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A story by the title the Whistle. I am not the author, the author is anonymous.
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The Whistle
The loud high sound of a whistle pierced straight through the heart-shaking terror of a dark night, reverberating across the village and rising to a shrill crescendo. For a quarter of a second, the scurrying insects stopped their whispers in mute resignation and a few blocks away, a lazy stray dog howled as if trying to register protest over the unruly behavior of the whistlers for disturbing its sweet slumber.
The whistle showed the vigilance of the patrollers, soothing the nerves of the villagers frantic with anxiety as well as satisfying the demands of the army. Out of the village, up the road, to the left, the army was posted, beside which a makeshift check post kept stern checks on peoples’ movement. It was the army who had ordered the villagers to carry out the night watch.
In all, the patrollers were four that night. By way of contrast, their numbers varied from time to time.
There had not been any night watch before the army’s occupation. Unified and disciplined, armed with destructive power never before seen in the history of the village, it was the army who ordered the villagers to patrol the village from dusk till dawn and to watch and report any sign of suspicious activity. The villagers were however warranted not to carry any arms on them. As a result, clubs and poor quality torches were the only arms they could carry.
Those were hard days, full of frantic and depressing experiences; the villagers had no other alternative but to obey the orders of the army. And in silent subjugation they did obey.
Contrary to sensible logic, which self-defense demanded, all the villagers across the countryside would patrol their respective villages but without having been equipped with weapons of any sort.
In spite of the visible evidences of the sweeping Army’s successes over the Taliban, the latter were still seen as a threat. A good number of the Taliban were murdered or caught alive, but a good many were still at large and in hiding since the Taliban knew that the patrollers were on the guard against their likely attack. Furthermore, the Taliban were also aware that the patrollers had been disarmed, and they were not hesitant to attack them. In all frankness, the patrollers were mere sitting ducks! Many such incidents had occurred in the not very distant past when some of the patrollers were slain or murdered in cold blood. Yet ironically, the army was indifferent towards allowing the patrollers to have arms against the likely attack of the trounced and desperate enemy.
The patrollers were quite despondent and sulky over this sadistic carelessness and inhuman treatment by their ‘lords’—men in uniforms—but they were caught between the devil and the deep blue sea. And it was incredibly pathetic that nobody was able to do anything about it. In silence and shame, they bore the hideous persecution—for sins unknown.
Before the Army defeated the Taliban, the Taliban strutted freely across the human population toying with the helpless creatures of the area. They would throng the villages, cull their preys, and either hold them for ransom or slaughter them straight away. Strangely, all this stonyhearted fanaticism, ignominy, persecution, and liquidation were carried out for no other reason but religion. This left the poor, poor villagers overwhelmed with awe and terror. Devastated and shattered, outcast and stranded.
No writ of the government existed. No law of the land and no humanity breathed. Only jungle law reigned everywhere. Even the mercy of God had abandoned them. The pitiable creatures of the village would cringe back behind the bolted doors of their houses and wait for the imminent but deadly knock at their doors. They would wait as to when the merciless monsters would come and tear the wretched preys from their beds. It was time of soul searing awe and horror. They were soulless bodies of flesh and bones. Their hearts throbbed from terror and premonitions. They were a corps of incertitude, shadows of woeful silence and silhouettes of inscribed patterns in real sense of the word.
The cunning and shrewd enemy often used to make intrusions at night thus leaving the poor villagers to nurse their empty bellies, the enemy would gorge the edibles and seize whatever they would lay their hands on, whether or not the owner assented. The Taliban were the sole authority. All those people who showed even the slightest inkling of disobedience were either put to severe punishment or sent into the swallowing cave of death.
More wrenching days lay ahead! And now it was the army’s turn.
The Taliban were driven to despair. The Army put them to flight but not until a huge ‘collateral’ damage that carried the entire region to a common destruction. The economic life of the place was shattered beyond belief. It was quite a memorable conquest on the Army’s part. Like wave upon wave, the Army has won a series of conquests. But there was still one more to come. Yes, the Army still had an ace up their sleeve, and that was to tame the uncouth savages: the villagers.
