Imran

| Shaik Asad | October 2024 | Short Story |

After school, once his growling belly was stuffed with snacks and tea Ammi had kept ready for him, Imran was free to go out and play. Without wasting any further time he dashed into the hall where, on one of the shelves, lay a cardboard box containing his playthings: a top and thread, a plastic mug full of marbles, a spool of thread (used when kite-flying took his fancy) besides a few fishing hooks and a fishing line wound around a twig. He filled one of his shorts pockets with marbles.

As he made for the compound gates at a run, pressing the marble-held pocket against his thigh with a hand, Ammi’s words reached his ears.

‘Remember, dear, be back before seven…’

‘Ok, Ammi,’ he cried out, now already outside the gate. Once he slowed down to a walk along the street, he tried to figure out how long he’d got until the Church’s clock tower at the end of the street chimed seven times before announcing in a recorded voice in Telugu to whoever was out on the street, ‘The time now–is–seven p.m.’

‘Hmm, let’s see how long I’ve got,’ he told himself. School had let him off at four; let’s say fifteen minutes for hurrying back home; another fifteen minutes for snacks and tea. 

‘That leaves me a good two and a half hours, which is plenty,’ he said aloud, kicking the air.

He liked to relish the pleasure of calculation every day, even though the evening schedule had remained pretty much the same ever since he could remember. For one thing, he believed it’d make him quicker at maths.

He seldom needed to venture beyond the street because a vacant lot on the same street bustled in the evenings and on weekends with kids of all ages, providing enough space for games he enjoyed playing. Except fishing, of course, the nearest pond being at least half a mile away(in the middle of the mango orchard).

The vacant lot, Imran’s playground, was surrounded by a boundary wall and had an entrance gate. It had just one shady spot, which was under the jamun tree in a corner. The first one to come there would decide the game played under the shade. That’s not to say that the rest of the ground was bad. The ground was even, with patches of half-dried grass here and there.

In less than five minutes after setting out, Imran was on the playground. The shady spot was occupied by top spinners.

‘No problem,’ he thought. He looked at the sun, who had all but spent out his energy for the day and, in an hour or so, would call it a day and slip behind the western horizon. 

‘No problem,’ he said to himself again, this time a little wistfully.

He crossed to where the marble game was on. Luckily he’d come at the right time: they were just about to start a new game. Had a game been on,  he would’ve had to wait till the ongoing game was over before he could join in.

When the clock tower struck seven, he was in the middle of a game. It was time to quit and go home. 

‘I need to go,’ he said to the others, picking up his share of marbles among those lying inside a circle scrawled on the ground. Technically, this meant breaking a rule. But something had happened six or seven months earlier that forced the other kids to accept his case as an exception. 

The ‘something’ that happened:

One fine evening five months ago, as the clock tower struck seven, Imran made for his share of marbles that he’d staked in the game expecting, as usual, harmless protests and threats about not letting him play the next time. That brat Sanjay, Imran’s schoolmate(a year senior), who happened to be among his playmates that evening, confronted him, saying, ‘Hey, what’s the hurry? You can’t leave when the game’s going, don’t you know?’

Being a little taller and more muscular for his age made that scoundrel Sanjay think he was the overlord of the playground. Everyone was afraid of Sanjay. Including Imran. 

‘Ammi said be home by seven,’ Imran said, trying his best to hide his dread. 

‘Oh, Ammi’s little baby you are, aren’t you? Go go, milk’s getting cold, go have your milk!’

 Imran said nothing in reply for fear of stirring up a fight that would invariably yield disastrous results. So he silently approached the circle in which the game’s marbles lay scattered. 

Sanjay dashed up and shoved Imran away from the circle. Imran fell over. His clothes got soiled. By this time, sensing the heat, a crowd had gathered around and was watching the scene with pleasure. 

Now he didn’t feel afraid of the Big Boy Sanjay anymore. 

He said, ‘Oh yes I will go have my milk. You play till your mother comes here with a bamboo stick to redden your butt like a monkey’s.’

This remark triggered a few chuckles. Sanjay’s face went white in humiliation. 

Imran made another attempt to snatch away any number of marbles his hand could grab from the circle, but Sanjay proved more agile. He pushed Imran over again; Imran fell over again. 

Imran rose to his feet, dusted off his clothes. It was getting late. ‘Hell with those marbles,’ he thought, and was walking away leaving his marbles behind when Sanjay said to his back, ‘ Oh, now I know. You’ve got something else to do, don’t you? Need to go to the bar and get your Abba a full bottle, right?’

