The Accident

 

  I was in jitters as the balance-sheet did not tally. Just then the telephone rang and its jangling made me even more jittery. “Raju speaking,”I took up the receiver impatiently.

  “Raju,” I’m Lakshmi speaking...M...Mukund is killed. Bus accident. Come to the mortuary. General Hospital…”Lakshmi spoke in sobs.

  “What! Mukund killed!” I was shocked. The earth under my feet trembled. “My bosom friend Mukund is no more!” the receiver slipped down from my hand. I sank in the chair and my mind was in a maze.

  Ten minutes passed. My mind cleared of the maze, caused by the shocking news of Mukund’s death gradually. “What should I do now,”I thought, “What a fool I am to sit here and think like this? I should go to the hospital and stand by poor Lakshmi. I should console her.” I took my officer’s permission and left for the hospital.

  I took a taxi. As it raced towards the hospital, I pictured in my mind poor, bereaved Lakshmi, sitting on a bench in the verandah of the mortuary and weeping bitterly. It was my responsibility as her family friend, guide and philosopher to offer her consolation and prevent her from going to pieces. Myself and Mukund were best friends since our school days. His death was a loss not only to Lakshmi but to me also. It was a void which could not be filled by anybody else. 

  The taxi pulled up at the General Hospital. I got down and without waiting for the change from the taxi driver, I strode towards the mortuary. 

  I entered the corridor in front of the mortuary and stood transfixed for a while. Lakshmi sat on a bench crying her head buried in her knees. Only the previous day I had seen her in high spirits celebrating her twenty-fifth birthday. But now - what a change fate had wrought upon her. She heard the sound of my footsteps. She looked up and saw me. She got up and staggered towards me. “Raju” she burst,”my Mu...kund...Mukund...is no more. Tell me, can’t I go with him?”

  She clung to me like an abandoned little child and wept.

  I wiped the tears streaming down her face. I was affected more by Mukund’s death. But I must seem composed before poor Lakshmi. “No Lakshmi, don’t say like that” I said, fighting back my tears. “You must live for the sake of Mukund’s dear memory.”

  “Excuse me Madame,”the police inspector who came out of the mortuary room said.”You can identify the body. Sir, you better accompany the lady in.”

  I took Lakshmi by her arm and said “Come,”

  Lakshmi walked into the mortuary as if in a dazed condition. She was not crying now. She was looking at the dead bodies, some on the stretchers mutilated or wounded, some others in the stretch of drawers, some drawers half pulled out. The mortuary room was filled with the cries and wails of the kith and kin who were trying to identify the bodies. The inspector led us to a chest of drawers and pulled out one, “Madame:”the police inspector said slowly, ``Could this be your husband’s body? Please try to identify.”

  At the mention of Mukund, Lakshmi became her pitiable self again. “Oh, no! I can’t bear to see my Mukund mu...mutilated.”she covered her face in her hands and wailed.

  “Aye Lakshmi! Hai Raju! you too. “I am alive. I’m not dead.” Mukund appeared there from nowhere.

  “Mukund...Mukund...Is it you?” Lakshmi laughed through her tears and clung to her husband. Mukund gathered her into his arms as if she were a fragile thing. Both of them became oblivious of the world for some time.

  The police inspector looked at me puzzled. “Mistaken identity, I suppose.” I said to the law officer. 

  I looked at Mukund and Lakshmi, still entwined in each other’s arms, with a sigh of happiness.

  The law officer pulled out a notebook from his trouser pocket. “Yes,” he said.

  Mukund gave his statement: As I was going to my office this morning by bus, my pocket was picked. The culprit jumped down from the bus when I tried to catch him. He came under the rear wheels of the bus and was crushed to death. As my wallet contained only a five rupee note and my photo identity card, I did not report the theft to the police.”

  Mukund paused for a moment and continued with a suppressed smile,”My landlord telephoned to my office that the police informed my wife that I was killed in a road accident. The rest you know, inspector.”

