In Absolution

Lying motionless beneath the thin white sheets, I try hard to ignore the shadowy images dancing menacingly across the breadth of the window panes spanning the eastern wall of the three hundred square foot room. The rusty smell of blood is still fresh. The hideous act seems to be clawing at my conscience reminding me of the sheer treachery that love brings along. My muffled shrieks are barely recognised, my parched voice merely manages to let out a fatigued whimper, my eyes welled up to the brim let everything stream down effortlessly. One more night in this curious crucible of pain and pleasure draws me to an epoch of a dark yet hopefully liberating dawn.

The morning presents different visages – clean but not cleansed, fresh but barely pure, charming and radiant but charred to the soul.

I lie with my knees folded close to my pulsating heart, quivering unusually in the shaft of the sunbeams hurting my eyes. Not long before, do I hear the key moving in the grating door lock and after a quick click-shut two men show up in a seemingly flared up and aggressive mood. These men are always aggressive anyway. Even bestiality will cower down before their brutal moves.

Robert and Steve are the promising faces to the extremely poor people in Sonarpukur in South 24 Parganas, Kolkata. They deal in buying and trafficking small children from these impoverished and hapless parents for a spitting price with the assurance that the children will be well looked after and provided for with the basic necessities.

And I can tell you for a certainty that we are more than ‘just’ being looked after and provided for.

‘Four thousand rupees for both the kids.’ I remember these words that have sealed the fate of my five year old sister and mine. Being four years older to Munia, I have always been a doting brother to her, always ensuring her safety and smile, trying to accompany her everywhere. And almost six months since that fateful day, I am still on the lookout for my Munia.

Strangely enough, the girls and the boys are kept in separate dwellings. Just two things I pray and wish for each moment – one, Munia is alive and safe; two, she is not a victim of pedophilia, like I am.

I hear gut-wrenching screams each day. I see a boy my age being blindfolded with his hands tied behind him and escorted to unknown places only to be dumped back after several hours as a living corpse, limping awkwardly while another boy would turn up with bruised swollen eyes or a deep purple gash on his assaulted mouth. We merely look on as passive sufferers – ten unfortunate boys subject to blood-curdling sodomy.

I wonder why Death is all-merciful to us. With this grouse building in me, I resolve to befriend him soon, if not for any salvation but for common retribution for sure.

-2-

‘Hey, you piece of butter, come here’, seated on a high cane wood stool, Robert speaks to me raising the butt of his dreadful whip that he prefers to keep coiled round his right wrist at all times when he is watching over us. He has a gross deep scar across his right eye that starts from a little above his right eye-brow and courses down a little below the right nostril. The reddish-pink ridge of the scar lends a more grotesque touch to his dark eyes that seem to rip apart any innocent being and scare the living daylights out of him.

Pulling myself up from my agonizing consciousness and not daring to look him in the eye, I muster courage to drag my malnourished frame to reach to where Robert is perched like a hawk awaiting the prey to surrender itself for a much coveted meal. As I inch towards him with my hands still tied behind me, I can feel the thudding in my chest shooting incredibly, making it all the more difficult for me to swallow the invisible lump knotting in my throat.

He keeps looking at me from his vantage point, puffing out big circular rings of the cigarette that he takes huge delight in smoking. No sooner do I reach within the range of his grasp than he swirls his left hand around, holds my hair from behind in a tight grip, draws me closer to his face and presses the burning end of the cigarette against my nape dragging it down from my right ear to my collar bone on the same side.

I scream. It’s a silent one, though uncontrollably loud within. Each one of us is gagged to provide sadistic pleasure to these messengers of Devil. While I am still recovering from the pain and recently inflicted trauma, Robert thrusts his left heel against my back and knocks me face-first on the floor.

‘With all the money that I spend on your lavish meals, you ought to please me the way I want you to’, grins the devil incarnate.

Oh, yes, a lavish meal! I mock the thought of it in my mind, still writhing in pain, just to find out what ‘lavish’ is there in two wedges of onion served twice a day with a stale roti (hand-made bread) that even a mongrel would sniff at with sheer abomination.

Somehow, I gather my charred self up and gradually crawl towards my corner when, with an ear-splitting crack of the treacherous whip on the tiled floor, Robert’s words burn through my soul of whatever is still left to be decimated.

‘Tonight I’ll take you to the carnival. Steve will come soon and see to it that you have washed and cleaned up all well.’

My gaze almost freezes leading to my shrivelled form lying paralysed at that invitation. Now I know what I have to do.

