Sticks and Stones

There were kids playing outside the window again, he noticed with casual irritation. He had warned them only this morning. Always with the cricket, these kids, always with the relentless howzzats and the interminable running between wickets. Just last week, a boy had been accosted by a timber lorry when he’d crossed the road in pursuit of the ball. The lorry got the better of that unfortunate acquaintance and the hapless fielder was hospitalized. Yet here the kids were again, one week having been adjudged a sufficient moratorium in honor of those wounded in the line of duty. His compatriots were nothing if not resilient. He stubbed his cigarette out with practiced chagrin and continued typing on his old Remington. He was finding it slow going; it had been a dull week. With only a fortnight to the election, one would expect it to be hunting season, news-wise. Even in a small town like his, a staged protest or two, numerous petitions and investigations into suspicious campaign contributions of the two contesting parties were par for the course. Baba Ramlal and Naveen Thomas had been on the election circuit for weeks and it was as close an election as any he had seen. In photo-finishes such as this, frequent and interesting news was almost a given. But no such luck this week. Not for this reporter. The only mildly interesting thing that had happened was the elephant having the runs.

The temple elephant had contracted a severe case of diarrhea and was advertising the fact with several obnoxious smelling watery turds deposited at strategic locations. That was the highlight of the news week. Roy’s editor had woken him up at 7 in the morning with the news that the Mother Mary statue on Christopher Street had just been the recipient of one of these gigantic excrements. Roy had burst out laughing. “Get on it.”, his editor had told him.

“What? You can’t be serious.An elephant is having a bad colon day. There’s no story there”

“Bullshit”, his editor said.

“You mean elephant dung, don’t you?”, Roy countered.

“Don’t give me none of your smart lip this morning, Roy. That’s atleast three paragraphs there and you know it. Now go.”

“ Fine. I’ll go look at the dung, pronounce it bonafide, write a brilliant article, maybe turn it into a long monograph that will be expanded into a Booker-winning novel. I’ll even mention you in the acknowledgements.”

“Roy!”

“ Then I’ll sell the film rights to Ashutosh Gowariker, get some money and go abroad where I can work for a real newspaper.”

“ You wouldn’t do that. You’d miss your editor too much. Now get the fuck outta bed and onto that story before I come down there and shove a zucchini up your behind.”

Great, thought Roy, here comes my two page exposé on pachyderm poop. He gargled some toothpaste, run a hasty finger over his gums and spat. Grabbing his notebook and pen, he stepped out of the house.

A tennis ball smashed into his face. “ Six”, somebody cried out in the street. He hated hearing that jubilant exclamation. “Six” usually meant another of his windows had been smashed. Damn kids, he’d show them. He went out of the gate carrying the ball and promptly collided with a 6 year old girl who’d been sent to retrieve it. She wore a fake white Nike t-shirt that was too big for her and a wide smile that fit her just right. “ Ball,” she said. “This ball?” Roy shouted, angrily shaking the dirty yellow ball in the girl’s face. “ Yes,” she cried happily, obviously not having registered his fury. “ Yellow Ball.” she said cutely, simply, grinning from ear to ear; a statement of fact, of happy ,untainted innocence. Roy almost fell for it. For a moment. Then he threw the ball as far as he could. “You know what it looks like. Now go get it”, he said, smugness written all over his face. He’d always wanted to use that line. “ …and don’t play here again.” he added. The little girl burst into tears. Damn little girls, Roy thought. Always with the crying. He bent down, “Now, now, don’t cry…”he said, trying a sentence which always seemed to work in the movies. However this only exacerbated the sobbing; the girl launched into a cacophony of sound reminiscent of a chorus of raucous jackdaws. He reached out to carry her in his arms,( another technique from the silver screen ) but she ran away frightened, her ragged t-shirt wet with tears, clutching her skirt to keep it from getting wet in the water-filled potholes that cluttered the street. The sooner kids learn that the world is a dangerous place, the better; Roy thought sheepishly, as he got on his TVS scooter and proceeded toward the scene of the ‘crime’.

The elephant had done a swell job of it; you had to hand it to her. Nandini, the apple of the pujari’s eye and star of the yearly temple festival had gone ballistic on the statue with such utter abandon it was almost a work of art. Roy pictured the whole thing framed in the Tate Modern captioned “Excretion Desecration” and sandwiched between Andres Serrano and Tracey Emin. The smell was unbearable, so much so that Roy wondered how The Virgin Mary didn’t take her hands (now outstretched in holy benediction) and apply them to her nose, to plug the stench. Roy spoke with the mahout, who blamed Nandini’s irritable bowels on some bad jaggery that visitors had fed her.” Pujari taking Nandini’s money, saab. For buying new radio. So poor Nandini must eat whatever she gets.” Roy figured he’d gotten enough info; he’d probably go with the animal rights angle without dragging the pujari’s embezzlement into it. This close to elections, it could cause quite a stir, and while Roy was a good reporter, he was no polemicist.