  “I am glad at the happy twist of the story.”the law officer said to me,”as you’ve rightly supposed it was a case of mistaken identity. May God give your friend a hundred years of happy married life.”

  “Well said inspector,”I joined, “elders say that if a man, earlier supposed to have been dead, is alive, he would be blessed with another hundred years of happy life.”

 While we left the mortuary, I could not help shedding a tear of pity for the unknown pick-pocket, the victim of easy money, “just a fiver.”

 

 The Trinket Seller

I simply called the poor little child of ten as a trinket seller till she entered my home.

By the time I narrate this story she lived with her mother in a huge cement pipe, lying unused on the road side. A bedding, some utensils and some trinkets - cheap imitation jewellery were her property.  The mother and the child lived in the pipe-dwelling. 

   Near the pipe there is a city bus stop. Myself and my colleagues had to take our bus at that stop in the morning around 9 AM and alight at the same spot in the evenings. By day break, the mother and the child finished with their morning routine. The child spread a polythene sheet near the bus stop and arranged the trinkets on it neatly. Before our bus came, I engaged the child in conversation and bought one or two trinkets almost daily. Her mother rarely stirred out of the pipe. She came out of the pipe only to cook food or wash clothes, a few yards away from the pipe.

  The child was thin but tall for her age. Her big round eyes were the chief attraction in her lanky face. She was losing some of her upper teeth and her semi toothless smile was an added attraction to her face.

  As I always found her in a tattered frock, I offered fifty rupees to the mother to buy the child a new frock. But she refused. “No sir.” She refused politely, “I’m not a beggar.”

  “Sorry!”I said,”I don’t want to hurt your feelings. But the child’s clothes…”

  “The money we get from selling the trinkets is enough for us. Soon I will buy her a new frock.”

  Her polite refusal of alms increased my respect for her.

  Whenever I bought trinkets from the child without bargaining, sometimes paying more than the actual price, under the pretext that I had no change, my colleagues often teased me that I did all this because I had an eye on the child’s mother. Though I dismissed their jokes, it was an undeniable fact that the child’s mother must have been a beauty in her hay days. 

  When I returned home with a trinket or two in my lunch box almost everyday, my wife flared at me. “Why do you buy the same trinkets again and again? Do you pity the little girl or her mother?”

  That day when it was time for dinner, I did not get up. I was still hurt at my wife’s rude comments. She stood behind me and put her hand on my shoulder.”Sorry dear,”she said,” I shouldn’t have hurt your feelings.”

  I melted instantly and got up for dinner.

  We were married for twenty years. But we had no children despite consulting many doctors. I suggested to her that we should bring a child from any orphanage and bring her up. But she did not agree, saying that an adopted child could never become our own.

  My wife was tired of scolding me for buying the same trinkets again and again. She gave away most of the trinkets to the children of our maid servant. 

  Days were passing on without much change. Soon the hot summer gave way to the rainy season and the monsoon rains began.

  Soon the Dasara festival approached. There was colour and gaiety everywhere. A huge canopy (pandal) was erected near the city bus stop and the statue of Durga Mataji was installed at an auspicious time. The deity was worshipped twice a day - during morning and evening and the prasadam (offering) was distributed for the devotees who gathered at the pandal. The offerings usually consisted of bananas and acacia jaggery. The trinket seller attended the pujas (worship) with her mother everyday and collected the prasadam with great devotion.

  Though Vijaya Dasami is a public holiday, I had to attend my office on some urgent work. By the time I reached the bus stop, the bus was about to start. I got into the bus on time. So I had no time to chit chat with the child. 

  Clouds were gathering by the time I returned from the office.  After getting down from the bus I looked around for the child. She had already packed up her trinkets and put them in the pipe - her dwelling. She approached me and said,”Sir, my mother is down with a fever. She hasn’t eaten anything since the morning. Could you fetch a doctor?”

