[Independence Day Special][Short Story] Pis-Aller

 "He that studieth revenge keepeth his own wounds green, which otherwise would heal and do well"-John Milton


He was in his nineties now, slow, fragile and nearing death. Still, every day he used to wake up at 6 in the morning and stare outside the window, blankly. They said when he was young, he was agile, healthy and quick, no one knew what his profession was, but he did retire rich at the age of fifty-five.

His only son used to visit the old rooms twice a day,


'Baba, I request you again. Come with us to the big house. What is there in this dump?' his son used to question.


Chess Photo by George Becker Stocksnap.io


'I can't leave now, there is one final task left son,' he used to smile, 'One final task.'


Baba had sent all the furniture from the room to the new house but kept himself a bed and the jewel beaded box.


'No one has ever removed the box from under the diwan since last 20 years, baba,' the daughter-in-law use to question, 'Don't let the servants, but please let me clean it.'


'No, girl, there is still one last task left…'


Days turned into weeks and weeks into months. Still, he gave no sign of moving from the house.

Finally, one day, the son received the dreaded news, his father was on his death bed. Quickly the son collected a jar of sealed Gangajal and ran towards his arrogant dad.


Indeed his father was on death bed, but something had changed. The old beaded jewel box was not under the bed, and there was someone else holding his father's hand.


'Tough guy,' the stranger said, 'So I win, eh.'


His father glanced at the stool in the house and smiled, 'I wanted you to win so much.'

Son saw on the table, the Jewel studded box lay open, and they had laid a dusty chess game next to it.

'But you didn't visit me before,' his father said, 'Now I am dying, and you came to visit.'


'I missed you while crossing Germany border. Till that time, we were close to each other'.


'So, essentially, I win,' his father smiled.


'For twenty years you were waiting for me, that is something,' the man said, 'You know if someday they wrote a book on our chases, they will have the biggest mental battle of the century.'


'I know,' his father smiled, 'We were close. I foiled your plans, and you cut mine. I always wanted to close the loop on you. The big guys last dying wish.'


'Obviously, you couldn't let me retire, could you. You stayed fresh and on my trail,' the man fumbled in his pocket.


'Think about it, that time those 8000 Rs was such a big amount for us,' his father said coughing twice.


'Yes yes,' the man looked around the room, 'You haven't changed the rooms at all. It was just like this for so many years.'


He looked at the conversation from the window and knew something was amiss. Something left.


'So,' his father finally said, 'Where is it?'


The man took a deep breath, 'You know I could kill you here and now,' he quickly removed the pistol from his pocket and held a locket in other, 'You have nearly ruined my life with all your plans. You are just like him, plans, plans, plans.'


The son immediately ran to the door to protect his dad, but realized the man had bolted it from inside, a loud noise filled the room, and he had to return to his watch post near the window, prepared to shout for help, but instead, he saw something different.


His father was standing erect and fresh as a teenager over the dead body of the stranger. He was carefully wiping the blood from his knife. And that time he realized the boy was standing near his window. The first reaction of surprised turned into a smile.

With a sudden surprise, he saw his son standing at the window and smiled.


'Chandrashekhar Azad always said, a soldier never relinquishes his weapon,' his father calmly said as he collected the locket from dead man's heart, 'Son, my part in this life is over. Help me clean this mess, will you? I am no longer as young as I used to be'.


Astonished, speechless he watched his father lift the dead and put him in the body bag.


'There are people both high up in the government and lower ground beyond the law who wants this man dead for the last eighty years. The part of my past which I shared with no one,' he pointed to the unfinished game of chess lying in the dust on the stool.


'The game began on August 9 1925, when rebels looted a train number 8, travelling from Shajanpur to Lucknow at the station of Kakori. It was the news at the time, viral. We, me and my friends, inspired by that robbery, decided to follow suit and execute our theft. We planned to loot the house of the viceroy and distribute the money for buying weapons and other equipment needed for the freedom struggle. A lot of us joined this game, but one man decided to act out a bit selfish and stole a few bags for himself.'


His father cleaned his hands and face, 'We were trained by Chandrashekar Azad to execute plans, and this plan was in work for the last eighty years. We could not immediately catch him because he went to London with some ships taking his booty and started an Indian Spices business there. 


