Jewel-less Crown: Saga of Life by BS Murthy (classic books for 12 year olds .TXT) 📕

Unable to stomach the indignity, their hapless uncle committed suicide. With the path to his illicit passion wide open, their father brought home the widow. And that forced their mother to have her as co-wife.

Though their mother resented the development, yet she fell in line in time. Even that accommodative gesture was of no avail when it came to earning her husband’s gratitude. Instead, she had to put up with the blatant partiality showed by her man towards her rival. As though the unease at home was not good enough for a bad living, in time, their stepmother delivered a baby boy. The obsession their father developed for the newborn made him lose whatever sense of proportion he was left with. Thus, in time, he reduced his first wife and her three children that included a girl to third-rate living. Having taken advantage of their father’s weakness for her and her son, their stepmother stepped up her tirade against their mother and began to boss over them as well. But their mother bore all the indignities for the sake of her children though they boiled with rage.

However, their stepmother induced their father to step out to set up a home of her own. Of course, to have her way with their father, she alleged that all were hell-bent on making a hell out of her life. So their father moved away with her and her son, leaving his old house to their mother and them. But, by then, their father pulled them out of the college and made them salesmen in his garment shop. Anyway, after their father’s desertion, the brothers were at rebuilding their life with their mother and sister. And all that changed when came a realtor, like a bolt from the blue, to acquaint himself with the property, as their father, unknown to them, had put it up for sale.

That, after all, was more than the brothers could take, as without the house, their mother and sister might have to live on the pavements with them. Thereby, without a second thought, that very night, the brothers descended upon their father and his favorite family. Having slain their father, who opened the door for them, they battered their stepbrother who came behind him. When they went inside to finish off their stepmother, they saw her coming out of the bath having had a bath. As they tried to strangulate her, she struggled to survive, and in that process she dropped the towel she draped.

Left to hold her in the nude, the brothers came in direct touch with their stepmother’s frame that had snared their father and brought them misery. Driven by an urge to hurt that in her, which had hurt their interests, they fell like wolves on her body. As their hatred for her readily acquired a sexual thrust, they raped her by turns till she lay exhausted. And having had their unintentional revenge on her body, they snuffed out her vengeful soul in the end. Thus securing the house for their mother and sister besides their father’s garment shop, without a trace of regret or remorse they surrendered to the police.

Finding the brothers unafraid of death on the gallows that they expected, Suresh was tempted to probe their mind. They said, had their father had his way, their mother would have been reduced to beggary and their sister might have turned into a street walker. After all, how could they have averted that from happening for they were far too young and unskilled to support them? Now with the house for a roof and the shop for succor, they would be able to get on with their lives without any hassles. Thus, having averted a disaster to their mother and sister, they felt they had fulfilled their filial duty after all. Why wouldn't they walk up to the gallows with the satisfaction of being saviors?

Their poignant story that pictured the vicissitudes of life affected Suresh for days on end.

Duggar, the dour banker, who happened to be his cellmate, was the odd man out in the gallery of rouges. Lodged at Tihar for defrauding the bank at which he worked, he was ill at ease amidst the common crowd in the sprawling prison. The Tiharians, for their part, snubbed him roundly for his snobbery and nicknamed him the Rough White-collar, alluding to his character and his crime in the same vein. In that life of unease, the arrival of Suresh was a Godsend for him as it afforded him the company from one of his own class. Besides, his own grey hair and the youth’s abominable crime provided the right mix for him to condescend to descend.

Duggar lost no time in telling Suresh in jest the story of how Kubera of heaven turned into Mammon of earth. 

In the beginning, ensconced in swarga, the Hindu heaven, gods used to govern man's destiny on earth. Taken by the rumors about the comforts of swarga, the Hindus of Aryavarta began to aspire to reach there after death. What with the word of mouth playing mischief, the urge for swarga surged amongst the people from our neighboring lands as well. Sensing that the collective human impulse could inspire an exodus to their fiefdom ending their domination, the gods went into a huddle to help avert that from happening. Well, the emerged consensus was to accord some sops for man to divert his mind from the godly abode.

So they deputed Kubera, the Marshal of Monies, to rein in the situation starting with Bharat, where the Brahmins made a business of issuing visas to swarga. Demigod he may be but Kubera knew the power of his portfolio only too well.  Seeking to wean the fickle minded folks away from the Brahmanic influence, he laid the money trap with a view to stop the Hindus in their tracks. It was only time before all saw the essence of swarga in the riches of Aryavarta and that made them chase wealth on earth in right earnest. But, the gods, not wanting to take chances with human frivolity, ordained Kubera to rein them forever from the Indraprastha.

