Dumb Witness
Photo: Karan Madhok
Short Story: ‘You ask yourself a question: How does a fallen airplane look? Does it look like a pigeon squashed to the ground, its neck askew? And the hot, unplastered room answers: well, you’ve got to see it yourself.’
You arrive at your brother’s rented room in the city, where he lives alone, trying his luck in the papad business. You tell your mother back in the village that you need a books which are only found in the city’s big bookshops. You know that is a pretext. Your brother lives close to the airport, and planes fly over the roof of his building all the time. You have been fascinated by airplanes since childhood. After idling away in his room, sour with his sweat, you quietly nick his phone. You climb up the iron staircase to the rooftop. You stand there, squinting into the horizon, your eyes shaded with your hand against the glare of the sun. A flight takes off. Fascinated, you begin recording this sight with the phone camera, as the plane almost grazes the tops of the houses in its gradual flight. You have been told this is a common phenomenon, and you start wondering how it would be to live in these houses, the windows, tables, and rafters, frequently rattled by the ear-splitting whistles of the airplanes. Your brother will likely be enraged if he found you here with his phone. You are 17 and just a year away from getting the legal right to vote, and you don’t understand why you shouldn’t have your own phone. Your brother, 22, got his first Redmi Note 7 pro when he was just 16. You’ve wanted to complain about this to your mother, but you know her eyes would mist up with a film of tears. She will remind you that your father was dead, that your brother needed the phone for his job. The plane in front of you descends behind the houses. You assume it is going to land on the other side of the airport. But soon, there is a slight, soundless tremor. The roof shakes beneath your feet. Huge, black curls of smoke in the horizon. And then, a flash of orange. Oh my god. You panic, because you know something has gone terribly wrong. You descend the stairs and shake your brother awake from his afternoon siesta. “There’s a blast. There’s a blast.” Your brother rubs his eyes. “Huh?” he says, his voice hoarse. Breath fetid. A string of drool creeps out of the corner of his lips. “The airport, no, airplane just burst,” you say, pointing with your finger, at the wall, ceiling, or nothing in particular. He frowns “Airport? Airplane?” Before you can curse him for being so obtuse, you remember the video. Both of your heads are above the phone, halfway into the video, when a huge roar erupts somewhere, followed by a noise of what seems like an incipient commotion. Exchanging looks, the two of you clamber up the staircase. Already, there are many people on the rooftop. The air is tense. All of them appear to be wearing a clueless expression. Kids crowd around the low brick parapet wall, throwing chips of concrete down below, miming their missile-like descent. You want to whisk out your phone and shout “See, see, this has happened.” They would crowd around you, heads craning to take a closer look. For once in your life, you will be the centre of all attention. People from the media will contact you. If only Kanika were here. Kanika of the tiny, diamond-like pimples on that fair forehead, the cascade of freshly washed hair, fragrant with Clinic Plus shampoo, and those damp patches on the small of her back. But your brother has beaten you to it. A hand slips into your pocket and the next thing you know, your brother is in the middle of the circle of craning heads. Soon, all the elders are requesting that the video be sent to them. You can hear the symphony of trills as all of them receive the video on their WhatsApp. Not long from now, it would reach the grapevine, that’s for sure. Your ears ring. The soles of your feet itch. You stride towards the kids, fingers balled in a fist. The kids are now ramming make believe airplanes into one another’s nuggets chipped out of the parapet wall. Technically, since it’s your brother’s phone, the video is his property. But, but it’s wrong. It’s not done. You stood in the sun. You saw the orange flames pulsing in the smoke. You are the one interested in airplanes. In all the years your brother has lived here, not once has he stood watching airplanes. Any moment spent outside of thinking ways to make money is a waste of time.
But soon, there is a slight, soundless tremor. The roof shakes beneath your feet. Huge, black curls of smoke in the horizon. And then, a flash of orange. Oh my god. You panic, because you know something has gone terribly wrong.
