Witness

The tiny watch on the side of Bibek’s bed showed the hour-hand sluggishly bent past 3. Bibek threw up his hands in frustration. He was not being able to sleep. Not just tonight, he had been sleep-deprived for the last three nights. Ever since the day of that murder; no, not murder, the accident....since then he had been hearing sounds in his head at night. Terrifying, morbid sounds. Sounds which could awaken even the dead from their graves, horrifying wails like the ones he had heard that day, when he was there. The man’s shrill cry for help and the loud, deafening howls of his attackers; and those sounds played back and forth in his mind throughout the night. Three nights at a stretch! He knew he was losing his mental balance. But what could he have done?

What could anybody do about something like that?

Bibek sat up on his bed. Why was he hearing these voices? He did not kill the man. It was them, the guardians of religion, the protectors of faith. They who commanded over all men and women; they killed him. He had no role to play in the murder; no, the accident. It was the man’s fault anyway. He should have been more careful before doing what he did. Bibek was always careful, then why could not the man do the same. It was his fault because of which he lost his life. It was all just meant to be. Then why should he be tormented like this? Why was he the one hearing the voices?

Bibek gulped down another glass of water as the shrieks kept ringing in his ears.

“SAVE ME, PLEASE…..LET ME GO….I HAVE NOT DONE ANYTHING…NO PLEASE…. LISTEN TO ME…

SOMEBODY SAVE ME….

SOMEBODY SAY SOMETHING….”

Somebody say something! What an audacious thing to say! Why should someone say anything. You hurt someone’s religious sentiments without thinking and now you are being punished appropriately for that. Why should anybody say anything at all? And why did he expect Bibek to say anything. There were a lot of other people there. It was midday, in the midst of the bustling marketplace, filled with scores of men and women. Why then should Bibek alone feel guilty? Why should guilt even be there in the first place. Nothing happened that day which could be otherwise called as unjustified or undeserving; even if something unjustifiable did occur, Bibek could not have possibly protested against that. Why, he had never protested against anything in his life, ever....

He did not protest against the bullies in school who used to drench his notebooks, he never protested against the laundry guy who kept taking the same bill again and again from Bibek, five times in one month. He did not protest when his boss denied him promotion, year after year. He did not protest when all the office people mocked his best friend for his sexual orientation, or when his boss passed lewd comments about Asha. He did not speak even a single word when Asha was harassed by her boss, neither when she was fired from her job for her non-compliance. He did not protest when they took away Asha for good. He never protested against anything. And likewise, he did not protest that day either when the machetes came down one after the other on the man’s hands and legs and other parts. He had been like that for his whole life, so why was he feeling bad this time? Someone else should have protested, not him. How could he?

“SAVE ME, PLEASE.....SAVE ME....SAVE ME....”

The voices were becoming unbearable. Bibek clenched his hair with both hands almost trying to rip them off. He wanted to shout, let off the agony in some way. But he could not shout. He never shouted. For as long as he could remember he had never shouted. No, he did shout once, during his childhood, the day his mother had died. He had shouted and shouted and kept shouting like that for several minutes. That was the last time he was angry. After that, everything went numb. When was that? He tried to recollect his mother’s face. How did she look when she was alive, when she would read stories to him? What were those stories? Was he forgetting everything? No, he could never forget his mother. But he HAD forgotten her! He had not thought about her for so many years. He had forgotten his childhood. He should not have forgotten that, but he had.

The men smiled through their veiled faces as the enemy slowly gave in to the punishment. The enemy of the people, the traitor! They did not stop even when his body was in pieces; the hacking continued as Bibek and the others kept watching, standing in silence and observing the brutal outcome of thoughtcrime. He remembered that word from some novel he had read sometime in the distant and forgotten past. Or did he hear it from somewhere else? He could not be sure. He was not really sure of anything, now. All that he could be sure of was the voice of the man in his head.

Bibek looked outside his window. In the faint light of the moon outside, he could see the men in their brightly coloured dresses outside the metal gate of his house carrying matching-coloured flags, the flags waving menacingly in the air. Oh no! It was happening just as he had feared. They had come for him this time, and like that man, his fate had already been sealed. He tried to get up, but his feet felt heavy and his chest seemed burdened. The wails had stopped, and now all that reverberated was the frantic victory-shouts of the mob, the proud announcement of their self-declared verdict….

“You, Bibek, have committed a crime against the people by hurting their religious sentiments. You are hereby sentenced to imprisonment for the entire remainder of your lifetime….. ”

And then, slowly all the voices stopped, an eerie silence engulfed the space between the damp walls as the first light of dawn flooded his tiny cell.