"Guilt"

Short Story written by me in 2005

Why do we do anything that we do? Because somewhere, somehow, directly or indirectly, we believe that it will make us happy. I kill for a living. Not proud of it or ashamed of it too, neither am I depressed about it, nor glad and that’s the way I feel when I go about doing it … Neutral. It is like any other job and someone’s gotto do it.

I still remember my uncle’s last words. He was the only family left, having lost my parents to the Bombay riots. He had just got to know about my work and for a man, who had known nothing other than serving the lord in all earnestness throughout his adult life, his empathy to my professional choices surprised me. “Son” he said, quoting the Gita “Do your duty and that’s the only thing which matters” With just those words, he had cleansed me of the guilt that I was carrying till then. My wife says that all big moments, good or bad are points of transformation. I have had my share of big moments, but this was the biggest of them all.  Bigger than the joyous moment of seeing my twin girls for the first time, bigger than the horrific moment when I saw my parents being torched to death by angry mobs, which definitely transformed me as a person. For good or for bad, I don’t know.

Every morning I start my day with a heavy breakfast of sandwiches. Bread with cheese, with jam, with pickle, with ketchup, with honey, but never with omelet. Vegetarian, you see. My friends find it quite odd, but for me it is quite normal. Then I walk to work everyday. My work place is not your typical office, but it has all that I need. Including the room inside, where the victims can smell what they were getting into and would do what I call “the dance of death” Every evening I come home and immediately enter the shower. It takes some time to wash the blood off your clothes. Different people have different solutions for removing blood stains. Use vinegar, use lime water, petrol and the list goes on. My solution is simple and proven. Wash your clothes with soap and water the same day itself.

The jugular vein is the most sensitive in our body. Slash there once and you’ll have your kill. My victims were usually locked up for sometime. But at times people get them to us to do the job. The victims usually have no clue of what awaits them. Like the one I did today. She looked at me with her young innocent eyes and quietly walked with me to the inner room. “Do your duty” I told myself to steady my nerves. As soon as we entered the inner room, she did the “dance” and I held her neck down with my trembling hands. She slipped away, kicked my face and ran towards the closed door. I wiped the blood off my face, slowly walked towards her and pulled her leg. Before she could face me and attack again, I pulled my knife and stabbed her deep. Blood squirted on my face and I let go of her to die in peace.

My assistant slowly walked in, lifted and set her on the table. There was a lot of cleaning to do today. He pulled out a large plastic bag. I ushered in our client. He looked at her closing her eyes and a wide grin spread across his face. “Today is my son’s birthday” he said. My assistant cleared the table, collected the payment and then handed the big bag to him.

“And we are having a feast” he said, keeping the heavy bag in his car. The bag was purple in color and had a blood red logo of my store ‘Tapan Butchers, Mahim’

copyright - Pradeep Kumar / picture from http://4.bp.blogspot.com