Jewel-less Crown: Saga of Life - BS Murthy (polar express read aloud txt) 📗

in a fit of rage, the result of his sense of outrage? True, he had his rival to her favors die while he was still alive and kicking. Thank God, he would not be dying on the gallows either! After all, given the provocation, didn’t the courts hold that a life sentence would meet the ends of justice? With a little bit of luck, he might even get remission sooner than later. But, what might release mean to him then, when the best part of his life would have been spent behind the bars?

Even when freed, won’t it be his lot to wear the cuckold badge? What a shame he had advertised that his wife was loose? Oh, she did visit him often enough, but who knew she hadn’t replaced her dead lover? After all, wasn’t she as attractive as ever? And thanks to his rashness, she became a free bird without an encumbrance to name. Being young and amorous, she might be having the time of her life, even as he was languishing for a mate in the hell of a cell.

How stupid of him to have killed that fellow! It’s as if the dead soul had left his share of problems to his upkeep as it were! And having earned a sentence for himself, hadn’t he granted her unfettered freedom to have her way, anyway she liked? If anything, the news of her looseness would have whetted the appetites of many in the neighborhood. Wouldn’t that enable her to satiate her lust even more? Oh, how had he got into the no-win situation, making it all win-win for her?

Why, he had ended up facilitating for her what he wanted to prevent her from doing. The irony of his crime saddened Wadhwa no end. Oh, given his own need for her favors, he should’ve turned a blind eye to her infidelity or made her pay for it through a divorce. Either way, he would have got along with his own life. But oh, he had allowed himself to be condemned when he had other ways to settle scores. Given the unfortunate repetition, would he have dared touch her lover with a long pole?

As and when he would rejoin his wife, she might even remain faithful to him, having had her fun all the while. Well, even if she were to be chaste, wouldn’t both of them have been past their prime by then? Won’t that leave them cold on the sex front then? Above all, it would only be a life of unease at home and ridicule in the lane.

While Wadhwa lamented thus, Suresh couldn’t help but recall the parallels in his parental story.

Parikshit Agarawal, nicknamed ‘the parasite’ by the prisoners, was literally a lost soul. The posthumous child of a poor widow, he graduated by the sweat of his mother’s brow. Fascinated by what he was deprived of, he dreamt of owning a Vespa. But his mother had designs of her own—she wanted to renovate their old home. When he became a babu in the government, his daydreams acquired a new dimension: he wished for joy rides with his wife. And the mother-son duo saw an opportunity to realize their goals with the dowry in the offing.

But, as the needs of life prevailed over the wants of his dreams, the dowry that Ruma fetched was consumed by their decrepit dwelling. Thus, his outings with his wife were reduced to mere bus rides. But, sharing his disappointment, his mother thought it fit to goad him to turn to Ruma’s father for additional doles. When he sold Ruma the idea of their joy rides, she didn’t fall for it fearing that would break her father’s back further. It didn’t take long for her parents to sense that she had a rough ride in her home street. Pestered by her mother, when she spilled the beans, her father tried to appease his son-in-law by agreeing to part with his old Lambretta.

But as Parikshit was hell-bent upon a brand new Vespa the stalemate continued. And to win the next round, he came to increase the pressure on his spouse. But, as she remained steadfast bearing the brunt of his frustration, he took to wife beating. Besides, to browbeat her through sentiment, he accused her of bothering more about her paternal interests than that of her own husband’s. Unable to bear his daily regimen and to blackmail him back into his senses, she threatened to commit suicide. As it did the trick, he retreated for a while.

Soon, seeing him morose, his mother suggested that if only they could get rid of his wife, she would find him another bride with a Vespa in tow. Seeing a silver lining in his wife’s death, Parikshit dared to dream all again and that sapped the last thread of emotional bondage in his heart for her. Seeing her as the roadblock to his dream ride on his Vespa, he insensibly turned insensitive to her fate. Becoming obsessive to get rid of her, he turned cruel to her.

Once, when he pushed her up to the hilt, she talked about suicide and he abetted her up to the brink. When in desperation, she doused herself with kerosene; he incited her by thrusting a matchbox into her hand. As she took out a stick in pique, he provoked her to ignite herself. Having pushed herself into a corner and as if to uphold her honor, Ruma did his bidding. While she was engulfed in flames, he feigned panic feeling glad at heart.

Though he tried to picture her death as an accident, her father’s complaint to the police opened up the Pandora’s Box to earn him a ten-year term even as his mother got a couple of years to cool her heels. But, at Tihar, started repenting for the loss of his wife and feared the prospect of spending the best part of his youth without a woman.  Thus ruing his fate shaped by his obsession to live beyond his means, he turned morose. And the buzz of the jailbirds that he was a parasite only made life even more miserable for him.

