Evil Injustice and the Struggle for Freedom and Martyrdom

Dominance and rebellion rule the minds of men.

Shankar was at that crossroad where men go to sell their soul to Shaitan. This crossroad exists of course in the minds of men and nowhere else in reality. It is a strange place where men must refuse to recognize themselves. It is a dark and lonely place.

What had led Shankar there? He had wandered far in search of the purpose of his life. A man has two things to learn. First, that he is good, and then that good cannot exist without evil. Living is an art and life is a circus. We are actors. What’s the purpose of this show? For the sake of knowing just this much Shankar was willing to sell his soul to Shaitan. The king of all evils, Shaitan would surely know the answers to his questions. A statue maker, Shankar, disappointed with the mundane life at his town crafted a statue of Shaitan and quietly began worshipping it. Other people were unaware of his devotion to the ruler of all the evils. They went to factories, went to estates. They were commoners. They worked for other people. That was the purpose of their lives, to serve others.

“Shankar? Shankar…” Jarnail came to the statue workshop owned by Shankar. Many tools had been scattered on the floor. Shankar had gone out. Few men had ganged up against an innocent man and killed him. The incident had occurred just down the lane. Shankar had gone there to console the man’s family.

Jarnail was an activist of sorts, he went around the town making people aware of a struggle. Things used to bother him a lot. He considered the world his enemy. He was eager to find Shankar. He went out and waited by the lamppost by the tailor’s shop. The adda of the dadas down the lane was bustling with life. Trees reached high in the sky, but shade was scarce. Winter had set a mystic haze over the grey buildings. The day had already set. City lights glued to the backs of cars and motorcycles, like ribbons, whizzed past this scenery. Lights, could ignore the troubled lives of men, had the power to tie the pace of their lives into a tight knot. Else it was difficult to wrap one’s head around how fast some people lived. No one had time for any of Jarnail’s “struggle” bullshit.

At a far slower pace, a factory worker and a mutual friend of Jarnail and Shankar came cycling down the road. Rajesh, pushing his thumb against the bell on the handlebar twice neared Jarnail. Tring-Tring.

“What’s brought you here, away from the rallies?” he asked getting off and parked the cycle next to him. Being an apolitical sort of guy even he was somewhat pleased that at least the town let such peaceful rallies go on. Jarnail whispered in soft tones, “The rallies are unhindered. I’ve come to take Shankar with me.”

“What makes you think he will waste his time going with you?”

“As if he’s up to any good anyways…” Jarnail taunted.

Rajesh’s colleagues at the factory had been discussing something disturbing. His mind kept going back to that same thing again and again. “Shankar’s friend was found murdered this morning. He’s gone to see him. The innocent man was trapped in a crossfire.”

“Why doesn’t Shankar stick with his useless statues. Who knows what kind of a world he brings to life behind those walls of his?”

“They are not useless” Rajesh retorted. “Everyone has use for statues. Anything can be turned into a statue if you have the right tools.”

“Pledge an allegiance to statues and become part of the whole disaster. You are no different from a statue anyway.”

“I am a statue? I’m more alive than you.” Rajesh wasn’t going to take it. He was becoming impatient. “You are one to judge everyone. Quite the preacher you have become, haven’t you, Jarnail?” Rajesh asked him.

“Who might remain unmoved when injustice crushes the souls of all men freely.”

“What do you know about injustice, you are a commoner, just like Shankar and I.”

“Show me the house of this man who was murdered” Jarnail told him.

Ending this bout of spite Rajesh carried Jarnail on his cycle down the lane where the death of an innocent man was being mourned. Even under the roof of such a house a group was gathered feeling more humiliation than grief.

Rajesh left the cycle leaning against a white wall outside the house. The wall had been surprisingly untouched by slogans or symbols. This was rare for the town. Some people were crying by the old iron gate. The weeds were growing unattended.

The night was spent there. By sunrise the dead man had been declared a victim with majority vote.

Rage was fuming in the minds of the people but power did not reside within them to deliver easy justice. Jarnail didn’t speak a word about rallies with Shankar because he knew this wasn’t the time. Slowly the crowd dispersed but a few men remained. They entered an abandoned room and occupied it, enrage, yearning for revenge.

The air was soon full of smoke from the bidis. Many suggestions were hurled into open view like venomous bombs. They were all scrapped. If anyone knew what Shankar had in mind it was Jarnail, both were men of few words but likeminded. Shankar admitted to Jarnail that he hadn’t a clue why he was there. The need for revenge seeped deep into the blood of everyone present there. But no one was willing to start riot. Hours passed. Nothing came up. Then there was a sudden knock at the door. This caused a disjointedness in the argument. Some even reached for their pistols under the hide of their thick woolen shawls. The game, everyone knew, was bound to be a bloody one. The moustache twirling continued.