A blind rage engulfed Imran. Clenching his fists, he dashed up and dealt Sanjay two punches in the stomach and a slap across his face. Sanjay doubled up in pain, tried to hold back tears at first, but soon, the pain seemed to make him forget he was the Big Boy. He flopped to the ground, clutching his belly, and cried his heart out. 

After an hour’s study session post dinner, Imran lay on his bed, waiting for his Abba to come home, wishing that today he’d be home early and sober. This was the only time of day he could see him because Abba left home for the sawmill before Imran even woke up and stayed out drinking with his cronies till late into the night. Unlike his school, the sawmill Abba worked at opened on Sundays too. 

Imran now repeated to himself over and over that he loved his Abba, just like he should, just like other kids loved their fathers. And he’d wait with patience till Abba left the bloody drinking habit for good and, like the fathers of other kids, spend some lovely time with him every now and then, sit next to him and patiently listen to him ramble on and on about his school, friends, teachers, exams, adventures and all other things in the world. 

His head was brimming with all these thoughts which were full of hope as well as a fickle promise of happiness.

He closed his eyes to imagine Abba in a jolly mood. He saw himself and Abba rolling on the bed, trying to tickle each other, their laughter echoing through the bedroom. He also saw themselves chasing each other in an intense pillow fight, running all about the bedroom.

To his own amazement, Imran felt much comforted by what he saw with his eyes closed. His lips curled into a broad smile. A soothing warmth exploded in his heart, spreading across his chest.

He suppressed a yawn, reminding himself that today he wouldn’t sleep without seeing Abba. Not that he’d rush out running to the gates to demand to be hoisted up and give him a little peck on Abba’s cheeks. Abba’s perpetually bloodshot eyes and his alcohol-smelling breath scared him a lot. He’d just get a peek at him and go to bed.

Presently the gates outside gave out their characteristic lack-of-oiling creak indicating Abba’s arrival. Ammi, who’d been in the kitchen, went out to switch the verandah’s bulb on.

Imran strained his ears to figure out what his parents were talking about. Owing to the fan running at full speed in the bedroom their words reached him as a faint murmur. He slipped out of bed and without switching the light on, stood at the bedroom’s threshold to see his Abba. 

Abba was sitting on the navar cot, Ammi standing before him, telling him something. His clothes and hair were dusted with sawdust from the day’s work at the sawmill. 

Abba beckoned him over, saying, ‘Rei, come here.’ 

By the sheer gesticulation of Abba’s arms Imran figured out that Abba had come home loaded.

It was only when he padded across the verandah past Ammi and meekly stood before his Abba that Imran could see the eyes, the blood-red eyes of his father that seemed on the verge of shedding blood.

 Scared out of his wits, Imran could still manage to say, in a trembling voice, ‘Please eat something now, Abba.’

In reply Abba ruffled Imran’s hair before handing him the polythene bag in which, Imran was sure, lay a packet of sweets.

Abba then slumped over, stretching out on the cot. ‘Go sleep,’ he said in his deep rumbling voice before shutting his eyes himself.

Imran got back into the bedroom and stretched himself out on his bed, now fully relieved. Even though Abba’s voice had sounded today like he was about to punish him for some mischief done, today hadn’t been such a bad day after all, definitely better than his previous rendezvous with Abba.

It had been Sunday morning to be more precise–Imran’s previous meeting with Abba. When Imran woke up that day(he slept till late on Sundays), and got out looking for Ammi, there Abba was, squatting on the ground in the verandah, holding a cleaver, chopping up a skinned chicken on a wooden block. One side of the wooden block had a half chicken split vertically, the other side had the other half chopped into little pieces. The wooden block, the chicken, and the pieces were spread out on a plastic mat. Abba’s shirt and face were spattered with tiny patches of blood and bits of meat. 

 Abba waved him over the moment he saw Imran, then he reached into the little heap of chopped-up meat. When he found the testicles of the bird, he held them out to Imran, accompanied by a go-ahead nod with his head. Imran’s stomach churned looking at those testicles, raw and pink. He was repulsed just by the look of them, and here his father was, asking him to swallow them whole.  He was also aware that if he swallowed them, the next thing he’d be doing was run like a mad dog. Eat them raw and run your lungs out, you’d be as strong as a bull when you grew up, as the belief went(in this part of the world). He did want to be strong when he grew up, but surely there’d be other means to that end!

He looked around for Ammi to bail him out of the situation. She was nowhere to be seen. Where did she go? He wondered.

‘Didn’t you hear what I just said?’ Abba shouted. His eyes had widened in anger.

