Deadly Innocent: The Broken Tale of a Juvenile Rebel

By Babu Gautam

Deadly Innocent, picarseque on more than one counts, imaginatively recounts the short-lived life of an adolescent rebel, Leelu. The picaro here is a troubling teenager whose exploits come as cries to the busy world, and go unheard. On a factual account he's a rebel without cause. But the facts make way for the truth, when we come across the uncut reality of an adolescent underworld in the times of cholera and war. In a rising republic of sufferings and hope, India that was, Leelu, the rascal kid, lived his today as if there's no tomorrow.
In a quasi- Freudian account, Leelu's delinquency is essentially a consequence of the broken family. Unlike his perennially
absent father, Leelu asserts his presence wherever he is, to pronounce himself a real man.
The reason behind his destructive acts is nothing but 'you gotta do something' against the authoritative system. For an errant boy, on the verge of being declared enemy of the society, and the 'cosh' being in the hands of the social authority, 'vanishing into thin air' was the only way to redemption, if it has to be. The truth remains, at the end, that Leelu was too damaged to have survived.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Partridge Publishing India
• Release date: Apr 6, 2020
• ISBN: 9781543706710

Babu Gautam

Not the fear of death, but the guilt of life lived, also unlived, is what makes Babu Gautam a storyteller. With so much in our story books, so much still remains to be told, he believes. In Deadly Innocent he cleans his chest; obligatory for a fiction writer to make a start, and to keep going, since the way to the sunlight of the morrow passes thru the woods of the yester.

Book preview

Chapter One

Life looked fragile against the hard-edged silence that swathed the flock of elderly villagers heading every day to the murthali—the village crematorium—a forsaken corner of the local forest; the bani as we called it. The funeral procession that just went by, with a log of firewood on every shoulder, would be back, walking the talk, bunched up in twos and threes. So would come back the tenaciousness of life. Death paid a daily visit. If not enough, it came back for a second or even a third chase sometimes. Cholera was on the loose.

Sehore had seen such outbreaks many times in the past and had kept those awful tales, handed down from generation to generation, carefully preserved.

For some curious reason, if the first victim was a boy, it was, then, a lesser curse for girls; otherwise, the same hot waves would happily ignore the easily available boys in the open fields to pick up girls from secured and lively courtyards. This season one could smell cholera in the heat or maybe it was the nausea of so many deaths around.

Death fancied boys this time too and grabbed eight of them in less than a week. Kundan was one of them; the onlyon of an old couple, always keen to prove that theirs was the most loved son in the village. It was unimaginable to pass a day without hearing—Kundan! The latest location of Kundan was a floating question. If one escaped it, then believe he would soon bump into Kundan’s mother or her messenger asking, Did you see Kundan?

Kundan would never again be seen by anyone, anywhere. The decision of death was unquestionable.

Masterji wouldn’t say it in words, but he never allowed me to see death from up close. Children were traditionally kept away from rituals of death, but everyone of my age had seen some part of it at some time. All of my cousins had something to tell about the stealthy events succeeding a death; I was only to listen. I was sure the day death tries to put her hand on me, a tough fight was a given. In an open battle, there was no way she could reach me without vanquishing Masterji. That might happen when the time comes.

For an immediate delivery, fate had something else in store. The last among those untimely claims of death was my cousin, Kirori. It was usually difficult to locate him in our modest house. His favorite hide-out was the inner dark room where the bahus, itching to sashay their stuff and to share their woes and kinks, would huddle up during hot and dull afternoons. Enveloped in that dusky darkness, they would lavishly talc their face and neck, kohl their eyes with a locally made black paste, and then ostentatiously streak their well-parted hair with a pinch of vermillion—the mark of marital bliss. Eavesdropping and alongside previewing their ever to be unveiled make-up dos was Kirori’s favorite pastime. He hated playing or loafing around in the streets; bani was the place he would visit only on some great day.

On an innocuous invitation of death, he left his cozy hangout and joined our regular gang, setting off to bani on that boiling hot day. Cheesed off with repeated taunts of a house mouse, he peevishly accompanied us to pluck "peels" from the age-old jaal trees. Not able to endure that throat-blowing thirst, he had water from a kadeel—a broken piece of clay pot filled with water. For birds to quench during peaks of summer, altruistic poor villagers would keep kadeels on treetops.

It was believed that he caught cholera from contaminated water. After that it was just a matter of hours. He had bouts of vomiting and diarrhea till he looked completely devastated. The local healer gave him black pills of sanjivani, lord Hanuman once brought for comatose Lakshman and the panacea got the latter back from the door of death. In this time of kaliyug, the sanjivani didn’t work. Masterji kept administering him spoons of boiled water mixed with salt and sugar—the officially prescribed antidote to cholera. That too didn’t work.

My aunt wailed for God’s mercy, and our Buddhima did differently the same, obvious from her quivering lips. God turned his face away, it seemed. The result: Kirori was no more.

I heard loud cries. Death was nearby.

