Human Stain

I don’t know him. Never met him and whatever I have heard of him are occasions where he was a syllable in a collective noun, another head that’s a part of a reference to an ambiguous group whose span you have no idea of – Classmates, friends, acquaintances. His death shouldn’t really worry me or give me sleepless nights. But ever since I heard about it, there’s this nagging feeling of unrest inside, a feeling you can’t come to terms with but can do nothing about – like an irritating speck of dust ducked under your eyelid that refuses to leave.

An auto hits a college youth on his way to college and leaves him bleeding meters ahead. The auto itself topples to one corner and as the driver scrambles to get his vehicle back on the wheels, trespassers rush to help him leave the place as soon as possible. Onlookers from behind the rusted window bars of public transport stare at the college kid whose head is slowly gaining a red halo as his hair gets matted with blood. Busy professionals on their way to work blame the kid for taking up so much space in a road as busy as airport road. Someone calls for the traffic police to clear the mess. A circle of heads surrounds a rotting body. Rumors doing the rounds whisper the words “police case”, “trouble”, “ambulance” in each other’s ears. The circles gets wider – the pool of blood and the crowd of spineless spectators. The watches tick in horror for 45 minutes as the heads come and go. 45 minutes – the blood dries up in the burning concrete. Someone picks up the kid’s mobile and starts calling the numbers. One hour later, the kid is admitted in a hospital. Post mortem suggests that the kid could have been saved if he had been brought to the hospital in the first thirty minutes.

That night one murderer would have gone back home, washed his auto, confessed to his wife and would have lost sleep for the next fortnight hoping dreading the possibility of someone having noted down his vehicle number. Hundred more murderers would have gone back to coffee tables and office canteens and described the gruesome details of the accident and blame their inability in helping the situation (“Do you think our manager would have understood if I had been late?” “Damn that teleconference! I would have saved him otherwise!”). A million more heads would nod in unison and blamed the boy for speeding. A thousand more witnesses would have crossed the signal, yawned and resumed their usual gossip. One soul would never see the light of the day. One family would cry forever because, unfortunately, they live in the company of spineless men.

The city sleeps peacefully hoping the municipal corporation will clean the dried blood left on the road. It is distressing to watch roads littered with human stains on your way to work. Indeed.