The villagers, whose constitution was made up of simple particulars, had to be indoctrinated and injected with the verve and zeal of patriotism, for which end they considered punishment inevitable – to punish the people once smitten by the previous serpents! The Taliban-driven people had to succumb to the domesticating ‘lawful coercion’ and other punitive measures. Measures that exempted none, even the victims of the Taliban. It, they considered, was against the rule of justice. For justice should be equally distributed among the riot. And they strictly complied with this universally approved principle. The night patrol was one of the measures they inflicted on the villagers, which the latter took as quiet as lambs. Everywhere, the streets of the village began ringing with the shrill sounds of whistles.
The four patrollers had muffled up their faces and were trudging the whole night along the village alleys. In truth, they were not afraid of the Taliban. Not anymore. It was a bygone story now. They were sure that Taliban had perished away. They were only afraid of the Army. The Army would often appear right out of the blue and inspect their way of night watch. If found lingering and shirking, they would be obliged to face up to punishment, and the chastisement would continue till their purity of obedience became evident. They would compulsorily blink their drowse away and continue watching with appreciable alacrity. Yet the Army would be quick to pick holes in their sole obedience.
While walking across the streets, a patroller, finding it hard to remain silent, indulged in a conversation with a colleague who was slightly lagging behind, breathing noisily, puffing and blowing.
“Hey, buddy! What’s it? Feeling sleepy? The exertion must be entirely exhausting for you.”
“On the contrary,” the colleague said, yawning sleepily, “I’m all alert. Oh, you needn’t worry about me. I’m quite used to night watching. Besides, it’s not my first watch, anyway. You pretty much know that. Don’t you?”
And he inadvertently yawned again.
“Oh! Really! Quite alert, I must say! I can observe that from your yawning,” replied the first patroller, giggling!
“Don’t play on words. It’s my palpitation that slows me down. I am not in a good trim. You know that, don’t you? You know I’m suffering from a heart problem,” the first patroller defended himself. “The doctor’s advice is to immediately undergo operation or face the consequences.”
“Yea, I know. It’s so very ruthless of them to have you included on the list of night watchers, but what can we do?” They won’t just listen to anybody. Concerning the role of our leaders, I preserve, I have nothing but contempt, and the press is silent or content with using some fig leaves to hide its nakedness.”
“I wouldn’t be very naïve to say the Army reserves the right to ask us this small favor for all the good they have done us. They too suffered heavily at the hands of those brutes, you know,” the third patroller said.
“Yea, they are our protecting angels,” assented the fourth patroller, who, up until now, was silently stalking. “I don’t know what we would do if it wasn’t for the Army. Indeed, they are our guardian angels,”
“Yes, indeed. I wholeheartedly agree with you,” said the first patroller, “but there’s one thing that I always find hard to come in grips with.”
“And what’s that you find hard to understand?” remarked the patroller, smiling as if trying to challenge his intelligence.
“The army very well knows that we people suffered tremendously at the hands of the Taliban. Also they know that we are a true patriots and peace-loving folk, yet the way the army treats us sometimes makes me think that we are the perpetrators and not the victims,” whispered the first patroller confidentially.
“Yea, you’ve a valid point there. The patrollers of the upper Chum were also doing the night watch with flair, but despite their diligence, people say they were punished because someone had prejudiced the Army against them. The one thing that drives me nuts is that the army always takes for granted whatever is said to them. They find things against us, they love things against us, and to always go against us is their favorite job. It’s is in their temperament.”
“I’ve heard one patroller was killed during the watch few days back,” said the second patroller.
All the patrollers shuddered inwardly at this disclosure in the prevailing awesome and impermeable darkness of the night. The patroller continued. “Nobody knows who killed him, but it’s rumored that the Taliban might have stalked in furtively and so shot him dead.”
They shuddered again at this revelation and cowered near one another in sheer dread.
One of them whispered, “Yes – yes, who killed the patroller? No one knows for sure.”
“Who kills whom, this always remains a mystery,” the last patroller, giving vent to his concern, said. “And see, we aren’t even allowed to carry weapons. What do you make of this? Only these clubs won’t do us any good in the face of danger, can they? What a shame!”
While talking, they had left behind the narrow cobbled streets of the village. They reached a point where weeds and scrub trees were growing everywhere and there lay a far, stretched-out vast field the shoulders and laps of which were brimful of desolate darkness. The branches were mysteriously swaying against the wind while the fields were spewing out nightly horrors. They had been continually whistling, even here in the open. The whistle was more strident and piercing. They blew the whistle with more force. The logical outcome of an involuntary force of nervousness!
