THE BHOOT IN THE RIVER


PART-I



Its so difficult to sleep these days…
The head ache has been very bad today. She hates such nights. Because, on such nights, the bhoot comes in her dreams.She clings on to her mother who is sleeping peacefully beside her.The vey thought of the bhoot is so frightening. Now, the headache seems so light, for all she can feel is the beat of her own heart. It feels like her heart would come out of her chest. Now, there is a pain in her chest.
She closes eyes tight, trying to keep the bhoot away. But, she knows, the bhoot is still there, in the shadows of the room, in shadows of her mind .

The night crawls on ...
And she waits for the bhoot to come.


She had just come back from school. It was her first day. She was so scared to go, but the school turned out to be a very nice place. She had fun playing with so many kids.
Amma had asked her to remove her uniform. But she wanted to go to Keerthi’s house and show them her new uniform. Keerthi is one year younger than her and was not old enough to go to school. She was running to Keerthi’s house when she heard the sream. She stood still for a moment. Then she ran faster.
Something had happened to Keerthi’s appa.His hands and legs looked scary and he was crying in pain. She was standing beside Keerthi.They did not know what had happened. Keerthi’s amma was crying very loudly. Many people had come rushing in to the house. A man came running in and knocked Keerthi to the floor. She started crying. Everyone was shouting. And she stood there, thinking what had happened to Keerthi’s appa.
It was amma who told her that a bhoot had caught Keerthi’s appa when he was fishing. The bhoot made Keerthi’s appa cry in pain. The bhoot in the river.

Amma had taken Keerthi also to her house that day.She had to share her food with Keerthi for a whole week after that day. There was no food in Keerthi’s house and her ama was always crying. All of them had to remain hungry because there was very little food. Her own Appa was sick and had not gone to work for two days.
Two days later, she saw the bhoot. It had come in her dream. She had screamed and woken up amma that night. She had cried the whole night and did not let amma sleep.

That happened two years ago. Her eyes still closed, she lets go of her amma’s hand. Now, she knows, Keerthi’s appa got hurt because the factories threw acid in the river. There is no bhoot, her teachers tell her everyday.

There is no bhoot. She opens her eyes. And there, in the darkness, she sees it. As clear as ever. The bhoot! It is real and it is waiting for her.
She screams.


PART-II


Its so difficult to sit in class when one is sleepy. She is trying hard to keep her eyes open. The teacher is reciting a poem. All her classmates are repeating the lines after the teacher. She is sitting there, staring at the black board.

STD-III
15/03/05
TRY, TRY! NEVER CRY!!

she had tried her best, but the bhoot just would not go away. It is coming every night now. And it has started talking to her.
When everyone goes to sleep, she does not know whether she is sleeping or not .All she knows is the fear.
The first time the bhoot came near her, the stench was unbearable. It felt like she was near the factories. The same stench.
Then it whispered in her ear, ”I’ll make u cry like I made keerthi’s appa cry. I’ll make your appa cry too. I live in the factory he works in. Cant u smell me when u pass by the factory?” And it started laughing. She was so scared to move, even to close her eyes. Her heart was beating hard against her chest and she realized that she was shaking very badly. Tears were rolling down her cheeks. She tried to scream, but could not.
The next day morning, she begged her appa not to go to the factory. She cried and she pleaded, but he did not listen to her. Amma tried explaining to her that if appa does not go to the Factory, they would not have any food to eat.
She is so scared for appa these days. She gets so tensed when appa doesn’t come home on time. She tried telling him, she tried telling everyone. But they don’t listen to her. They tell her there is no bhoot. No bhoot in the river and no bhoot in the factory. Nothing will happen to appa. He is safe.

But she knows, the bhoot is real and it is in the river. When people go fishing, it eats their flesh. And when they cry, it laughs at them.
She knows, the bhoot is real and it is in the factories. In the air. When people breathe, it eats up their throat and chest, like it eats up hers, every night.
One day, it’ll eat us all up.

She knows, because it told her. It tells her, every night.
But no one would listen to her.
Can’t they smell it’s stench when they go to the factories? Can’t they hear its deafening laughter when they fall sick and cry in pain?

She is crying now. The teacher is beside her. Headache, she tells the teacher. She takes her to a doctor who had come to the balvadi for a medical check up. He gives her two tablets. One for headache and the other for cold. ”you will be alright if u take these tablets every day morning. Now, don’t cry. Go to your class.” She is not moving. She is standing there, looking at the doctor. She starts crying again. The doctor puts his arm around her, ”what is it, child?”
She looks down. “Can you make the bhoot go away?”

