A Difficult Code

The market place had crowds to suggest the misgiving that the crowds intended to transact in the market. Nevertheless, people filling up the market arena had quite off the mark intentions. They were on their routes to nearby bus stands and railway station. As a result, shops and crowds had almost nil interaction. You look at a high denomination note closely for examining it only after which you find a deceptive silver line dividing two parts of paper money wrong way to declare it a counterfeit.

Hidden behind this market of Dalton nagar stood the little railway station stood with it's one pair of tracks. In a train bound to Lucknow, I was sitting on the filthy floor of a compartment. The night before, they had assassinated Father of the church and his family with whom I, a recently converted young boy, used to reside.

After the assassins left, I sneaked from my hideout and reached where Father lay with weltering pool of blood still creeping, slicing and killing the whiteness and holiness of Father’s cloak. I had seen him always in this white long cloak, his face always malleable with kindness and smile, reminding one of the white holy smokes oozing out of a dozen incense sticks.

Imtiaz, a student of Lucknow University, was the man who arranged for my shelter in University’s canteen. I had done him a favor. When I was standing in a dilemma near the university building, a bike savagely pulled up; a young man shot a bullet with his weapon injuring Imtiaz in the leg and sped away. I helped Imtiaz to find a dispensary nearby.


Imtiaz and his friends would come to the canteen in the afternoons. Once on Imtiaz’s insistence, I told him my story. Near the end, my visage stiffened in a queer and sudden chill that baffled him. When I asked him to give me a weapon and some help for my going back to Dalton nagar to eliminate assassins of the Father, he just looked on, flabbergasted, as if he had never imagined that an easy looking mathematical sum would, after few steps, need expertise to break the code.

Next day he gave me a packet wrapped well with old newspapers. I went to a solitary corner near a dry tap, and looked into the contents. Immediately I folded back the wraps of the packet. There lay in the packet a hand gun, three 9mm bullets, and few leaves of 100 rupee notes.

I had been waiting for the train to Dalton nagar that night at Lucknow station, when daybreak colors emerged their usual way on the skyline, and I half asleep fell into a conversation with the nature. Why do you divide a day in morning, noon, evening and night? Otherwise man wouldn’t have made routines. Why do you make a part of earth so hot and another so chilled? Those suffering from heat in the out envy the ones driving AC cars. Those having nights in the open like me envy comforts of people owning houses and palaces; all the rigmarole that came to my sleepy fatigue ridden brain. Nature kept replying me as if these questions were asked to nature thousands of times before by destitute men like me. Her replies were impromptu and effortless- as impromptu as a cartoonist would sketch furtively the usual cartoons of well known persons.

The passenger train after leaving Lucknow entered the crass UP towns and villages and stopped without signs of early moving at a small station. The over bridge of the station hardly appeared property of railways; both sides of the bridge were lined with makeshift shops of Muslim unemployed people. Coming of a train after a wait of a long part of the day made it appear coming of a festival in a year once there, as the travelers disembarking the train made some purchases before going home.

Two days later, in Dalton nagar, when I held my loaded weapon on the forehead of the inebriated man who had killed the Father, at first glance the victim didn’t know what it was about. Then when the bullet made way into his skull, a few seconds after the penetration of the bullet, he realized and understood it along with the pain just before his death; like I was thrown out of my sleep when standing in a long patient queue, by prodding of people behind me to fill the gap made by walking away of a few first buyers of tickets after a long wait in front of the ticket window closed previously for a prolonged lunch period.