Imran, startled by the sudden change in Abba’s mood, took the pair of testicles and downed them whole in one gulp. The metallic after-taste made him gag.

‘Now run around the house, thirty laps. Go go go…’ Abba said. 

After a couple of rounds around the house Imran actually felt better. The retching was gone. ‘So that’s the reason they make you run,’ he thought. 

Ten rounds proved to be a piece of cake. He began to sweat on the eleventh round. Fourteenth round, his lungs began to hurt. It became harder to breathe. He lost count after another few rounds. His shirt was drenched and stuck to his body. His arms were glistening in the morning sun. 

When his legs began their threat to buckle and collapse anytime now, he slowed down and began walking. A thundering bellow from the verandah jolted him into a run again.

When Ammi came back from the grocery store he ran to her, grateful that finally she’d come to his rescue.

That night he just didn’t feel like even trying to stay up until Abba came home.

‘Why should I?’ he justified to himself, ‘I’d definitely have fainted in the backyard and died then and there if Ammi had stayed out at the shop longer, chatting with Radha aunty.’

The next morning Ammi gave him a bigger packet of sweets Abba’d brought. That’s Abba’s way of apologising. 

Imran had gobbled the sweets greedily, and he had accepted the apology too, although a little grudgingly.

The next time he saw Abba was under very different circumstances. 

That evening, as he was having snacks after school, a male voice called Ammi’s name from outside.

Ammi went out to inquire, and Imran followed her out of curiosity. The man, a mere bag of bones who looked well over fifty, said, ‘This is Ibrahim’s house, isn’t it?’

‘Yes,’ Ammi said. 

‘He’s fallen unconscious on the road before the ice factory. Get there as quickly as you can, madam.’

There was a liquor shop named Venu Wines two buildings ahead of the ice factory.

An image of Abba subconsciously wallowing in the roadside dirt and in his own vomit flashed across Imran’s eyes. Because that’s how he’d seen him every time he and his Ammi went to bring him home.

Although this wasn’t new to Ammi, there was considerable panic in her face as well as her actions. If she was mad at Abba for putting her through all this, she didn’t show it. 

They hired a rickshaw on the way to the ice factory. Imran knew the rickshaw puller. His name was Swami uncle. He used to drop Imran at school and bring him back home when he was too small to go to school by himself. 

When they reached the ice factory, from a distance Imran saw, to his great relief, that Abba wasn’t rolling in the dirt nor had he soiled his clothes except for those little specks of sawdust in his hair and clothes. He had regained consciousness and was sitting on a rock with his head lowered between his knees. Only when they reached him did they see that he was shivering uncontrollably. He was running a high fever too. 

‘My head’s bursting,’ Abba said, his voice weak and quivering. In that voice, Abba sounded like a complete stranger to Imran. 

Imran and Ammi helped him sit on the rickshaw. For the first time in so long, Imran smelled no alcohol on Abba’s breath. Most possibly Abba had been on his way to Venu Wines but before he reached there his legs had given in at the ice factory and he’d fainted. 

‘To the hospital, Anna,’ Ammi told Swami uncle the rickshaw puller. 

The doctor was a portly five-footer whose half-moon glasses journeyed down from his forehead to his nose bridge and back up about a hundred times a minute.

Blood tests revealed that Abba had got typhoid.

Abba was transferred to the dormitory, where the doctor put him on saline. The nurses kept injecting medication into the saline bottle every now and then.

The doctor came back two hours later. He touched Abba’s forehead for temperature. ‘Do you feel better now?’

Abba nodded, saying, ‘A lot better, doctor garu.’

‘You can go home now, but it’s a six-day course of IV treatment for typhoid. You’ll need to come every morning and evening. And remember, not a drop of alcohol for at least a month unless you want a relapse.’

They went home when Abba’s shivering subsided. Over the following week, Swami uncle turned up morning and evening, and Abba kept up his visits to the hospital.

During those days, the first thing Ammi made Imran do once he was back from school was go to his Abba in the bedroom and enquire about his health. 

So he’d stand before the bed and ask, ‘Do you feel any better, Abba?’ Sometimes it was, ‘How do you feel, Abba?’ 

Abba’s invariable answer would be, ‘A little better.’ 

Then he’d nod and force a grin to say he was happy to hear that. Now, with the ritual over, Imran turned over and ran out of the house, and only stopped when he reached the playground. 

One evening, as usual, he stood at the foot of the bed and asked his usual question, ‘How do you feel now, Abba?’

Abba was sitting on the bed, leaning against the headboard. His answer came, frail and raspy. It was the usual answer, ‘A little better.’

