STORYMIRROR

Hope

Hope

20 mins
235


Never mind what the name of the place is. Never mind to which community the people belong. Never mind what their names are. This is just the story of a human being who suffers for no fault of his, all his life. There are lakhs of such human beings around the world, suffering untold misery every day. Who cares? To avoid any biased judgments, let us not name the characters.


X woke up in a shock. He had a nightmare. He sat up on the bed, switched on the light beside the bed and looked at the small clock on the peg table. It was just 2.15 a.m. He remembered having seen the time last at 12.45 a.m. He tried to recollect the last thing that he did before closing his eyes. He was reading J’s letter, which he received from his home town. It was a heart-rending letter and took X back to those horrifying days that he spent in his home town. No wonder he had a nightmare.


X could sleep no more. He kept turning from one side to the other. He was in no mood to sit up and read. He loved darkness and so switched off the light. It was a paradox. Though he feared darkness, he loved it too, for he felt peaceful in the silence of the nights. How he wished all his nights were peaceful!


X was born in the middle of a raging war in his home town. He later often wondered how people could make love when the whole country was in tension and everybody’s life was ever in danger. It is very strange and surprising that nature ensures life goes on even in the worst of the situations. If not, how is his country, where ethnic violence is on for the last fifteen years, able to continuously supply activists, when lakhs and lakhs of people are being slain every year? That is really strange! X had never known what was peace, until he arrived in this country. In fact, he got so used to the sound of missiles and gunshots that absolute silence disturbed him, in the beginning.


He vividly remembered that first day, when he ‘saw’ violence, in the sense, he realised that was violence. Until then he was too young to realise what was happening and would only get scared of loud noises. X was around 4 years old and was playing with his friends in his courtyard. Suddenly there was chaos on the street outside. Curiosity forced the kids to look out of the gate. A huge group of people armed with swords, guns, cycle chains and what not and shouting slogans were marching on the street. 


His mother came out of the house, hearing the noise and tried to pull all the children inside. But the children were adamant and wanted to watch the fun. Before the mother could forcefully pull them inside, the incident occurred. The group broke open the door of the house opposite his house, pulled out Y uncle, his brother, his two teenage sons and his old father and started shooting at them. In a few seconds, the whole street was coloured red and all the women who came out of the house were wailing by the side of the street. The group marched on triumphantly, as though they had done something great.  


X and his friends were shocked and started crying. His mother fell swoon. There was utter confusion. X could not understand what was happening. He just remembered having fallen beside his mother and when he opened his eyes, he was lying beside his mother on the bed and his father, grandmother, sister and uncle were all looking at them worriedly. The moment he opened his eyes, he remembered that terrible scene and once again started crying, hugging his mother.  


“Why did they kill Y uncle and his children? What did they do? Are they bad?”

“Son. You don’t bother about all that. The people who killed them are bad. You don’t get scared. Sleep now.”

“Then, will they come and kill us also one day?”


Nobody could answer that innocent question. All of them were crying and trying to comfort X. X did not go to school for nearly a month after that incident. He was in eternal fear. Even to go to the bathroom, he would want his mother or father to accompany him. He never stepped out of his main door. The moment he heard some noise, he would run and hug his mother. After a month when his mother took him to school, he was not happy and cried a lot. The school was surrounded by soldiers wielding guns and his mother said they would take care of the children. But the very look of soldiers scared him all the more. Nothing that the teacher said entered his head. Some of his friends could be normal and did learn what the teacher taught but many of them were in the same state as was X. They could not perform well. As the teacher taught something, they would be gazing at some thing and hearing the sounds outside the school.  


After some time, X and his friends got used to the sounds of tanks, guns, missiles, fighter planes, bomb shells and mortars. They could say one from the other, sitting inside the class. As they passed by scenes of violence, they would be numb and just count the number of bodies lying dead. Very few days went by without such incidents. None of them knew who was killing whom, for what reason and for how long.  


“Children, do you know why R is not coming to school since last Monday? Who lives near his house?”


“Madam, R lives in SS Colony. My father told me that last Sunday SS Colony was bombed and almost all the residents were killed”. This was when X was in his eighth grade. R was not the first boy to go missing. Many of his classmates suddenly had stopped coming to school and on many days the Principal announced the death of many students and held condolence prayers. Even that had become a routine. But life went on.


