THE VERY SHORT STORY OF A SHORT LIFE

He was on his eighteenth year of life in 1971, just passed the School Certificate exams but couldn’t enroll in a college, didn’t join the War of Independence, fled instead to his grandfather’s refuge in a remote village with his family. Village life was full of fun, chasing girls, his libido often overpowering – some success at ‘touching’, a few slaps too but virginity hung like a stigma still at the end of the war. College didn’t interest him, he wanted a life of money, he travelled to the big city where his uncle was a successful businessman, an apprenticeship was not difficult to get.

He had good people skills, a skill that was honed by his ambition and pretty soon he became a vital cog in his uncle’s business by 20. The uncle doted on him and his misappropriation of funds were overlooked, that ‘crime’ allowed his debauchery to flourish: drinking, gambling, and whoring. He was stationed in a small town outside Dhaka, looking after his uncle’s concerns there. A young girl living beside his rented house floor was soon pregnant, her sister was also bedded by him but pregnancy triumphed and, by 25, he was married but carried on with the other too, sister-in-law now, on the sly. He didn’t have the wherewithal of wooing or the charisma but regular gifts did the trick; the family of the two young women was a notch below middle class.

He became a father two times over and relocated to the capital city, his wife remained with her parents with their two kids. He chased her university going sister-in-law, the whoring-drinking-gambling continued. Business was good and by thirty, he was free of his uncles ‘shackles’. He was now drinking from the morning and spending money like there is no tomorrow. His wife got the whiff of everything and asked for a divorce and got it too, with handsome monthly alimony for herself and their children. The ‘day-tripper’ coaxed the former sister-in-law into becoming his new wife but his finances were going south like a luge down a snowy slippery slope.

In a couple of years, his second wife left him, a second tranche of alimony added on to the first, every month, without fail. When it rains, it pours….his uncle was dead and his cousins showed him the door. He started living on loans from former gambling-drinking-whoring mates but that pipeline dried out soon. He faced destitution, he tried his father but returned with the latter’s boot marks on his bum.

He came to a point of starving and started hiding from the two ex-wives and the people who had given him loans.

One day he realized that he hadn’t a penny in the world and his head was in a spin, he lost his balance and collapsed on the roadside. He had no chance. The doctor concluded that it was a massive stroke and if he hadn’t hit his head, he might have survived. He was not even forty.

Dhaka, 21st October 2016.

© S M Shahrukh and Traces of Orange, 2016