Juddhi agonisingly lifted his face and peered at the reviling faces in the dark. His eyes were smeared with blood and everything was a blur. Like a whipped mongrel, he whined and whimpered. Then he spotted me in the crowd and fixed his gaze on me. I tried to look away but he recognised me. “Father…,” he pleaded. “Have mercy on me… ask them to release me…tell them to forgive me,” he begged, “Please, give me some water.”

I looked around. All eyes were on me. What would I do? Would I show compassion to this criminal now treated as an animal? Or would I join the crowd in punishing him? Time stood still.

March was the winter’s twilight month in Tipling. The bitter cold slowly gave way to the balmy days of the spring. It was the season when rhododendrons danced in an array of sprightly colours, ranging from soft rose to crimson red. It was a time when troupes of men and women sang their way back and forth from the forest carrying firewood to be stored away for the impending, cruel monsoon. It was also a time of match-making and heart-breaking as boys and girls intentionally lost their way in the forests on arrival and found their way together on departure. It was the month of fun and frolic, of mirth and merriment. It was also a month of tragedies.

It was a splendid Friday evening in March. The setting sun suffused the village in a surrealistic charm. After a day’s labour, husbands and wives and maids and lads were returning to their homes carrying loads of firewood, singing songs all along. Some young boys who came back faster were playing ‘hit-the-coin’ and while some others were idly chatting. Half-naked children with noses leaking snot were darting here and there. Group of girls were loitering about effusively gushing water springs; some filled their jars, while the others washed their limbs and emptied themselves of the day’s gossips. I was sitting on the upper veranda of my house with a book in my hand, soaking in the surroundings with lose abandon.

A sudden sound of gunshot startled the village. For a moment nothing moved. Then the yells and shouts came. A bunch of swallows that had perched on the plum tree in front of my house shrieked and fled. People ran pell-mell. I threw the book into my room and ran to the direction of the noise.

When I arrived at the spot, a large group of villagers had already formed a circle around a young man called Juddhi who was shouting war cries and was slashing the air wildly with a khukuri, threatening to maul anyone who dared to go near him. Blood oozed from his nostrils. Like a cornered cat, screeching and fuming, Juddhi searched frantically for a way to flee.

Juddhiman Tamang, a good-for-nothing tippler and shirker, who made his way into the village by playing cards, fighting, and bullying others, was drunk as a skunk that day. As his wont was after getting boozy, he beat up his wife and gashed her head with a khukuri. She

yanked her two children, one aged three and the other one, and fled. Juddhi, who thought he was invincible, was hurling expletives at everyone who passed by and itched to pick a fight with anybody who came to his vicinity. Knowing his crazy nature, the villagers kept a safe distance from him.

That was when Madhav Ghale happened to pass his way home. Juddhi slung obscenities at Madhav and braved him to a fight. Now, Madhav was another young man who had done his term in jails for illegally possessing arms and other such crimes. At first, he ignored Juddhi because Madhav was on his parole and did not want to create a reason to break it. Like a street mongrel that barks and howls after a spunky Tibetan Mastiff that refuses to engage him, Juddhi, triumphant now, called Madhav a bastard and his mother a whore. That was too

much to bear for Madhav, a hot-blooded man of twenty-two with little brains. He could accept any amount of crassness but any suspicion cast on the origin of his birth and the dignity of his mother was a matter of shame. He retaliated and both Juddhi and Madhav quickly got into a fist fight. Juddhi took a couple of clean blows on his nose and face from Madhav. 

Bloodied, with a bruised ego and flaming anger, Juddhi turned mad and wild. He made a dash for his house and fetched his hunting rifle. (Some men keep these long single shot rifles in their houses to hunt animals, illegally.)

He swayed his rifle at the crowd indiscriminately. Everyone ran skelter-shelter. He, then, pointed his rifle at Madhav and took aim to shoot. But his intention was thwarted by Madhav’s uncle who, realising that his nephew was going to be hurt, jumped on Judhhi, grabbed his hands and pushed him. The gun went off and fortunately the bullet riveted off the wall of a toilet nearby and caused no harm to anyone. 

