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080808

By Prakash Subbarao

Chapter 1

Rajan woke up late and jumped out of bad in alarm. He looked at the watch. It showed eight minutes past eight o’clock.

Strange, he reflected to himself. Today was the 8th of August 2008 and here he was, waking up at 08:08, an hour later than usual. That was because of last night’s party at Sushil’s place; Sunita and he were enjoying themselves so immensely that they lingered on, hours after they should have left.

He would be late at the office. He hoped that his boss wouldn’t notice this; he believed that if the day started well, it would sustain itself that way.

“Sunita!” he shouted “is my breakfast ready”.

“Ten minutes”, she shouted back, from the kitchen.

Ten minutes was all the time he would need to bathe, shave and get ready.

As he was shaving, he turned and bent past the slightly open bathroom door to look at Sunita.

There she was, briskly efficient, making parathas (Indian bread) for him. “She’s so beautiful” he told himself “she’s such a sweet girl. I’m so lucky that I married her”.

They were classmates in College and came from different ethnic backgrounds. He was a kannadiga, a native if the state of Karnataka, and was originally from Mysore.

She was an Iyer from Chennai. Her family were very conservative and it took them months to get the approval of her parents to even meet him.

Slowly, they began to bond, and when, one day, Sunita raised the subject of marriage with her parents, they didn’t throw up any objections; they liked Rajan and considered him a fine young man. “The only thing that worries me is that his horoscope doesn’t match yours” her father told her one day. “This does not auger well for this marriage.”

Sunita looked at her father and smiled. “You know I don’t believe in all that stuff, Papa” she said. “You young generation don’t believe in anything” her father responded, with mock dismay and both of them smiled at one another fondly.

Sunita and Rajan were married a few months later and were very happy together. “How long will you love me?” she once teasingly asked him, just after the marriage and he laughed and replied “I will love you only for six months more!”

Yesterday, after the party, as they were riding back on his motorcycle, she hugged him tightly and teasingly reminded him that the six months were soon to be up. “Will you extend your love for me after six month?” she smilingly asked. “Hmmmmm. I will have to think about it” was his playful reply. She responded by pulling his ear and they both laughed and drove on.

Rajan gulped the chappatis down and quickly pulled on his shoes. “I am very late” he told Sunita “I have to run.”

“What about my kiss?” she asked as he passed her and headed for the front door at a brisk trot.

“No time for it now!” he shouted over his shoulder as he raced down the stairs “I’ll give you several kisses when I get home this evening!”

His bike started almost immediately and he drove as fast as he could, to try and save a few precious minutes.

Traffic is surprisingly light today, he reflected.

The 4th Block bus junction was not packed with cars, as it normally was. He saw a new coconut seller sitting in the corner; there were several people buying coconuts from him. “He wasn’t there yesterday” Rajan mused.

A kilometer further up the road he started getting pangs of regret that he had not kissed Sunita goodbye.

They had never ever missed a kiss. Not once.

On impulse he stopped the bike and, from his cell phone, called his colleague at work. “Has the boss come in?” he asked him.

“No. Boss called in just now and said that he will be coming in by 10 o’clock” his friend replied.

A delighted smile lit up Rajan’s face. He would go back and give his lovely Sunita a kiss. Then his day would go well. Whistling a popular tune, he turned the bike around, feeling lighter and better.

As he reached he 4th block junction, he saw that something appeared to be happening near the coconut seller.

He wheeled the bike closer to the coconut seller to get a look.

Chapter 2

Shankar worked as a clerk in the post office. He had been transferred recently to the Umbarpet Post Office and took a bus to work. Luckily for him, he stayed very close to the 4th Block bus stand. There was a bus here every five minutes to Umbarpet and he invariably managed to get a seat.

This morning he was in a very bad mood. He and his wife, Savitri, had had a fight and he was still smarting from it.

Savitri was always after him to earn more money. She had recently realized that Shankar’s colleagues were all corrupt and taking home over a thousand Rupees a day in bribes. “Why are you not taking bribes, you fool?” she would hotly demand.

Shankar just could not convince her that taking bribes was abhorrent to him; he just could not do it. He believed in the concepts of dharma and karma but all that his wife wanted was more money and a better life style.

While he was having a bath, he heard her talking in high pitched tones to someone. Who is she talking to at this time?” he idly wondered. Automatically his eyes went to his watch, which he had put on the mantle a few feet away. He saw that the time was eight minutes past eight o’clock.

“Who were you talking to?” he asked his wife as he came out of the bath room.

“I was talking to my mother. I told her that I am fed up that you do not take bribes. My mother agreed with me. She told me to tell you not to come back home today unless you come with an extra one thousand rupees in cash.”

Shankar was horrified.

“I will not come home with any money that I have not honestly earned” he told his wife angrily.

“Then don’t come home at all!” she screamed at him. “Go and stay somewhere else."

When Shankar left home a little while later, he was very disturbed. He thought that he would drop in to the Ganesh Temple. The temple was about half a kilometer away.

As he crossed the road towards the temple, he saw that there was a new coconut seller sitting on the road. He walked past the coconut seller to the temple.

At the temple he poured out his grief to the God. “What should I do, God?” he asked in despair “Please guide me as to how I should control this wretched, corrupt, wife of mine!”

He left the temple feeling a lot calmer.

As he approached the bus stand, he saw that there was some sort of commotion. Intrigued, he went closer to get a better look.

Chapter 3

She had met him at a party a month ago. They seemed to have a lot of things on common and, gradually, their relationship got more intimate. He had taken her out to dinner last night and suddenly, after they had had a drink, had uncharacteristically, got on his knees and said “Lakshmi, will you marry me?” Overcome with emotion, she hadn’t been able to get the words out and had just happily nodded. “Yes, yes yes!”  her eyes said.