‘Wonder how greed makes man mad indeed,’ contemplated Suresh, ‘and how he turns blind to the consequences of crime! After all, Parikshit had time to understand where all that would lead him to. Leave alone the cruelty of the crime, didn’t it reflect the stupidity of man! And what do those murders of sexual jealousy tell but the tale of man’s idiocy? Oh, on the pretext of patching up, how easily the husband or the paramour would lure the other into a death trap! What a wonder is it that one comes to trust someone with a motive to harm one! Oh, if only the intended victim had known an iota of the human psychology! Would then there be the death of one and the jailing of the other?’

There were those rustic folks from Rohilkhand, who always huddled together. The Tiharians promptly named them the Dirty Dozen. They were under trial for taking the law into their own hands for dispensing their own brand of caste justice. The trigger was the inter-caste marriage amidst the separatist mindset of the village folks. When the couple was caught red-handed, amidst sweet nothings, all hell broke loose in the village. Apprehended on the spot, the couple was dragged all the way to the village square to face a kangaroo trial at the caste panchayat.

Even as the panchayat began the session, the errant couple turned out to be the red herring for those gathered there. As if to incense all further with a sense of outrage, and not to let any lose the focus on the social trespass, the conjugated were tied together to demonstrate the magnitude of their crime. As the guardians of the caste chastity brayed for the polluted blood, the transgressors’ parents were pushed into a corner to extricate from which they unequivocally condemned the crime. However, they pleaded for mercy and averred that their separation followed by a few lashes would drive home the point.

Though living on either side of the caste divide, the gathering ironically got united to uphold the separation of the deviants. Wanting a deterrent punishment to guard against future transgressions, they all pressed the panchayat to make an example of the errant couple. As the condemned were too terrified to speak, someone who came on a visit from the nearby town raised the lone voice of objection to the manner of their detention. Having condemned him roundly for his corrupt thinking, the panchayat pitched in for a harsh sentence for the violators of the caste boundaries. And sensing the public mood, the detractors demanded punishment to the fathers as well for their failure to rein in their children.

In that senseless tension brought about by the anger of the ignorant mob and the temptation of some amongst them to settle old scores, the panchayat decreed that their respective fathers hang the culprits at that very moment. In a cynical exhibition of human meekness, the hapless were executed with the very hands that had tended them to their youth. What was shocking more than their heinous deed was their collective belief of its righteousness, that was, in spite of the subsequent public outcry.

Yet, the redeeming feature of that sordid episode was that the fathers of the victims felt emboldened to defy the Dirty Dozen at the Tihar. Ironically thus, they experienced a sense freedom in their confinement. For once, Suresh felt that his crimes, though abominable, paled into insignificance compared to the panchayat’s collective cruelty.

A corner in the cemetery was all that man needed in the end but could he do without some land of his own before that? The compulsion of Hussain and the dilemma of Ram Dev illustrated the reality of land in the impoverished rural north that led them both to the Tihar. While cooling their heels as lifers there, both of them took it all stoically, perceiving themselves as the martyrs of a cause.

Hussain staked his life to protect his land and ended up killing Rashid, his cousin. He told Suresh that those in the towns failed to appreciate the factors that shape the rural life. The social reality in the village centered on land, and land alone. Thus, life in the countryside could be worse than death without some land to till on. As the head of his family, didn’t he owe it to his posterity to preserve the property? Why should one blame him, when it was Rashid’s avarice that took him to his grave?

Whichever way the law might look at it, Rashid asked for it. Had Rashid had his way, what would have happened to his own family? The hardships of life for his kith and kin would have far outweighed his plight in the prison. Didn’t he derive the satisfaction that he had averted a mishap to his family? Why, life seemed to have unique ways to link the fates of the mortals and to de-link their destinies at its whims and fancies!

While his cousin’s greed for his land led to Hussain’s crime, his own sibling’s intent to have his share the property prompted Ram Dev to kill! Well, he was born into that community, which, over the time, had evolved the custom that would ensure that the family land was not split up amongst its heirs. What if the males of the clan were to partition the family land from generation to generation? In time, no one would be able to inherit any more than bits and pieces. And wouldn’t that make the holding unviable for agriculture, so reckoned the clansmen of yore. Were it to happen, their seers had foreseen, its members would dispose their paltry share and all turn into landless laborers.

Sensing how that would impoverish the community further, and to forestall that fate, they evolved a bizarre custom but of practical wisdom. It was ruled that only the eldest son would marry for his wife