Winner – 6th Position
(Judges’ Choice)
All India Literature Competition 2019-20
by The Creative Post
— by Steffi Sarkar Biswas
–Reading Time – 16 min Approx
I stretched out my left hand to put off the radio. The clock on the wall showed the time was 3 am. It was raining a while ago.
A dog that was barking for some time had now stopped. I usually go to sleep before 12 am in the night. But for the past two days I am not feeling sleepy in the night. I had also taken sleeping pills on the first day. But today I had taken two pills more, hoping to fall asleep fast. I don’t have any disease. Nor do I take much stress at work. I am very much fit and fine and follow a proper routine. But I don’t feel sleepy in the night. But today it seems I will have to stay awake the whole night, so I sat up and switched on the light. I sprinkled some water in the eyes and thought to go to the roof.
I took my tape recorder and went to the roof to take some fresh air. It was a full moon night. The moon was shining at its best. My mood got nostalgic. I wanted to record poetry. When I was about to finish recording, a dog suddenly gave a loud bark down from the street.
It was like an appreciation from the dog. To hear my poetry, I clicked the rewind button and then played it. I could not hear anything. Maybe the recorder was not working properly, and my poetry didn’t get recorded. I must go to the shop tomorrow to fix it. After strolling a while, I decided to go downstairs and turn on the radio again. It was better to listen to the radio rather than staying awake and strolling like this. Suddenly I heard a ‘banging’ sound from the roof of the house adjacent to mine. The sound was very shrilling like someone is banging some metal material with an iron hammer. It was like someone was trapped inside a metal box and banging it again and again to open. I thought to have a look.
There was a wooden ladder in my roof, so I took it and kept the starting part on the adjacent house and end part on my roof. I somewhat crawled slowly on the ladder to make sure I don’t fall off down. As I reached on the roof, I saw something white lying on the floor. When I touched it, it started to move. It was a white cat sleeping. It meowed so loud that the ‘banging’ sound stopped. I realized that I had woken up the owner of the house from his sleep. Quickly I ran into a small corner to hide, as the moon light was not shining at that corner. Footsteps could be heard as the person was climbing the stairs to the roof. Someone with an unfamiliar voice said in a sleepy tone, “Who’s there?” The footsteps were getting deeper and my heartbeat was getting deeper. The man came near me and saw here and there. He murmured something to himself. Thank God the man did not have a torch. After he went I somewhat managed to escape from that hiding spot.
But to my surprise the ladder vanished through which I came to the roof. I was sweating profusely thinking how to reach my home. I just had one option to get back, which was climbing down the water pipe at the back side of the house.
I wasted no time and carefully climbed down the pipe. As soon as I reached down, some street dogs saw me and started to bark.
The light of the moon shined more as the sky got clearer. I thought that now the owner will catch me red-handed and hand me over to the police. But there was no sound of his footsteps. Rather a foul smell came to my nose. A rotten smell. Maybe a dead rat. I was just about to open the main door of my house, but it was already open from inside! “Is a there a thief inside”, I wondered. I tiptoed and entered my house. “Uugh this rotten smell is getting more intense”, I murmured to myself. The smell was coming from the study room situated at the ground floor of my house. Slowly, slowly I went to the room. As the latch of the window of my study room was broken, so it always remained open. Thereby birds and cats used to enter from that window. The rotten smell could be of a dead cat or some bird. I had lots of thoughts in my mind. As I was about to open the door, I heard a loud thud sound from upstairs. “Is it the thief?”, I questioned myself. I shivered with fear.
I did not have much cash in my house, just Rs. 200 that I had received from the publishers for publishing my poetry in their magazine.
There was some exclusive wooden furniture, my books, and my radio in my house. What will the thief get by selling my radio or stealing my money, I thought. Suddenly something crossed into my mind. There was some jewelry of my wife in the locker of my almirah which is in my study room. Then what is the thief doing upstairs, I thought. Had he already stolen the jewelry and then went upstairs? My brain was not working at that time. Firstly, I must get rid of the thief, so I took an iron rod from the kitchen and silently went upstairs. My heart was beating so fast that I could hear it clearly. I managed to gather some courage and opened the door of my room. As I entered, I could see no one, but that white cat that I had seen in the roof of the adjacent house. It was sleeping on the floor and I could see it clearly with the moon light that reflected inside the room through the window. I was relieved. It was just the cat that had come from the roof. I had left the door open, so I quickly went to the roof and closed it.
When I reached my room, I got so relieved and got off to my bed. I thought to play the recorder again to recheck whether it is not working properly.
I could not hear anything but the loud bark of the dog. My heart stopped for half a minute. I played it again. Not my poetry but I could hear the barking of the dog. The foul smell was still coming, and it had spread the whole house. I went downstairs to my study room. After entering the room, I switched on the lights. To my horror I saw my wife standing in front of the almirah. She had taken out all her jewelry and placed in my study table.
My wife is an extremely poor and simple woman. She often used to visit her sick mother in her village at Behrampur. We were leading a peaceful life. She had gone to her village two days back and told me she will be returning after one week. I had no idea of what she was doing in our house at the middle of the night. Why did not she inform me? What is she doing with her jewelry? All these questions were juggling in my mind. I moved forward to talk to her but then I heard a voice of a man behind me. I turned back and saw a tall, grey haired man wearing a shirt and trouser. His head and half of the body was covered with a Kashmiri shawl. After hearing his voice my wife turned and to my surprise, they both hugged each other like as if they were meeting after years. I felt like someone has put a huge stone in my heart. I could not breathe properly. I did not know that my wife had an affair. Why did she hide it from me? In our eight years of marriage, I did not feel so much broken than today.
The man told, “The smell is spreading like anything. Let us take it out now dear.” My wife replied, “Yes, I have waited for this day for so many years darling. My husband was a good person, he gave me all comforts of life. But not a child.” She sobbed. “I told him to at least visit the doctor once to get a checkup, but he did not pay a heed to my words, my emotions. I always wanted to have a baby; my inner happiness was this little bundle of joy. I cannot explain how much I had cried nights after nights, always longing for a baby.
We were happy but this borderline between us induced a grudge inside me. I had suppressed this for so long. And suddenly you came to my life. You remember when we met in Behrampur. You filled up those gaps of my life.” “And now we are going to become one dear”, added that tall man. “Yes, and for being together I had to murder him with the iron rod and put his body in this large trunk in his study room. I had planned to murder him a month ago and finally put my plan into action two days ago. Without your support and love I could not have done all these.” The man opened the trunk beside the side table, and what I saw was unbelievable. I saw my body smeared with blood and my head totally smashed. I shivered and went to the drawing room to put lights on. I didn’t have the courage and went in front of the mirror. No, there was no one. I could not see myself in the mirror and tears rolled off my cheeks.
— by Steffi Sarkar Biswas