  I was thoughtful. I wanted to go into the pipe-dwelling and inquire about her health. But I checked myself as some people were already observing me curiously. I rushed to a nearby medical shop and bought some antibiotics and painkillers. “Give something to your mother to eat and then give these medicines.”  I put the medicines into her hands and left for home.

  I had my dinner and went to bed. But I could not get a wink of sleep. The light rain which started, soon developed into a heavy downpour.  I was alarmed for the safety of the mother and the child. I looked beside me. My wife was having a sound sleep. I got up and rushed out with a blanket rolled up under my arm. 

  I rushed into the pipe dwelling and she lay, muttering incoherently “my child…”my child…”

  I spread the blanket over her, up to her heaving bosom and looked at her once beautiful face intently for sometime. Suddenly the child beside her stirred. I took a last look at her face with an intense emotion and left the place.

  The next day was a working day for us. I walked to the bus stop with a presentiment that something bad might have happened to the woman.

  Before the pipe-dwelling lay the woman motionless. The child buried her face in her mother’s lifeless bosom and was crying her heart out. Soon a crowd gathered and one of them telephoned the local municipal office.

 Our office bus came and went. But I did not get into the bus. I stood my legs rooted to the ground. The child’s eyes were searching for me. But I stood far behind the crowd and avoided her glance.

  The municipal van came and the woman’s body was shifted into the vehicle. As the van started  to a crematorium, the child thought that her mother was being taken to a hospital in the van. So she kept asking the crowd, “which hospital mother is being taken? When will she be back?”

  Nobody in the crowd bothered to answer the child’s question. Soon the crowd dispersed.

  All the while, a range of emotions were surging up in my mind. “Why Couldn’t I come forward and arrange for the final rites of the woman?” I thought.  “Had I done so, my neighbours would think that the woman was my keep and her daughter was my love-child. Such a rumour would eventually break up my family.” I reasoned within myself.

  Finally I came to the conclusion that I should take charge of the child. I stepped forward.  I took the child’s hand into mine and said,”Let’s go home.”

 I took the child home and explained to my wife what had happened briefly. I told her that I would admit the child into an orphanage. 

  “No dear,”she said, hugging the child, “the child is ours.” 

 A Wave’s Touch

I was waiting at the Bangalore Bus Station Complex impatiently. The Madras bound bus was yet to arrive and I was pacing up and down the platform. I had already finished with the two periodicals I had bought at the news-stall. 

  “When is the bus to Madras expected?”a nightingale’s voice poured honey into my ear.

  I looked in the direction of the sweet voice. Beside me stood a tall and slender girl of twenty. She was very beautiful to look at. She stood before me with a suit-case in one hand and an air bag slung onto her shoulder. 

  “It is scheduled to arrive in ten minutes miss,”I replied, surveying her attractive figure through the corner of my eye. As a writer it was my experience that, if you stare straight into the eyes of a beautiful woman, she takes you for a roadside Romeo and you may soon land in trouble. Then the golden opportunity of winning her heart is lost forever.

  “Where are you going?” I asked her.

  “Madras,” she said.

  “Me too.”I said. I was already devising plans to engage her in conversation because I had already become a poor victim of Cupid. “ Hi! I am Rao” I introduced myself to her.

  “I’m Lavanya,”she said.

   “Why should we strain by standing?” I said to her,”let us sit and relax for a while.”

But she stood undecided with her suit-case in her hand for a while and then nodded. 

But before we could sit on a bench and relax, the most unwelcome bus arrived on scheduled time. 

  Soon the passengers gathered at the entrance of the bus to get in. Lavanya also joined the gathering to push her way into the bus.

  As soon as the passengers got into the bus, the driver honked the horn twice.  Lavasnya put her head out of the window to ascertain whether or not I got into the bus. 

  I felt that she was anxious that I might miss the bus.]

  I got up, took the suit-case into my hand and got into the bus leisurely. As I checked my seat number on the ticket, it was a pleasant surprise for me.; My seat was next to that of Lavanya. I put my suit-case on the luggage rack and sat beside her. There was no arm-rest, separating the window seat from the aisle seat. So I sat huddled up to avoid falling over her, if the bus took a sudden turn. But she sat relaxed.