Imran gave his usual smile and got out of the bedroom. He was about to break into a run when Abba called him back. 

‘Imraan? Imraan?’

He stopped in his tracks. Why had Abba called him back? Something was wrong for sure! What was he to do now? For a moment, he considered ignoring Abba’s call and running out to the front yard to his Ammi, who was sitting there before the hearth feeding firewood, boiling water for Abba’s bath. 

But what if it was nothing to worry about? Maybe all Abba wanted was a glass of water. Or perhaps he’d ask him to fetch Ammi to clear up some doubt regarding his medicine.

He turned about and shuffled back into the bedroom to stand just where he’d stood not long before.

‘Come to me, dear, come nearer,’ Abba said, his voice raspy but tender.

Imran took a couple of steps forward and stood next to the bedside coffee table on which all his tablets and capsules lay. Abba grabbed him by the hand and gently pulled him nearer. Then he hugged him tight and gave a little peck on his hair. 

Then Abba asked, still clasping Imran in his arms, ‘Which one is it today?’

‘Huh?’

‘Which game?’

‘Top.’

‘Good, good.’

A long moment of silence. Then Abba unclasped his arms around Imran to let him go play. 

Imran crossed the verandah and broke into a run, not for the gate but into the backyard. He paced up and down the backyard, his heart racing, a lump choking his throat. Tears kept rolling down his cheeks. What had happened to him all of a sudden? His Abba had hugged and kissed him probably for the first time ever since he could remember. Wasn’t this an occasion to celebrate? Then why were there tears falling from his eyes instead of happy laughter spreading on his lips? So far in his little life, he’d laughed when he was happy and cried when he was sad or angry. What kind of emotion was this, making him cry like something really bad had happened when it was clearly an occasion to celebrate? He thought he was going mad, crying when he was supposed to be laughing. 

When all of this strange emotion vented out, his tears stopped. His heart slowly returned to its normal pace. 

Then guilt started to set in. How shameful it was on his part to have been so indifferent about his Abba’s illness! Why the hell had he wasted all these evenings playing when he could’ve stayed home after school to nurse his Abba back to health? He was filled with great remorse. 

In a rush of determination, he sprang up, and rushed into the hall to bring out his top and thread. Walking toward the burning hearth before which Ammi sat, he ran his fingers about the top, and had a good look at the little thing. Its blue paint around the smooth end had chipped off at several places. It wasn’t a new one, but it had lasted longer than expected and largely kept him on the winning side. It’d gained his respect for that.

‘I’ll miss you,’ he said to the top.

He chucked his top and thread into the burning hearth and sat next to Ammi to watch the fire burn them up. The thread caught fine almost instantly. 

Ammi was visibly shocked at what he’d done. 

‘Oy, oy! What a foolish boy you are. Why did you do that?’

He shook his head, watching his top get engulfed in flames. What had really happened? He had no words to describe to his Ammi how he felt right now.

‘What’s wrong, dear, what happened?’

His eyes gave him away, starting another flood of tears. 

Ammi clasped him to her bosom, wiping his cheeks. ‘Don’t cry, child, don’t cry. Won’t you tell Ammi what happened?’

‘Nothing,’ Imran said.

He watched the top burn and turn into a glowing ember. The ember glowed for a while in its original shape before falling apart.

From then on, Imran stayed home after school, checking on Abba every now and then. Abba had only to stir to see Imran rush into the bedroom to ask, ‘You need anything, Abba?’

Abba slowly and steadily recovered. It took him another two weeks to feel able to get back to the sawmill.

Abba didn’t come home drunk for another few days. He’d be back home by sunset. He helped Imran a couple of times with his homework. Imran even started to wait till his Abba was home so they could eat together. 

On one or two occasions, while pretending to be absorbed in his play, Imran overheard Abba promising Ammi that he’d never touch alcohol ever again.

Slowly, Abba began avoiding his bar buddies. But the buddies were also quick to sense their losing influence on Abba. They began pursuing him with even greater focus. They tried every possible way to lure him back into drinking.

Despite his best efforts, Abba eventually succumbed to their relentless efforts. He had to. It was just a matter of time. 

After all, good times had to end somewhere, sometime. Imran knew his good times were past him when he saw Abba’s blood-red eyes again.

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_{Shaik Asad is a Corporal in the Indian Air Force. He hails from Bapatla, a coastal district of Andhra Pradesh. Apart from his writing hobby, he loves reading books.}

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Feature image by Charu Chaturvedi via Unsplash 

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