Seizing this opportunity, several strong men, dispossessed Juddhi of his gun and flung him to the ground. He scampered to the veranda of a house nearby and was soon in possession of a khukuri. This was when I arrived at the scene.

With the involvement of a lethal weapon like a rifle, the usual drunken brawl took a new turn altogether. Fights were common in the village. At times, people have been attacked by khukuri and other sharp swords. But attempting to shoot another while villagers watched was scary and showed many lurking fears that in that village. Some people suggested that the police must be called.

But the nearest police station was a three-hours-walk away. By now it was 6 pm. No police would come to Tipling that late.

I stood among the score of bystanders. Being a ‘master’ in the school and a spiritual leader to some in the village, I had a certain respect there. Many cast their anxious eyes on me. What happened next was sudden. Madhav, his father Lal, and a couple of young men who had been nursing some long time grudges against Juddhi from earlier skirmishes, overpowered him, bound his hands and feet, and tied him to a pillar that was used to tether buffaloes and bulls in the yard.

Each one present took his chance at bringing down fire and brimstone on Juddhi. Vociferous din of swear words in multiple languages was accompanied by the thrashing of Juddhi with stinging nettles. Women spat on him. Many men, including boys below ten, beat him with sticks, kicked him all over and slapped him on the face to the rhythmic claps of the spectators.  Madhav, realising that he had an enthralled audience, thought it opportune to establish himself as the foremost don of the village by yammering about the great crimes he had committed, the guns he possessed, the counterfeit money he smuggled, and the men he cut open. By this time, Juddhi’s wife, carrying their kids, had returned and was wailing loudly; she threw herself beside her husband.

The sun had set. Darkness descended. The drama continued. Many stood and watched, others came and went. “This devil has to be kept tied and beaten all night. No food...no water…it is our culture…our traditional punishment for someone who has done a crime,” someone shouted. The utterance of the words, ‘our culture’ and ‘tradition’, gave legitimacy to all the madness that was unleashed. Tradition was sacrosanct. It could not be broken.

I was there. I watched it all. My mind was torn asunder. Madhav’s family was my greatest support in the village. Juddhi, I knew, was a wife-beater, something I considered as the most cowardly and demeaning act a man can commit. He deserved to be behind bars. But this inhumane treatment meted out to him was demonic. No human dignity was shown to him. No one in the village came to his aid.

Juddhi lifted his face agonisingly and peered at the reviling faces in the dark. His eyes were smeared with blood and everything was a blur. Like a whipped mongrel, he whined and whimpered. Then he spotted me in the crowd and fixed his gaze on me. I tried to look away but he recognised me for sure. “Father…,” he pleaded. “Have mercy on me… ask them to release me…tell them to forgive me.” He begged, “Please give me some water.”

I looked around. All eyes were on me. What would I do? Would I show compassion to this criminal now treated worse than an animal? Or would I join the crowd in punishing him? Time stood still.

I was reminded, then, of another time and space, another situation of death and another master. There was this woman who was caught in the very act of committing adultery. The tradition prescribed that she should be stoned to death. They had their stones ready. She was brought to the master by the self-righteous men. What would the master do? The master did not look at the men around him. He simply said, “Let anyone who has not sinned throw the first stone.” Silence. Then came the thuds, the sound of stones dropping from the hands of men at their feet. No stone was thrown. One by one the men went home.

I slowly stepped forward. I could hear sounds of gasps. Juddhi’s face lit up with hope. I went near him… knelt down…looked into his eyes…

I, then, pulled his lacerating wife to her feet, picked up the kids and took them all to the health post in the village. I vanished into darkness. I dared not to look back.

Back in my room, sleep evaded me. The ghosts of my mind haunted me. And as I lay there peering into the darkness, in the wee hours of the morning, I heard the blare of the shaman’s conch, three times…the sound of the death knell.

Jose is the chief of the Creative Writing Department at St Xavier’s College