“Curfew has been lifted. Can you get some grocery items and vegetables today?” his mother asked his father.  

“Give me a list. I will go”, replied his father.


X’s father got ready. X had some strange feeling that day. His father looked smarter than on the other days and he observed him keenly.


“Why are you gaping at me X?”

“Dad, you look very smart today. Can I also come with you?”

“Because I look smart?” said his father with a smile.


Both of them set out to the market with bags in their hands. On the way, his father said, “X, this land has become a hell. I don’t think we can carry on like this for long. I am in touch with my friend who has settled in Z and trying to move over there or at least send you and B to that place. Study well.”


“We will go, only if we are all going together, Daddy. Otherwise, we will live here and face what comes. We cannot leave you behind”, said X with tears.


The whole street was lined up with soldiers. The market was crowded. People flocked to fill their bags, because they did not know when next they will be able to shop. The prices were very high and some of them were returning with long and sad faces, because they could not afford such prices. X found hundreds of beggars of all ages. Many of them were children, with tattered clothes and dirty bodies. They were crying. X felt very sad and wondered how these creatures survived. Fear engulfed him. His father was buying vegetables and just then a car parked on the road suddenly exploded with a loud noise. Immediately, there was confusion. X was thrown some twenty feet away from the vegetable shop and he lost conscience.  


When X opened his eyes, he realised he was in a hospital. The hospital was crowded and noisy. People were moaning out of pain and the stench of iodine was nauseating. X tried to rise up but he could not. He felt heavy below his waist and looked at himself, raising only his head. He was shocked to find both his legs in cast. He called out, “Sister, sister, where is my father?”


“Child, just lie down. We are trying to locate people and identify them. Give us your address and we will contact your people.”  


After a lot of confusion, the hard truth came to light. His father was killed in the bomb blast. X had 4 fractures and many bruises. He was bedridden for nearly six months. The whole house was gloomy. Nobody laughed or talked. They led a mechanical life.  


“Mummy, why did they kill daddy? What did he do to them?”


“Son, they do not see individual faces before planting a bomb. They are blood thirsty and they want to create fear in the public minds. That’s all is their mission. Your daddy is not the only person. On that day, thirty other people lost their lives. They too were ordinary people who had gone to shop. What was their fault?” X’s uncle explained.


X entered college without any fanfare, just as many others did. There was no joy or thrill in any student’s face. By then, the students had grasped a bit of what was happening in that country but many of them were not convinced that for any reason, hoards of people could be killed like this.  


“Did you know X that L has joined the terrorist movement and that’s why he is not coming to the college?”


That was the first shock he got while at college. Someone known to him, being labelled ‘terrorist’! He always found no specific identity in the faces of the terrorists, whose pictures he had seen in the newspapers or on the TV. Why would someone become a ‘bad man’, as he called the terrorist in his childhood?


“L’s family lost eight members in this violence in the last five years. His father was a Minister and they were living so royally. All of a sudden, after his father was assassinated, his family lost all peace. His brother first joined the terrorist outfit and he was killed in an encounter. His mother died of shock and his sister committed suicide. His two brothers were arrested by the police and went out of trace because they were suspected terrorists. His grandparents and uncle were killed by the other terrorist group. L could not tolerate it. He had been saying for long that he would definitely avenge the system, which ruined his family. Yesterday, his picture was shown on TV by the police. I was shocked”, said Q.


L was a very soft-spoken, well-behaved boy. He was always sad and a loner. He had a lot of respect for teachers and was very studious. But he could not perform well because he was very disturbed. The teachers often advised him to concentrate and do well, so that he could get out of this rut.  


X sighed. L was not the only student. Thousands of students all over the country went missing suddenly, every day. The youth were easy targets for the terrorists because they could be brainwashed.  


Why should any particular clan only flourish? Why this discrimination? How did it all start? X had no clue, just like most of the youngsters. They believed the best orator and before they could analyse and find sense, they either joined the army of the land or the terrorist outfit, with some biased notions. Wherever they were, they became heartless robots and taking away lives was just a small part o

f their job, which made no impact on their numb minds. He once witnessed the army personnel ruthlessly thrashing a group of youngsters who were silently marching with candles. Most of the youngsters were not even adults. The pain, the blood, the tears or the pleading words had no influence on the soldiers. Where had they stored their hearts? The onlookers too had become numb, witnessing such incidents day in and day out. Nobody in this country seemed to know what ‘peace’ meant and how people led normal lives.


