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| Only the death is the loser |
An hour ago, I was brought down from my creaky ivory tower when I heard a few gunshots. One of my neighbours went by shouting... I could understand the frustration in his voice but it was not clear what it was all about. And there it was -- the unexpected event but which is not unexpected at all: An old man, believed to be around 50 was lying in a pool of blood. I have never seen him before, but I heard some people saying he worked inside the mission campus of the temple at the street corner. We hired a cab and took him to the government hospital but the doctors only uttered their favourite line: Brought dead.
It was all gloom and doom and I hate it especially in the morning hours. Some of the guys who stayed back and his family members have lodged an FIR to the district police when we came back after we were told that we can fetch the body from the mortuary. We saw a police Gypsy around the spot, doing some inquiry about this and that. But I doubt for it's too early to predict who did it and that the police would ever catch the culprit. Things are just like that. But I don't doubt the FIR report will find its eternal place among the dust-covered, moth-eaten racks of the police station. And I feel sorry for the old man. His family said there had been no enmity with anyone of late. My voice got blocked with nothing to say.
I heard now, they are staging a sit-in protest. We call it 'wakat meepham' in Manipuri. It has become some kind of formality to express that we do care about decadence of our values but the only thing we can do is to sit, with some catchy banners and coconuts, at the roadside while the concerned authorities will become deaf, dumb and blind. Pain and gloom are all lingering in the air.
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