Thus, having come to stay for good on the globe, Kubera began to fine-tune the power of wealth to make the earth rival the heaven itself. And the Hindus who wanted the best of both worlds began to divide their loyalties between him they adored and the gods they feared. The by-then bloated ego of the demigod wouldn’t suffer the divided loyalty, and so he looked elsewhere for the potential loyalists.

So, he shifted his base to the Occident, and at length, he inculcated the spirit of capitalism in the Western souls. And that did the trick for all time to come as they went about cultivating materialism in the fertile minds of the white man. In due course, under his benign influence, the West became wealthy and prosperous to overshadow the swarga itself.  When the opulence of the Occident caught their eyes, the gods themselves thought it fit to desert their abode and descend on the West.

It’s time one realized that as gods too turned materialistic, the worship of wealth was the worship of the gods. And it would remain so forever. The humiliations on the road to wealth were but the hurdles man had to cross to reach the godhood. But, the poor Hindus still feared the non-existing gods while being half-hearted at the materialism that the gods themselves endorsed.

As Suresh recalled the saga of his parents, he felt sad as well as puzzled about the power of wealth over the mind of man. But, as Duggar felt scandalized at finding Suresh mix with the common criminals, he averred that it was demeaning to say the least. When Suresh said he was looking for an alternate idea of life, the banker chastised him that in that process he could lose the reality of the world. Besides, with an all knowing air, the banker was wont to aver that mistaking ripples for the waves would only lead to the lowering of the standards. Yet, to appreciate the ways of the world, Suresh went about acquainting himself with the lows and highs of crime.

There was the young Salim the supari, the hired killer from Bombay, who was lodged a block away. He was under trial for six years then for his alleged hand in a hired killing. Being a school dropout from Dharavi, he started leading a wayward life as he came of age. When his father began to curtail his freedom, he left the slum and shifted to the pavements of the metropolis. In the beginning, pimping came in handy to him to make both ends meet, but soon enough, he had his first peep into the underworld. Never the less, he wanted to stick to crime for a living. Having realized that there was an aura attached to the hired killers in the dark alleys, he opted to become one himself. Though he went scot-free after bumping several heads in Bombay, the assignment that brought him to Delhi led him to the Tihar.

Finding Salim nonchalant, Suresh tried to probe his mind to understand how one could turn a professional killer in the first place. While Salim cursed his ill luck for landing at the Tihar, he had no thought for those whom he had bumped off. It was as though they were no more for him than targets to be hit to the jackpot. What was so unfair in snuffing out someone’s life, as life itself had no sense of fairness about it? Those whom he had killed had died as they were destined to die. Why, had he missed his mark, wouldn’t have a speeding truck mowed them down in time?

And what was all the fuss about the fate of the deceased’s kith and kin? How can one be sure that they wouldn’t have welcomed the development? If a drunkard was bumped off, wouldn’t that have stopped his draining the family money any-more? Ha, what if an impotent was the assignment? Wouldn’t that have helped his wife’s sex life with her paramour sans qualms? What would even a well married woman have got to lose if the supari widowed her? If young, some man would be too eager to enter into her life and were she old enough, she wouldn’t be missing her man anyway.

If the assignment was to bump off a woman, wouldn’t the widower be free to have a younger mate? The death of a parent should not make much of a difference to the children either, as anyway; they had to fend for themselves sooner than later. And that being the reality of the relationships, what was the hitch if some lost their lives at his hands? Besides, had it not been said that the dead have no problems? What mattered was to lead a carefree life as long as it took to live. But, the goddamn Tihar had robbed the charms of life from him.

‘Oh, isn’t crassness a part of life?’ thought Suresh. ‘Though lacking in morality, it seems, Salim’s crimes had a logic attached to them! Maybe, that is what crime is all about. Looks like it has a rationale of its own to evolve the dynamics of man’s undoing. But is it so with the so-called honor-killings of the unfortunate females whom the Cupid tends into the arms of lesser males across the caste barriers? What an irony is that men invest their honor in their women all the while treating them as vassals! What idiocy the honor-killing is - would it ever restore to the family the lost honor? Why, with the infamy of murder tagged to it, it only ensures a double jeopardy for the family, won't it?’ 

A sense of ridicule seemed to haunt Wadhwa in spite of his tough image at the Tihar. The innate doubt that he could be the object of ridicule as a cuckold always haunted him. What did he achieve by eliminating his wife’s paramour