Resurrection!!

“He will swallow up death in victory; and the Lord GOD will wipe away tears from off all faces; and the rebuke of his people shall he take away from off all the earth: for the LORD hath spoken it”
(Source: Holy Bible – Isaiah 25:8)

I never knew where I got it from, but ever since I remember, I always had this fantasy, a dream or whatever it is; to look someone in the eye and punch him right in his face. It’s not human to do such a thing but that’s what my dad always told me, the world is no place for the good. You should be able to fight for your existence. It may not be true for everybody but considering where I come from, you need to be ready to fight or else you’ll be left on the floor to die… like my dad.

The place where I grew up was what one would call a slum. I would call it an animal shelter because what you find there are creatures without an ounce of humanity or whatever it is that separates human beings from animals and beasts. People who live there are usually murderers who kill for money or escaped convicts who don’t mind robbing their own parents. My father used to do odd jobs for a local real estate dealer before he himself tried his hand at selling land. That apparently didn’t go well with his boss and he hired people from our own locality to kill him. I’ve seen people kill others before. At least six times before, but that was different. I was seventeen years old and was sleeping in the corner of our small house when people came banging on the door. My dad tried to run away from the back door but they were too many. I saw him fight back for a while in the vast fields under the bright moon light, but it was just a matter of minutes. They slit his throat with a pocket knife (yeah, that’s the value they give to life) and left him to bleed and eventually die.

For a young person whose father had just died and who never knew what his mother looked like, I was never short of sympathy that people showed on me. Not everybody though. There were few families in the locality that were willing to send me food for a few weeks. It was strange that in the midst of something that is so cruel and gruesome, there was something to feel human about; the only thing that reminded me that I was not an animal. But I just laid there inside the house thinking about what happens to people when they die. It always baffled me. The answer can only be known when I am dead. But the very thought of death and its aftermath always fascinated me.

On one of those rainy nights when it seemed like the entire sky is melting down on to the earth, I stood looking outside into the field where my father was murdered. I don’t even remember the faces of the people who killed him, but strangely I wasn’t angry on them. They were just a few thick skinned beasts who would do anything if they are paid enough dough. They usually drink a lot of alcohol before they go on a mission like this and finish it off before running away to some distant place in a lorry that carries wheat or rice bags. They return after a few months and by that time people would forgot everything. They were just beasts who would kill a man just as easily as they would kill a goat. They need to be drunk that’s all and they were pretty much drunk that night when my father fell dead on the ground with blood gushing out from his throat.

I could never take that sight out of my mind. I didn’t come out of the house as I didn’t feel like I had a connection with the outer world. People stopped sending me food and few of them probably thought that I ran away or was dead somewhere (Even I wasn’t sure if I was dead or alive). No one really cared. People had their own problems to worry about and in that locality, problems meant death and survival. I don’t complain though. I would do the same if something like this happened to someone else in the neighborhood. That’s how we lived there. I just laid there for hours together; sometimes with my eyes wide open but all that I could see was darkness. I lost count of minutes, hours and even days. I didn’t know if it was a night or a day. I began to think if that was how death feels like.

When a window broke a few days later, I saw a ray of sunlight creeping into the house. There were thousands of dust particles floating and shining in that light. I was on the ground with my eyes half open. They were there all along but I was blind enough to not take notice. But what I did notice at that moment was a half filled bottle of rum at the corner of the room. I dragged myself towards it opened the bottle. The smell of the drink was intoxicating and the heat that it produced as it went down my throat was liberating. Not sure how much time it took me but I threw the bottle aside after finishing each and every drop of it.

I walked on to the roads as if the world to me, seized to exist. People looked at me as if I was some kind of a monster. They were the real monsters but no one was ready to accept it. When everybody around you is as cruel and ugly hearted as you are, you have no sense of remorse or guilt. Isn’t that what our history had taught us? I didn’t look at anybody but walked straight to the place where my father’s body fell as he died. They probably took his body somewhere to make that sure it won’t become a big deal. They usually tie the body to a rock and throw it in the abandoned well nearby or into the canal that is a few kilometres away. Nobody would bother to search for it and even the families choose to ignore it to save the funeral costs.