Hasn’t he always been like this? Many summers ago, both of you were sitting in an airless room, your English khata open at your lotus-crossed feet. Father had asked you both the meaning of yell but before you could answer, he had to hurry out because your ‘yedi’ grandmother—who often forgot who she was and talked about picking mangoes with Lata Mangeshkar—had fallen on the bathroom floor. Left to yourselves, your tiny toes started tingling. You had to tell your elder brother that you knew what yell meant. “Zor zor se chillana”, you whispered into his ear, and sure enough, after father came back, your elder brother, broad shouldered at fifteen, imposing and boisterous from the hours on the cricket grounds—where he, with his equally boisterous compatriots, ogled girls passing by—said with a cocky grin, “Baba, yell matlab zor se chillana, ekdum gaand fatne maafik,” and produced a ululating shriek like a primitive hunter, to wit. Your father beamed at his elder son, let him off for the day and sat with the younger son for two more hours, not caring that the latter’s moment of glory had been robbed, and that a pool of sweat had begun collecting around his backside. But there is no arguing with his brother; he has a way with words and could— as he often does— spin an argument to his favour.
Anyway, what proof do you have? No one has seen you record it. An irrational anger flashes in you towards these kids. You want to throttle them, see their eyes roll upwards and tongue lol out. Why weren’t they here, just five minutes before this? You hope to catch your brother’s eye. And then what? See a glint of malice or remorse or shame? That is never going to happen. So, you clamber loudly back down the staircase and shut the door behind you. You sit in the corner, expecting your brother to come back and apologize sheepishly to you, rubbing his nose, as he does with his girlfriend whenever she is upset. Come he does but only to carry the new batch of papad he’s been packing, upstairs, “To sell them to those chomus, now that the time is right.” No remorse, no apology, no nose rubbing. No concern for his younger brother’s hurt.
You want to sleep and forget all of it, as you’ve always done, rather than jut out a truculent chin and come to blows. But the airplane tugs at you. You are that child again, ankle deep in grass, squinting up at the red light travelling in a straight line through the clouds. Watching, watching, watching, till your nape hurts in the evening and aai has to rub oil on it at night and pat your buttocks to sleep. You ask yourself a question: How does a fallen airplane look? Does it look like a pigeon squashed to the ground, its neck askew? And the hot, unplastered room answers: well, you’ve got to see it yourself. So, you hurry out. In your wake, the rooftop erupts in a crescendo of laughter. Your brother’s killed several birds with one bloody stone. You walk ahead and then, what you see horrifies you. First, there is a thick bank of acrid smoke and as you go deeper, you see— what’s it called again?— something to do with some Pandey… pandemonium, yes. You remember your English teacher talking about shaitaan ka ghar. This is what it must look like. People milling about, loud, and chilling sirens of fire extinguishing trucks, rubble, waves of scalding heat and shouts rending the air. And then you see it. The hull of a smoking building and the nose of the airplane poking out of the wall, like the beak of a gigantic, curious bird. It must have dived straight through the building. Even before the news is out in the evening, you know it in your bones: there’s no way anyone could survive it. No way. An image of joyriders with flailing hands on a long, rollercoaster wagon flashes ludicrously before your eyes. It must have been over in a flash, the fire shrivelling and claiming the insides fizzing and frothing with the excitement of a journey. Flailing hands, flailing hands. You peer into the heap of rubble in front of you. You feel as if you are hallucinating, for you seem to have seen—a hand. Your heart races. You inch closer, unobtrusively wending your way through the orange clothed firefighters. And there it is, no trick played by your brain. Twig-like five little fingers and a slender wrist sticking out of the large, jagged concrete slabs. Except it looks like a hand what a hand could look from being kept too long in a tandoor. Tandoori hand, you mutter grimly, half wincing at your own crudeness. But something else grabs your attention. A slim pink wrist watch, ticking insistently like a death beetle, the pink strap melting into globs on the charred, flaky flesh. Involuntarily, you turn around on all fours and retch, retch, retch. Without remaining a second more, your skin hot, you dash back to your brother’s building, tears flying off your chin. You are so preoccupied with the thoughts of the hand—it’s scored indelibly into your brain; after all, why wouldn’t it be—that you brush off one of the rooftop kids leering at you, on your way to your brother’s room, “Tera bhai toh famous ho gaya re. Pura viral ho gaya video.” You do not react to your brother prancing around his room, a wad of notes clutched in his hand, a pair of ironed clothes on his bed, choosing instead to turn your back to his petty victory and think about a little girl and her Minnie Mouse watch.