  Thus laying huddled up in a corner of the seat, I reopened the conversation. “The weather is chilly. Isn’t it?” I said.

  “Yes,” she replied, “because it’s winter.”

  I felt a little beaten. But I did not lose heart. I continued, “If the weather is chilly, as it is now, your mind is numb and you lack the initiative to do anything creative.”

  “Creative!” she repeated with a note of frustration in her voice, “I am the personal secretary for a sill, old boss. “To take dictation from him in shorthand and bang it on a typewriter, I don’t need any creativity. But why do you speak about creativity? Are you a poet?:”

  “No, I am a writer,”I said, “but my critics say that my fiction is as poetic as that of Thomas Hardy.”

  “I was an avid reader of Thomas Hardy, when I did my B.A. with English Literature at Madras University.” she said.

  “The syllabus of B.A. English literature at the Madras University is exclusive. There is no other subject in the three year course unlike at many other universities. Hence it is almost half M.A English literature course.” I added.

  “What about your academic career?”she asked.

  “I majored in B.A. with English literature, History and Philosophy. So my knowledge of English literature and language may be less compared to yours.”

  Again our conversation reverted to the fiction I write.

   “What are the books you have written so far?”

   I reeled out the titles of five unpublished novels and two collections of short stories.

  She pouted her lips and seemed to rack her brains for a while. “Sorry,” I don’t remember having read your novels. But believe me. I read a lot of fiction.”

  I felt a little sad. If she hadn’t heard the titles of my books, it was not her fault. It was my fault as they were not yet published.

  “I wasn’t a famous writer,” I said, “I shun sex, violence and sensationalism in my writing. So I could not shoot up into prominence as some other writers could.” I thought that she realised the hurt note in my tone.

  “Don’t be sad because you are not known to many. Great writers like Somerset Maugham 

were obscure and felt desperate, when they began their career as writers. But when they became mature in writing, the world recognized their genius and the public simply flocked to them.”

  Her soothing words gave me the strength of a hundred elephants. “If only I had that much encouragement” I said, “I am sure to come up in my career.”

  “By the by”she said,”what do you write about? What are your themes for fiction? Please tell me all about your fiction?

  “The joys and sorrows of the urban middle class are an inexhaustible source of material for my fiction.” I said.

  “Then what about the rich and the poor? Don’t you write about them.

  I smiled and shook my head in the negative.

  “You are a committed writer then!”she said.

  I was a little alarmed. I have taken Lavanya simply to be the personal secretary to an aged cranky boss till now. But now I realised her depth of understanding. Talking to her refreshed my spirits, which lay dormant all these years.

“You are partly right.” I said “when I write about the urban people, they cover both the neo rich and the poor.”

  “But you see,”she argued, the Indian middle class is not confined to urban areas only. The middle class exists in rural areas too. What about them?

  As she posed this challenge, my spirits were reinvigorated. Had I had this brilliant, incisive thinking girl by my side, I thought, I would have earned my due place in the world of fiction. I answered her question with great enthusiasm, which was frightfully surprising to myself, that I was born and brought up in an urban middle class family. So I could write about them faithfully. 

  “Agreed” she said laughing. “Now I call you a ‘sincere writer.’”

  “Any tag which pleases you.” I laughed too.

  The bus made a halt at Chittoor. She was about to get down to have a cup of coffee. But I stopped her. “I myself will go out and fetch two cups of coffee for us.”

 I fetched two cups of coffee and offered one to her. Sipping over her cup of coffee, she wanted to pay. But I told her that I had already paid. Then she promised to give me a cup of coffee in Madras, our final destination.

  I bowed my head and said like a gallant lord pleasantly,”As the lady pleases.”

  She raised her eyebrows in feigned fright and exclaimed,”Oh my good heavens, you are a knight! Must have found yourself at the round table of King Arthur!”

