Saturday 19 November 2016

SHORT STORY - III

                                                JUDGEMENT


I was awakened by a rambling from outside.It was my neighbour, a 65 year old woman, screaming at someone. I opened the window to hear her clearly. Her voice was shrill, her curses and abuses heart-felt. It was as if it provided her with her catharsis at the cost of butchering the other person. I wondered who this other person was, It must have been someone close to her who had caused her so much pain that she couldn't restraint herself. And then i heard her say, " You have ruined my entire life?" There was no response to that, nobody replied back, just faint sounds of other persons groaning or perhaps sobbing. I thought it was her husband. May be he had abandoned her and returned now. May be it was her own parents, who got her married against her wishes. I couldn't be sure, but i was curious to know. For some reason, people's emotions attracted me, especially the sad one's. My thought chain got interrupted because of a din , formed out of utensils falling, It was followed by loud cry from someone. They were different from human cries, It was as if somebody's mouth has been strapped with a cloth though not tightly enough to stop them to make sounds. The neighbour continued abusing the other person. The whole building was alarmed and had taken the notice of this now, and the intensity of the lady's screams had picked up, there were sounds of things falling, being thrown, the victim of her abuse was sobbing louder than ever, people had started to approach their door to stop something terrible from happening and just then it all stopped. 

The door slowly opened. A girl may be twenty year old or so, with visibly unnatural body structure and facial arrangement appeared on a wheel chair being pushed by a hospital nurse. As they made their way through the corridor towards the lift, I looked inside the house through the open door. There she was, my neighbour, head buried in her hands on dinning table crying. Everybody dispersed back into their houses as the ambulance drove out of the building.

In the evening, after i returned from work, my mom told me how everybody in the building were discussing about the incident in the morning. Most of them, deriding my neighbour for sending her mentally ill daughter to a mental institution. How they thought, it was so cruel and unjust on her part to get rid of her like that. My facial expressions conveyed i didn't want to hear more, and so she stopped narrating further. I finished my dinner and went to bed. I woke up in middle of night, again with the sobbing sound from neighbour. I tried to ignore the sound, it was discerning, i wanted to stay indifferent to it but it was getting difficult. I took my phone and plugged in my earphones to loud music and slept. 

The next morning i was in a rush to get to office. I skipped my breakfast, took steps instead of lift and hurried downwards, as i stepped outside the building, I heard a cry from above, I looked up and by that time, it was down. My neighbours body, beside me, in a pool of blood. I stood rooted in that place, fear-struck. 

Now, when i reflect back on to the happenings of that day, I realise, her soul had already left her body with the ambulance the previous day of her suicide. She proved the people right, it was cruel and unjust on her part to get rid of it that way.