Sunday, October 6, 2013

RED

He shouted irritatingly counting money over his desk. “Make it fast. They are waiting.” It was Sunday and as usual he has estimated a three times more business on his shop. He looked at the crowd of customers around the small desk. Their eyes shone with greed and impatience. He counted in mind how much they are going to pay today, each individual and then again he summed them up. His face brightened up with the answer. Today I will get than tiny train set for my son, he thought to himself.

Just then the helper of his shop brought out the black plastic carry bag and handed to him before returning to his work.

“Here sir.” He held it with big smile. “Wait!” He interrupted suddenly before that carry bag was touched by the customer. He took out a small soiled white cloth behind his desk and wiped the small trail of blood on the carry bag. “Here sir, you chicken.” He brightly handed it to the eager customer.

The customer was very happy and in return awarded him the exact price without any bargain. The customer left and the next customer get to that place. He again shouted the same lines at the helper slaughtering hens back there. Just then the tiny phone over his desk rang loudly.

He picked up the cradle and replied. “Hello.”

From other side a broken female voice came. It was his wife and she was saying something unmanageable over the phone. “our son…so much..in hospital..alone…don’t know..what to do…please come soon.” The sentence was broken in places with inconsolable sobbing.

“What happened? Where is my son?” He cried over the phone. “Where are you now?”

“At..hospital” His wife sobbed again.

He didn’t answer instead he left everything there, barged through the crowd to his bike. On the bike he raced to the hospital nearby his home. He was sure they must have taken his son to that hospital. That was the only piece of sensible thought he could think all the way. Except that all that came to his mind was the beautiful face of his son. He loved him too much. Perhaps he loved him the most in world. A scratch on his body was unbearable for him.

It took him half the time it usually takes. He blindly swerved through the traffic. The time he reached, everything was messed up in his mind. He didn’t know what to ask his son for. He bumbled through varieties of patients waiting on the tiny corridor of hospital. He even didn’t know what happened to his son. He ran past the wards and all of sudden stopped near the emergency ward. His wife was sitting there.

He went to them, shivering on his own gait with dread. His wife started to cry louder on seeing him.

“What happened to him?” He asked his wife. A nurse came and politely asked them to have both patience and silence as it’s a hospital.

“what the fuck happened, will you tell me?”

His wife managed herself to speak. “He was playing outside and I was cooking..and I heard his shout and came out and saw he had slipped from the terrace of unfinished building in the construction site. I had told him not to go there. I had even scolded him. But he again went to there and now..” Her tears rolled down again.

He went to the small bed where his boy was lying. There were bandages rolled over his forehead, a patch tapped over his cheek, covered his both legs and the left hand at different places. He was sleeping there.


He looked into his face where there bandage wrapped up. Fresh blood was oozing from the place. As he put a hand lightly over his head, he strangely got a vision of the chickens slaughtered in the shop. He tried to shake away the thought but it was so powerful and gripping that it didn’t leave him. The more his looked into the blood soaked bandage                                                                              the more was reminded of the strain of blood in his shop.


 He cried there, thinking crying would save him from comparing his child with those mere chickens but it didn’t too. He stood there alone, forgotten of the difference between the streak of blood he had wiped from the carry bag and the one he was witnessing now. There were now more similarities in them than just being equally red. 

15 comments:

  1. How very sad... sometimes we don't know what we have until it is gone... :(

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    1. True. Realization often dawn on you like a heavy deluge in summer afternoon.

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  2. A poignant story.

    You write so well about life!

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    1. Thank you The Gardener..you are always so kind! You know sometimes you criticize me too..I am in need of some constructive criticism too! :D

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  3. The Gardener has lent words to my thoughts. Beautiful write. Chilling and poignant. Red is the colour of all Blood.

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    1. Thank you. Yes! Red is the color of all blood. My intention behind the post was to show that it doesn't matter whether it's human or animal, the blood is same and also the pain they get is also same. :)

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  4. Poignant. You almost turned me into a vegetarian there.

    Awesome use and flow of words. Keep it up :)

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    1. Thank you Soumya..now I think that I did a good job as the message is understood and well-received. :)

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  5. Wow! Awesome Namrata… really I don't know what to say. It pinches me also deep, and I think we don’t expose to killing animals live so it doesn't bother much even we eat meat. (Escaping… hehe)

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    1. You are right Jeevan. We are kept dark, blindfolded with nice names of nonveg dishes and all the tortures are done behind the curtain. Imagine if Tandoori-chicken would be called as Murdered Chicken then noone would have even touched it. We are the slaves of our greed.

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  6. It is right, what you said. Being a vegetarian myself, I will almost concur with you, except when I think that what about the plants, who have life but no blood, or whose blood is not red. What about them?

    Beautiful post!

    Blasphemous Aesthete

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    1. Well! To answer the question I need to get to a bit deep into thoughts. Actually the thing is that the vegetarian food is not considered as harmful because most of the vegetarian consists of fruits and flower and leaves. If you take one fruit out then after a few days another fruit will take it's place. And even if we don't take out food, it will eventually rot there fall one day. It's like shedding our older skin.

      But when we do kill an animal, we take out it's life. The worst thing is that the butchers kill them mercilessly. Do you know in slaughterhouses the small kids are of good rate..they kill small piglets thumping them directly on the floor so as to save the amount of meat wasted in cutting. The cows are sucked with the cow milking machines that leave them totally drained out and lead them to leave pathetically. (You must be thinking I am some peta maniac! But hell, NO!)

      Practically the truth is more scary than my post. Just that I want others to understand that animals also have some feeling and they can be hurt too.

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  7. I was a vegetarian who became a non vegetarian. You made hate me :(
    Such a beautiful write up this was!!

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    1. Thank you for reading and understanding too. :)

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