Someone went to check the door. Few men had come from far once they learnt of a crime. They had guns with them, proper guns. This lynching had taken an ugly shape. A conflict was on its way. On not finding enough support at the rallies, crowds assembled at different locations throughout the town gathered outside the house.

In that room though, these were all men who observing the situation, felt that perhaps this was the time to take the reins of the revolution into their own hands. Sadly, their fingers were on triggers and they were aiming for the skull of the enemy. They had all lost someone or the other to this conflict. They had absolutely no sympathy for the enemy. They had come a long way in life to make peace with this war of ideologies. Survival was at the top of everyone’s minds. Some were believers in the ideology of peace, they tried calming the situation down. But they were now too close to the fire. Something worked. There was peace, if only for a moment. All those now gathered there went back to their own lives feeling useless and pathetic. Shankar was not someone who could easily calm down. Neither did he have peaceful company. He was now a worshipper of Shaitan. Usually, he would know the way out of situations like these, after all he was an artist. At this moment he only felt his heart beat fast. It was pulsating in his mind. It was not in chains.

Rajesh and Jarnail walked Shankar back to his workshop. The dadas had woken up too and the meeting was alive once again at the adda by the turning.

“Shankar, I know you are upset all this had to happen. I cannot imagine what it is like to lose a friend. The thought comes to my mind often when I think about you. Do not go back there. If a death can gather such a crowd… I do not wish to learn about its consequence” Rajesh said. Shankar was indeed troubled and he knew it too. He also knew that Rajesh meant well.

They bid each other a quiet farewell for now. Shankar went straight to that statue of Shaitan he had been worshipping and asked him why such evil ran with freedom. He looked up to the statue hoping good and evil could even each other out.

Jarnail tried peeking in but he could see nothing. Shankar had shut the door behind him. He didn’t want anyone seeing how doomed he was. He felt some peace sitting by Shaitan’s statue but that was that. It was just a statue. His faith was just a matter of imagination. Big horns, sharp tail, gouging eyes, burnt skin, pointy toes. All of this meant nothing in the end.

The silence was deafening and the mental definitions began to blur in his mind. A man troubled by his circumstances begins to brood in the darkness. Shankar had built this statue in the confines of this darkness. He felt sick and depressed.

With the little energy he had left in him Jarnail sat contemplating why he cannot accept the road ahead. It is scribbled under the intoxication of revenge. It is impossible to avenge man’s suffering.

The next day Jarnail came back to visit Shankar. He came bearing news that Rajesh was leaving the town forever. That was not the only reason he came all the way here. He too had found himself at that crossroad, looking to sell his soul. Maybe there were more than just a few who wanted to learn the purpose behind this eternal struggle. He didn’t know which way to go either. He could not face the world. The path before him was clear but he tried convincing himself that wrongdoings of men against fellow men could not be corrected.

Shankar was pleased to see Jarnail. Jarnail often called the world his enemy. Despite having thought of revolution, he never once succeeded at having visions of victory. Standing at the roads end with all this anger, he only ever felt greedy. Maybe he was finally grieving too and this greed was caused by the need for revenge. Is that what a man’s killer want? To surface above the rest as somehow superior, indifferent to revenge? Satisfied by the anatomy of a murder. “Why did they kill him, Shankar?”

Shankar didn’t take a second before words left his mouth like bullets. “Because man is only part man. Shaitan has his teeth deep into man. Our world burns. Shaitan does not burn even when the fire is fierce. He smiles through it. We remember the evil he caused and he turns his back on us. We cannot undo evil. The lives of men are full of moments when Shaitan comes to linger. He promises revenge and redemption in the guise of evil. He promises to pardon our wrongs. He blinds us. Shaitan’s eyes are so black, so damaged, his horns are so bloody that it has him drowning in madness. His mind plays tricks on him and he thinks it is God’s way that is causing him to stray from good. He wants to put an end to his misery. He wants to destroy this world we live in.”

“Should I feel unfortunate Shaitan laid its path before me and I cross ways with him?”

“Don’t you get what I mean? You can’t stop it from walking alongside you, whichever path you may choose. Do you feel better knowing that he is Shaitan, the torchbearer of evil, and not you?”

Jarnail’s eyes turned away in disgust. “How can you live like this? So blind to the suffering of our fellow men.”

“At least I’m not causing the world more pain” Shankar said. The two men felt a sudden disconnect between them. It was at this point their roads diverged.