  I met her at her own level. “Yes Lady, a knight, a gallant lord who fights a monster to win his beloved lady.”

  Suddenly she became silent. I thought that she had got the cue of what I had said. Her lower lip trembled and she held it with her glistening white upper teeth.

  “Isn’t it  a sign that she was also hit by the arrow of Cupid?” I thought. I fancied a thousand roses blooming in her reddened cheeks.

  I did not want her to be silent. I yearned to hear her talk through her bashfulness. “Why are you silent?” I challenged her, shoot me some more sharp questions if you can.”

  She looked at me and smiled. Her shy smile tingled my entire being and I thought that I could write an excellent novel with the electric charge of her smile.

  “You’re very designing,”she said, “I must be careful about you.” 

  “Of course I am designing,” I said, “a lord is always designing to win his lady’s heart.

  “Oh, please stop it,” she said with a suppressed smile, “Won’t you keep quiet?”

  “Yes, as the lady pleases,” I said and remained silent for a while.

  The bus was racing along the tarmac road that looked like a long, winding black cobra. From the window I saw the beautiful green paddy fields, flanked by tall trees. I looked at her. She was enjoying the beauty of nature, and while she was thus immersed, I gazed at her golden brown complexioned body, glowing in the warm sunlight.

  The silence was killing and I wanted to engage her in conversation again. “So you are beaten in the argument.” I teased her. “No more questions to fire at me?”

  She looked at me and gave one of her radiant smiles. “I am tired of the argument,”she said but posed a challenge to me immediately,”Why don’t you appoint me your personal secretary? Being a P.S to a writer is wonderful. Isn’t it?” 

  I was taken aback. I was a writer of sorts and could hardly make both ends meet. But... had I only sufficient resources to have her as my P.S, the ambiguity and abruptness in my writing, which my readers often complain, could be avoided by her incisive criticism about my writing. Keeping with the style of the Mills and Boons fiction, suppose this P.S fell in love with her boss, that was me, and became my wife in due course of time after the usual challenges and counter challenges and misunderstandings, I should be the luckiest person in the world, I thought.

  “Why don’t you answer me,” she persisted, “Do you doubt my abilities to be your P.S? If it were so, I explain my secretarial achievements?”  she paused for a moment and then continued, “I will make the best PS you can ever dream of having. I can just tell you how useful I can be to you. Once Somerset Maugham’s personal secretary suggested a punctuation change - inserting a comma, in his magnum opus ‘Moon and Six Pence.’ When the suggestion was carried out, it enhanced the greatness of the master-piece. When I become your P.S. I can do better than that. Can’t I?”

  “Oh God!” tears welled up in my eyes. I lied to this angel that I am a very successful writer, when in fact none of my books were accepted to be published. “What a cad I am” I thought.

  “Yes, I was mean, mean to the girl who believed in me that I was a popular writer. But me? A hypocrite. But there is no going back. I must keep my pretense. So I found myself saying, “Right now an old man is working as my personal secretary. He is lonely and unable to seek employment elsewhere. If he quits on his own, the next preference is yours only.” 

  “Thank you very much” she said brightly and fished out a scribbling pad and a pencil, “give me your address. I will be visiting you at your office.

  I was caught in my own pretense again. I rented a dirty bed in a dormitory. All my property consisted of a suit-case, full of clothes and another bag, full of white papers, ball pens, refills, punching machine, pins, gem clips, other stationary necessary for a writer and some books. Both the suit-case and the big bag were stowed away under the bed. I did not have even a separate cupboard for me. There was hardly any walking space between the beds. If I gave her my address and she visited me at the dormitory, my pretense would be blown up and she would take me for a cheat. It would be suicidal for me. So I reeled out some more lies. “I am vacating the spacious apartment and my office which I have rented till now. It’s because I am leaving for Malaysia to partake in the Asian Writers’ Conference. After that event, I will go on a world tour for three months.”

