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The day I shot Rana in the head

By Prakash Subbarao

The three of us were were close friends during school days; Rattan Dutt, Rana Das and me.

Rattan Dutt was my classmate at La Martiniere. Rana was from another school. How did we meet? Through “Squeaky” a smallish sardar and classmate of mine who stayed near Rana’s house in New Alipore.

Rattan Dutt had a large house, also in New Alipore, where we played a game of cricket or two. His father, or uncle (I forget which) had just returned form abroad and had brought him an indoor cricket game that was just “fab” (as we used to say in those days) and so we alternated between outdoor cricket and the less physically challenging but equally exciting indoor game.

Rana was plump and overweight even then; he and physical activity just didn’t go together. He and I invariably played ‘Monopoly’.

It must have been 1966 or thereabouts. My father had just bought me a cycle. “It’s a Robin Hood” he told me. “With an oil bath gear case”. What an oil bath gear case is, I didn’t know but I loved my cycle. I traveled all over the vicinity on it. Every gully, every by lane was explored on this all terrain vehicle.

Rana was fascinated by my cycle. He wanted to ride it whenever I went to his place. But this wasn’t in my best interests because it left me alone at his place with nothing to do. So I generally refused.

One day his father got him an air rifle and Rana used it as a tool to bargain for my bike. You take my air gun and shoot birds with it and I’ll ride your bike. What says?” he asked one day. “It’s a deal” I replied.

So there I was, on that fateful day, perched on my “machan” a.k.a. “the balcony” of his second-floor flat. I shot at anything that moved – Rana had left me with an inexhaustible supply of ammunition in the form of lead pellets. After each “shot” I would crack open the barrel of the gun and insert a pellet. Then I would fire again.

As I kept firing at all and sundry I wondered where Rana had vanished to. He had been gone for quite a while.

A few minutes later he wobbled into view, his face flushed with the exertion of riding the bike.

Almost involuntarily, I looked down the long barrel of the gun at him. I gently pulled the trigger.

(Note: I plead insanity.)

What happened next was hilarious. Rana fell off the bike. He jumped back up on his feet and looked all around him, trying to fathom why he had fallen off. “I felt as if I had been hit by a brick” he later told me but since he was not able to accurately pinpoint the reason for his fall, he jumped up on the bike and pedaled off with out a backward glance.

A little later he noticed, with alarm, a thin trickle of blood down the side of his face, behind his ear. He rushed back home. That’s when I broke the news to him that I had shot him.

He took it calmly. Being a very practical sort of bloke he realized that if he implicated me, he wouldn’t be the beneficiary of my friendship nor would he be able to ride my bike for that matter. The “shooting” obviously had to be blamed on some one else. But who?

The likeliest candidate was Rattan. It couldn’t be anybody else. That poor, mild mannered Rattan.

The problem was that Rattan stayed next door, literally. Just down the road, about half a kilometer away. If one implicated Rattan, Rana’s mom would charge over to Rattan’s house like a bull seeing red and all hell would break loose. We realized with a sinking feeling in our stomachs that we wouldn’t be able to pull off making Rattan a fall guy without first taking him into our confidence.

Rattan listened intently and silently to the sordid tale. Then, seeing that there was no alternative to his being the fall guy, he agreed. But on one condition. That we delay breaking the news to Rana’s mom till he could make his getaway plans. The two of heaved a sigh of relief. Rattan was in as a collaborator. My scruffy neck was saved.

Rattan and his parents left for Murshidabad where they had their carpet factories – Rattan having successfully convinced his parents that he just longed to see the looms at the family factory. They would be gone for a week. We all figured that this would be time enough to calm troubled Rana’s troubled mom and secure the safety of Rattan’s life.

But we had miscalculated. I’ll get to that shortly.

As expected, Rana’s mom saw red. As expected she charged over to his place. Murder was definitely on her mind, to put it mildly. The Nepali durwan or chowkdidaar or watchman or whoever took the brunt of her almost physical attack. But the villain of the piece was obviously not there and so there was nothing to do but retreat, to live and fight another day. On this note, Rana’s mom pulled her formidable forces back.

The next few days were spent by both us lads listening to her terrible threats of what she would do to Rattan when she met him. If she met him, we mentally amended. The thing to do was to keep Rattan and Rana’s mom at very safe distances from each other.

Shortly after the Dutt family arrived back in Calcutta Rattan’s father had, luckily for him, gone out one day when the phone rang. It was the very irate Mrs. Das demanding to speak to Mr. Dutt (Rattan’s father). Rattan had the presence of mind to deepen his voice, pretend that he was the good Mr. Dutt and patiently listen to Mrs. Das’ tirade, every now and then interjecting that his naughty son would be the beneficiary of a sound thrashing when he returned. “I will even drag the rascal by his ear to your house so that he can fall at your feet” Rattan shouted into the phone, relishing his new role of an angry father. “That won’t be necessary” a mollified Mrs. Das murmured. And with these famous four words the crisis was over.

Almost.

What we didn’t realize was that the pellet from the air gun was sill lodged in Rana’s skull, just under the skin. He soon started developing a lot of pain. An X-Ray was taken. It showed the offending slug with great clarity. The doc removed the slug after a minor surgery. However, a four inch diameter around the wound was shaved so that the wound wouldn’t get infected. To Rana’s mom, it was a stark reminder of Rattan’s homicidal attack on her son. Every time she saw that little bald patch she saw not only red but the entire spectrum of the rainbow flashing in front of her eyes. Rana kept pleading with her to drop the issue. I took up the cause too. “Please forgive him” we chanted, often in unison.

This time Rattan was taking no chances. He had pulled the telephone wire from the socket so that his phone was dead. We informed Rana’s mom that Rattan’s parents had gone abroad and wouldn’t be back for weeks. “Rattan is with his grandma, we don’t know where she stays. We think he isn’t well. He isn’t coming to school these days” was our tactic. The strategy slowly won the day. The hair grew back, the painful reminder of the attack ceased and Rattan breathed easier day by day.

Rana’s mom never learned who the attacker was. She recently passed away and maybe she checked on Rattan’s little black book in heaven and was astounded to see that there was no black mark against his name on that score. Maybe she learned that I was the culprit and maybe she smiled and forgave me. I like to think that I was her favourite. She certainly was my favourite alter-Mom
 

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