The patroller with a troubled-heart suggested, “Let’s go back. It’s very dangerous and lonely in here, and I’m afraid someone may fire and kill us. I feel so scared. Oh, my poor, poor heart!”
Already scared, they agreed. They quickly came back and cringed inside a parlor that belonged to one of the patrollers. They strictly forbade one another from mentioning the subject to anyone. They did not sleep at all. They used to come out of the parlor intermittently, watch around, blow the whistle forcefully to assure the people and the Army of their vigilance, and go into the parlor again.
Gradually, the night set out and they dispersed to their houses.
The next day at noon came orders from the Army summoning up the patrollers of the previous night. The patrollers proceeded at once trembling inwardly for what was coming. They knew well in advance how the Army maul and thrash people. They were not new; they were habitual. All the patrollers went to the post of the Army with heavy hearts and minds full of apprehension and premonition. There, an officer whose rank the simple patrollers were unable to discern was standing in great artificial fury. It was clear from the insignia that he was officer of a high rank.
“Are you the patrollers?” asked the officer in a mocking tone.
“Yes, sir!” The wretched patrollers, pale with fright, babbled.
The officer meaningfully shook his head and ushered them into a corner.
The four of them, heretofore self-respecting people, rushed to the pointed corner and involuntarily stood side by side, like prisoners, in a row. They were used to making perfect rows in mosques. They had been trained there. However, scared and confused, one of the patrollers, who was slightly sticking out, quickly realigned himself when nudged by a colleague standing immediately next to him.
The officer, supercilious and imperious, came towards the villagers and said, “Raise your hands above your heads – you savages! You can’t be humanized easily and every endeavor to humanize you leads to still more discomfort and distaste. You are barbarians, contemptuous little creatures! You don’t understand the language of civility and mildness unless you get a good thrashing. You deserve being punished and beaten all the time – don’t you?”
Bewildered, the patrollers nodded as though agreed with him.
“Don’t just stay there dumb and deaf. Say, ‘Yes, s-i-r.’” the officer’s voice rose to such a high pitch that it cracked on the last word “sir.”
“Yes, sir!” said the patrollers.
The officer continued with immense arrogance and contempt hinting at one of them, “You didn’t say, ‘yes, sir.’ Why?”
“Oh, no, sir, I did say, ‘yes, sir,’” the prisoner humbly defended himself.
“So you said it. Hmm, so you said it.” The officer began repeating the words as if finding himself at a loss of words and then said, “That’s complete and utter nonsense! Bull****! Do you think I am deaf and dumb? Dirty creature! I say you didn’t say it.” The officer fixed him penetratingly over the rims of his sunglasses, while the squalid prisoner, unable to meet his gaze, cast his eyes downwards.
“Sir, I heard him say, ’Yes Sir,’ said one of his colleagues, in an endeavor to rescue his mate.
“Stand still and keep your brazenly filthy mouth shut unless you want me to pluck your tongue by the roots,” burst the officer and, resorting to the former man, his mental torture, continued.
“Yes, sir,” said the patroller but not without a catch in his throat.
“I feel you hate me at heart, don’t you?”
“Oh, no, sir! By God, never, and why would I hate you? You haven’t done us any harm,” said the prisoner meekly. “Rather, we all look upon the Army with great respect. We all feel it in our bones that you are our guardian angels, and exactly this was what we were discussing last night.”
“Ah, “g-u-a-r-d-i-a-n a-n-g-e-l-s,” said the officer in a voice loaded with gnawing sarcasm. “And this is how you reciprocate our favors, huh? This is how you repay the kindness we show to you, by not obeying orders?”
The officer overbearingly walked in front of their row and said, “But I hate you because you are worthless savages. We’ve to humanize you – but you aren’t going to be humanized. Now you there, rascal, step up. You – yes, you!”
All of them wondered simultaneously, “Me, sir, me, me?”
The furious and haughty reprimand of the officer was, “Not you, idiot. You over there,” pointing his whistle towards the villager with the troubled-heart.
He came out of the row with myriads of imploring questions in his eyes. The officer harshly commanded him to bend down.
He bent down.
“Now up straight!”
And he was up and straight.