After dinner they had made love for the first time since they had met and it was languid and emotional. Though she had made love with several men, this seemed to be different. She felt that she was floating in a bed of pleasure and experiencing sensations that she had never felt before. It was a psychic experience that was new to her.

They made love for several hours and had drifted off to sleep at around 4 a.m.

She awoke with a start. Sunlight was streaming through the window. She looked at the clock. It was 8.08 am! “My God!” she thought to herself “I’ll be late to work!”

Jumping out of bed, she dashed to the bathroom for a quick shower. There was no time for breakfast; she would have to have it in the company canteen. She calculated that she had just had a few seconds to spare and spent these scribbling a note that said “Yesterday was terrific! Have to run to the office but I’ll be back as soon as I can! Let’s do it all over again.” She signed the note “Your Lakshmi” and propped it up where he would see it.

She walked briskly to the corner where she would be picked up by her company vehicle.

As she approached the corner, she saw that there was a new coconut seller there. He had piled the coconuts in a heap that spilled on to the pavement, blocking the path of the pedestrians. She approached him to tell him that he should rearrange the coconuts in such a manner as to allow people to walk freely on the pavement.

Just as she neared him, she felt a violent tug on her hair. Her head was pulled backward forcefully and she heard a person saying “Bitch! Why are you here? Why are you following me? I will kill you!”

Unable to respond, and in a state of shock, she watched in horror as her assailant grabbed the sickle from the hands of the coconut seller. Shoving her violently away, he brought the sickle forcefully down. She watched in horror. “This can’t be happening to me!” she thought to herself.

Everything seemed to be happen in slow motion.

She took her first look at her attacker. He was a powerfully built man of medium height who appeared to be in his mid-thirties. He was simply dressed in a white bush shirt and dark trousers. His eyes were bloodshot and blazed a hatred that she could not understand. She had never seen him before.

She watched in fascination as the hand holding the sickle descended. She felt the violent blow but strangely there was no pain. As she looked down, she saw the front of her dress drenched with blood. She was finding it difficult to balance herself on her feet and her body was swaying uncontrollably. She made a last attempt to remain upright but was unable to stop herself from falling. She felt a second violent blow to the back of her head and her vision started flickering. “Why is this happening to me?” were her last thoughts. A moment later she was dead.

Chapter Four

Rajan was ten feet away on his bike and saw the whole thing. He couldn’t believe what he was seeing. “Let me ram this monster with my motorbike so that he will fall and we can overpower him” he thought to himself and accelerated towards the killer.

The killer saw him coming and side stepped. He took a swipe with the sickle that almost chopped Rajan’s right hand off. The bike fell, throwing Rajan off. Due to the impact, Rajan’s helmet came off.

The killer was on Rajan in an instant, slashing at his body with a manic fury.

Shankar, standing a few feet away, was horrified with the spectacle. “Sir, what are you doing?” he stammered. The killer looked up, saw Shankar and advanced towards him, menacingly. Shankar thought he would reason with this deranged man and try to get to calm down. “Sir, please put the sickle down. We can talk this out” he pleaded in a shaky voice. He noticed with growing alarm that the man was advancing towards him in a half crouch. Suddenly the man jumped at him. Shankar lost balance and fell backwards. In that split second the killer slashed his throat with the sickle.

By now a crowd had formed and their horror turned to anger. Just as the killer slashed Shankar’s throat, a person in the crowd picked up a nearby stone and smashed it on the killer’s head. The killer fell to the floor as another blow smashed his head, cracking his skull. Soon the entire crowd joined in, and in a matter of minutes, the killer’s body had been reduced to a mass of bloody tissue.

When the police arrived ten minutes later, there saw a huge crowd silently looking at the carnage. Soon three ambulances arrived and removed the bodies. Half an hour later, after the forensics people had completed their business, the corporation workers sprinkled mud and sand on the bloody portions of the road. An hour later, no one could  have believed that all this had taken place here .

News report in The Times of India the next day:

Mad man kills three with sickle; crowd smashes him to pulp.

A man went berserk in Chennarajnagar yesterday morning and hacked three people to death. The deceased were identified as Lakshmi, a software engineer with a well known MNC, Rajan a Marketing Executive and Shankar, a clerk in the Umbararpet Post Office. The killer has been identified as Madan, an agriculturist from Mandya.

Madan was reported as being of unsound mind for the past six months. His wife was allegedly having an affair with a close friend of his and Madan had come to know of this only recently. Police sources say that Lakshmi, the dead woman, bore a startling resemblance to Madan’s wife and they feel that he may have mistaken Lakshmi for her. This could explain why he attacked her without provocation. Rajan and Shankar went to her rescue and were also hacked to death.

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Author’s Note: We read about a lot of violence in the newspapers. There are often pictures showing dead bodies. We rarely realize that these dead persons left behind people who loved them and whose lives were shattered by their death. Through this story I have tried to take the reader behind the scenes into the loves of people who died tragic and sudden deaths due to no fault of their own. This story is also based on an experience I once had when our bus, traveling from Kanakapura to Bangalore came to a sudden halt. We saw people running past and they told us that there was a crazed killer ahead; he was killing anyone that came in his path with a machete. Later on, when the "incident" was over, and the traffic started moving, we saw him lying dead in a pool of blood. The infuriated public had literally beaten him to pulp. The story was in the papers the next day; he had had a fight with his wife, left in a huff, boarded a bus, got off in a maniacal rage enroute, seen a coconut seller, grabbed his machete and started killing people. He was a lawyer and had had a marital spat with his wife which sent him into a maniacal rage.

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