When X read about the heartless brutality that the army used to torture prisoners, his heart bled. He could not get a wink of sleep on many nights thinking about the thousands of prisoners suffering for no fault of theirs, because most of them were mere suspects or family members of terrorists. Age was not at all an issue. Children, women, old people were all treated alike. Thousands of them perished in prisons.


X started reading more and more about that war and hundreds of such wars being fought in different countries. He read about the horrifying experiences of those in Hitler’s concentration camps during the Second World War. He wondered how compassion could totally go missing in human minds. What would have driven them to that point?


On that dreadful day, X finished his dinner, came to his room and sat with his books. The exams were scheduled to be conducted in another month, after getting postponed thrice. He was studying Political Science. His mother, sister and grandmother were asleep in the adjoining room. His uncle was reading something in the sitting room. Suddenly, there was commotion outside the house. X looked out of the window and was shocked to see a huge crowd, wielding different kinds of weapons banging on the main door.  


“What’s the problem?” shouted his uncle, who too entered his room and looked out of the window.

“Come out, scoundrel. Supporting traitors? Are you not ashamed?”

X was shocked. His uncle’s face went pale and he was trembling.  

“What’s this, uncle?” asked X with fear.


“I don’t know. Yesterday, my friend C asked me to accompany him to one of his friends’ houses. After going there, I realised that the two were involved in some secret activity, though I did not know what that was. I was made to sit in the portico, while C went in and chatted for nearly an hour. When he came out, his face was red with rage and he did not answer any of my questions. As soon as he saw a couple of soldiers on the street opposite to his friend’s house, he quickly pulled me into one of the by-lanes and starting running.  


“‘Run home and don’t ever open your bloody mouth about today’s meeting’, saying this he vanished into one of the busy market streets. I looked back and found the soldiers running after us, shouting abuses. I quickly hid myself behind one of the dust-bins, while they went behind my friend. I was shivering. I don’t know how long I sat there. After the town slept, I came home. But these people outside do not seem to be soldiers. Who are they?”


“Uncle, maybe they are from the other terrorist group. We have unknowingly got entangled in some politic. What do we do now?”


As they both were discussing, the door gave away and the crowd entered the house. The women too came rushing out, hearing the commotion. Even as his uncle kept pleading, “I do not know anything. I am an ordinary citizen. Please spare me”, three or four hooligans attacked him with different sharp weapons and in no time, he fell dead. Some men in the crowd looked at X’s sister and whistled, “Lovely bird as bonus. Fresh and tender. Let’s enjoy.” X was shocked and shouted, “B, get into the room and shut the door”. But it was too late.


Three men pulled his sister, as she kept screaming out of fear and right in front of the family, plundered her beauty, stripping her naked. X sat shocked, as two men with guns held him, his mother and grandmother hostage. The women were screaming and pleading. But the ruthless men were pure sadists. What X witnessed that day was the worst that could happen to anybody. Tears kept pouring out of his eyes but he could not utter even a word. After nearly an hour of ravage, the men left. By then his grandmother had fainted and his mother was holding his sister in her hands and crying incessantly. His sister had stopped screaming. Little did he realise that she was dead. Neighbours started coming in with tears, much later.  


By next morning, his grandmother too had died of shock. His mother had no more tears and no more words. She sat like a rock. X’s friends arrived and arranged for the funeral of his lovely sister, uncle and grandmother. X obeyed his friends like a robot and finished the job. His father’s close friend M took the two of them to his house. His mother would never cry or talk. She was force-fed by T aunty. The doctor prescribed some anti-depressants to the two of them. It took nearly a month for X to realise what had happened to his family. Just in a matter of two years, his family was ruined. X cried for days on end after that. He did not know what to do next. He dreaded to enter their home, the home that he grew up since his birth, the home where the six of them did spend at least a few peaceful years, even though the country was not peaceful. After all, terrorism has no set pattern. Nobody knows when it will knock on his doors.  


X could not forget the ruthless and cheap act of those terrorists. His heart cried for revenge. But that was what M uncle, where they stayed, feared. He spoke to him for long hours.


“X, I know how you feel. It is but natural for you to feel vengeful at this moment. That’s how those terrorists were made. Be very careful, because the other group of terrorists will definitely target you to join their group. You are now full of anger and spite and that’s what they want. But what do you gain by that? Do you like to do the same heinous things to some other innocent families? Are you made that way? Your father was such a peace-loving man and kept away from all these politics for so long. 