“Again! Again! Again!”
The officer stared into the eyes of the prisoner ferociously. He seemed as if he were not appeased. Still, he ordered him to fall back into the row again.
The officer took a whistle out of his trouser pocket and asked them all to bend up and downs with each individual blow of the whistle. Compelled to do otherwise, they all half-heartedly consented. The whistle began to blow. The whistle blew, they bent down all together, and with the whistle they got erected again. They adroitly complied with the ringing of the whistle.
The officer went off to the front veranda where there was a small cubicle, which served as an office while still blowing the whistle all the time. After a short while, ranting and raving, the officer presently reappeared, stopped blowing the whistle and said disdainfully, “I can kill you all, right now and right here. I can do whatever I want with you! No one can stop me. Can anyone?”
Already pale with fright over their dereliction of the previous night, all the prisoners stammered, “No, Sir, no one can. You can do whatever you want with us!”
“I can shoot you all down here,” he said, resting his right palm on his pistol in a threatening way, “for ignoring our orders. Do you think we wouldn’t know what you were up to last night? You are just a bunch of worthless scoundrels. Country bumpkins, I say.”
The prisoners knew that they got frightened last night, and to that end, they sought a short refuge inside the parlor. They were racking their brains trying hard to think and unravel who could have tipped the officer about their trifling negligence but in vain. They were not able to figure out where their error had lain. They were quite flummoxed. Was he one of them? No, never! It just can’t be true. They were all good friends of many years’ standing and besides they were all receiving the punishment, equally and without distinction. They were quite perplexed and puzzled. They couldn’t think of anyone.
Once again, the agony was acute. The villagers had no answers. No hopeful answers. The officer, like a wicked sorcerer who is helped by evil spirits, was well informed. The officer continued, “We always know what you are doing. You thought, I presume, we’d be in the dark? You dimwits! Now, be quick, you filthy dopes! Just do it again. And this time, up and down in rhythm with the whistle.” And the whistle rang up again.
Then the officer went again to his make-shift cubicle office, got engaged in rummaging some files out of the jumble of scrap, but he continued blowing the whistle indefinitely, perfunctorily and without looking at them. But they were all perfect and all deft at the exercise.
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The Whistle
The loud high sound of a whistle pierced straight through the heart-shaking terror of a dark night, reverberating across the village and rising to a shrill crescendo. For a quarter of a second, the scurrying insects stopped their whispers in mute resignation and a few blocks away, a lazy stray dog howled as if trying to register protest over the unruly behavior of the whistlers for disturbing its sweet slumber.
The whistle showed the vigilance of the patrollers, soothing the nerves of the villagers frantic with anxiety as well as satisfying the demands of the army. Out of the village, up the road, to the left, the army was posted, beside which a makeshift check post kept stern checks on peoples’ movement. It was the army who had ordered the villagers to carry out the night watch.
In all, the patrollers were four that night. By way of contrast, their numbers varied from time to time.
There had not been any night watch before the army’s occupation. Unified and disciplined, armed with destructive power never before seen in the history of the village, it was the army who ordered the villagers to patrol the village from dusk till dawn and to watch and report any sign of suspicious activity. The villagers were however warranted not to carry any arms on them. As a result, clubs and poor quality torches were the only arms they could carry.
Those were hard days, full of frantic and depressing experiences; the villagers had no other alternative but to obey the orders of the army. And in silent subjugation they did obey.
Contrary to sensible logic, which self-defense demanded, all the villagers across the countryside would patrol their respective villages but without having been equipped with weapons of any sort.
In spite of the visible evidences of the sweeping Army’s successes over the Taliban, the latter were still seen as a threat. A good number of the Taliban were murdered or caught alive, but a good many were still at large and in hiding since the Taliban knew that the patrollers were on the guard against their likely attack. Furthermore, the Taliban were also aware that the patrollers had been disarmed, and they were not hesitant to attack them. In all frankness, the patrollers were mere sitting ducks! Many such incidents had occurred in the not very distant past when some of the patrollers were slain or murdered in cold blood. Yet ironically, the army was indifferent towards allowing the patrollers to have arms against the likely attack of the trounced and desperate enemy.
