Crime and Punishment:

Disclaimer:
This is one blog which I cannot call my own.. though the story is mine.. it is inspired by a short story, which I had read before.. 'The meek one' by Dostoevsky and various others by Maupassant. The title is obviously stolen from Dostoevsky's famous novel. Dont know when they slept and I wokeup to dream their dream.. or is it that they never slept???

Crime:
My wife was hanging from the ceiling. Her face was distorted with the neck broken, eyes wide open with the sad, resigned look she always had.Her hands were clutched shut with the remains of the mangalsutra dangling dangerously from it.The saree was pulled a bit up and I rushed and tried to iron it a little and cover those beautiful, revealed thighs before the police came and saw her in that position, What a shame it would have been for my family if her thighs were so displayed it to the public.She was always like that, thoughtless, never caring for anything I liked.. yesterday the eggs she had prepared had pepper in it, having told her thousand times about me not liking pepper, she had put it just to irritate me, was sure of it.But she was beautiful... May be I had married her because of her gray eyes and auburn hair, or was it because of the sweet fruity smell of her hair or the jasmine scent of her body.

I dont know why I married her.... but now I was no longer married.Her corpse was in my bedroom... Her alta clad feet was still in front of my face. The feet were heavenly... so shapely.. She had the red circle at the centre of her feet, to ward of evil, and some more small dots sorrounding it, and her toenails.. those were also painted with the alta red. She may have done these for prolonging my life, yesterday had been savitri amavasya(Orissa's Karwa chauth) and she had fasted the whole day. I just clinged to those and had cried "on" her feet... Why not I loved her so much... I had told you so.. right? I was in love with her.. maybe thats why I married her. But why did she die, I was a good husband.. Wasnt I? I loved her.. I worshipped the ground she treaded on.. I never looked at another woman.. never said no to what ever she wanted.. then where did I fail her.. Did she not love me?

I decided she didnt love me then. All these fasting were just to fool the world and herself of her true feelings, I decided. I was sitting at the bed and her feet was touching my cheeks.. I gave it an angry push and tried imagining with whome was she cheating me with. I couldnt make up my mind,may be it was Ahmed or was it Santosh... I couldnot decide who it could be.. It could have been anyone in the world, she was sweet to everyone.. to me too. She had that winning smile that she sprinkled on everyone who ever had the fortune of being on her path. She could smile at that 80 year old man, in the dirty rags and unclean yellow teeth, the rabid dog which had an arm aputated and cooed at the neigbour's kid which could have won the ugliest kid contest if he had even enrolled. She was sweet and was the perfect hostess with all my friends(and also enemies) won over by her altruism. I would have been jealous with a vengence, save for one fact which I knew.. She loved me... I had told you so.. right?

She did love me.. Dont ask me how I came to know of it... I can feel it in my bones.. Maybe it was the way she smiled at me when I was hogging the food, the way when she kept looking at me when I was looking at the TV, maybe the way she held me tight before just going of to sleep, maybe the way she kissed me goodnight, kissed me good Morning, kissed me good day... kissed me every hour, every minute every second. We were so much in love but still she was dead.. instead of lying on the bed she was hanging from the ceiling, you may laugh at my desperation but what could I do it was 3 Am in the morning.. and i have been sitting with my dead wife's feet all over my face for an hour or so. Her feet was cold and I was missing her warmth, her smell, her.

I had to know why she died before I called the police.. I clambered around the closet looking for some clue to atleast let me know why? I scrambled across the room empteying every drawer, reading across her diaries.. her papers but found nothing. Then I found at that letter, where I least expected to find, on the table in the living room with the TV's remote acting as the paper weight. The letter was short...
A,
Dont make it tough for me.. I have to do this. I cant go on with you.. nor without you. Sometimes I wished you had a mistress.. sometimes I wished you u came home drunk and bruised me.. sometimes i wished u didnt love me the way u do... sometimes i wished I didnt love u the way I do.. sometimes I wish...
We have loved each other while ignoring each other.I wanted us to be a couple and not each other's habit.
But today when am expectiong, instead of being happy i feel sorry for the baby yet unborn, our unborn baby.
Will we be just a potemkin family, seemingly in love? while unknown to the world, the truth would be different.
I dread myself.
The food is in the fridge please heat it up and eat it.
Sorry for I killed your baby and your wife
Love
W

I looked around.. the feet was still alta clad, the feet was still cold, and I had tears in my eyes. I kissed her feet, my tears wetting those pale feet. The red circle, that was supposed to wade the devil was distorted now with the devil's tears. I picked up the telephone and called the police.

