RENAISSANCE MAN

As far as I can remember, I always wanted to be a thief. The only problem was that I did not know where to start. It always intrigued me in an essential kind of a way. As for other reasons, my father was a petty thief, which pretty much made me a thief by default. Till age seven, I did not know what he did for a living. There were always unanswered questions in my mind. Why did my dad stay away in the nights? Why did he disappear for months and then come back only to disappear after some more time? I still remember the day when I found out that he was a thief. The police dragged him from our home to the police van as I stood there watching. To be honest, I had never been more proud of my dad. For one thing, now I at least knew what he did and I admired it. That was my life changing moment, right there. I don’t know why people scoff at thieves. It takes courage to steal. When you know that society does not accept what you are doing and that on being caught, you can either be pounded or thrown in the jail, you need to have a heart of steel to do that. I just love to steal. Screw your norms and values. I steal not because I need to, it’s because I want to. How many ‘civilized’ people can do that? My guess is not one of them. They are too busy living their mundane lives to realize the thrill, the excitement and the satisfaction that a successful act of theft gives. They just don’t have what it takes. They are too busy labeling things as right or wrong. Speaking of right and wrong, how was theft ever labeled an illegal act, I would never know. Rich guys criminalized theft as, well, they are the people one steals from. I mean you would not enter a laborer’s house to steal. What is there to steal? Nothing. That’s what rich people don’t get. Stealing is the most egalitarian act in the world. Isn’t that what our forefathers wanted? Equal distribution of wealth has always been the pipedream which never materialized. The reason behind that is that there are more rich people in the world that there are thieves. Still they are the ones who live in fear, ironic !!

Lately, though, there have been some changes. The thrill and the challenge associated with thefts seems to be fading away. People don’t just seem to care about thefts anymore. While Mr. Srivastava is nailing some student of his, you can just get in the house, pick up whatever you want and walk away, like a sale in some supermarket. While those rich college kids are boozing in the bar, you can just walk their bikes away and still not get caught. What’s the fun in that? It seems like I am not doing anything of consequence now. Is theft not fashionable as a ‘crime’ anymore? It used to be when the girls in my locality used to drool over every piece of jewellery I got them, now they are tired of it. My life seems to have suddenly lost purpose. I still stand by the egalitarian thing but if it is not exciting, it is a duty, not a passion. How can I justify my acts if I don’t make a goddamn difference anymore. The problem is that rich have gotten too rich too care about some minor thefts. There has to be some other way to do something important.

I woke up with this thought in my mind. Freshened up and got out of the room. People never recognize that I am a thief. If one is dressed well enough, he is automatically thought to belong to the middle class. If, on the other hand, one is shabbily dressed, people will think of him as some laborer or a beggar. They just don’t seem to think that I could be a thief. For them, their world is always perfect, just as they want it to be. That is called paranoia. I had a tea at a road side stall and went to the railway station to catch the local train. I sat there on the bench on the platform, waiting for the next local. A well suited man, with what seemed to be an expensive briefcase came and sat beside me. Here it was, the great leveler of our times. The bench on the platform where a thief and some rich guy shared space!! He lit a cigarette. Didn’t he know you are not supposed to smoke in a railway station? Or was he that rich?

Stranger(extending the packet to me): Do you want one?

Me: No, I don’t smoke.

Stranger(with a smile): A thief who does not smoke. You are very choosy when it comes to selecting vices my friend.

My heart almost stopped. How did he know I was a thief? Was he with the police? I looked around to check if there were any policemen. There were none.

Me: Who are you?

Stranger: Don’t worry. I have better things to do than get a petty thief like you caught.

Should I be relieved or feel insulted?

Me: I don’t get caught. I have never been caught.

Stanger: That’s because you don’t matter.

Me: How do you know I am a thief?

Stranger: That does not matter either.

Me: Who are you to insult me?

Stranger: These are facts you would better face. Your thefts, for whatever reason you do that, have stopped impacting the society. As far as I know, you consider your work to be of prime importance. I ask you, whom are you actually affecting? Look at these people. You don’t have an impact on anyone of them.