The count of our family, that was constant for the last couple of years, suddenly came down to fifteen. But like other things in the nature; temporarily.

Masterji was not a loving father. He was a ferociously protective one. In those days of uncertainty, the definition of love was altogether different.

Most of the parents had more number of dead than surviving children. A single male child was a deadly possession. As they said, an only son was like one eye—the blindness, a wink away. A woman posing a full-blown tummy every alternate year was held worthy and also blessed if she produces a few boys in a row; for some to grow into men the rest will act as buffers against the cruelty of fate. Who knew?

Girls were the creditors of past life all the way here to settle their account. But the girls were there, God knows, for the sustenance of life; no matter death was a winner for a while.

Cholera was not there to stay but life was.

Leaving some indelible marks on the mind-slate of Sehore, the predator went away. Holidays arrived

Chapter Two

Let summer vacation come and Leelu would emerge with a marauder’s conceit—unwelcome. Everyone would register him entering the scene, albeit with a feigned ignorance. He invoked lots of frowns along with some smiles on the shy faces of women in the neighborhood. Men were no-man in front of Leelu and that appeased those distraught women, regularly battered for silly reasons. Leelu had a covert support from this quarter. Sehore was the birthplace of his mother, Imarati, my paternal aunt.

Leelu would not go by the dictates of dominant voices, saner or wiser let them be in the considered and cumulative opinion of the folks. Sehore was connected to the world only through rumors and radio news. One of today’s most developed states, Haryana, was not on the map and this region, speaking a harsh and weird dialect of Hindi, was a part of joint Punjab. Leelu spoke Hindi in a better accent owing to his schooling in the district town, Mohindergarh. Most of Sehore’s folks knew Mohindergarh merely from the description of a few fortunates who chance visited this small but historical town, named after a forgettable king, Mohinder Singh. Many would fondly recall the passing glance they had from the bypassing marriage-party bus. Idling elders, during smoking sessions, presented their graphic description of Mohindergarh that would seamlessly extend to Delhi and Calcutta after a leisurely puff. Next was a squabble because Delhi of one was diagonally different from the Delhi of the other. To top it, the issue of Calcutta’s exact direction from Sehore was still unresolved. The debate would culminate into a hurl of abuses. But nothing serious; if not a complete cease-fire, a truce would emerge from third-party intervention. A would-be bandit or a proclaimed insane could have the audacity of defying the majority opinion.

That was 1963 and defiance was not just unacceptable but also seen as a trait virulent to take one down the road of crime. Leelu was an exception, I realized though much later. He was a phenomenon in the life of a village that had just begun to know its kid guest.

The war between India and China was over. Hair-raising stories of exemplary courage found their convergence into the decisive victory of India. Each of the Indian soldiers was too much for ten of those tiny Chinese— we children were given to believe. There was no room for doubt when it came from the teachers who supposedly knew everything. The belief got strengthened from the first-hand account given by the army men on annual leave. Patriotism was in the air. Amidst stark poverty India was a great country and we felt blessed to have been born on its soil.

Though not less patriotic than anyone, Leelu would never indulge in all this. He always needed something of his own. He would shun slogan shouting. Instead, you could find him scurrying through the narrow lanes of the village, holding his own flag, and shouting his own slangs. On every visit he brought new generic abuses and rhymed teasers customizable for anyone who tried to rein him in. In his assessment, the village of Sehore was too weak a force to deter him. In his belief, this harmless adversary would have to cave in and accept his upper hand one morning. Children of his age were too scared to pick a fight with him. Fighting here in Sehore was not more than a test of physical strength, something akin to wrestling. For Leelu, fight meant blood.

It was actually a bad day for Dharmendra, the reigning young wrestler when, in a flow of overconfidence, he laid his hand on Leelu. It was all because of the feared wristlock skill devised by the famous Punjab Kesari. Dharmendra could bring down a much stronger opponent with the steely grip he learnt from a self-proclaimed disciple of the Kesari. Once wrist locked, one could only plead and beg, and, if still not sufficient, swearing by one’s mother was the last option. If pleased, Dharmendra would display his scandalous smile before releasing his grip but not before bringing the victim to his knees. It was his bad luck to have locked horns with Leelu on this first day of the new season. It took not a second for Leelu to realize that the guy was too powerful. The next moment Dharmendra gets a nasty kick to his groin. His face contorts with pain; he opens his mouth to yell, only to find the sound missing

He crumbled like a tent. Everyone was stunned. Not only foul, it was a body blow to the culture and a crude shock to the psyche of Sehore. In the unwritten moral code of Sehore, one human being was not supposed to be so brutal to another, not even to a sworn enemy. Leelu refused to believe that he had so easily demolished a menacing opponent. By Leelu’s yardstick, Dharmendra must get back on his feet as soon as the pain was over. But Sehore was not accustomed to things so cruel and inhuman. Dharmendra was at complete loss, struggling to regain his poise. He looked around for some sane voice to intervene and denounce Leelu’s act of immorality. Demolished Dharmendra was desperately hoping to be saved from the disgrace of defeat. But nothing of the sort happened; this was not a duel that he should be declared a winner by default. Leelu was on his own trip. Anticipating a powerful counterattack he armed himself in spur of a moment. He was ready with a brick in his right hand and a piece of cast-iron plate in the left. He had blood in his eyes and it was difficult to judge his next move. Dharmendra was half-dead. Smaller kids didn’t know whether to run home and break the horrifying news or to witness the thrilling act up to the end. Fights were common here but bloodshed was unimaginable. It was like a freeze shot for the spectators to register the lethal blow yet hung in the air. Everyone was holding his breath.

