SHORT STORY FOR GENESIS 2006

The Angel

He was sitting in his couch at home. The sun had just set. He appeared to be a bit restless. He walked back and forth for some time. Then he came over to the table and poured out a glass of VAT69. He had taken out the bottle to have just a sip. This was the big day of his life. The meeting he has been preparing for would take him a step, a big step, closer to his goal. The thought of being the most respected person in the state in a few years, from the rags that he was, made a smile flash across his face. Genuine smile was something that came along rarely in his profession.

Just then his personal assistant came in. He reported,”Sir, Mr. Murthy is here to see you.”

“Yes, ask him to come in.”

The assistant left. He had been with him since he was elected the president of the youth wing of his party. He was happy to do anything as long as he was paid well. And he was good at what he did.

“Hello Thomas, you look excited”, said Murthy as he came in and took a seat. Just a look at his face would say that he was tensed to no extent, even though he was trying to put on a fake coolness.

“Don’t we have enough reason to be excited?” he replied with the smile still lingering,” Have a drink.” As he poured the scotch he asked,” How is your court case going?”

“Fine, my advocate is fully confident. When will these people learn to quit. First the district court, then the high court, and now the supreme court.”

“The money they spent for the litigation gets added to what you cheated out of him. You will be answerable for in heaven”

They both laughed. They were both friends even before they were in politics. They talked about everything and helped each other. But something has started to bother their relationship lately. Soon there will be a minister from their faction and they were the competitors. They are still friends only because they needed each other for those ‘political games’.

“They will arrive soon. I will deal with them” Thomas said.

Murthy’s smile vanished for just a moment. Of late they were having these little who-is-better games. As he was not in a mood for games he just gathered back his smile and asked,” Why don’t you come over for lunch at my house tomorrow?”

“I can’t. There is this cancer centre that I have to visit”

“Showing off?” Murthy said laughing.

“What all things should people like us do to keep up our popularity?”

“Ya, it is so bothering. I hope I don’t get any disease after visiting those dirty hospital wards”

“I wonder how all those people tolerate the smell!”

The assistant came in,” Sir they are here.”

“Ask them to come in”

The assistant left.

There were three men dressed in suits. They were from a construction company which will soon take a big road development project in the city.

“Good evening sirs”

“Good evening”, both of them replied with authority. “Sit down.”

“Every thing has been worked out. What money are you expecting, sirs?” the man in the middle said.

He replied, “There are three flyovers. It is a 500 crore project. If you give us 25 crores each we will see to it that your company gets the contract. What do you say?”

The discussions went on for some fifteen minutes when they finally reached on terms. The money would be put into a benami bank account that day itself.

Thomas couldn’t sleep that night. The neighborhood had gone to sleep. There was complete silence. He just sat there and stared at the empty darkness outside. When he just got into the bed it was excitement that kept him from sleeping. Then gradually he was carried away by a string of thoughts “Is this where I want to be?” He wanted to be in politics when he was young. He had looked forward to helping the people. Once in politics he realized that it would be better to help himself than any other. He was obsessed with the ultimate goal. Now see how far it had taken him. He felt the outside of the window to be a reflection of his inside.

Then when he realized the direction of his thoughts he said to himself,” Leave it. You can’t achieve anything for yourself if you are good. Go ahead with the ways of the world.”

He swallowed one more drink and lied down.

* * *

He was approaching to the cancer centre. In his car he sat and thought about the prick of conscience he had the previous night. He discarded it as just a bad dream. Today he is 3 or 4 times richer than he was yesterday. How many people could do that?

He would soon reach the centre. He had to put on such shows once in a while. As he was good at dealing with people he could make use of any incident to his advantage. If he was born a little richer he would be sitting in an office with an MBA tag attached.

The car stopped. People gathered around the car. And the usual procedures. Smiling. Waving. ‘Somehow’ his visit has leaked to the media. He put on an expression of “don’t make a great deal of it” as he walked in. he asked the media to stay outside. It was his tactic to stop the so-called-political-critics from arguing that he was showing off. Inside he met the duty doctor in-charge of the ward he was visiting. “Good morning sir. I am Dr. Ramakrishnan. I have a request.” The doctor showed him to his office.

This was what he hated most- people asking for help. Now the doctor would ask for some help from me for the hospital. After five minutes of listening, or rather just holding together his smile, he interrupted,” Everything shall be taken care of. Send a letter to my office and I will see to it that it shall be dealt with as soon as possible.” The look on the doctor’s face was not convincing. It is hard to fool these intellectual guys.

The doctor said a little unpleasantly, “shall we visit the ward?”

“Yes, of course.”

“The first person we are going to see is a little boy. He has been ill for some time now. We have given him all possible treatments available here. His parents are trying to find some money to transfer him to a private institution. They can’t afford it.”

The doctor stopped at the door and asked him to go in. He walked in with an action figure his assistant had just passed on to him. The room was all white and the boy looked pale. The only thing colourful in there was the bedside desk. It had photos and one or two drawings which must have been made by the boy himself. One was the picture of his house, which was rather small. He walked over and sat on the chair by the side of the bed.

The boy had a mask over his mouth and the rest of the face looked like that of a ghost. His eyes were open but were just staring blankly at the ceiling. The look on his face could move any heart.

He realized that he, the one who sits besides the boy, is the real him. Not the one trying to get attention from the public or the media. Not the fake image of him that he has grown used to.

He said to the boy,”hi Arun, how are u feeling?” He sat their and talked with no reply. Finally he places the action figure in his hand and started moving to the door.

Then he stopped as the boy called, “ hey mister!”

He turned around. The boy asked,” Who are you?”

He didn’t speak for a minute, nobody did. There was complete silence. But he was not noticing that. It was like he stumbled upon some rock and came back to his senses. The boy might have asked that just for formality sake. The boy might have thought that it was bad not to talk with someone who has come to visit him. But the thoughts that he had yesterday night, which he had hours before discarded as a dream, unraveled something. It opened up something in him. Maybe it was his conscience. Or maybe it was his spirit that he had when he was young. As everything unraveled he stood there without motion. In the whiteness of room he felt like in heaven in front of an angel as compared to the darkness he felt last night.

The doctor interrupted,” this is our MLA, Mr. Thomas. He is here to see you and help you and the others here.”

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