FUN WITH THE GUN
Dr. P. Dhanavel
Ramesh
returned from school on a Friday evening, eager to play with his new gun for
the next two days freely. He could
outshoot Rahul and Satish, he thought.
His father had promised him his gun.
And his mother had backed up his demand. Then he knew that his father would not be able to backtrack.
“Mother where
is the gun?” he asked his mother, putting down his school bag on the
floor. “The gun! What do you want to do
with the gun?” she shouted back. The
boy looked at his mother with seething anger and crying fingers. “This house is not worth a toy gun, I am
going away”. He was crying and running
was he, out of the house. Mother ran
behind him for a few yards, Ramesh was off on the main road.
As he was
walking along the road, he was lured into a small thatched shop with a few
eatables and many palyables. Of course,
toys big and small were dangling — cats, elephants, snakes, maruthi cars, cell
phones, and surely guns, specially the AK 47 variety. Ramesh dragged his feet to the shop and held on to a bamboo
post. His eyes were fixed on the
guns. Minutes were waving in and out.
The shop
owner, a middle-aged woman, came out to the boy and said, “My dear boy, do you
want to play with this toy gun?” Her
pleasing words excited Ramesh endlessly in a ripple. A gun fell into the hands of the “yes”, “yes”, and “yes”
boy. He held and aimed at the lady’s
forehead. He pressed the trigger and
the shot gave out a volley of laughter from the contended lady. Rahul in his neighbourhood used to lend his
toy gun to him for practice. That is
how Ramesh wanted to have his own gun.
The lady was impressed.
“It’s 6.30 in
the evening. It’s not advisable for you
to return home”, said the lady. She
took him to her house behind the shop, fed him with a delicious dish, and
lulled him to sleep, a sleep in guns and gunnings for which Ramesh was not at
all prepared.
When he woke
up the next morning, he found himself in the midst of a thick jungle. He could see a number of young men and women
there living close to nature. A young
lady brought him a cup of tea and told him, “You are going to be a real gun man
now. Wake up, have your tea and
training.” The boy weepingly said, “I
want to go to my parents. They will be
searching for me” and added “I have my school to attend too”.
“Indeed, you
will go to your school, but not in the town.
Here we have our own school of arms.
Come to my arms boy. You can
play with guns and of course you can kill our enemies.” She went on glorifying the life in the
forest and the boy went on crying. She
said, “No exam here. No home
homework. In fact you can shoot down
your teachers, who tortured you instead of teaching you. You can even destroy your school buildings
with bombs”.
“Is it? Toy
guns I can carry. These guns and
bombs! What can I do with them?”
The
inquisitive boy asked.
That’s
simple. Stay here. Help us with little things, to begin
with. Slowly we will train you to
become a perfect gunman. Right?” she
suggested.
The young
lady left and Ramesh stayed on. He
missed his parents, who could not buy him a toy gun. But then he was gradually lost in smoking, drinking, drugging,
and every othering. All he got
free. With freedom. He stayed on with the terrorists as he
strayed from his parents, friends and society.
As a grown up
young man, he was shooting down human beings for nothing but terrorizing the
state. He was thrilled to see the human
bodies falling into the river of blood, which choked the lives of people between
its banks. One day Ramesh too fell into
the river. As he was gasping for breath
in blood, he remembered his toy gun that gave him joy. He was no longer in the world of memory but
in the memory of the world as a terrorist.