The first ray of light hit his face through the vent and caused his stare to die down. With his eyes closed, he maintained the upward stance, allowing the heat to seep through his entire body. While the sun’s warmth spread to the end of his toes, a series of thoughts over his current state unraveled, leading his mind to frantic chaos.
After spending God knows how many days, he had finally grown accustomed to the life here. He scoffed mentally, it wasn’t as much life as it was survival with each passing day. Every morning, he woke up coughing to a series of kicks and punches and abuses hurled at him. Initially, the brutality caused him to jump up and retreat in fear, but the blows never ceased unless he was barely conscious. Eventually, he gave up any effort to defend himself and lay still while being thrashed, causing boredom to his sadistic tormentor. But his hack had only been temporary.
One cold night storms had clouded the sky, and incessant rainfall had shunned every sound off of the ears. At the darkest hour, the tormentor had brought a subject, along with a bag full of incomprehensible tools in the garden for everyone to see. It was the night everyone saw that the tormentor had no boundaries when it came to torturing the subjects, who were mere playthings. The screaming and howling, the face curling in agony, all of it had scarred many, including him, for life and till date, sleep evaded him, lest he suffered the same fate.
A loud growl broke his chain of thoughts, as the realization of being famished with hunger dawned upon him. It was too early for him to receive food, so he decided to make do with some water instead. He struggled to reach the corner where the pot of water lay, not that it was much distance given his room ended before it started, but last night’s beating had rendered him inadequate to move without hurting every muscle in his legs. He removed the lid, only to find the empty pot mocking back at him. To add insult to his injury, he felt the need to relieve himself but was helpless to do so for the lack of water. Feebly, his gaze moved from the pot to the squat toilet, both of which were a constant reminder of his misery and his confinement. Needless to say, his own stench and that of the toilet made things worse.
Drowning in the sorrow of his pathetic state, he chanced upon a silhouette he recognized only too well passing by, through the bars of the tiny window on his door. A sudden pang of jealousy enveloped him as he wistfully looked at the retreating figure. It was the traitor, commonly known as tormentor’s snitch among all.
The traitor had initially been one of them until he accepted the offer to do the tormentor’s bidding. He was hated upon by the others, but he was also the reason of envy amongst many, including himself. The snitch lived in his own room and enjoyed all the privileges of food, water, warmth and safety as a reward to sell the secrets of others. He had the freedom to loiter around without being detained to a room.
Like the traitor, he too wished to eat complete meals three times a day, as opposed to the two dry chapatis he received once, to never run out of water facilities and to sleep without the fear of being woken up to merciless beating. He’d expressed his wish to exchange places with the traitor, at which the former had rolled his eyes.
‘Sometimes invisible walls are far more formidable and burdening than the physical ones.’
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He passed through the corridor and walked to his room, a yearning look adorning his face relentlessly. The last room always caused his emotions to elevate rapidly. It belonged to the man who had once expressed an interest in wanting to be in his place. How he wished for the exchange to happen, but this was not possible.
Before being labeled as the traitor, he too had a life similar to the others, living in the small room, without the basic facilities, craving for a better life. And his life had turned when he was offered to do the tormentor’s bidding in exchange of a change in status, which he had gladly agreed to. But he only realized that he’d tried to sell his soul to the devil, and ended up with a no-win bargain.
None of the others were aware of how he was molested every night by men, who were too drunk to draw a line between inhumanity and insanity. But with every new morning, he donned the cape of pretension, pretending to be the cause of everyone’s envy and hatred, lest he was bestowed with something more unfortunate. He couldn’t go back to his earlier life, the tormentor wouldn’t allow it. The prison will always be just the way it was, reigned by the tormentor, and life here will always be a constant for the sinners.
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While envious of each other’s lives, the duo also often reflected if their sins were grave enough to end up as they did. They lamented over the fact that they got it much worse than they gave.
The former had simply beaten his wife to death and was dying each day in the small room. The latter had done no more than enjoying some forced – but occasional – moments with women, and girls, and babies, as old as a few months, and suffering at the hands of the tormentor and his nameless friends. The others in the prison were also accused of similar crimes with varying degrees of infliction, but surely they hadn’t ended the world to deserve this, had they?
About the author – Pooja Bansal lives in Gurgaon, India. She is an artist by heart and a writer by work. She believes in the magic of art and fiction. She describes her mind as a chaos of endless stories running around, and putting them down through writing and illustrations is her kind of recreational therapy.
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