  She looked at me in awe. “It will be simply great for me to be your PS in future. I do hope that when you return from your world tour, people will recognise your literary genius and admire your writings.”

  I could not look straight into her eyes. I was guilty. 

  “Rao!” she said breaking the silence. “You have already made a mental journey to Malaysia. A realistic writer should be mentally and physically present at the same place.”

  “Yes!” I said desperately trying to look composed, “I will be mentally and physically in India till I leave for Malaysia.”

  “That is it,” she laughed in agreement. She wrote her residential address on a piece of paper and gave it to me. “I will live with my grandparents in Bangalore. Please visit me at my house someday.”

  “O.K. sure” I said, 

  There was silence for a few minutes. “I think your people come to the bus station in Madras to pick you up”

  She opened her beautiful, honey oozing lips to reply but just then the bus swerved to the extreme left to avoid head on collision with an oncoming lorry in the opposite direction. The instant result - there was another head on collision between me and Lavanya. But this collision was a romantic one. She lost her balance and hit against me, her lips covering mind fully. 

  We recovered as soon as the bus steadied again.

  Our lips met for only a moment but the experience of it is of ages. We did not talk to each other for some time. We were still wrapped in that sweet experience.

  At last I looked at her. She looked at me too with her eyes downcast. I thought that she had not yet recovered from her virgin bashfulness for what had happened. Now she looked like a shy bride but not like the tantalising and lively girl.

  We were loath to break the silence for fear of losing the sweet mood.

   We talked to each other for a while before the bus reached Madras.

  The bus made its final stop at the Broadway Bus Station in Madras . All the passengers crowded at the exit door to get down and Lavanya joined them.

  I was the last person to get down. As I got down, I saw her getting into a taxi along with her people, who came to the bus station to pick her up.

  I stood at the parking slot and looked at her.

  She blew me a flying kiss as the taxi moved on. Her flying kiss expressed a hundred thousand meanings.  

  Gone was she, but may not be forever.

  I heaved a sigh and walked along the road that led to the Marina beach.

  I was walking along the sea shore and the waves were rising up and falling down. The droplets of a  milky white surf of a fallen wave rose up in a soft breeze and touched my lips. The soft touch was like that of Lavanya’s lips.

  I held my pen in my hand with a firm resolve to come up as a writer against all odds. Then Lavanya will find me and become mine, I thought. I set my face homewards - the dungeon-like dormitory, planning the plot of a new romantic novel.

  

 A New Leaf Of Life

Padma woke up in the middle of the night suddenly. The jail clock struck one o’clock just then. 

As she opened her eyes and looked around, she was bewildered to see that the prison walls were closing in on her. She was too afraid to move. She lay motionless and looked on. The wall of the single, dungeon cell moved in gradually and crushed her. She was reduced to pulp and life ebbed out of her.

  “Aye, prisoner No. 325! You are still awake.”the grating voice of the jail sentry  startled her out of her thoughts. She looked at herself. She did not die. She was alive. She adjusted her saree and tried to sleep again. But she could not. She knew by habit that some more choicest abuses from the mouth of the sentry were yet to come. She was not wrong in her supposition.

  “You keep wide awake for your sin won’t let you have a wink of sleep.” The sentry said spitefully. He was a middle aged burly person. He was one of the most foul mouthed man among the watch and ward staff of the central prison.

  Even if Padma was asleep, the sentry would hit at the prison bars with the butt of his rifle. Then he would utter obscenities at her. She would bear them silently and try to sleep again. When she adjusted the folds of her saree before sleep, the sentry’s eagle eye never missed to ogle at her heaving bosom.

  That is why whenever she was to be presented before the judge at the court, the sentry vied with others to be her personal escort.

  “My sin,  my sin,”Padma muttered under her breath as the sentry passed on.

  Padma thought that what she had committed was a great sin, which the waters of all the oceans could not wash clean. “Yes, I am a sinner” she said to herself and slept again but her sleep was often disturbed by night mares.