Often, Roy had buried some sensational story because it would piss off the wrong people. He didn’t see it as compromising his journalistic integrity; it was simply a matter of expediency. If you’re good to momma, momma’s good to you. You scratch my back, I won’t turn up at your house in the middle of the night with petrol cans and flaming torches. It was not right or wrong, it simply was. As an ingenuous idealist fresh out of journalism school, he’d questioned how reporting in this country could ever be objective, impartial, honest. His editor, a seasoned veteran who’d done some topnotch reporting in the capital during the war, had listened to the kid wear himself out in a self-righteous, indignant rant, then told him not to waste his time. “ You got to pick your battles, son. If you waste all your energy trying to catch little fish, you’ll be too spent to catch the shark when he comes.”

Roy biked back home, stopping only to buy a pack of cigarettes. He couldn’t write without his nicotine. He lit one up and started typing away, noting with irritation that the kids were at it again, fielders scurrying like rats, batsmen running across the wickets like chickens crossing roads, and with as much reason. Damned infernal cricket, he thought with weary affection, fatigued by his eternal, inexplicable hatred for a game that was almost a force of nature in this country. Hating cricket was like dogs baying at the moon or chasing cars, pointless and exhausting. He adjusted his imported Remington and typed out the final sentences of his article, stubbing out his cigarette in the coconut shell he kept for the purpose.

There was a knock at his door. It was Baba Ramlal, with a couple of his unsavory friends in tow. Roy couldn’t stand politicians. Yet he was fascinated and intrigued by them.

“ I hear you’re covering the elephant story.”

“ Yes,yes, do come in ” Roy replied. “ As one of the election contestants, do you have any comments?” he continued, reverting to type.

“ No comments, but I got a whole new take on it. In fact, I’ve got a whole new story for you.”, Baba Ramlal said, pausing to spit some betel juice out the window. Disgusting habit, Roy thought. “Have you spoken to the church authorities yet?” , Ramlal continued.

“No. But I heard they had no major problems. After all it was an act of God, hehe. Nothing they could do.”

“ True, true. But not enough masala in that version. I’m here to help you tweak it a bit. Say the Christians are very pissed. Calling it sacrilege. Say they’re demanding reparations.” Baba Ramlal spoke jovially, like a benevolent godfather.

“ Can’t do that, ole chap. Journalistic integrity and all that.” Roy replied in a jaunty drawl, though his voice had taken on a steely edge. Yes, definite steely edge there, Roy told himself.

“ Break the little finger on his left hand.” Baba Ramlal said casually. “ Not that left hand, you fool. His other left hand.”

Roy had always had fantasies of being captured by a radical terrorist group and being tortured for weeks. They’d ask him to write an article painting them as visionary, misunderstood prophets of truth, all the while waterboarding him and applying electricity to his testicles. In these dreams, Roy would always hold out forever, not succumbing to the pain, until finally he converted them to his way of thinking by his brilliant eloquence and unflagging clarity of vision.

He suppressed a scream as his little finger was snapped violently. That put paid to any romantic, heroic notions he had nursed. As pain coursed through his body, he looked at his curiously bent pinkie and had an epiphany; he couldn’t do this hero stuff, he had zero pain tolerance. “I’ll do it.” he screamed,” I’ll write your article. But there’s no way in hell you’ll get my editor to publish it.”
“Don’t worry about that.” Baba Ramlal continued in his avuncular fashion. “ We politicans can be very persuasive. Now let me take a look at that finger before we get started. We got some dissent to sow.”

The article was insidious, while not overtly expressing an opinion, it urged dissent. “ Genius, my son. Utter genius. Pulitzer-material. You should come be my speechwriter.” Baba Ramlal had urged, clapping him on the back, before ripping the pages away and scurrying off, presumably to the newspaper office to get the piece into the evening edition.

Roy went to the hospital, got his finger fixed and returned home where he fainted on his bed, sick with revulsion, with exhaustion. The things people would do to clinch an election, he’d thought with disgust, just before unconsciousness hit. Baba Ramlal’s attempt to turn the election into an issue of religion was a brilliant ploy. Nothing could get people riled up like debates over whose invisible person in the sky was more powerful.

He awoke in a damp sweat, at about three in the morning. There were distant shouts and screams in the night. Roy looked outside his window, and saw a house on fire. There was fighting in the streets, names of various gods were invoked. It aint my fault, he told himself, his penchant for rationalization asserting itself. Sticks and bones break bones, words never hurt no-one. Guns don’t kill people, people kill people. People with guns, an inner voice taunted. He cradled his face in his hands and tried to shut out the bloodcurdling screams. Later, towards dawn, he smelt burning flesh.

In the morning, he stepped out of the house and went for a walk, keeping to the corners, walking warily, hesitantly. Some buildings were still smoking, blood was splattered over the streets, but there were no bodies. Curious, thought Roy, objective, detached, his rational journalistic brain at work. I wonder who removed them. A little further on, he saw a couple rocking a charred body in their hands. A child, he realized, aghast, a damn kid – the paragon of innocence, lamb to the slaughter, collateral damage. Possible headlines zipped by in a haze before his eyes: Innocence Lost, Murder, Mayhem, Madness. Elephant takes a dump on Mary: Religious violence ensues. He looked again at the forlorn parents cradling the corpse. It wore a dirty white tee-shirt , nearly burnt out, but Roy could make out the faint markings of a Nike swoosh. Obviously fake.

No cricket today, Roy thought wryly.