Me: Are you saying what I do is useless?

Stranger: Pretty much.

A local train stopped and went away. I could not board it. I had to deal with that moron first.

Me: What I do does have significance. I don’t steal for idiotic reasons. Don’t take me for just another thief. I am good at what I do and I consider it to be necessary

Stranger(looked directly at me): What are you, Robinhood? That’s where your line of thought goes haywire. Look at those guys.

Some men, all dressed in shirts and formal trousers hurriedly boarded a train.

Stranger: See them. How do your thefts ever concern them? What do you think they lack?

He seemed to be talking in puzzles.

Me: I don’t know.

Stranger: Rich form a very small minority, my friend. You have got to look at the larger picture.

Suddenly a train came and stopped right in front of us. Clouds seemed to be gathering around the sun. All I could think was how the sun would soon disappear and how that was a good thing or a bad one. The stranger got up to board the train.

Me: Wait. You were saying something.

Stranger: Yeah. Take my card. Call me. We will talk again. Right now I have to go.

He picked up the briefcase and started walking.

Me: What do you do?

The clouds had covered the sun now. Was it going to rain, or would lightening strike right where I stood. The stranger stopped in his way, turned back and came to me. With no remorse or fear in his eyes, he murmured.

Stranger: I murder people.

With that he was gone. I stood there with the card in my hand. All it had was a phone number. No Name. No address.

I came back to the room in the night. The day had been a nightmare. I had not been able to get my thoughts together. All I had after the day was the card that man gave me. I decided to call him in the morning.

The phone rang for sometime before he picked it up.

Stranger: Come over. The only red house on Nayak steet.

And he hung up!! So I decided to visit him.

The house was situated in probably the most crowded area in the entire locality. Still, it looked dilapidated, as if it had not been used in years. I knocked on the door. It was already open, I went in. The place looked like it was ready to crumble any moment. It smelled of rats and the only thing that signaled any human inhabitation was a pack of cigarettes and a lighter placed on a table. A voice interrupted my analysis of the place.

Stranger: You are here. Sit.

I pulled out a chair which creaked like it was loose in a hundred places. He came, lighted a cigarette and stood in front of me.

Stranger: So why are you here?

Me: You called me.

Stranger(with a wicked smile): I didn’t call you. You called me. You could have chosen not to call me but you did. May I assume that you have recognized the futility of your work and are ready to look beyond?

Me: I told you. I have fun doing what I do. I am not complaining.

Stranger: You are not. Give it some time and you will. Do you remember the people I showed you on the platform? The neatly dressed guys.

Me: Ya I do.

Stranger: The problem with your solution is that it is myopic. You have been a thief for so long now that you seem to think of the world in black and white. The rich and the poor, but what about the other guys?

Me: What other guys?

Stranger: The lost.

Me: Who?

Stranger: People who aspire to be rich and live in the fear of being poor. The guys who are neither here nor there. Those who are so messed up with the trivial that they can’t see the bigger picture. The unchallenged. The lost.

Me(a little apprehensive): So what is it that you intend?

Stranger: I try to wake them up out of their deep slumber. I try to challenge them to prove to themselves that they can still face life. Those people you saw the other day were all white collar employees. They are so consumed with the deadlines, targets and revenues of their employers that they have forgotten about more important things.

He finished the cigarette and then looked me in the eye.

Stranger: What I am saying is that you try to catch fish for people, I make them learn the art of fishing.

I remembered what he had said at the railway station about murdering people. Sure he was joking back then. I felt a sudden chill but decided to ask him anyway.

Me: How do you do all that exactly?

Stranger: Like I told you. I kill people.

The clouds were gathering. It could have rained any moment and burnt everything that existed.

Me: Is this some kind of a joke? What has murder got to do with the bright side of anything?

Stranger: It opens doors to the bright side.

He didn’t seem like a guy who would go on a killing spree. He looked like a man with a plan. What it was, however, was beyond me at that point.

Stranger: There are people who kill politicians, leaders, movie stars for no reason at all. You see, I am not interested in that sort of stuff.