  Padma was born into a middle class family and was happily married., not for three decades but just for three weeks only.

  On a bad morning Padma’s in-laws dropped her at her parents house and demanded more dowry in cash, jewels and inlaws’ gifts. They made it clear that Padma could enter her mother-in-law’s house again only with a bag full of cash and jewels.  

  Padma’s father Shastri paid the dowry and the in-laws’ gifts with great difficulty through his nose and found himself on the road after his daughter’s marriage. 

  Articles like friz, tv, scooter and vcr were included in the additional dowry. 

  Padma did return to her in-laws’ house but with empty hands. She pleaded with her in-laws her father’s inability to pay more dowry, 

  “Aye, Padma”her mother-in-law threatened her, “Those blood daughter-in-laws who don’t bring sufficient dowry are reduced to ashes now-a-days. Bear in mind. You have returned from your father’s house empty handed.

  “Oh that dreadful night”Padma recollected the event and brought forth some horrible pictures before her mind’s eye. She felt that she smelled the stench of a human body that was burning in the fire. “Oh my sin,”she covered her face in her hands and wept silently, discharging her tears to the damp floor of the prison cell.

  The clock struck five and Padma woke up. Her eyes were red and she felt her limbs aching as she had no sleep the previous night.

  As the morning routine was over and Padma had her round of refreshments and coffee, the jail sentry ushered a tall, lean and bespectacled person of about thirty five years of age. He had a drooping but attractive moustache. He wore a black coat and held some papers in his hand.

  “Madame”he said,

  “Madame!” Padma was amused at the mode of address. All these days she was used to the careless address to her as prisoner no. 325.

  “Hi madame”he said again, “I am Raghuram,  a lawyer and human rights and social activist.”he introduced himself to her.

  Padma did not reply. She stared at him. She did not know what a lawyer and a human rights activist got to do with her.

  “You see madam,”he continued, “your case is going to come up for hearing at the sessions court tomorrow. I will argue your case if you allow me to.” He looked at her expectantly.

  Padma did not reply. She did not know what to say. She remained silent, for a while, counting the tiny holes in the iron mesh screen.“I have no money,” she said at last, “My father was a retired elementary school teacher. He spent all his lifelong savings to get me married off. Now he and my mother live on the meagre pension. I can’t pay the lawyer's fee if you argue my case.” 

  “Never mind,”he replied. I fight for justice, not for money,” 

  “But…”she paused.

  “But,”he repeated her word.

  “I have killed my husband personally. Even the lawyer, appointed by the government legal services department said to me that it was a first degree murder and it was very dificult for me to get off the noose” She laughed bitterly.

  Lawyer Raghuram waited till she controlled herself. “Madame, you didn’t commit any crime,”he said emphatically.”When you are called to the witness box to depose before the judge, you simply turn hostile and say that you are not guilty of the crime. That’s all. I’ll prove your innocence of the crime in court.” 

  Padma was confused. She was certain that she killed her husband. But the lawyer’s promise of a free world made say ‘Yes.’ The sentry blew the whistle that the time was over. Lawyer Raghuram left.

 The next day the court assembled with Padma in the witness box. Her sisters-in-laws in the visitors' seats were casting their spiteful looks at Padma as they thought that it was she who robbed them of an asset (their brother) of two lakhs rupees.

  When Padma in the witness box deposed that she was not guilty of the alleged crime, the judge inquired if there was any lawyer to argue on her behalf.

  Then lawyer Raghuram stood up. “Your honour,”he said,”I will argue on behalf of the accused.”

  He began his intelligent and powerful argument which the court heard in pin drop silence.

  Lawyer Raghuram argued that what Padma, the accused, committed was not at all a crime but a brave act of self defence which should be lauded. But even if the learned court did not construe the act of the accused as a brave deed, still the court could take a lenient view of the act, considering the hapless condition of the accused.

  He argued further that even if a docile cat was confined in a room and brutal violence was caused against it, then the cat, with its only aim of self preservation, would not hesitate to spring up on the offender and pluck his eyes. The lawyer said that Padma was placed in similar circumstances.