-3-

I get dressed in a nice but heavily used pair of jeans coupled with a fake USPA printed t-shirt without any apparent creases. Steve keeps watching me all throughout. I carefully run my fingers through my hair in a uniform pattern just to spare the otherwise dismal appearance. Steve rises sneering at me with a thin wooden toothpick lodged between his tawny-brown cracked lips.

And then appears a black velvet strip of cloth which he covers my eyes with tying a couple of harsh knots at the back of my head in an uncouth manner as if he were driving home some wayward cattle. I wonder why such preparation when the fate is not quite unfamiliar to any of us. What with this cleaning and washing and dressing? I feel like a lamb being taken to the slaughter house. Surprisingly, I amble out of the room bare foot.

Steve clutches at my arm tightly, hurting me with the rough scaly palms and the ragged nails which keep scratching at my tender underarms. I grimace in protest only to be smacked in return. ‘I don’t want to disfigure you before handing you over tonight’, trails his hoarse voice which smells more of nicotine than anything vitriolic. I feel being hurled inside what appears to be an expensive car as I can smell the fresh scent of lime while I am dumped on the comfortable cushiony seats. The words ‘handing over’ keep spiraling inside my head like a lurking monster.

‘Curzon Street’, says a voice to the driver. I realize it is not Steve’s. There is a different man sitting next to me. I try hard to squeeze my eyes but fail to catch even a faint glimpse of the surrounding. Unfamiliarity breeds contempt for me. The car moves and starts to speed along after some time on what seems to be a highway. I hear the rapid movement of fingers typing out messages on a smart phone keypad near me. I decide to rest my back for a while and keep my mind steady until the dreaded storm takes me within its fold eventually.

With the car coming to a chugging halt, I hear the door open and two pairs of arms fish me out placing me on some damp surface. I smell the wet earth and understand it has been raining in this part of the town. I am careful with my steps as I sense there is a slippery slope some inches away. I am taken to an underground parking lot as I hear the honking of cars too loud to be in open space.

Suddenly, I find myself entering an elevator with the automated voice saying, ‘Door closing.’ I wait with a thumping heart within me until the voice says again, ‘Seventh floor. Door opening.’

The hairy bristles of the carpet beneath wipe and caress my wet, coarse and bruised feet. Two men still on either side of me shove me a little less ruthlessly than Steve. We walk along straight for about fifty meters when like a flash of lightening almost freezing my senses, I hear, ‘Dadabhai. Dadabhai save me. Dadabhai please come fast.’ And the voice sails away.

It is my Munia. I can recognise her voice even in my sleep. She is here!

I refuse to walk further and yell for the blindfold to be removed and my hands to be freed. I get some unexplained strength to put up a fight for some time. Well, I am dealt with the way just like a butcher feathers the beheaded chicken still wriggling and holding on to some last straw.

I hear a knock on the door ahead of me. The door opens with a whiff of aromatic room freshener inviting us within. It is all so quiet, all so cold, all so threatening.

‘Quite some fight this poor thing has put up, huh?’ drones a baritone pacing up and down the room.

My blindfold is pulled down. I struggle to adjust my vision in the bright yellow lights pouring from the ostentatious chandelier from the ceiling above. I turn around to see the two men, realizing that they have gone. I see a middle-aged man in white bath robes seated with his shaven legs up on the burgundy couch holding a glass tumbler with a quarter of imported whisky remaining to douse his initial flames.

There lies the storm brewing in front of me either to consume or be consumed.

-4-

I stand transfixed trying to figure out my role in this new world. Something within me tells me that there is an end today and the end is not a very pleasant one. The nerves on the sides of my temple have started throbbing now.

‘What is your name?’ the baritone speaks to me finally. I choose to stay silent while looking down on the floor then on the bed and running my eyes along the head of the bed to the side table on the right where a small bamboo basket with some apples and pears lie with a kitchen knife placed carefully by its side.

Suddenly, the man lunges forward, grabs my throat and knocks me down on the bed. I turn on my back only to find him disrobed and his naked self plunging on my thin form and tearing my clothes off. I claw along the mattress and try to kick his heavy beer-belly out of my back. He pins me again, this time holding a tuft of my hair from behind like a jockey tugs at a horse’s reins. I shriek only to be drilled by the monster tearing my sphincter muscles apart and sending a wave of pain from rear upwards. He keeps thrusting into me wildly, senselessly and intoxicatingly as I keep groaning with excruciating pain building up.

