Fiction: Sriman is terrified after witnessing an incident he shouldn’t have

The huge structure was rising daily before his eyes. Many shops and apartments were already booked. The work was progressing very rapidly, and like a man in a trance, Sriman started to look after everything in the minutest detail. His father began visiting the site occasionally. His father had also taken up the job of commission booking of flats and commercial spaces in the building. He spent his days now meeting friends and acquaintances trying to convince them to invest in the project.

Sriman was greatly amused at this.

It was decided that Sriman’s family would be allotted two large shops below and two apartments on the upper floors. The apartments were not very big. They were modest with about fifteen hundred square feet of carpet space each. Ramen said he would lay the floors of the flats with good marble and tiles and install Jaquar fittings in the toilets. Even the two shops – his brother’s consultation chamber and his pharmacy – would be done up free of cost. What if a little modest, the apartments would turn out to be beautiful ones on the fifth floor with wide balconies. The terrace was also free for use. The matter of cash payment didn’t come up any more. But a fat salary was fixed for Sriman to look after the project.

Sriman had become so busy with the construction work that he had practically stopped going to the newspaper office. He went occasionally because Anjuda had asked him to retain a link. Editor sir also didn’t come on time, just put in an appearance at any time of the day. Madam also did the same. The new office space built to publish the newspaper slowly started to lose its sheen.

For the last few months, Priyambada was supposedly in Delhi. She was doing some course in mass communication and working in various exhibitions that are regularly held in the capital. Sriman had received a few greeting cards she had sent addressed to the office but he had not sent anything in reply.

Sriman had been a very, very busy man.

From early in the morning till the workmen stopped work in the evening, he was at the construction site overseeing everything.

And every day he never ceased to be surprised at the progress of the building.

He couldn’t believe that at one time their old house stood at this place!

A house covered with rusted, blackened, corrugated sheet metal, amongst the large buildings of Panbazar, it hardly caught anybody’s eye. If one didn’t look properly it was hard to make out that a house existed there, and the corridor that ran front to back between the two large shops in front was hardly visible. In place of that ramshackle house, now a large modern building was taking shape. Every day it was rising higher from the ground, but still, it couldn’t be clearly made out from the road. Temporary accommodation for Saha babu and the other traders along with the site office of the project had been built with bamboo partitions, wood and metal sheets in the front part of the plot.

The other trader had not easily vacated the place.

The husband of the fat woman with the coarse voice had lodged a case in the court and obtained a temporary stay.

When Ramen found out about it he went to meet Anjuda.

What happened after that Sriman didn’t come to know for several days. A few days later Ramen told him. “The scoundrel has taken back the court case – do you know that?”

“Really? How did you pull this off?”

“Maya, eh, everyone has maya or love for their own life,” Ramen said philosophically.

Sriman again had a bout of palpitation.

“Tell me everything,” he had insisted.

“That day – do you remember? The day we got the news of the man lodging the case and obtaining the stay? I went out immediately after that, do you remember?” Ramen started narrating the sequence of events after lighting a cigarette and letting out the smoke in style. “I went straight to Anjuda. We discussed the case. Next day we got all the case-related papers from the court. Then met our lawyer and talked with him at length. And that night…”

“What happened that night?”

“What else? Got both father and son lifted.”

“What?!”

“Ah, what do you mean by asking ‘what’? Anjuda sent some boys. They came and took both father and son away.”

“Then what happened?” Sriman’s voice shook a little.

“Then – ah, both father and son were trussed up and thrown into a cold dark room. At night some of our boys beat up the son real good. After hearing the son screaming throughout the night the father had a great realisation, ha, ha –”

Sriman started shaking like a leaf.

“Next morning the father himself went with our boys first to meet our lawyer and then, along with the documents prepared by our lawyer, he went along to meet his own lawyer – and then the case was withdrawn.”

“He didn’t object any more?”

“No, what objections can he have? We made him an offer – that you also purchase a space for your shop and an apartment above just like Saha babu has done. We will give you a better deal on account of you being an Assamese, otherwise…”

“Otherwise what?”

“Otherwise, we would kill his son and bury him in such a place that nobody would be able to find his dead body,” Ramen said quite simply.

Sriman was struck dumb by terror. When Ramen dropped him home at night, he practically went stumbling inside like an intoxicated man.

He couldn’t eat his dinner that night.

It was as if all appetite had disappeared. He somehow went to his room and undressed. When his mother had called him for dinner he lied that he had already eaten. Finishing the glass of water kept on the table in one draught he put off the light and collapsed onto his bed.

For a long time, he lay on the bed without moving.

He suddenly seemed to feel as if a blue-violet-coloured storm raged furiously on the banks of the Brahmaputra on a bright moonlit night! There was no sound! Strangely enough, the storm had no sound. Suddenly he saw, like a gas-filled balloon floating in the wind, the face of a man was being blown along by the storm! – Oh, the face of that dead man!

He sat up on the bed.

Tiny beads of sweat broke out upon his brow.

The violet-blue storm that raged within his mind suddenly seemed to have filled up the room.

He couldn’t stand it any more. He hurriedly got up from the bed and turned on the light. And in that sudden bright light, he felt as if the swirling waves of the blue-violet storm were rapidly sucked in by the corners of the room.

He stretched out his hand and grabbed the cordless telephone. Ramen had in the meantime got him this telephone connection through some member of parliament.

He called Ramen.

He had just reached home. “What is the matter?” he asked.

“Was our tenant threatened by putting a gun to his head to make him withdraw the case?”

“What?” Ramen asked in surprise.

Sriman repeated his question.

Ramen remained silent for some time. Then he replied, “I don’t know. I wasn’t there. Why?”

“I just asked.” Something was stuck in his throat and after a few words, he disconnected the call.

Excerpted with permission from The Rainbow Runners, Dhrubajyoti Borah, translated from the Assamese by the author, Thornbird/Niyogi Books.