  With the permission of the learned judge, lawyer Raghuram enacted the scene of the crime in the court.

  Padma’s in-laws threatened her with her life when she returned empty handed from her parents house. Her father paid whatever he had as dowry and gifts to in-laws and found himself on the street.

  Having learnt that not even a single penny could not be extracted from Padma, her husband, mother-in-law and three sisters-in-law wanted to kill her and wanted to get Padma’s husband married again with a hefty dowry and costly gifts for the in-laws.

  If they file for legal separation between Padma and her husband, then she had to be paid alimony for life. Moreover, they had to wait for the stipulated period of time to get the groom married again. If Padma were killed, all this trouble could be saved.’

  “With this evil end in mind” Lawyer Raghuram paused for a while to create a more dramatic effect. Then he continued, “on that fateful day, Padma’s husband, his father and mother and his three sisters bound her hand and foot. They poured kerosene on the floor and threw a lighted match into it. When the fire rose about four feet high and its satanic tongues spread towards Padma, her husband tried to push her into the fire.

  Padma, tied with strong coir rope tried her best to extricate herself. But she could not. She was resigned to her fate. She thought that she was going to die in a few minutes. But a strong urge for survival seized her. She sprang up and hit her husband hard under his chin with her head. Unable to withstand the shock, he fell into the fire. Then Padma moved away for a safe distance from the fire.

  Padma looked like the god of death. Her in-laws were afraid to approach her.

  Padma’s husband was admitted into a hospital with 90 percent burns and died soon after. 

  “So your honour,” lawyer Raghuram resumed his argument,”the accused had no premeditated intention of causing death to her husband. Hence it is not a culpable homicide. It was just a desperate attempt to save herself.”

  “Your honour”Raghuram concluded his argument saying,”even if the learned judge thinks that it was a crime on the part of the accused, it was purely an act of self defence.”

  He also prayed the court of law to set the accused free and punish the guilty whose crime has been proved beyond a shadow of doubt.

  The court heard lawyer Raghuram’s argument in rapt attention and reserved its judgement for the next week.

  If there was anybody who was totally unconcerned about the arguments and counter arguments in the court, it was Padma and Padma only. When the court was engaged in legal battle over her case, she kept herself aloof and muttered under breath that she was a widow and her life was sealed. For her it did not matter much whether she killed her husband or he met with his death accidentally. She was perplexed. When she gradually brought herself to feel the cold prison to be her second home, this lawyer entered into her life who wanted her to go into the world, holding her head high. She was indecisive. Her thoughts were divided. For a moment she would yearn to live in a free world. But the next moment she would resolve to spend the rest of her life within the four walls of the prison cell. 

  Whatever may be Padma’s conflicting thoughts, the court set her free and awarded exemplary punishment to her in-laws. The court further observed in its historic judgement that hapless brides should emulate Padma in similar circumstances. 

    It was a great occasion for anti dowry women’s organisations which gathered in the court premises to congratulate Padma. Stimulating speeches were made, praising her courage. Calls were given to boldly oppose male chauvinism.

  When everything was over and everybody left, Padma found herself all alone in the sprawling court premises. She had nowhere to gol. Her in-laws, now behind the bars, ceased to exist for her. She would only be an unbearable burden to her parents if she returned. She had an uncouth feeling that the jail sentry would come and drag her to her prison cell again.

  Then! There was a soft touch on her shoulder from behind. She was startled and turned round. Before her stood lawyer Raghuram with an expression in his eyes that he achieved what he wanted to. 

  Padma was overwhelmed with a plethora of emotions. For a while she wanted to bury her tearful face on his chest and wanted to cry her heart out. But she checked herself since it was a public place. She stood confused.

  “Let’s go” lawyer Raghuram said,”we’ll fight together against injustices on women.”

  Padma still hesitated for a while. Then she stepped forward. She walked beside him arm in arm.