“Do you ever think about the end?” Shankar asked Jarnail. “Do you ever imagine what you will achieve from this struggle?”

“Freedom” Jarnail answered.

“Will this struggle for freedom ever end?” Shankar asked coldly. “I’m not afraid of the end.” Jarnail had uncertainty written all over his face. “For me, the fight has only just begun.” Shankar was curious so he asked, “I know I should involve myself in this mess, but what if I just don’t care, will that make me a coward?”

“You cannot remain indifferent to the struggle. There is no life without it. Has the indifference to the suffering of others brought you any peace? Can you ever forget how unequal and unfair this world is? You can’t. Every day you are reminded of it, aren’t you?” Jarnail was beginning to become angry again. “If all those people who were killed in a flash were still alive would you not ask them whether they died a just death, whether they deserved the end that was given to their lives?”

“I would walk past them as if everything was alright knowing well enough that life as I see it is flawed and corrupt” Shankar said.

“Now that you know that we are living in a free for all, know well that they are coming for you? You know we stand united” said Jarnail. Shankar fell back in his chair and almost surrendered. “What should I do?” he asked feeling exhausted with all this thought.

“Nothing yet, when the time comes, we’ll tell you what to do.”

He was serious. Something big was going to take place. “Leave and never come back if you need saving. This land will always remain a battle ground between good and evil. Shaitan moves through us, invisible, making home in every mind it passes. The enemy too has made friends with him. Though we may be many, but the sides in this battle are only two. Shaitan is having yet another laugh turning us against one another. It will stop at nothing less than our pain and death.”

They knew that in a battle between good and evil the good always wins.

Shankar was still strictly opposed to violence. To calm the minds of these unsettled gentlemen Rajesh came on his cycle once again announcing his arrival with the bell.

There was scarcely anyone who was a supporter of peaceful protest more than Rajesh and that is why Shankar was glad he was near. But what was Rajesh doing here? Afterall he was leaving forever.

This time he was looking for a place to hide. “Jarnail, they followed me here”, his voice trembled as they let him inside. There was no escaping a force that was told to deal a deathly blow to the insurgency. “All your co-conspirators were arrested. Some were shot on sight.”

“This is the eradication we had been so wary of. Men have been turned against men. Don’t be scared, they came looking for a fight and that is what we will give them. Fighting till the last breath is the only option we have got.”

“They see you as a criminal”, Shankar said. “Your freedom, for them, is a flag which must be uprooted. Your life has no meaning, no purpose. They think they are crusaders, that they are doing God’s work.”

Which God could freely run such a slaughterhouse if not a servant of man?

“Freedom has been seized from us by them with misplaced power. We only ever call for a people’s revolution. They line us up and put bullets in the backs of our heads. They drive pleasure out of it.” Jarnail added. After a few minutes a group of officers came knocking at the door. Everyone thought this was it. There were calls to those inside to surrender.

It was so loud it felt like it would throw the door to the ground. Shankar pushed Jarnail into the room where he kept the statue of the Shaitan. He couldn’t stop wondering whether the officers will arrest Jarnail or kill him if they caught him. The knocking became more impatient. Rajesh reached for the door but before he could open it a round of bullets were fired from the roof of the building opposite Shankar’s workshop and the officers fell on the floor with a thud. When Rajesh opened the door, he saw that they were all dead.

 For some time nothing moved. In stillness Shankar came forward and felt that things would never go back to being normal. The gunfire was still echoing, but in the distance the echo faded away finding only abyss.

Jarnail stormed out at once and went near the martyrs to pick up their guns. He was not away from martyrdom himself.

Rajesh’s yell stopped him in the act, “Stop! Go now Jarnail. I never want to see your face again.” He turned to Shankar and added, “Tell him to take this curse elsewhere.” Shankar knew Rajesh was hurt. He knew they were all merely pawns. “These men wouldn’t blink once before gunning you down. They came here with an agenda. There was death scripted into our lives today. Aren’t you feeling lucky it wasn’t you?”

Shankar spoke finally. “I no longer know who is an enemy and who is a friend.”

“I will not see lives go to waste. I will not rest till my people are disarmed and these forces come to a halt, till our plea for peace is heard, till the day we can live without fear. That is no dream of mine, that is my future. Enough suffering – enough suffering.” Rajesh went chanting these words out into the open. The fighters of the force open fired on him from behind the mist covering the trees. There was some firing from the building opposite the workshop in return. Rajesh lay covered in blood. His dream of freedom ended a dream. The firing went on for a few hours till both sides retreated to their base.