I chased him from continents to continents, but when I reached him, I realized his business had grown big and bringing him down alone was not enough. I had to checkmate him and bring down his empire. So I planned, just like the freedom fighters, to bring down an empire, his kingdom, his entire life. The game lasted for fifty years which brings us down to this…'


He removed the locket in his hands, 'He realized I was hot on his trail, and I kept burning his resources, so he came after me. Your elder sister was killed by him to teach me a lesson, he kept her locket as a remembrance, but all the young rebels had already accepted the fact that we can't have a proper family. I continued countering his every move. When finally 20 years ago, I wrecked his empire, he vanished. We all were trained for that, to vanish forever and I knew I couldn't trace him now,'


He pointed at the dead body on the floor, 'But I didn't have to, I knew he would come out of his rat hole, now that I had destroyed his life and he thought I am on death bed. So I passed on the wrong information of me dying. And said, I win.'


His father walked towards the game of chess and played the final move, 'He forgot that these bones strengthened when we took down the entire British Industrial Empire, they are not going to rot so quickly.


I do not blame him; we all were young, hardly 18 and saw the foreigners who treated us like dirt. He wanted to grow large, and he thought of the best way to do it…'


His father calmly crossed over the dead body fallen in the middle of the room and closed the eyes of the dead man,'… he just chose the wrong men to betray.'


"Revenge is an act of passion; vengeance of justice. Injuries are revenged; crimes are avenged."- Samuel Johnson


- 30 -


All characters in this story are fictions. This is a tribute to all the greatest freedom fighters of all time. May their soul rest in peace, and we preserve what they died to achieve.


Facts: On August 9, 1925, the Number 8 Down Train travelling from Shahjahanpur to Lucknow was approaching the town of Kakori (now in Uttar Pradesh), when one of the revolutionaries pulled the chain to stop the train and overpowered the guard. The rebels looted money-bags belonging to the British Government Treasury from the guard's van and escaped to Lucknow. Following the incident, the police started an intense chase and arrested several of the revolutionaries involved.


pis aller

/piːz ˈaleɪ, French piz ale/

noun

  1. a course of action followed as the last resort.

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[Short Story] 9123

This post has been published by me as a part of Blog-a-Ton 59; the fifty-ninth edition of the online marathon of Bloggers; where we decide and we write. In association with ​IndiCreator. For Creators. By Creators.. Share Your #LockdownTales at indicreator.com
Woman Photo by Christopher Windus from StockSnap


She sauntered around the room, brushing her finger on the settled dust on the placid bedstand. How many days had gone by since she had seen another adult? She wondered.


The dredge and the humdrum were now drowning into a routine that she could not shake off. She drank the old room around her, not bohemium or minimalistic or too fancy. It was a standard room as any room can be. 

A large diwan in the centre, a cupboard and a common bedstand. Nothing too fancy. Nothing too cheap.


Just enough. 

But now this room looked enough and dreadful for her. She wanted to spread her wings, and she wanted to fly. She wanted to taste worldly flavours, and she wanted to go out.

She pulled her hair behind and secured them in a pony. Tied her dupatta to her waist and took substantial steps towards her destiny. 


"You really shouldn't," the laid-back voice behind her spoke, and she turned around.

The young man was lying on the bed, wearing a lose red T-shirt and his cargo shorts. And his sleepy eyes were staring at the phone in his hand.

For a moment, she froze in her steps, and her eyes widened. "Shayan! what are you doing here?"

"What do you mean babes," he spoke, in a husky voice, his eyes still not deviating from his phone, "I was here all along."

She scratched her scalp for a moment pondering at him. Her eyes darted from him to the room. Was he there all along?

"No, you weren't," she exclaimed, "Or were you?"

'Whatever..." he scoffed, busy tweedling his thumbs on the phone.

She moved on to rub her chin and eyeing him very closely. He had started sneaking up on her lately, appearing at odd hours and not paying attention. 

But she could swear he was not here before. She brushed her hand to her head, hoping to rub off the headache away. But then her task at hand came to her focus, and she shot,

"Why shouldn't I go out?" she said, "Why do you want to control me?"

He looked at her briefly from his phone and then his eyes darted back to the device, "I don't want to control you babes, but you know why you can't go out."

She fumbled and started cleaning under her long nails. Her foot was shifting in its position. She stood there, staring at her feet. 

Thinking. Why did Shayan have such a controlling effect on her? Surely, she could break-free and go out. 

She turned around and looked at the closed door. Beyond the brass door handle was a whole new world, and here she was stuck in the room with Shayan who had more things to do than look at her.