There were no signs of a murder there. I could feel the alcohol making my head turn and my eyes blur but I could distinguish between a simple piece of land and a crime scene. The rains might’ve washed away the blood, the foot prints and every other thing that might indicate that a murder happened there. I thought about my dad’s old boss that wanted my dad to be dead. But strangely I don’t feel anything for him. Not anger, not rage. He was just trying to protect his business and that’s what anybody would do. Hell, my father might’ve killed others just because that guy ordered him to. I had no feelings for him and clearly there weren’t going to be any.

For the next few days, I slept in a farm under the tree and sometimes on the roads. I don’t know what I did but sleeping there made me feel at home. The ground seemed softer after the rains. My clothes got worn out. My body soaked in the rain and dried in the sun and slowly I began to feel a silence inside me that finally decided to break open. All I wanted was some way to let the angst get out. I wanted to feel sorry for my own situation. I needed to find a way to let myself break open. I needed to find a way to free myself from my own clutches. I began to feel hungry again.

The house once we lived in has become a place where people usually played cards or just sat together to drink. Many times I saw wives cheating on their husbands with other men by sleeping with them in my house. That’s the world I live in but that’s not the house I wanted to live in. I mostly slept on the road and ate from the garbage that people threw away. Nobody seemed to care anymore. I begged people for money to buy myself some liquor. I’ve become a part of the neighborhood and they didn’t see me as the kid who lost his parents. I was a drunk, filthy, ugly bastard who roamed their streets and slept on the roads while they used my house to fuck other people’s family and life. For them, I was just a body without life or any significance…a corpse.

On one cold night, I was staring at the stars and observing their patterns when somebody ran over me suddenly. Before I could lift my head to see who it was, a group of men hit me as they ran chasing a lady into the fields. They were probably going to kill her. Without a slightest idea as to what I’d do once I reach there, I began to run after them. By the time I was there, people gathered around to see what was happening. A man stood there beating a lady with his bare hands. She was bleeding. Nobody moved from their places and were watching the proceedings as if they could do nothing about it. The man took blow after blow cursing her with the ugliest words a man could say to a woman. From what everybody was talking, I understood that the man was cheating on her and when she questioned him in front of everybody, he decided to kill her.

I believe certain acts of courage are products of instinct and so are the events that are utterly stupid. No matter what it was, I ran towards the man with all the force I could gather and pinned him to the ground. I could hear people shouting evidently shocked as that was totally uncalled for. But I was sure nobody would come to stop me. The man tried to fight back but I was too strong for him. He was drunk and was grunting like an animal. I’ve become a beast myself. Ever since I remember, I always had this fantasy, a dream or whatever it is. To look someone in the eye and punch him right in his face. That guy was under me and there I was, sitting on him and looking into his eyes that were trying to pierce right through me and they glittered under the moon light. His beard and hair were wet with all the sweat. In the midst of the rattle and the beastly fighting, I grabbed a stone in my hand and punched the man right in his face looking into his eyes. For a second, flashes of my dad came rushing into my head. I wondered if it was my dad who killed my mom. I wasn’t sure and I would never know. The touch of his face against my fist wrapped around a stone felt as if I was hitting the ground. I knew my hand would bleed after that but I didn’t stop punching him. I was in a rage and kept punching his face again and again making sure I didn’t take my eyes of him. He however closed his eyes after a few punches and later his face lost its shape after his jaw broke spilling his warm blood all over me.

I fell on the ground exhausted and closed my eyes. I could listen to people as they gathered around us. I wasn’t sure if they looked at me or the man I just killed but I was sure they took his body away and left me right in the middle of that farm. I felt relieved for some reason and kept picturing the look on his face when I took the first blow right on his nose before it broke. The silent night turned arrogant as I began to laugh out loudly. When I opened my eyes, I saw the people running away from me thinking that I’ve probably gone mad but the fact was that I was happy. Happy, because I knew that I broke the shell and came out free and alive. A few minutes later, I stopped laughing as tears began to roll down my face which was already covered in blood. For the first time, I cried for the loss of my parents. I cried for my mother whom I’ve never seen in my life. I cried for my dad who was an animal just like me but was my father nonetheless. I cried because I was free from myself. I cried because I knew that I could live again.