Now, your priority is to bring your mother out of this shock and take care of her. This cycle of hatred and revenge has been going on for 20 years now and in some countries even for more than fifty years. What is the use? Nobody wins. All of them are losers, because whether you are a terrorist or a soldier, you ultimately live in tension and die. Your father had told me about his plans to leave this wretched country and go away to Z, where his close friend N has settled. In fact, I know him, too. I will arrange for your papers. Go away with your mother and live peacefully”.


“But uncle, if you help us like this, won’t you be in trouble? Why don’t you also come along with us?”


“X, that’s not so easy. Of course, I am also trying to flee this country but since I have a whole family of eight, things will take time. However, since you are a student and have just your mother to take along, it is easier. Do not worry about us. We will face what fate has in store for us.”


It took nearly eight months after that for the papers to be arranged. X and his mother stayed with the same family. X helped Uncle with his small business, which was running under loss because of the war. His mother mechanically did a few small domestic chores, to help the family. X hated the country, though he had lived there all his life and wanted to just get out. He was ever frightened. Even if some friend knocked on the door, he and his mother would wake up with shock and his mother would start screaming, “B, get into the room. Get into the room. The hooligans have come.” They never slept peacefully and their friends were really nice to bear with all this for nearly a year.


Finally the papers arrived. X’s mother broke down on the day they had to leave. “No. I do not want to go anywhere. I cannot leave my husband and B here and go away. Who will take care of them? Who will punish those scoundrels? This is my motherland. How can I be uprooted?”


X had to coax her a lot. T aunty said, “Listen O. You have lost your husband, your mother, your daughter, your brother-in-law and so many of your friends here. You are left only with your son now. Do you want to lose him too? He will either become a terrorist or be killed by the terrorists. What do you gain? Who are you going to punish? We are all ordinary citizens. Can you even kill an insect so ruthlessly? Do we understand the real facts of this whole problem? Does anybody speak sense to us? God should only save this country. By going away from here, you are only helping your motherland because you are avoiding the making of one more hateful terrorist. Maybe your son can be of some constructive help from Z. Be wise and go away.”


Thus X landed in Z with his mother. N’s family members were very nice to them. X got into the university there and continued his studies. He started working in the evenings. His mother too slowly came out of the trauma. N uncle had got her some psychiatric help. She later took up a job in a library and they both moved into a small apartment. It took nearly two years for them to get into routine, normal life and realise that there could be life without violence too. There are places where people lead normal lives, without fear of terrorists, bombshells, soldiers, rapes and murders. For the first time in his life, X started observing and enjoying nature and loving the sounds of water, birds and animals. How unlucky are those who live in his homeland!  


X completed his studies and took up journalism as a hobby. He kept in touch with his friend J, who kept updating him with the latest news of his friends and countrymen. J too underwent a lot of trauma and lost his father and brother in the violence. He joined the Government service and lived with his mother and wife.


“Dear X,


You did a good thing by leaving this wretched place. You are lucky. We are still living in the same condition. Nothing has changed. I wonder how our motherland gets so many people to die! She is bathed in blood everyday. She seems to be enjoying it or she has become numb with pain. Your father’s friend, with whom you stayed for a year, passed away last week, out of shock. One of his sons had got involved in terrorist activities and was killed in an encounter. There is only chaos here. I do not know who has to be advised and who has to bell the cat! Good that you are a writer and are spreading the message of peace. I am hopeful that people like you can bring sense to people here and turn them peace-loving. After all, the pen is mightier than the sword! We are praying for that good day to dawn, when peace shall prevail and the guns go to sleep. I felt happy that with your strong words, you could move the Government of Z to interfere and talk to the terrorists. I am sure this is the beginning of an age of peace. Thank you.


Yours lovingly,


J.”


The birds started chirping and the eastern sky started brightening. X sat in the balcony, enjoying the cool morning breeze. Tears rolled down X’s cheeks, as he muttered to himself, ‘Yes, my pal! Definitely a day will come when you too can enjoy the rising sun in a relaxed mood. Just as all good things come to an end, all bad things also have to come to an end. I will continue my efforts. Hope is the only thing that has helped life to go on in our motherland. Keep that hope alive, J’.




Rate this content
Log in

Similar english story from Drama