He was probably having an online argument with someone pointless. 

"Its Jogi," Shayan said, softly, his eyes still glued to his mobile phone.

"What did you say?" she turned to him and sucked air through her teeth.

He finally stopped thumbing his phone, looked up and stretched his arms. He stifled a yawn.

"Come back to bed, baby," he said in a soft voice, 'You cannot go out. Jogi won't let you."

She started chewing on her nail as the words sunk into her mind. Yes, the problem is not Shayan, it's Jogi. He always sat outside the door, urging her to go back in.

Shayan patted the bed next to him and smiled, "This is soft and warm, outside is cold and uncomfortable, you know what you want, right?"

She kept chewing her nail, her eyes darting from him to her feet. 

"I can take down Jogi if I want too...," she muttered, her voice soft and always tuning out towards the end of the sentence. 

"No, you can't," Shayan shot.

"No, I can't," she repeated.

"I am telling you, come back to bed, have a siesta and then we can talk...," Shayan replied. He beamed. She responded with a smile.

With slow steps, she returned to the bed, wrapped herself in the soft duvet and pulled it over. She gleamed at the brown eyes of Shayan who was now smiling, "Want me to sing you a lullaby?"

She nodded. Who doesn't like a lullaby?

"Will you be around when I wake up?" she asked him, earnestly—her voice betraying her mistrust at his intentions.

"Sure, I will," Shayan smiled, running his fingers on her forehead, "I will be here whenever you need me."

She smiled. Her eyes were slowly drifting into dreamland and sinking into Shayan's soulful voice. So engrossed she became in his voice that she hardly noticed the bronze handle turn and the door open a bit.



A lady peeped inside and pulled her head out as fast as it had entered. The lady returned out, locking the door and turned to her colleague, "No, Jogi today, she is only talking to Shayan."

The colleague holding the clipper and notes in her hand said, "She even finished the argument sooner than every day. That's new."

"We could call it progress," the colleague scribbled, "But I hardly think that has any difference in her overall status."

"No, of course," the first one nodded, "We have to keep her under observation until she stops seeing Shayan."

They both shrugged and closed the file on inmate no. 9123 and moved on.



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[Short Story] Fasting for the husband




The first thing Sub-Inspector Pandey noticed when he entered the house of Gupta was that the wife was watching the repeat of the famous daily soap. It was middle of the night and the quiet neighbourhood in Noida was disturbed by screams of a man, a few minutes back. Sub-Inspector Pandey was in a PCR van nearby and responded to the call.
The wife was watching the television show without turning around, Sub-inspector Pandey hesitated at first and then observed,


"Oh! So she finally wakes up," he said observing the daily soap, "That is really good. I really didn't like where the story was going and with the female lead in a coma for seven years, the story was getting dragged."

"I agree," said Mrs Gupta, looking at the guest and nodding, "They were simply adding more and more characters to the story to pass out time, maybe for this day. Do you also follow this show regularly?"

"Only sometimes, when I am in a morning shift and go home in the evening. It is difficult to follow regularly on the evening shift as today but the story does not proceed a lot, so I do not miss a lot," he laughed.
"That is true," agreed Mrs Gupta, "The story has not moved forwarded for the whole month."
Sub Inspector Pandey looked at the constable who shrugged and they both eyed the female, "There were reports about some screaming in the house, is everything ok?" he asked.
"Oh, that must be my husband, he is in the bedroom," replied Mrs Gupta.
Sub-Inspector Pandey signalled the constable to check the bedroom and continued watching the show.

"They really have no sense in how they are expanding the story," he said, "Do they?"
"I guess not," she replied, "All these stories somewhere or the other look same."
"Sir," the constable screamed, "You need to see this."

The Sub-Inspector signalled the second constable to stay at the door and rushed into the bedroom. Indeed, lying in the pool of blood was Mr Gupta and from what it looked like, his guts were pulled out from his stomach using a kitchen knife.

He walked into the living room and talked to the wife, "Do you mind telling me what happened?"
"Sure," she said, "Just wait a bit, there will be a break anytime now."

The Sub-Inspector glanced at the house and noticed the food was still on the dining table. The menu was delicious, pooris, potato rice, and kheer. Lying beside the food on the table lay a bloodstained wheat strainer. He signalled the constable to bag it as evidence.

"Yes, " Mrs Gupta muted the television and turned around, "What happened was, I murdered my husband and he screamed, so you guys came."