Me: What do you mean?

Stranger: What I mean is you have got to ask the right questions. You see all these criminals these days, the so called criminals. They don’t excite me. What’s the point of killing someone like a politician or an actor who is so easily replaceable?

I felt darkness surrounding me. The sinister clouds swallowed the sun and the angels stopped dancing. He was almost whispering now, that’s all he needed to do.

Stranger: If you want to make an impact, you have to strike where it has the maximum effect. Kill the only teachers in a municipal school or the only guy who wants to run an old age home in the worst suburb of the city. These people, these so called nobodies are so much harder to replace than a filthy politician. Let people suffer. Let them realize the true worth of such people.

Me: How does that accomplish anything?

He came near. I could feel his breath on my nose. His eyes were still unflinching, not a trace of remorse in them.

Stranger: It is easy to fool yourself by believing that by stealing from the rich you have become this Messiah, who, by the way, wastes all this money on whores and useless fucks. You know that’s bullshit. It’s not about egalitarianism with respect to money, anymore. My vision of a perfect world is where people have to face challenges and overcome them. People are fooled into a false sense of security by giving them exactly what they need exactly when they need it. Remove the pillars of society, and you know whom I consider to be the pillars, then people have a challenge at their hands. Let them find alternatives, replacements, solutions to problems they never expect to face. Lets make them learn how to fish. And yeah, you have always wanted excitement, haven’t you? You will get it.

The last doors to fresh air had closed. He made perfect sense. For the first time, I had felt a sense of oneness, a sense of identity with someone. He was now my friend.

Me: What do we do then?

Friend: Kill Mr Srivastava for a start. So many girls in his class get banged by him to pass. As long as he is there, they know all they need to pass is get fucked. Once he is gone, the useless whores will actually have to study.

You had to give it to him. However ridiculous it may have sounded, but he had a plan. I was no longer a thief. I was going to be the man who challenged the world.

Friend: We’ll meet on Sunday. I want to be there to see you reborn.

He was there as he had promised. The first touch of a gun felt as chilling as the thought of killing someone but soon it pervaded my sense of identity. The gun was no longer a foreign object. I had been reborn and reborn with a gun. Through the opening in the wall, a shot was fired and there lay the perverted teacher, dead. The girl beside him squealed like a monkey. Was it the horror of witnessing death or the disappointment of missing a fuck? Whatever it was, she, as my friend said, now had a challenge. She would have to go back and study, prove her worth on paper and not on the bed.

This was it. Take away the luxury of mindless dependence and people lost it. It was the system that ran their lives. Take away the government and these civilized people won’t know where to get their next meal from. This culture of short-sightedness, dependence and taking everything for granted had to be removed. In the days to come, we killed another school teacher, the guy who ran the only medical shop in the whole locality and many more. Find more teachers, learn how to get medicines in case the only guy you know in the field of medicine dies. Cmon, grow up. The sun had set. The vampires were out in the open. Chaos pervaded the city. The sudden deaths had made front page news. Finally there was a recognition of the threat that faced the masses. As the blood escaped the dead bodies, we basked in the glory of our accomplishments.

Friend: Look at all that stupid talk they do. Amidst all this, people are still happy to appear on TV and talk nonsense. It would take sometime to get them working my friend.

Me(with a mock smile): Losers. All they can do is jump up and down in front of the camera. Most of them will go back and hump their wives like nothing ever happened. They need to learn a lesson. They need to wake up.

Friend: Exactly. They seem to have come out of their shells, atleast. That’s some progress. And that’s why our next mission is going to be a big one.

Me: What’s the next mission?

Friend: Remember the white collar guys I showed you. It is time to shatter their dream world. Our forefathers conceived a country full of self dependent people who would create the future of a nation with their enterprise and skill. That dream is long lost, what we have are thousands of young people wasting away their lives in 4x8 cubicles. These assholes have traded their lives for a few thousand and air conditioned rooms. They go through their lives unchallenged, happy with being slaves to employers who don’t even know their first names.

