The Death of Noah

As if an umbilical cord of concord between the grey sky and the green landscape, the rain went on. The vast expanse of lush green fields, drenched by the downpour, was sublimity in one of its grandest manifestations. The only anomaly that marred the splendour of this panorama was the railway line - invariably one among those incorrigible human elements that taint the beauteous finesse of nature.

It is unfortunate that our present story has to begin and end within the narrow confines of these tracks: a sad, dark, humane tale that ought to be told; even as around it, shrouded in that emerald expanse and waiting to be narrated, were vivider tales - of frogs and rats chasing each other and being chased by snakes; of cranes, kingfishers, fishes, fishworms and what not. But then, Adam's snobbishness in thinking it unworthy of him to choose an accomplice from among all those beasts and birds, is wont to reflect in his descendants. Hence, we shall content and concern ourselves with such a tale, that remains  within the narrow spectrum of humanity.

****

The relentless patter of rain stifled the ominous hoot of an advancing train number 6225 and the terrified bleat of a stranded goat that had been bound to the rails by some negligent idiot. Its prospective messiah trod along the track - an outrightly soaked stranger; apparently buried in deep thought that he heeded the poor animal only when he was a few yards away from it. Crossing himself and saying a prayer, the unknown volunteered to don the saviour's garb. And having managed to unknot and set it free, he smiled and waved with queer contentment, as the animal fled deliriously through the fields. Even more odd was the fact that his eyes were brimming as he proceeded his pilgrimage towards train number 6225.....

****

Train number 6225 shuddered momentarily, but soon regained its equanimity and heaved forth; for it had a long journey to make. Beneath its colossal might though, a journey had ended.


In that evening, had you - yet another of those strangers - been amongst the crowd witnessing the aftermath of that gruesome tragedy, it would have struck you that despite the severe mutilation, the corpse was identified by the gangmen; thanks to the familiar sky-blue shirt, navy-blue trousers and the wrist watch on the right hand. And had you been curious enough to listen to the buzz among the assembled crowd, you would have gathered from the testimonials conjured up by the acquaintances of the deceased, that Daniel (31) - the locomotive pilot who lived in the adjacent Krishnapada station's railway quarters - was an agreeable, amiable bachelor who didn't have any obvious reason or enough sophistication to commit suicide. If you had allowed your inquisitiveness to be quenched by these superficial talks which were nowhere near the truth, you would have comfortably ignored that bloodstained scrap of paper that stuck out of the ill-fated victim's trouser pocket. But surely, wouldn't you - a keen, good-hearted stranger - have got hold of that gory letter before its metamorphosis into a mere piece of soulless evidence in the hands of authorities? For, therein lies the grim story of a tormented man that you long to know....

****

13th June 1996

"The recapitulation of this wretched life shall begin from a toy train, which was my prized possession in childhood days. How I enjoyed  upsetting those poor, puny insects with that gaudy plaything! Rather than ensuring that those crassly daubed passengers reached their ambiguous destinations, my chief concern was to chase those little creatures till they scrambled and managed to find a refuge. But in spite of this instinctive sadism (which, I think, is inherent in every human), never did I crush a single being to death. The anecdote might seem an inappropriate and incoherent way to begin something as grave as a suicide-note. But when you have massacred as many as eight lives under the remorseless might of  a railway wagon, you can't help reminding yourself of such seemingly trifling instances; for only they could have alleviated the self-doubt that kept gnawing you and reassured that you are not some ruthless slaughterer.


Four men, a dog, a woman and two children...trampled to death in the course of eight years of service. Don't I deserve retribution? No? But then, this is the ultimate chastisement. To be deprived of recompense...to be tortured by guilt...to be haunted by those pale, macabre, strange but familiar faces...to be alive. But I shall self-prescribe my expiation: the journey should end. And I see no better terminus than this Noah's Ark; where lives confluence, overlap and jostle against each other, spawning infinite tales. In those brighter days, my narcissism derived pride and pleasure in projecting me as a part of these lives...these stories...as I imagined myself to be the shepherd who guided the herd to its destinations. Indeed, I was the Noah who gave them a hand in fording across the audacious currents of the flood called life. Or, in the least, a cogwheel that aided them in moving forth.


Precisely these thoughts shattered me when the first man turned up, and turned me his executioner. Hitherto, I was just a fragment of a small passage in all those epics. Now, I constituted the dismal denouement of a sad tale. The whistle sounded as if it were knelling. It was the beginning of a realisation. For plebeians like me, rather than its metaphysical implications, death resounds with chagrin. Five out of my eight unforgivable sins were cases of  suicide: A fact that offers some respite, since they couldn't have been helped anyway. But surely, I must account for the three souls - that of a dog; and two little children who were dragged to death by the woman. Their mother, perhaps. I never enquired or rummaged through the newspapers for the whereabouts of any of those deaths, sheerly owing to a guilty conscience. I could have excused myself with the word 'accidental', like all my fellowmen do. I tried to. But my conscience pined away, finding itself bound to the dark end of all those disconsolate lives. It was a strange case of victims victimising the inadvertent slayer. And with every departure, morbid clouds aggregated in my horizon, transforming my Noah's Ark into an eternally travelling coffin; whence bones piled upon each other were hurled helter-skelter. Yes....all the hopes & despair, fortunes & falls, goodness & spite, enmity & bonhomie....into an inconsequential pile...if this wagon were to go on forever. Such a thought disillusioned me. I found life worthless and absurd for two reasons: I couldn't comprehend it; being used to scheduled timetables, I couldn't tolerate death's gross lack of sense of time and occasion.


The semaphore signals red. It shall remain so forever. In these final moments, I am undeceived of yet another of my childhood fancies:
Gazing at the interminable railway tracks, I apprehensively asked my father, "What would the trains do when they reach there...over there, where the tracks intersect?" 
He replied tersely, "No Danny. It's just an illusion. They never meet." 

Nothing ever converges.

DANIEL

(To be buried alongside my parents' graves at St. Lourdes Church.)"

****

This, dear stranger, is the story of the cadaver that you saw this evening. You could call him a fool, a milksop, a saint, an unlucky soul....whatever. The thing is that he won't mind. Neither would this humble storyteller; for it is just another of those innumerable stories that keeps bubbling and blowing up around you...


As if an umbilical cord of concord between life and death, the rain went on.....