The patrollers were quite despondent and sulky over this sadistic carelessness and inhuman treatment by their ‘lords’—men in uniforms—but they were caught between the devil and the deep blue sea. And it was incredibly pathetic that nobody was able to do anything about it. In silence and shame, they bore the hideous persecution—for sins unknown.
Before the Army defeated the Taliban, the Taliban strutted freely across the human population toying with the helpless creatures of the area. They would throng the villages, cull their preys, and either hold them for ransom or slaughter them straight away. Strangely, all this stonyhearted fanaticism, ignominy, persecution, and liquidation were carried out for no other reason but religion. This left the poor, poor villagers overwhelmed with awe and terror. Devastated and shattered, outcast and stranded.
No writ of the government existed. No law of the land and no humanity breathed. Only jungle law reigned everywhere. Even the mercy of God had abandoned them. The pitiable creatures of the village would cringe back behind the bolted doors of their houses and wait for the imminent but deadly knock at their doors. They would wait as to when the merciless monsters would come and tear the wretched preys from their beds. It was time of soul searing awe and horror. They were soulless bodies of flesh and bones. Their hearts throbbed from terror and premonitions. They were a corps of incertitude, shadows of woeful silence and silhouettes of inscribed patterns in real sense of the word.
The cunning and shrewd enemy often used to make intrusions at night thus leaving the poor villagers to nurse their empty bellies, the enemy would gorge the edibles and seize whatever they would lay their hands on, whether or not the owner assented. The Taliban were the sole authority. All those people who showed even the slightest inkling of disobedience were either put to severe punishment or sent into the swallowing cave of death.
More wrenching days lay ahead! And now it was the army’s turn.
The Taliban were driven to despair. The Army put them to flight but not until a huge ‘collateral’ damage that carried the entire region to a common destruction. The economic life of the place was shattered beyond belief. It was quite a memorable conquest on the Army’s part. Like wave upon wave, the Army has won a series of conquests. But there was still one more to come. Yes, the Army still had an ace up their sleeve, and that was to tame the uncouth savages: the villagers.
The villagers, whose constitution was made up of simple particulars, had to be indoctrinated and injected with the verve and zeal of patriotism, for which end they considered punishment inevitable – to punish the people once smitten by the previous serpents! The Taliban-driven people had to succumb to the domesticating ‘lawful coercion’ and other punitive measures. Measures that exempted none, even the victims of the Taliban. It, they considered, was against the rule of justice. For justice should be equally distributed among the riot. And they strictly complied with this universally approved principle. The night patrol was one of the measures they inflicted on the villagers, which the latter took as quiet as lambs. Everywhere, the streets of the village began ringing with the shrill sounds of whistles.
The four patrollers had muffled up their faces and were trudging the whole night along the village alleys. In truth, they were not afraid of the Taliban. Not anymore. It was a bygone story now. They were sure that Taliban had perished away. They were only afraid of the Army. The Army would often appear right out of the blue and inspect their way of night watch. If found lingering and shirking, they would be obliged to face up to punishment, and the chastisement would continue till their purity of obedience became evident. They would compulsorily blink their drowse away and continue watching with appreciable alacrity. Yet the Army would be quick to pick holes in their sole obedience.
While walking across the streets, a patroller, finding it hard to remain silent, indulged in a conversation with a colleague who was slightly lagging behind, breathing noisily, puffing and blowing.
“Hey, buddy! What’s it? Feeling sleepy? The exertion must be entirely exhausting for you.”
“On the contrary,” the colleague said, yawning sleepily, “I’m all alert. Oh, you needn’t worry about me. I’m quite used to night watching. Besides, it’s not my first watch, anyway. You pretty much know that. Don’t you?”
And he inadvertently yawned again.
“Oh! Really! Quite alert, I must say! I can observe that from your yawning,” replied the first patroller, giggling!
“Don’t play on words. It’s my palpitation that slows me down. I am not in a good trim. You know that, don’t you? You know I’m suffering from a heart problem,” the first patroller defended himself. “The doctor’s advice is to immediately undergo operation or face the consequences.”
“Yea, I know. It’s so very ruthless of them to have you included on the list of night watchers, but what can we do?” They won’t just listen to anybody. Concerning the role of our leaders, I preserve, I have nothing but contempt, and the press is silent or content with using some fig leaves to hide its nakedness.”