What was he hinting at? I didn’t know. But in him, I trusted.

Friend: Listen up carefully. This time we strike at the heart of this industry which has turned an entire generation into mindless, useless zombies. We blow up the headquarters of DevDomain. The biggest IT organization in the country.

The sun had died and the clouds poured acid. The burning was about to start. A cigarette was lit.

Friend: It’s the start of a revolution. We are going be the renaissance men.

I knew he must have a plan. He always did. Whatever it was, this was going to be our ultimate contribution to mankind. I stepped out of his house and walked into the rain, waiting for the acid to hit me.

Two days passed and it was time for execution. I went to his house. The red house on Nayak street. There seemed to be people working on it. They were plastering the walls and cleaning up the place. I asked them what the matter was and one replied that it was going to be converted into a photo studio. How was it possible? How can they convert someone’s home into a photo studio?

I called him on his number. He didn’t pick up. What the hell was going on? I started going back to my room. I entered a quiet alley and there he was, standing right in the front of me.

Me: What the hell is going on man? Do you know what they are doing to your house?

Friend: They are working on it and it’s not my house.

Me: What?

Friend: I meet you here today to inform you of a recent development.

Me: What is that?

He reached into his pocket and took and took out a cigarette from the pack.

Friend: We set out to challenge people. We have done that. We have given the people enough to act upon recently. In the process, you have outlived your utility.

Me: What does that mean? Hey, are you kidding with me? We were going to..

Friend(cutting me off): We already did that. Don’t you remember? Yesterday night, we sneaked into the underground car parking and planted the bombs. The lousy security guards were no threat at all. We had fun, don’t you remember?

I was getting scared now. When did that happen? I didn’t remember doing any such thing. I reached for the gun and instead got hold of a cigarette packet.

Friend: You smoke too much.

Who was he? What was happening? Cigarettes? I didn’t smoke. How did it get there? He was not a friend. He was a fiend.

Me: What is this? What the fuck is going on?

Fiend: I’ll explain everything. You wanted to do something challenging. Didn’t you? Weren’t you bored of stealing? Didn’t you want to have a greater impact on everything? You asked for it, you got it.

Me: Wh..What?

Fiend: I was everything you thought you were lacking. You created me to do what you thought was more challenging. You just disguised it in the form of social service and employed me to help you along.

Me: This is bullshit. This can’t be true.

The acid drops began to fall. I searched for it again and this time got hold of the gun.

Fiend(smiling): Shoot me.

I looked at him and his eyes still had the sparkle and confidence which was so characteristic of him.

Fiend: Shoot me because anyways I am going to shoot you. You have played your part. You have to die because if you get caught, everything would appear a sham and people would go back to what they were. These things can’t have a face, because if they do, they lose the credibility and purpose.

I shot at him instantly. An old man passing through the alley dropped to the ground in the distance.

Me: O Shit. O Shit!! What the fuck is this!!!

Fiend: You know it. Accept it.

He had the pistol.

Fiend: Run.

And I ran harder than I ever had. Tears welled up in my eyes. Tears of horror. I ran and ran and ran and reached a plateau, a high rise kind of a place. You could see the whole city from there. And there it was, the headquarter of DevDomain shining in the horizon. I hoped what he had said was not true. That nothing was going to happen. He reappeared by my side.

Fiend: Enjoying your last work?

I felt a chill as I hoped nothing would happen.

Fiend: One more minute to go.

Every other sound faded away. I could only hear my heartbeat. A minute passed by. Nothing happened. I looked at him. He looked disgusted.

Fiend: What the …Why didn’t it go off? What the fuck !!

I kept staring at him and realized what I had been doing. What I felt was not remorse or any feeling of guilt. It didn’t feel wrong. Nothing. I just didn’t want to do it any more.

Fiend: We will do it again. Crap!! You and me.

The rain had to stop. I was not in a position to make a judgment, but it had gotten lonely.

Me: No, we won’t.

And I plunged into the depths from the plateau. The last thing I saw was the sun escaping the cover of the clouds.