Punishment:
The pundit was chattering something in sanskrit, and was demanding my utmost attention. How could I give my attention to the bald pundit when my love was sprawled across the floor and my heart still not distangled from her. My umblical chord still tied me to my wife and all the pundits hogwash just reminded me of the vaccum my wife's death had created. My sacred thread had changed their directions... from a householder, i had become a sanyasi and then a pariah whose wife was dead. She was clad in a new red saree, my relatives were admiring her beauty.. some old uncle contemplating of times when she had shown her face to him the first time, a moon clad in a veil, he reminisced. The moon was at my feet now.

They asked me to pour water in her mouth. I poured water in those lips, zombie like... Wanted to kiss those half shut pale lips.. but just poured the water.. Ganges.. some said. I didnt care, nor did she. She had some half smile smacked on her face.. may have heard my old granny thinking of getting me married to the village balle. Another victim, she may have thought and thus the smile. We were carrying her now.. four of my friends... i was given a lamp to carry and show the path to the dead.. to the dead or to the alive? I walked in the front leading the way... I walked fast trying to do away with the rituals..

The graveyard was in the corner of the city.. near some god forsaken railway line.. the line to maybe nowhere. They put her in the pyre so lovingly prepared by her husband and the pundit. We had arranged for sandalwood.. the pundit had looked shocked when i had asked if we can burn her along with the jasmine flowers. She smelled of jasmine not sandlewood, I reasoned. I was a hero there... the world reasoning that my love for my wife was just next to shahjahan... She was lying on the top of the pyre.. her auburn, fruity smelling hair shining in the sun. I was asked to stand up and a pot full of water was placed on my left shoulders and was asked to make an anticlockwise circle of the pyre, the pundit made a small hole in the pot while I started walking, the water wetting my back.. The receeding water were filling my heart with all the unspoken wails, unshed tears. I was all welled up but i couldnt create a scene.. my family name would be ruined. I was given a torch smelling of kerosene, and without looking back I lit the sandlewood pyre.

My wife, the one who smelled of jasmine, was burning in front of me. I had killed my wife with my indifference and then I had burnt her with my so called sense of duty.

The world had sympathised and empathised and had proclaimed they understood what I was going through. I smiled.. the smile of a senile man.. The world left, leaving me with my wife who was still burning. The smell of the burning flesh was repulsing.. but for me it was still the smell of jasmine. She, with her sweet temperament was not actually the burning type, so she burnt with a little help from me. I kept on poking at the fire, the passing breeze helped. It was actually romantic, me alone with my wife, in a dilapidated graveyard with a old rail line passing near by, the pleasant breeze and the cool sun, only my burning wife took the romance away.

She was all ashes now. I kept collecting her unburnt bones. I filled the silver urn with bones, with ashes, stones and burnt wood. The ash didnt smell of jasmine as I had expected.. I took the urn and went back home. I placed it on the TV stand and sat on the sofa. The TV was blaring but I kept looking at my wife's ashes, actually the urn. I wanted to be near my wife. I took the urn and held it as I saw the news. I was missing my wife's touch. I remembered when we used to watch movies, with ourselves entwined. She was right, she was my habit, but didnt she understand that i didnt look at her but I wanted her to be near me, so that I could hear her breath, feel her sighs on my trembling hairs, bathe in her smell, now when her urn didnt provide that warmth and all I could do was cling to her memories.

The police found my body, two days after, hung from the ceiling, all covered with my wife's ashes.
Their report said, I smelled of jasmine.

The Recluse

Naveen kept looking at the balcony waiting for Roma to make an appearance on the balcony. He had been waiting for a single glance of her for days now, seating in the road-side chai stall sipping tea. He kept on looking up at the balcony, with the flowering pots with wilted flowers, and the half hidden, moth eaten doll strewn from a heap of old cothes dump. He was talking to balwant, the proprieteer of the shop while stirring the cup, to make the tea cooler, in a periodic movement of his hands. He remembered how happy he was the day when the magazine, he worked for, asked him to pen an article on Roma, the beauty of yesteryears. Naveen was ecstatic at the thought of interviewing his childhood fantasy, the lady whose saree clad picture had been under his pillow for long, the beauty, whose twinkling eyes, laschivious smile and a heavenly gait had made his nights passable and days happy. He looked forward for the divinity to speak to him, but he was not prepared for this, speaking to balwant, sipping the cold tea and waiting for that one glance.