By the evening, the visuals are out. All the residents crowd around Shyam Mahadik’s brand new LED TV. The youths massage your brother’s shoulders. They know that the media would throng the building, that his face would be on papers. The only witness. But for you, the room shrinks. Everything appears to have become smaller. You feel like you are watching everything from a distance. Something shifts in you. And you know that you’ve changed. You will be leaving tomorrow, you tell your brother. “Kya pagal mafik baat kar raha hain, Meenu. What about your schoolbooks?” he asks. “I will make do with the Sawant question banks.” “Oh, you’re jealous right?” his eyes glitter, one eyebrow arched. He says you have always been too immature. “Do you have enough savoire faire to speak in front of the media? You can barely speak a line to a girl. Fat jati hain teri. You want the credit, na?” This is when you scream at him. You tell him that he is a pathetic piece of shit.
Maybe, whatever ails you and whatever you don’t speak about will be healed by God, she says in her helpless-widow voice. But while scrubbing at the floors, you gaze at the placid face of the elephant god. You ask if there is a god at all.
You are back at your house in the village the next morning. Your widowed mother supplies cups after cups of tea to neighbours coming to discuss and congratulate her on her viral son. You rush, to and fro, fetching pouches of milk and Arrowroot biscuits till your legs give out. So, you sleep. You sleep, sleep and sleep till weeks pass and the tragedy, worst aviation disaster in India, they call, is a faint welter in the history of the world’s bruises.
The next time your elder brother comes, his papad business has picked up, he has a motorbike and finally, tries to propitiate you with a small allowance. But money holds nothing for you now. Your whole life has come down to the memory of a pleading, twiggy hand. You barely pass your twelfth and enroll for an electrician’s course, since your percentage does not get you a seat at any of the good colleges in the state. Simultaneously, you start working at a temple, in the evenings. You clean the stone floors, scrubbing furiously at bird droppings. Your mother tells you that working in the temple will do you good. Maybe, whatever ails you and whatever you don’t speak about will be healed by God, she says in her helpless-widow voice. But while scrubbing at the floors, you gaze at the placid face of the elephant god. You ask if there is a god at all. Had there been one, your brother wouldn’t have got away with everything, that young girl wouldn’t have died, you would have had Kanika, you would have been in the city, studying physics. Always, the same railing. In the evening, when shadows deepen, you can almost see a sinister grin in the idol’s face. The only time you feel content is when the temple caretaker pays you your eight hundred rupees, for you can get a paper bag full of kanda pakodas and sit on the bank of the river darkening in the fading daylight. And you tell the birds, the prickly grass, the supine dogs: “You arrive at your elder brother’s rented room in the city.” You begin, this way, every evening. Your testimony. You hold on it with your own twiggy hand. You don’t want to forget it. Maybe, you are searching for an epiphany, to tell yourself this is where it went wrong. Sometimes, two or three crows look at you quizzically, the dogs sit, stiff and listening, their ears pointed up. And in the susurration of an evening breeze, the long tussocky grass nods at your feet.
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Madhurjya Goswami is a PhD student living in Guwahati, Assam. His thesis is on Cartography of Queerness in R Raj Rao’s Fiction. He has published his literary work in The Assam Tribune. You can find him on Instagram: @goswamimadhurjya and X: @MadhurjyaG44258.