"Oh," Sub-Inspector Pandey said, "Can I ask you a few questions?"
"Sure," Mrs Gupta replied, "But be quick, I don't want to miss the last few minutes after the commercial break of the show."

"Right then, can you tell me why you murdered your own husband?" he asked.
"Today was karwa chaut, the festival where a woman holds a fast for the long life of her husband. Like all the woman on our block, I also was observing fast," she said.

"Alright," the sub-inspector noted down in his casebook.

"I was waiting for my husband till 8:45, the moon was seen brightly in the sky but my husband was late from office," she said.

"Was he always late from office?" asked the sub-inspector.

"Sometimes yes," she replied, "But most of the times he would be home and then work from home for few hours in the night."

"Is that why you killed your husband?" asked the sub-inspector.

"No, not really," she replied, "Around 9:00 I got a call from him that he will be late than usual and he will be dining with a colleague outside."

"That was really insensitive of him, is that why you killed your husband?" asked the Sub-Inspector.

"No, not really," she replied, "I asked him by what time he will be in and he said it would be more than 11:00."

"What time did he actually arrive?" asked the Sub-Inspector.

"He came around 10:30, because of which I had to miss my daily soap. He came slightly tipsy and was talking to his colleague about how nice time he spent with her."

"Do you think he was having an affair?" asked the Sub-Inspector.

"No not really no," she said thinking for some time, "You see he was incapable of understanding women. I don't think any girl would voluntarily fall in love with him."

"Please continue," the sub-inspector continued to make notes.

"It was around 11:00 we sat at the dinner table, he had already come having dinner but I was hungry since morning," she said, "So we were having dinner. I liked him for that, he was at least sensitive to my feelings. We were having dinner when his phone rang. It was a client from America. He got busy on the call as I continued my dinner."

"Is that why you killed him because he was always working?"

"No not really, no," she said and continued, "We finished dinner... I finished dinner and went to the bedroom. It turns his call was finished a long time ago and he just did not bother to come out in the dining room to join me."
"I changed in my nightgown and decided to call it a day, thinking about how I missed today's episode and making a mental note to watch the rerun tomorrow. It was that time when he touched me."
"He touched you as in..." the sub-inspector cleared his throat.
"Well like a husband touches his wife. He wanted it, but then I was tired and I really had no mental capacity to do it." she said simply, "but he decided he wanted it anyway."

"Is that why you killed him because he forced himself on you?" asked the sub-inspector.

"No, not really, no," she said, "See it was his benefit as a husband, he was entitled to it, you know. I was his wife and I was supposed to be ready whenever he wanted it. It was just my bad luck that he wanted it today when I was tired of having not eaten the whole day."

"So please continue," he said.

"After that, we went back to sleep and he started snoring without even talking a single word. He had a small penis and it was not that great or good. It was his weight on me that was bothering me, that's all."

"Oh," the Sub-Inspector said.

"Yeah, it's the same thing since our honeymoon. Not a real superstar performer he is, not really. He thinks he is something great but I knew his secret," she smirked, "Anyways, as I lay in the bed a thought occurred to me..."

"What?" Sub-Inspector Pandey raised his ears.

"I had prayed for his long life today. I observed the fast whole day, drinking only water and nothing else. I did everything as my mother taught me to do, I wanted to know if my prayer was successful or no," she said, "There is no litmus test you see to check if your husband's life increases on the prayer. But then it is just one day wasted isn't it?"

"True," the Sub-Inspector said, "Then what happened?"

"I walked into the kitchen cut an apple for myself. I was still a little hungry or maybe tired or maybe exhausted. I looked at the knife and decided to test if my prayer succeeded. I walked into the bedroom and sliced his stomach again and again. How do you know if someone is dead? They make it sound so easy in movies, it was really hard. I didn't want to touch his heart because like it or no, it was mine. I removed his gut and opened his stomach. It was then I realized there was a late-night rerun of my daily soap, so I sat here watching," she said.

"I am sorry, I will have to arrest you for the murder of your husband," said Sub-Inspector Pandey.

"Yes ok," she said, "Can I finish this serial and come?"

"Sure," the sub-inspector said turning to the television. After a brief moment of silence, she replied, "Do they have a television in prison?"

"You get those in barracks, I have heard," the inspector said, "Or they allow you to bring your own if the jailer permits."

"Oh that's nice," she said, "But I don't think I'll miss a lot in the coming years, will I?"
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