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For those of you who are curious, the "she " in The Bhoot In The River lives in sipcot, cuddalore.If u really wanna know what she and the other kids are goin through in there, please visit the place urself.For no literature, no poetry, no reports and no photographs can recreate the trauma of being in sipcot, cuddalore.
U and me, alike are responsible for this deplorable state of affairs.
This story is the out come of the emotional turmoil i went through after visiting the palce and interacting with the kids.It was primarily written for me, myself to deal with my own emotions. As for 'her', she is with me always, like the bhoot is with her. And she keeps reminding me that, this life i lead is , but a meaningless act.

Wednesday, March 14, 2007

Random thoughts.....

In kerala,a backyard...a bucket in the middle of it...u look inside, u see a big bloody stone, something is sticking out of it..small, flesh coloured, bloody and purple... it looked gory...but i couldn't figure out what it is... while i listened to the investigation, i realized that it was newborn baby boy...crushed to death.. they take the baby out and put its small bruised and crushed body on to a banana leaf...
cant tell u what i was thinking or how i was shaking...
the baby was delivered by its mother, a nursing student,in the toilet of her nursing school hostel, killed with a stone and left there in the bucket.She attended that days classes, as any regular student would...
how can a mother kill the life that grew inside of her in such a fashion??
definitely...she must be the embodiment of evil on earth...one would think...
but one look at the terrified 19 year old gal...leaves u confused and disoriented and the emotion cannot be put in to words...
that affects u more than the baby itself... its mother... she doesn't understand what she s done...
19 years old, and already given birth to two kids, yes, one some years ago, the kid is now in some orphanage somewhere..both the times, the guys reponsible, are missing from the picture...
some pple, they went to shoot this.... after showing the dead baby s body from every angle possible for lingering moments which is still haunting me, they went to interview this girl,manu george, who was out on bail..
they meet her, and they got no questions to ask her.. they are dumb struck...not more than a kid herself...she talks to them... that her mom and dad have gone for work... and that she s alone at home now...these pple leave... no wait, she s coming after them, they stop...she has something to say?? no, she asks them.. will they come back??
one hears about a crime, all the wrath... all the criticism...is directed up on the one who committed it...the crime begins and ends with the criminal...
but here, one goes astray... trying to pin everything on this helpless girl who has no idea whats going on around and , and more than once has fallen prey to the exploitation of her biological vulnerability...

i check on the net, the next day morning, almost similar incident has taken place in USA, several years ago, the baby was delivered in the high school toilet, put in a trash bag, suffocated to death,and put in a trash bin... here again, the mother, a high school student, went to dance in the prom after this...

this disregard for the sanctity of life...and the failure of these kids to understand the importance of life...both the cases, one a high school student, and the other a nursing student who is supposed to serve and help the living and the dying...
is it a lack of education??
nope...
is it the lack of awareness??
well.....it is hard to believe that the importance of preserving life was not taught in the high school and the nursing school..or at the least, was not there in their "syllabus"..

or is it the indication( yet another one) of our collapsing social structure???

a pregnant lady...mentally ill....the roads her home...in trivandrum...
not understanding why her stomach was getting bigger day by day..started beating it in the middle of the road.. and created much disturbance to the public..(the cause of her pregnancy,rich guys who prowl the streets for such helpless females and use them in the night,..returning them exactly where they found them, in the morn)to heck with this nuisance, some pple take her to the medical college, there on the veranda of the medical college, with nurses and doctors bustling by...unattended, she spent some days..still uncomfortable with her condition.. and there..she give birth to her child..alone.. in blood and pain.. not understanding whats happening.. and scared..
this new life.. a nuisance once again, was given to some orphanage, and the lady...was replaced.. back on the road..

its time we take out the verb humane from our language...a quality of humans...it was... not anymore.. to me the word will have a different meaning form today... something dark and brutal.. something that makes me wanna throw up...

and thank god! naveen, me and vaishal shankar i met yesterday are monkeys!!

m gonna find a tree somewhere make it my home... away from humanity...for humanity if filth..its so murky that m scared I'll drown in it..

but, alas.. if i could find a tree....

thought i would run to the Himalayas..its being stripped of its vegetation coz foreigners come up with huge orders to buy these medicinal plants so that they can patent it..soon.. we'll see a bald Himalayas.

so, where'll i find a tree??

