Torture

‘Have you ever been tortured?’

‘Beaten black and blue…hating it more when the tormentors pause, preferring the certainty of pain rather than the wait for the next assault…at first, you try to look at them in the eye, try to show defiance or beg for mercy, for some virtue learned by rote, glory or love or life…and then you realize it is nothing personal, a ritual, a pastime, you lose focus…you expect the punches, the cuts, the burns...you feel the nails being pulled out, you squirm when they insert stuff into your penis or anus…sleep-deprived, starved, solitary confinement, chilly wet or scalding hot, light or dark without idea of day or night or even season…you wonder if there is anything left for them…maybe, internal injuries, bleeding organs, ravaged mind…but they will not allow you to go brain dead…not that…’

‘You try to pray…if you are lucky, you get time to curse…you know it will continue…each second, minute, hour, day, year…no savior, no miracle…’

Each time I have heard my uncle Hosappan tell that story, it always started that way. The story never changed, only the setting.

When I heard it as a child, it was based in the jungles of south-east Asia where communists were shot at first sight. As I trudged past adolescence, youth and adulthood, he kept shifting to a new locale and background each time…Naxals in my backyard, in the city or our village, moving north past our borders to the Middle-east and Balkans, pimping in the cities of Western Europe and North America, caught unawares in unheard places of Central and South America, within drug cartels, back in Africa or Japan or China, surviving apartheid or racial purification, exterminating unwanted cultures, amongst tribes committing genocides protecting fiefdoms.

The story always remained the same. He was like a virtuoso playing the same piece or an artist painting the same landscape, over and over again, perfecting, or unraveling. As he moved the story to places further away from home, I wondered if he was trying to get to some truth within him. At times, while he told the tale and his light grey eyes looked at me intently, I had this unsettling feeling that he was trying to see if I recognized it as my own story.

‘The torture went on for days before they talked to him for the first time. Or maybe they were just improvising with their torture?’

‘They told him that they were going to start with his lover…the lover they had carefully preserved unblemished…they told him what they would do to her…unless…’

‘Unless…he retched then, quite amazed that it was the first time he retched till then…he coughed, vomited, spluttered, brought up the bile within him, soiled himself…when he heard that  from his torturers…unless…’

‘They took him to a big room. At the far end, he saw his lover seated on a chair, her legs and hands bound…she was gagged but not blindfolded…how he wished that she would be blindfolded…he saw her looking at him…saw relief in her eyes…his torturers had not lied…she seemed preserved unblemished…

There was an open door behind her leading to a balcony…light pouring in, the promise of the outside world paining him more than all that they had done to him…making him want to cry out…though he was voiceless, speechless…nearly deaf, dumb, mute…they had done that to him…but not blinded…still able to see her eyes on him…her tears, her love…’

‘They brought in the other prisoners then…old, young, men, women, kids…some untouched like his lover, some in the state that he was…they had told him what he had to do…’

‘He did it…followed their orders…one by one…tortured, maimed, killed…he could not look at her when he had to do all that…for her…but he knew what he would see in her eyes…he did not want to see love leave her eyes…’

‘Even that got over…he saw them going to her…he cried out…he begged…silently…’

‘But they had not lied…they had kept to their words…they untied her…they made her stand up…preserved unblemished…free…’

‘Even then, he could not look at her face…he knew that she must have been looking at him…with dead eyes…with him dead to her…he kept his eyes on the floor near her legs…’

‘He watched her move slowly…unsteadily…towards the door, the light, the promised outside world, the balcony…’

‘He watched her climb over the rails and jump from the balcony…she did not even cry when she fell to her death…they did not move…he did not move…they watched…he watched…’

‘Then…they released him…you are free, they said…to live…’

‘Free…to live…’

My uncle always ends with that death-chant, that dirge…