The Man From Another World

The unexpected barking of the dog made me stand up in bed. I opened my eyes and listened closely. “Don’t shout, you bastard,” a muffled, masculine whisper from outside reached my ears. But the stubborn dog kept on throwing his bark onto the man. In fact, the dog’s screeching noise, instead of going silent, continued to rise louder and louder. Probably a thief, I wondered, and instantly found myself doubting this possibility. Why would a thief shout back instead of hiding behind a tree? Then coming out of bed, I peered out through a hole between the gaps of the wooden walls. A huge shadowy man was standing in the front doorway and was trying to scare off the dog with a stick.

While I stood pressed against the wall of my room, a lingering creak cut through the silence of the night. Someone had opened the door of the adjoining room. Probably ma had pulled her body out from sleep, her beautiful messed-up hair pouring like cascades of dark stream all over all shoulders. With the realization that ma had woken up, all my initial fear flew out of my heart. With courage, I too was able to unlatch the knot of the door of my room. Running my hand through my hair, I stepped out onto the verandah and inhaled the aroma of orange blossom welling up in the night air.

The barking of the dog and the yelling of the man hadn’t stopped yet. Oh, a man with torn shoes, whose hallux toe was peeping out from the hole of his shoes like the bald heads of dwarves! His dark clothes with innumerable holes in it gave his skeleton-like body a spectral look. As my eyes slided upward I saw a known face. He was the same man who lived alone right next to our house. His desolate eyes were glaring at the dog without a blink. I carried my body in front of the dog since I hadn’t forgotten the deadly crow that this man had hung on a tree in front of his house.

After a silence which seemed to last too long, he shouted demandingly at my ma, “I want food. I am hungry. This hellish hunger!” “It’s 12 am and we are too tired to cook. Neither do we have left over,” my ma replied in her soft voice. He sat down, gradually sliding his bony body in a side by the pillar. He stooped slowly and rested his head on the floor. Keeping both hands as a pillow he pretended to sleep. Still the dog was howling from behind me. Ma tried to calm the agitated animal, “Seru shhhh”. Ma said, “Uncle, you come tomorrow morning. We will make food for you. Everyone is disturbed. See! Poor sleepy kids..,” ma added, pointing at me. I flinched and took a step behind her.

The man murmured something to himself, rose and, after staring coldly at ma, rushed into our kitchen. I and ma too ran behind him, followed by the dog, Seru. Once inside, the man started rummaging the utensils. His running into the kitchen was not a surprise to us since he was not a stranger. In fact, he was actually quite a popular man in my society, though now a mad man according to the society, and a hungry mad man according to me, and probably an innocent helpless uncle according to ma. A mad man can harm anyone. This was something that was frightening me and I couldn't go back to my room and leave ma alone. After not finding anything to eat, he looked out from the door at ma. “I brought a noodle. Can you please cook this, my daughter,” he pleaded. Ma went into the kitchen. His words “my daughter” gave me clarity that he wasn’t going to hurt my mom. Which is why I went back to sleep.

Keeping the door open, I stepped in bed. “Is he gone?” my cousin asked, surprising me with her voice. She was sitting in a corner, her body partially wrapped in a blanket. “NO,” I replied. “He went into the kitchen and I guess ma is cooking for him.” “Poor him!” she sighed. We both laid our heads on the pillow. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t fall asleep. My head started burning with thousands of thoughts. Trying luck if my sister was also awake, I said into her ears, “I guess loneliness made him mad.”

“Guess so,” she replied sleepily. “He isolated himself for a year and then he came out of the house finally,” she added.

Isolated? Such a happy man, once brimming with life and excitement, had now been left all alone to trudge through the storm of life. I could vividly picturize those days when he was with his wife. How happily the couple had lived! Every time I saw them, I felt they were both made for each other. They were so kind, always ready to help those in need.

I remember how years ago he had taken his wife to hospital. I would never forget that rainy evening when he had returned home alone. Maybe those dark, roaring clouds had already been forecasting his life, his isolated life after the death of his wife. His memory of her, it seemed, gave him the strength to pull through the real world he was living in. Maybe he had forgotten everyone, except his wife. His sad eyes were actually missing her, longing to be with her. Maybe he was cursing his hunger since it was only the reason that he made him come out of the paradise of her memory. Also, his nocturnal wandering today made me feel different about him. I could sense this man was oblivious to the happenings of the world, since for him neither the day nor the night seemed to matter, as if time had shedded all its meaning. For him, neither the flow of the river mattered nor the perennial ticking of clock. Actually, he was isolated, isolated from the world that snatched away his wife.

I was clueless about the little world of my village because I had been away for a year. Here, I had to help myself understand by guessing things. “What do you think he did for a year? Living like that, all alone?” I asked my cousin eagerly. She replied, “He used to lie down in bed with every rotation of the earth.” Then after a brief pause, she added,“I also heard that he used to talk to his dead wife for the whole night.”

“Maybe not. I could see how forlorn his eyes looked. How loneliness has dragged him out of his mind. It seems like he is a marionette and someone else is controlling him,” I replied. “He can feel his hungry stomach. How can he be out of his mind,” I added indignantly. Anger against his tragic life welled up in heart.

“But look at him, how crazy he has become! Have you seen a crow he tangled in front of his house in a lemon tree,” my cousin added. I nodded, contracting my nose as if I could smell it even now.

“Why did he actually kill the crow?” I asked.

“I have heard that he talked and laughed with the crow in his verandah every day. But one morning, he killed it and hung it outside the door,” my cousin replied. “No one knows the reason why he had hung the dead crow in a tree in front of his house.” After a while she added, “That stinky one. He is actually out of mind or maybe he is into black magic.”

My disagreement was not letting me stop. So, I added, “No, I guess. He doesn't even know himself, how can he learn magic!”

I didn’t hear her response. Maybe she had already fallen asleep, or maybe she was floating into the realm of thoughts.

Though the silence now tightened its grip upon the world, her words continued to reverberate through me. I kept on thinking. I could sense the tender emotion he must have shared with his people and this was not letting me agree that he was out of his mind. And I believe that those roars of the river and those serene winds of the pine forest would surely whistle to bring their son back had he gone out of his mind. These unending layers of hills that surround our village, along with the depth between the ranges of the mountains, would softly let the sun pour its rays as blessings to heal him.

Or maybe he is already living in the next world, but has not gone mad. I believe his grief has taken him into another world but his body remained here. And I guess this is how lonely a man can be or how loneliness can drive a man mad in the eyes of the people of this world, while the person, filling up with the longing for his loved ones, might already have gone to another world.

I continued to ruminate for a long time. The gradually melting empty night into dawn left me sleepless and reflective. My last thought had probably been: he is not mad, it’s just loneliness that killed him even before his breath stopped.

There I stopped thinking. A pin drop silence gripped my mind. Silence of loneliness, of the isolated man, of the dead scary crow. Everything was wrapped in this silence that stretched between the night sky and the hills, the rivers and the forests of my village, and later I felt I dreamt of that man laughing and smiling once again with his wife.

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