Roma's secretary, also her supposed lover, had emphatically rejected his proposal for an interview; Roma, it seems, never saw anyone, never talked to any individual, she had hidden herself from the public which was willing to give their arm for that one smile. No one had an inkling of why she did that, why she left the lime light to hide behind those heavy curtains.She could have got the world if she wanted, she just had to ask, but still she chose to just vanish away. She must be 44 now, she must have grown a bit fat, her lips may not be as pink as they were, her hair may have lost the rich texture and those shapely figure may not be as etheral as it was before, but 29 was not an age for a diva to retire, even at 44 she must be pretty, Naveen mused.

All his efforts for an photo, leave aside the interview had been futile. He had done everything humanely possible to coax the secretary to grant an interview, save maybe point the gun at him, but to no avail. Roma, never left the house, never rested on the balcony, never roamed in the vast garden, never swam in the vast pool, so how was he supposed to click a snap. He thought of forcing an entry at night but the images of being an late night dinner for the huge mastiff came as a deterrant.. Rightly so, Being a messiah who brought back beauty to the world was one thing, sacrificing oneself at the alter of Page3 journalism another. His vigils at the balwant's shop had brought no results save one, he had become a friend of the nearby plumber who was sometimes called to Roma's sprawling bungalow.. and Naveen waited for one such call.

He dreamt of winning the pulitzer for the story, dreamt of standing next to the stunning Roma.. dreamt of Roma's lips on his, Why not he reflected.. Roma may not have seen a male, save the bald secretary and he may be the best option for her. His day dreams remained incomplete with the sounds of pawan, the plumber running towards him with a 100 watt smile. Naveen knew the reason why, with a pounding heart and an anxious mind he made way for the bunglow hoping he doesnt see that rude secretary. He was shown the bathroom by a old butler, There was no sign of the lady, not another soul could be seen in that bunglow, no voices were heard, the silence was broken periodically by the clocks ticking in some part of the room and the water dripping from the broken tap. Naveen sleathly climbed the stairs, with the camera in one hand and his shoes in the other.

He saw a wonderful looking huge room with chandaliers lighted, the candles lit everywhere, and the room smelling of some french perfume, maybe in preparation of some grand ball. A smile lit on his face.. in addition to Roma, he may see someone equally grand. There were pictures adorned on every wall.. huge potraits of Roma. She was looking so beautiful with the trademark locks of hairs falling on her face, she wearing a saree in one, a dress in another. Naveen was lost on seeing those snaps, beauty has an intoxicating power, a beautiful face makes one more still than copious amounts of grass. He picked a picture .. kept looking at Roma, who looked the enchantress in that particular picture,her hairs were left open for the picture and they fell behind her back seeming like an ocean of flowing black hair.. the eyes were hiding some twinkling mischief, those lips were a picture of interwined gloom and grace and she looked so lovely in those long skirts and loose blouse.

Naveen just kept looking. The door adjacant to him opened suddenly and there was someone dragging onself across the floor, the dead foot lying so dead behind her. He had dropped the picture he was carrying and he kept looking at the face on the floor, if you call it a face. It had no trace of the lovely eyes, just two sockets with the eyes deep within, the luscious lips that were the fantasy of millions were looking sickening and there were protrusions all over her face. The voice which had men whine in their dreams was reduced to a whimper and she kept mewling some obscure paraphrases. Naveen shuddered at the diva at whose feet millioneres used to fall, lying so pitiably at his feet. He picked up the camera and clicked, the flash lighting the leper's face for a second. She was dragging herself across the hall, oblivious of anyone's presence. Naveen kept looking while she went to the nearby desk, took up a framed photograph and kept on fondling the same.

Naveen clicked another picture. He could see the pulitzer in his hand. He kept on clicking, Roma suddenly broke down... there were no tears just the silent whimper. She was touching her face, her hair her skin... She turned around with the lifeless leg dragged around like an appendage. She touched her lips and fell on her back crying aloud a voiceless sob. Naveen went on to her and kissed those non existant lips.. maybe trying to make her remember of the waman that she actually was. He kissed her on the forehead, his tears drenching the lady's face. The face had no reaction.. She just lay there with the beautiful Roma of the past lying on her bosoms. Naveen took those reels out of the camera, threw them at the fire and walked away.

There was a notice in the 5th page in an obscure column of the paper, the next day.
Naveen Chaubey has been terminated from the newspaper services and any legal dealings with him are no longer hold valid.