Waterworks

Shanti Nagar, true to its name, is a peaceful colony.

There are no bars or liquor shops in the locality, a decision that was taken when the colony was being built, to keep unwanted social elements away. There is a park at the centre of the colony where children play cricket in the evenings, and elderly couples take a walk on the winding roads, or sit down on the benches and watch the children play. The people of the colony all know each other, since many of them had been living there for over a decade.

Until that night when they heard crackers go off.

It had begun with a few solitary bombs, but in a few minutes, the sky was lit up with showers of gold and green. The bombs got louder and louder, and children begged to be let out of the house so that they could watch the fireworks.

A few parents stepped out of the house to see who was causing the ruckus, but the dogs who spent the night in the park had assembled near the gate, and were barking wildly at anybody who approached the gate.

In half an hour, the lights in all the houses had been turned on. The women watched from their balconies as the men grudgingly stepped out of the house, unpleasantness writ large on their faces.

The crowd outside the park’s gate had gotten larger now, and the terrified dogs had begun chasing the cows who were loitering around. People began craning their necks to look inside the park, till they found who it was – Satyendra Dubey.

Satyendra Dubey was the one person in Shanti Nagar who never spoke to anybody else.

In fact, most of the people knew his name only because the nameplate in front of his house said so. Dubey was a man in his 40s, short and stout, who went to work on his Kinetic Luna, returned at 6 ‘o’ clock, and stepped out on Sunday to buy groceries.

When a cricket ball went into his house, he promptly stepped out and gave it back to the children with a smile. When the youth of the colony went to his house to collect money for a festival, he gave them the money with a smile. But apart from these interactions, no one in the colony knew anything about the man.

But why bother about something that causes no trouble, the people of the Shanti Nagar thought, and they went about their lives peacefully. Until this night, when the fireworks disrupted their sleep.

It had been more than an hour since the fireworks began, and the children were running about on the roads excitedly. The cows ran about with their tails raised in the air, the dogs had turned jittery, growling at one and all. The crowd at the gate had grown larger.

A few of them tried shouting out at Satyendra Dubey. But it was of no use. Like a man hypnotised, Dubey bent down, picked up a cracker from a white bag, walked up a few feet, and bent down to light the wick. He then stepped back, and waited for the explosion of sound and light. When the residents grew tired of the commotion, one of them suggested they call the police.

The police van arrived in half an hour, and two policemen stepped out of it. One of them was old and stout, while the other was younger, and held a stick in his right hand.

The policemen asked the people to move away from the gate, and they promptly stepped away. But dogs have trouble understanding human languages, and they growled louder, flashing their sharp white teeth at the bewildered cops. The crackers, meanwhile, continued to light up the sky.

Another fifteen minutes later, the cops had managed to drive the dogs away. The children were the first to run into the park, as the elders followed slowly. Satyendra Dubey was bursting the last of his crackers from the white bag.

The cops moved in on him, asking him to stop. The crowd stood around him in a circle, whispering and muttering to each other. The children ran about the park, searching for any crackers that were left lying on the ground.

The cops took away the bag (which, by now, had only a handful of crackers left), and the crowd got closer. Dubey’s face showed no expression at all. He calmly looked around at the group, and began to pick up the litter from the floor. The cops, used to hustling people and screaming, looked around stupidly, completely befuddled by what was going on.

When Dubey had finished picking up the litter, he walked up to the group of spectators, and began to speak. He had a soft, wispy voice, and spoke in a calm, measured tone.

‘I have been living here for twenty one years. I moved in when I got a job after my graduation.’

The crowd looked at one another, and stepped a few feet ahead to listen to Dubey.

‘I got married within a year of getting the job, and in another year, my wife was expecting our first child’. The cops were now listening to Dubey too.

‘My parents kept telling me to bring my wife to the city, but I was against it. Back in the village, there would be people to attend to her. Here in the city, she would spend all day alone while I went to work. My wife requested me too, but I was adamant that she stay at our house in the village.’

‘When there were a few weeks left for the delivery, I used to visit home every weekend. And then, on a Thursday, I received a call from my village, asking me to rush home. I was new to the job, and didn’t want to displease my officers, so I told them I would leave the next day. She was safe with my mother and sisters, I reasoned with myself.’

‘I boarded the bus the next evening and reached my village early the next day. The sun was out, crows were cawing about happily as I walked down the brown road to my house. The first sound I heard, was of wailing women.’

‘In a few minutes, I learnt that the operation had been complicated. Both the mother and child had passed away a few hours earlier. When I walked into the house, I saw my wife lying down, her eyes staring at the ceiling.’

The crowd listened to Dubey in stunned silence. Not one of them moved a muscle.

Dubey smiled. ‘But that was twenty years ago. I spent every day of the last two decades thinking of them. I would imagine what my child would grow up to look like, what my wife would have cooked if she were living with me.’

‘I spent the last twenty years going about my work like a ghost. But a few weeks ago, I decided I had had enough. What was the point in spending my remaining years in sorrow? So this year, on the night my wife and child died, I decided to burst crackers.’

Dubey looked at the crowd for a few seconds, and bent down to pick up a few papers lying on the floor. The crowd stared at him in silence, while the cops looked about.

In a while, Dubey walked back to his home. The dogs returned to their sleeping spots in the park. The night was quiet again.