“I wouldn’t be very naïve to say the Army reserves the right to ask us this small favor for all the good they have done us. They too suffered heavily at the hands of those brutes, you know,” the third patroller said.
“Yea, they are our protecting angels,” assented the fourth patroller, who, up until now, was silently stalking. “I don’t know what we would do if it wasn’t for the Army. Indeed, they are our guardian angels,”
“Yes, indeed. I wholeheartedly agree with you,” said the first patroller, “but there’s one thing that I always find hard to come in grips with.”
“And what’s that you find hard to understand?” remarked the patroller, smiling as if trying to challenge his intelligence.
“The army very well knows that we people suffered tremendously at the hands of the Taliban. Also they know that we are a true patriots and peace-loving folk, yet the way the army treats us sometimes makes me think that we are the perpetrators and not the victims,” whispered the first patroller confidentially.
“Yea, you’ve a valid point there. The patrollers of the upper Chum were also doing the night watch with flair, but despite their diligence, people say they were punished because someone had prejudiced the Army against them. The one thing that drives me nuts is that the army always takes for granted whatever is said to them. They find things against us, they love things against us, and to always go against us is their favorite job. It’s is in their temperament.”
“I’ve heard one patroller was killed during the watch few days back,” said the second patroller.
All the patrollers shuddered inwardly at this disclosure in the prevailing awesome and impermeable darkness of the night. The patroller continued. “Nobody knows who killed him, but it’s rumored that the Taliban might have stalked in furtively and so shot him dead.”
They shuddered again at this revelation and cowered near one another in sheer dread.
One of them whispered, “Yes – yes, who killed the patroller? No one knows for sure.”
“Who kills whom, this always remains a mystery,” the last patroller, giving vent to his concern, said. “And see, we aren’t even allowed to carry weapons. What do you make of this? Only these clubs won’t do us any good in the face of danger, can they? What a shame!”
While talking, they had left behind the narrow cobbled streets of the village. They reached a point where weeds and scrub trees were growing everywhere and there lay a far, stretched-out vast field the shoulders and laps of which were brimful of desolate darkness. The branches were mysteriously swaying against the wind while the fields were spewing out nightly horrors. They had been continually whistling, even here in the open. The whistle was more strident and piercing. They blew the whistle with more force. The logical outcome of an involuntary force of nervousness!
The patroller with a troubled-heart suggested, “Let’s go back. It’s very dangerous and lonely in here, and I’m afraid someone may fire and kill us. I feel so scared. Oh, my poor, poor heart!”
Already scared, they agreed. They quickly came back and cringed inside a parlor that belonged to one of the patrollers. They strictly forbade one another from mentioning the subject to anyone. They did not sleep at all. They used to come out of the parlor intermittently, watch around, blow the whistle forcefully to assure the people and the Army of their vigilance, and go into the parlor again.
Gradually, the night set out and they dispersed to their houses.
The next day at noon came orders from the Army summoning up the patrollers of the previous night. The patrollers proceeded at once trembling inwardly for what was coming. They knew well in advance how the Army maul and thrash people. They were not new; they were habitual. All the patrollers went to the post of the Army with heavy hearts and minds full of apprehension and premonition. There, an officer whose rank the simple patrollers were unable to discern was standing in great artificial fury. It was clear from the insignia that he was officer of a high rank.
“Are you the patrollers?” asked the officer in a mocking tone.
“Yes, sir!” The wretched patrollers, pale with fright, babbled.
The officer meaningfully shook his head and ushered them into a corner.
The four of them, heretofore self-respecting people, rushed to the pointed corner and involuntarily stood side by side, like prisoners, in a row. They were used to making perfect rows in mosques. They had been trained there. However, scared and confused, one of the patrollers, who was slightly sticking out, quickly realigned himself when nudged by a colleague standing immediately next to him.
The officer, supercilious and imperious, came towards the villagers and said, “Raise your hands above your heads – you savages! You can’t be humanized easily and every endeavor to humanize you leads to still more discomfort and distaste. You are barbarians, contemptuous little creatures! You don’t understand the language of civility and mildness unless you get a good thrashing. You deserve being punished and beaten all the time – don’t you?”
Bewildered, the patrollers nodded as though agreed with him.
“Don’t just stay there dumb and deaf. Say, ‘Yes, s-i-r.’” the officer’s voice rose to such a high pitch that it cracked on the last word “sir.”