With a few more kicks in resistance and being tossed around by the predator odiously, I feel the devil’s teeth sinking into by shoulder. This drives me to raise my arms to grab at the nearest pillow and hit him to get him off me. But instead, I lay my hands on something else and when I move my hand in the same action with a greater-than-usual force as I have thought with the pillow, I see blood stains splashing in a horizontal wave across the white sheets and carpet.

I have slit the throat of the devil. He now lies in a pool of blood. The wound within me coupled with multiple scratches all across my body has numbed me completely. I start shivering at the sudden impact and realization of the crime that I have just committed. Not knowing how to react while still holding the stained knife dripping in blood; still trembling till every core of my being with the flurry of combat, I throw the knife on the carpet, pull up my pants and limp towards the door to find an escape route.

As I turn the handle down, the door opens. I peep out through the narrow opening first to check if the two men or anyone else is in sight. Finding everything clear, I tip-toe out and try to run along the dimly lit corridor with framed abstract paintings appearing to watch my every move from either side of the wall. I try to reach the place where I have heard Munia calling out to me some time ago.

I leave the corridor and cautiously manage to amble towards the vestibule leading to the elevator. Just then I spot a narrow passage way at the far end of the corridor. I walk towards it and see about five girls huddled in a corner with their hands and mouths tied to the concrete pillars supporting the ceiling. They are covered with a large blanket of tarpaulin sheet. Munia lies asleep in a corner. Tears stream down endlessly as I shake up the girls after freeing their knots. I announce the prospect of freedom to them. But the fight is still not over.

-5-

I hear the loud palpitation inside me as I lead the girls down the elevator ensuring extreme caution at each step. All along I keep thinking my next course of action.

Where do I go with all these little girls? Where do I take Munia with me? The murder I have just committed has already started haunting me and keeping me from thinking straight.

As I walk out of the building, I turn around once to identify it as the Singhania Royale. It is drizzling and the light spells somehow augment my anxiety. Seeing no potential danger on the street, I, finally, decide to take the girls to a nearby police station. The girls can barely walk. Besides, they are starving and don’t seem to have any energy left in them.

The next thing I know, I am at Lalbazar Police Station narrating the plight, the gory details and the great racket of child trafficking and flesh trade that is on the rise. I confess my crime while talking about my ordeal. I request for some medical attention as the pain seems to be growing beyond my tolerance.

There seems to be a furore raised inside the police station all of a sudden. The atmosphere is couched in some indignation of sorts. There are female constables rushing in to take care of the girls. I am reluctant to let go of Munia. She clings on to me too. I hear someone phoning the ‘Commissioner’ who I assume is an important man. I tell the cops that all of us are famished. Two men in uniform are sent to fetch some food instantly.

Amidst all these, I am asked to sit and wait outside in the veranda with an asbestos roof. Munia follows me. We sit on a rickety wooden bench kept there. I watch the rain pouring with a myriad of thoughts raging within as the rainwater flows down the rugged edges of the asbestos.

Munia and I keep waiting.

The rain is relentless. I hear it thrumming on the metal roof and running down the broken pipe into the mud, and I moisten my cracked lips with my tongue. I wonder if they’ll bring me food and water. I wonder if they’re coming at all.

After a couple of hours or so, two big rain-washed vans with glowing bulbs atop their roofs arrive – one white with a red ‘plus’ on its sides, the other navy blue with a thin white stripe on each side. By now Munia has dozed off on my lap, perhaps, out of hunger or weakness or maybe both.

The Commissioner walks up to me and says, ‘The girls will have to be sent to the hospital for medical examination. You will help us make the sketch of Robert and Steve. By the way, our team has already rescued the ten boys where you all have been held captive.’

So saying, he walks inside the police station. The girls along with Munia are led into the ambulance. I feel as if I have lost and found and lost my only family all over again. With helpless tears coursing their way down, I am taken inside the blue van as a juvenile delinquent. Strangely enough, I feel certain freedom on this journey. I wear no handcuffs; my vision is not restricted; my voice has some space and audience; my feet are free from all fetters.

I spend six peaceful months in juvenile imprisonment. An atonement for my sins, I reckon. I’m relieved.

Once again I am escorted to some unknown land. Where the police van stops, I read a sign ‘Nirmala Orphanage’. Two men in uniform lead me inside the premises. I see children playing gleefully in the garden. As I stroll past another play area beside a small sand pit, I catch a glimpse of a little girl in a beautiful pink frock. She seems to be engaged in some game of her own with her friends.

I walk up to her and gently tap on her shoulders. When she turns around, I look into Munia’s eyes.