Leelu moved a step ahead, and raised his right hand to get into the action of a trained killer. Dharmendra was lying like a paralyzed deer in front of a tiger. What followed was all the more surprising. Leelu threw aside his brick and the iron plate before vanishing with the briskness of an animal that had seen the danger before the latter spots the former. In a matter of seconds he was gone. Everyone was stunned again. It was hard to guess whether the crowd was relieved or disappointed. All of us standing around had suffered, at time or another, the slow and severe cruelty of this insensitive buffoon, today helplessly floored with an appeal of mercy in his eyes.

Holding the corner of his dhoti, Masterji walked from the bani, wearing his trademark stern look. Leelu had sensed the danger. Masterji was strictness personified. By often ignoring condonable waywardness, Masterji not only managed to keep his daunting aura intact, but added a layer to it. Today he did it again by giving a pass to the participants and viewers of the barely averted mishap. He played his anticlimactic role in a passing shot. Dharmendra was back on his feet, the cost was loss of face.

My father, Masterji to the folks, was Leelu’s maternal uncle. A very few women, those too by virtue of their age, had the liberty to speak to him directly. My grandmother, we called her Buddhima, was naturally the first among them. She was khadak-amma for the village folks, as one could hear her arrival before she was a hundred meters away, from the khadak-khadak sound of her wooden slippers.

Buddhima was a bit higher than a normal being in my eyes more because she always kept her persona fortified. Life was a duty assigned to her by the Almighty and it seemed that by voluntarily accepting it, she had, unlike usual worshippers, lost her right to complain. There was no reason for her to be carried away by anything straying her from the discharge of that duty. She was probably obliged to honor the contract with her creator at the cost of life and its offerings, death not excluded.

To Leelu she was Nani. She was on a chase for the last couple of years to catch and beat him up at least once, it looked so.

Life was an invisible arena for Leelu and Masterji to confront each other. God sent these two with opposite missions, yet condemned to achieve their goals living dangerously close. I would feel cramps in my stomach at the mention of my father but I found Leelu never scared of his dhoti-clad-another-name-for-strictness mama. Leelu was always alert to ward off the gaping humiliation of getting spanked in full glare. He escaped again.

Leelu was not new to Sehore; known to many as Imarati’s lad, but today he showed his true color. The word went around like wildfire, Dharmendra was lucky that Masterji passed by at the nick; otherwise the poor guy would have turned into a dead body. The semi-retired hooligans, sobering up to become local leaders, privately stated, "He needs to cross paths with someone like me and see how he forgets forever the way from Mohindergarh to Sehore.’’

Leelu begot a further dent to his image. A mischievous nephew was a notorious small villain, just in a day. His villainous image gave him a right to play a spoilsport, whenever he chose to. He never liked our grimy rural games anyway.

The summer vacation of 1963 was a post-war time to bask in the glory of an imaginary victory, vicariously real for innocent folks. For Nehru it was a shock he never recovered from. He had the stature and unchallenged dominance to carry it off without ignominy. Army men came in hordes that summer and brought a myriad of stories from the battlefield, mostly second-hand narrated in first person. All India Radio, the national broadcaster, released controlled news to make people believe that India had formidable power to fend off any attack of the enemy. China would never ever dare to wage a war against India. The famous bottom line was, "India wants peace but is ready for a war.’’ Amidst that new invented euphoria there was something definitely amiss in the air. But we believed since we loved to believe—we have won a war

Sacrifice was the buzzword. It was not the strength but the sacrifice we were told the country needed most. People sacrificed their lives, their comfort, and whatever they had, to win freedom for our motherland. So we should always be ready to sacrifice our lives to save that priceless freedom. We children were reminded everyday in the prayer sessions that we wouldn’t blink if had to die for our country. To me, only the army men could get such a noble chance. The rest of us were less fortunate, made for the supporting role. No one had an idea what sacrifice meant living in the Sehore of free India. Unable to wield, we would pass through goose bumpy moments a few times every day. Patriotism was an antidote to forget the ill of poverty and sacrifice was just a feeling to overpower the difficulties posed by the scarcity. The real meaning of sacrifice I understood reading through the life of my Buddhima.

No one had inkling that Leelu was here to stay and it was not just an annual affair of spending summer holidays with his cousins. I got to know from whispering wives that something terrible happened