“Yes, sir!” said the patrollers.
The officer continued with immense arrogance and contempt hinting at one of them, “You didn’t say, ‘yes, sir.’ Why?”
“Oh, no, sir, I did say, ‘yes, sir,’” the prisoner humbly defended himself.
“So you said it. Hmm, so you said it.” The officer began repeating the words as if finding himself at a loss of words and then said, “That’s complete and utter nonsense! Bull****! Do you think I am deaf and dumb? Dirty creature! I say you didn’t say it.” The officer fixed him penetratingly over the rims of his sunglasses, while the squalid prisoner, unable to meet his gaze, cast his eyes downwards.
“Sir, I heard him say, ’Yes Sir,’ said one of his colleagues, in an endeavor to rescue his mate.
“Stand still and keep your brazenly filthy mouth shut unless you want me to pluck your tongue by the roots,” burst the officer and, resorting to the former man, his mental torture, continued.
“Yes, sir,” said the patroller but not without a catch in his throat.
“I feel you hate me at heart, don’t you?”
“Oh, no, sir! By God, never, and why would I hate you? You haven’t done us any harm,” said the prisoner meekly. “Rather, we all look upon the Army with great respect. We all feel it in our bones that you are our guardian angels, and exactly this was what we were discussing last night.”
“Ah, “g-u-a-r-d-i-a-n a-n-g-e-l-s,” said the officer in a voice loaded with gnawing sarcasm. “And this is how you reciprocate our favors, huh? This is how you repay the kindness we show to you, by not obeying orders?”
The officer overbearingly walked in front of their row and said, “But I hate you because you are worthless savages. We’ve to humanize you – but you aren’t going to be humanized. Now you there, rascal, step up. You – yes, you!”
All of them wondered simultaneously, “Me, sir, me, me?”
The furious and haughty reprimand of the officer was, “Not you, idiot. You over there,” pointing his whistle towards the villager with the troubled-heart.
He came out of the row with myriads of imploring questions in his eyes. The officer harshly commanded him to bend down.
He bent down.
“Now up straight!”
And he was up and straight.
“Again! Again! Again!”
The officer stared into the eyes of the prisoner ferociously. He seemed as if he were not appeased. Still, he ordered him to fall back into the row again.
The officer took a whistle out of his trouser pocket and asked them all to bend up and downs with each individual blow of the whistle. Compelled to do otherwise, they all half-heartedly consented. The whistle began to blow. The whistle blew, they bent down all together, and with the whistle they got erected again. They adroitly complied with the ringing of the whistle.
The officer went off to the front veranda where there was a small cubicle, which served as an office while still blowing the whistle all the time. After a short while, ranting and raving, the officer presently reappeared, stopped blowing the whistle and said disdainfully, “I can kill you all, right now and right here. I can do whatever I want with you! No one can stop me. Can anyone?”
Already pale with fright over their dereliction of the previous night, all the prisoners stammered, “No, Sir, no one can. You can do whatever you want with us!”
“I can shoot you all down here,” he said, resting his right palm on his pistol in a threatening way, “for ignoring our orders. Do you think we wouldn’t know what you were up to last night? You are just a bunch of worthless scoundrels. Country bumpkins, I say.”
The prisoners knew that they got frightened last night, and to that end, they sought a short refuge inside the parlor. They were racking their brains trying hard to think and unravel who could have tipped the officer about their trifling negligence but in vain. They were not able to figure out where their error had lain. They were quite flummoxed. Was he one of them? No, never! It just can’t be true. They were all good friends of many years’ standing and besides they were all receiving the punishment, equally and without distinction. They were quite perplexed and puzzled. They couldn’t think of anyone.
Once again, the agony was acute. The villagers had no answers. No hopeful answers. The officer, like a wicked sorcerer who is helped by evil spirits, was well informed. The officer continued, “We always know what you are doing. You thought, I presume, we’d be in the dark? You dimwits! Now, be quick, you filthy dopes! Just do it again. And this time, up and down in rhythm with the whistle.” And the whistle rang up again.
Then the officer went again to his make-shift cubicle office, got engaged in rummaging some files out of the jumble of scrap, but he continued blowing the whistle indefinitely, perfunctorily and without looking at them. But they were all perfect and all deft at the exercise.