do you bathe now?” A young policeman came in asking the
former.
“The one who escaped in the morning. It’s for him.”
“Is it that mother…cker?” the young policeman stared at the
prisoner intently and took off his belt. “Yettaiya, open the lock-up for a
minute,” he spoke as if giving an order.
“Don’t take trouble, Santhanam; they have almost shredded
him. He is lying like a corpse and yelling out for water”
“Mother…cker! He would have left three families standing on
the street by now. Please open the lock-up yetta ya ya.
Yettaiya gave him the lock-up key. The prisoner was watching
the enactment of that drama without flinching a move. His face just turned
towards the open door. That was it all; a flash of the whip with the leather
belt hit his eyes. A sense of alertness ran high in the prisoner. He closed his
eyes, clenched his teeth lightly, and lay motionless. His knees developed a
sudden, unbearable pain. He couldn’t either lift or turn his hands. He could
only move his left hand, of which the wrist hadn’t yet been broken. His face
and shoulder blades were repeatedly smacked. Spittle on his face. None of it
had any impact on him. He didn’t move an inch. Eventually, his knees were
targeted with rash beatings. He gave out a helpless yell, “Aiyo…aiyo.”. Tears
came out, sneaking through his closed fists, covering his face. The young
policeman fixed his belt on his waist, visibly satisfied with his efforts of
showing the prisoner a hell.
The prisoner wasn’t aware that there was one more policeman
yet to come. Out of three who would have lost their jobs, only two had paid him
their visits. The third one was two-not-six, aged about forty, and wouldn’t get
involved in any petty scuffles with others. As he had possessed a qualified,
graded electrician certificate, Grade A or B, he was earning some extra income
through legal means. He never allowed bribery in his dealings. But at the same
time, he wasn’t contemptuous of people who had bribing as their ethical way of
life, nor betrayed them. He would never open his mouth to slander others.
Without any ‘black mark’ on his career, he could complete his twenty years of
service. Today, he had the test of his life.
Beatings, kicks, disgrace, inebriation that hadn’t yet died
down, a sort of unsullied peace lying under all these, and a smugness of having
borne all these tortures—all these seemed to have induced sleep in the
prisoner. He was blissfully unaware of the lock-up door being opened, the entry
of two-not-six into the cell, his close examination from head to toe, and his
mild kick with legs. Two-not-six bent down, arched lower, examined the
prisoner’s motionless body closely, and pulled the prisoner’s jaw. The body
moved straight without showing any signs of movement in it. Two-not-six glanced
at the body fixedly as if the body and the direction it was lying had some
untold importance. He then silently went around the body once, diligently
surveyed its various parts, and then resumed his work.
The prisoner’s body couldn’t shield itself from the teasing
of innate feelings and brutish attacks for long. Very soon, it went stiff with
the overwhelming fear. Every part of it shivered separately. Every nook of the
body had felt the impact of vicious whacks that had made his nerves go frail
and stopped them from functioning at its commands. Crackles devoured the
muscles; a sheer shock almost akin to a heart jumping out like a ball with the
poisonous bites of a scorpion; ears that got blocked; the pulls of dermis
preventing the eyes from opening; a meek moan from the bottom of the throat pit
that came with froth seeking water— Two-not-six didn’t bother to watch all
these. He just switched off the lights. Two-not-six was immensely happy that
his electrical knowledge, which would otherwise have helped him earn a good
amount of money during off-duty hours honourably, and solve electrical problems
in police stations to earn a very good reputation, had now helped him to avenge
a prisoner who would have caused irreparable damage in his career with his
attempt to escape.
***End***