may be, I'll go to south America..Peru... there,only poachers, cocaine traffickers and cocaine plantation owners will threaten me...they are good at killing pple..most of the scientist who 've gone there to study the fauna and flora never returned.. hence it still remains the most unexplored forest area of the world...may be I'll dodge these pple and find a tree in peace..and one day, it'll be shattered..with me watching the poachers killing a friend of mine..

hey!! i know where I'll go, I'll go to the artic..with the ice being thawed...the thundra is predicted to move in... may be...a new forest will come ..wiping out the polar bear..but still...I'll definitely find a tree..or may be..the whole area will be flooded..very less hope there..
so, where'll go??

that night, after seeing the program, i went in to hibernation...inside this blanket..through out the next day also...only got out to have food and wash vessels..(washing vessels is in itself a meditating experience..i love it..u should try it sometime..)
yeah..also..checkin on the net for newborn killings..i almost threw up after Reading bout all that..so i returned to the security of my blanket..

when will oxygen cylinders come to market?? and when'll it be mandatory for every one to carry an oxygen cylinder on one's back?? and pple waiting in queue for a breathe of air??
air will also be privatised soon...and a piece of paper will decide who'll live...its very funny...u know what i think? i think we are evolving in the opposite direction....
that what we call evolution is not a positive effect...it is infact a negative one....we are so primitive compared to wild animals.. look at it, ok..
what would u call a perfect organisation?? one that is self sufficient..right??
our 'perfect' body is incapable of being self sufficient...so, the most efficient method would be to form a collection of beings and form a self sufficient network..this is what we c in nature...its perfect..
but what did we do??
with these individual bodies, that are incapable of self sufficiency,we broke lose of the chain...not wanting to compromise....but wanting to manipulate... and in the process... we became dependant on a million things...and with every step "forward"..our dependencies increased...and now, man has become the least self sufficient living thing on earth...
so u tell me, who is more evolved??

the sad part is..on this march towards reverse evolution...we've used up almost all of the natural resources, and destroyed everything in sight..
how can evolution be a positive effect when the result of it causes its own and the destruction of the very environment that facilitated it??
definitely....this negative evolution that somehow created the mistake called human beings....like weeds and parasites...i hope, one day will be wiped out from the face of the earth...
for i believe in nature... and she has always corrected her own mistakes...and her biggest blunder, us humans,..she'll take care...with forces unseen and un apprehended by us..
but i hope it happens as soon as possible..for i cant stand this suffering...this callousness..and above all..the sheer stupidity of humans in thinking that they are better than the rest...

have i lost hope??
nope...

okay...right now... i've got no reasons to tell u why i've not lost hope...yes, m disheartened...drained...
but somehow...somewhere inside of me says....

can u hear the hum? a silent murmur? its very feeble...but it is present...its existence cannot be denied...its the hum of resonance...of pple who think alike...of pple who dream of a green earth and smiling hearts everywhere...
and it makes me feel strong..for i know...m not alone..

i know...it might be stupidity to dream of something like that... or feel the hum... for may be this resonance is something i alone feel.. but it gives me strength to move ahead..

i read something from the dairy of a mad man... he had posted it after he got out from the asylum from the notebook he used to keep when in the asylum...it said,

i want to build a bridge between the hearts of every two pple i meet.. and i wanna go on doin this..untill the whole world is connected with these bridges between hearts and finally, i'll find the person i hate the most and build a heart between his heart and mine.....

2 comments:

simple_weekly said...

m

simple_weekly said...

i read ur thoughts and found that u are ashamed to be a human being or ur ashamed of their actions.... ur concern on such issues is gud... but lakshmivenugopal let me tell u this human beings are the most complicated creatured on earth... they are blessed with funny things like emotions and intelligence. Sometimes emotions guide intelligence and sometimes intelligence guides our emotions. Therefore people are also different with their emotion and intelligence. There is no right and wrong in this world. Everything is justified. justification is the only thing which exists. Ur concern or sympathy or social service will evoke the emotions in people for sometime but they will die down after sometime.

I m not writing this to prove ur thoughts are wrong. I just want to say that every action in this world is selfcentred. Whoever tries to say that they are gonna save the world there is a selfishness in it. The reason very simple, his individual interest of survival is there. Why he propogates because only collective efforts can achieve a goal.

But i dont mean to say ur tryin to save the world and ur selfish. But goin behind the theories set by people is not worthwhile. Because in the end u realise there is no such thing as right and wrong. But what u would have achieved will be some followers of ur thought or u following someone else thoughts.

Wht my advice to u is play ur part well. Do your karma thats what bhagavad gita says. But dont judge who is right and wrong.