This post is about a story that can make an impact on you.
‘It was the winter of 1980; the 7th of December, to be exact. I still remember the day so vividly; it could’ve been yesterday.’
‘Mmhmm’, I said, bending my neck a little forward.
‘I was at my tailor shop as usual. The winter was unusually cold, so my business had been pretty brisk that month; more than half of my work that week had been knitting sweaters for kids. Red, pink, blue – ah, you name it, the kids loved wearing those.’
I felt like I saw a hint of a tear in his eyes.
‘Then two tall, well-built men appeared suddenly from nowhere’, he continued, ‘I had never seen them anywhere before. They came in, and asked for two army-style jackets. I gave them a place to sit, brought my tape, and made them stand one by one and took their measurements. Army jackets were quite in vogue in those days, and I had a row of them ready at my shop. I gave them the jackets that matched their sizes, wrote the receipt on a slip of paper…’
His face stiffened as he spoke these last words. ‘What happened then?’, I said. I was getting really curious.
‘I gave them the piece of paper, they paid the money and left. They seemed to be in a hurry..’
The words were coming out so mechanically from his mouth, it looked like he had said the same story a hundred times over.
‘The next day, I was watching news on the small TV set I had in my shop. All of a sudden, a flash appeared on the screen: “BREAKING NEWS! TERRORISTS OPEN FIRE AT NEW DELHI RAILWAY STATION”. I was numb for a few seconds. The only one in the world whom I could call close to me – my brother – was in Jaipur, so I just shut my eyes and whispered a silent prayer hoping that everyone could be saved somehow.’
‘My friend lost his sister in that massacre’, I said.
‘I saw visuals of the shootout on TV later, captured from CCTV cameras. There were two tall men wearing army jackets shooting at everyone they could see. It was horrifying.’
‘Then?’
‘The police managed to shoot down one of the terrorists after seven minutes. 57 people had died’, he said, a solemn look on his face now. ‘The other one escaped. He had simply vanished. The police was on the hunt for a week, and still they had no clue. The public was getting livid at the police and government authorities – and rightly so. How could a man just kill so many people and escape? Where was he now? Where would his next attack be? The whole nation was in a state of shock.’
‘I see’, I said, deeply intrigued. The incident had happened three years before I was born, and since I was never properly educated, it was the first time I’d been hearing about it in so much detail.
‘The government was getting desperate. With elections coming up in two weeks, this sort of a debacle would grossly dent their chances. They needed a way out, to assuage the public that they were on to something. And I was their answer.’
‘I…didn’t quite understand.’
‘The police had searched the pockets of the sole terrorist whom they had shot down. In his army jacket was a receipt. And on the receipt, there was the name of my shop.’
‘And..?’, I said, as things finally began to form a picture in my head.
’15 December. It all happened in a flash. A jeep came and parked in front of my shop, and two armed policemen got down, a slip of paper in one of their hands. Before I could make sense of what was happening, there were handcuffs on my wrists and I was being dragged into the van. Then I was locked inside and before I got down, a black cloth was put over my face. They said I had been arrested for aiding the terrorists.’ A lump began to form in his throat now.
‘The police had finally got a “lead” on the case. The public had calmed down a little. A poor man with a small tailor shop with no one to look after had done it for money, or maybe was just a psychopath – I was the perfect accomplice. The public never got to know of the details of my arrest – they were just told that the police were progressing on the case.’
‘God, that is so unfortunate.’ I whispered.
‘The starting few days were unimaginable. It was like my life had turned upside down. I thought I was dreaming. I was locked in a dark room and food was thrown at me twice a day. The saddest part of the whole thing was that I was not even in a position where I could die. The guards kept watch over me. I was tortured every night – forced to confess that I had been a part of the crime. And each time I refused, they beat me harder.’
I had no words to say.
‘As the reality began to sink in, I resigned myself to this fate. Three months after I had been put in this jail, I was informed by one of the guards that my brother – my only living relative – had died of tuberculosis. That was the moment when I lost all desire to live. Or to die. To do anything.’
There was a long pause.
‘Slowly, I began to stitch clothes for the inmates here. If there was one thing I was good at in this world, it was stitching and knitting. It gave me a portal of escape from the misery of my life here – when I was with my thread and needle, I forgot everything else.’
‘Was there no one to help you?’
‘No one in the outside world knew me – or rather, no one cared.’, he said, with a tone of indifference in his voice.
‘Did you never think of escaping?’
‘There was no chance. I wouldn’t have minded being shot while trying to escape – but the guards wouldn’t allow even that. Plus, what use would I be of even if I escaped? My shop was gone for good; I would’ve had to beg on the streets.’
This was the story of inmate no. 10874, locked in Raigad Jail since twenty-six years for a crime he hadn’t committed. His life had been shattered to pieces – the official death toll of the terrorist attack was 57, but they had failed to include this man whose life had been snuffed out of his body slowly yet completely, all these years. He had been turned into a living corpse.
I had been put into the same prison cell as him three years ago on account of a burglary case. There was another man in the same cell who had joined us just four months ago – he had been caught stealing food from a shop to feed his starving son. The father never came back ‘home’, and the son died. In these circumstances, was there ever any right and wrong?
It was upon hearing the story of this new entrant into our cell that No. 10874 had suddenly been moved. He felt like he had a job to be done in this world – an unfinished business. ‘I am wasting my life away’, he told us one cold night. It was probably the first time in years that he had uttered the words, “my life”. There was a newfound spring in his step – he seemed to walk with a sense of purpose. As ironic as it may sound, the death of one had infused life into another. It was like he suddenly realized that he had to make a difference – however small a difference he could make.
And thus over the rainy nights of 2006, an intricate plan was hatched. A plan for No. 10874’s escape from this hellhole, into the world where he could begin his life anew and probably be in a position to help others. He believed that if he had stayed alive for all these twenty-six years, it wasn’t meant to go waste after all. And if he got caught while trying to escape, he had nothing to lose anyway.
Tonight, the moment had finally come. I had a matchbox and a bunch of matchsticks in my hand; my job was to light the fire in case I heard even the slightest noise of the guards twitching from their sleep. My friend had discovered a way out through the pipeline from the latrine next to our cell; we had spent the last two months gnawing away at the edges of the drainage outlet with a stone we had found in the prison grounds. The stone, a needle, a piece of cloth, a few threads and an old watch we’d dug out from the ground were the only possessions we had in the cell. The door of the latrine was right across the corridor.
I observed him carefully as he walked to the door. I knew that time was running out but suppressed the urge to check my watch. I took a deep breath and started counting in reverse under my breath. "Ten, nine, eight, seven..." Counting the seconds seemed to me to be the only way to try and pacify my pounding heart.
The prison was dead silent except for the snores of a few. My matchsticks were ready to be lit up. He slowly unhinged the door, walked through it and closed it back again. I heard a very faint sound – that of him unscrewing the pipeline. And then…
This blog post is inspired by the blogging marathon hosted on IndiBlogger for the launch of the #Fantastico Zica from Tata Motors. You can apply for a test drive of the hatchback Zica today.
