What do you call this?

                                          What do you call this?


The under-sized bus skidded to a stop. The doors at the back came crashing open.
Thud. Thud. thud
A melee of boots and the cops rained onto the road. Already a cordon of cops had surrounded the bus, solely to keep the prisoner’s supporters at bay. And obviously, the reporters, too.
Clang, clang
The prisoner came down the stairs, chained to an obscene extent.
A tight close-up of his face follows.
Eyes burning red, face puffy and bruised, slightly bearded, wholly unkempt.
The dangerous part was the expression in his eyes.
Hatred, delusion, megalomania, stark madness. You’d expect any such expression on the face of the one who tortured and murdered five policemen. But not blankness.
Pure, bland, blank eyes. Dead eyes.
This is scary. You almost hear a menacing music in the background, accompanied by a half- heard thunder.
Thump. Clang. Thump. Clang.
The prisoner walked towards the door of the courthouse. Measured, steady steps. Steps of a man who is in absolute control. Eyes straight. Head held high. An almost regal march. Not so much impeded by the chains.
He entered the compound of the courthouse. The whole crowd was silent. Stunned to the core.
None of his supporters had expected to see him alive, let alone saunter almost nonchalantly into the court-room, unbroken and unbowed.
There was a reason for that. They remembered the circumstances of his arrest.

Intercession of fast-paced flash back sequence montages.

    An unassuming headman of an interior tribal village, his lone misfortune is that the bush around his village is a hot bed of separatist insurgency.
    An attack on a police convoy in the general area angers the police high command. The result: A battalion of troops sent to the villages in the area to “demonstrate the ill-effects” of aiding and abetting insurgents.
    Long story short, his whole village is burnt to ashes, the women-folk of the village are raped (the sad point being that the troopers consider any female above five to be “women”) and he, being the headman gets to watch his wife and daughter burnt alive (The legend goes that the commander of the troopers chided him saying” with power comes responsibility to act properly” while his family burned).
    He goes half mad with grief at first, and then goes fully berserk. Single-handedly, he breaks into the police HQ, gets hold of five very senior officers of the high command, and in their very own conference hall, carves out every pound of flesh from their body.( Apparently, he also plucked and eyeballs and the other balls. All this while they were alive. The police department has refused to comment to that effect.)
The police find him sitting in the middle of the hall, drenched in blood. And smiling. Ecstatic.

Back to the present.

The prisoner had nearly reached the court room door. The cordon of around him strained to its limit to keep the newshounds at bay. The whole area was noisy to the extreme.
“Do you think your wife and daughter would be happy about what you’ve done?” A flicker of emotion touched his eyes for an instant. He stopped, bent towards the reporter slightly. She managed not to flinch.
“I don’t know if they’re happy. But I know they sure aren’t sad, Neither am I”, he smiled. Dangerously.
“I understand your pain and suffering but do you think murdering those cops was justified? Wasn’t that a ct of revenge, most violent in form? Aren’t we civilized? Aren’t we supposed to be better than animals? More than that, aren’t we human? Aren’t you?” A mini outburst.
A tight close-up of his face follows.
The prisoner’s face showed a plethora of emotions now.
Anger. Pain. Grief. Add to that another extra dollop of anger.
“Human? You want to talk about humanity? Whom do you call humans? These cops? Newshounds smelling blood and running around in a frenzy? Do you see humanity around you?” he raged.
“A dead carcass being dragged in chains, hyenas baying for dead meat and blood and vultures and crows circling overhead. This is what I see now”. He was well and truly angry now.
“You want to know if I am human. I tell you, I am not. I was, but when I saw my doe and my little fawn feasted upon and roasted in front of me, I died. What you see is dead meat. A carcass, being dragged for cremation.
What would you have me do? Exercise patience? Non-violence? Have you heard a six- year old screaming when she is being raped? When she is on fire, being burnt alive? Not just my women. The womenfolk of my entire village.”
His anger was near its boiling point.
Pan out the camera.
“None of you have the right to talk about humanity. We, as a species, are anything but human”. He made a sweeping gesture with his hand.”None of you……”
And, at that moment, his hand crashed right against the camera, unfortunately a hand-held one. The cameraman stumbled and the camera fell to the ground right at the heroine’s feet.
“Jesus Christ, you dumb shit! That’s twenty five takes you’ve screwed up. You have one scene and you keep fucking that up? Who hired you? Am I the one who has to do everything here? Andy, where the fuck are you?” screamed the director as the female reporter, who was the heroine of the movie, stomped off to her cabin with Andy the assistant director running behind.

The poor, aspiring actor never got another role in a movie.