Voice of a Gunshot

                                                           Voice of a Gunshot
5  minutes to 6.

    At 60, I find myself at a good health, when compared to any other INDIAN. Thanks to early morning jogging and the cooking of JYO, my wife. It has been a while since I retired from my service. I have a daughter, who is now in USA, happily married. Myself, Srikanth and my wife, Jyothsna live in Chennai, INDIA. Jyo is a very “strict officer” when it comes to health. She is my sweetheart, still. I never did anything to see tears on her cheeks. And I will never. That’s what I thought.

    I am used to my early morning jogging. Kinda addicted to it. I felt miserable whenever I skipped my jogging. When it comes to winter, my wife is afraid that I might catch a cold, if I go out early in the morning. And now winter has started.

    You know what happened yesterday?
    “Ok. You can jog, but you should accept a few conditions?”-Jyo.
    “Shoot them out”-me.
    “You should not go out before 6’o clock. And you should not go out without your shawl”-Jyo.
    “Sure. Accepted”-me.
    So now I am waiting for the clock to chime.
    Ah… it did. Now I am free.
    “Hey Jyo, see you soon hun.”
    “Not more than 15 minutes dear.”
    “Huh… OK.”
    I Slipped out of the house. Of course, with my shawl wound around my head and my ears. It was cool outside. Cool, not cold. It was unusually cloudy. I should return home before it starts raining. My jogging route has always been the same. I have been doing it from the age of 35. The route has 6 streets. Starting from my house, I jog up to the end, where there is a right turn. This is a good looking, broader road, longest of all the roads I jog. At the end of this road, I again take a right turn. This is not a sharp turn, slightly tilted to left. This runs for a short distance. Then one more right turn. This one tilted toward the right. At the end there is a left turn, where one can go around and come to the same place as that of the starting point (a round turn). I jog through this so that I can go some extra distance. Then one more left turn, which brings me to my home. In total I jog 1.8 km (i.e. nearly 1.2miles).

    Today was nothing special, except the unusual cloudiness. I started my jog. I could see very few people in the street. I took the right turn to enter the longest road on my routine. Now I was able to see few people moving here and there. Most of them were women, beautifying the entrances of their home. I always loved pleasant climate. Today was one such pleasant day. I felt everything eased out of me, until I heard that muffled sound.

    There was this muffled sound which seemed very much like a gun shot. After all these years of watching movies, one can easily ascertain the sound that broke the silence of the pleasantness. It’s a gun shot. The shooter must have used a silencer. But still the sound was very much clear. It’s a gunshot. Most of the women disappeared into the houses. A few men too. 3 or 4 men, who were brave enough started to chase the santro, that was gathering speed.

    Someone cried, “my god its magistrate. Shit. He is bleeding.”
As the santro disappeared out of sight, quite a crowd gathered. An auto rickshaw was called. The magistrate was taken to the hospital. The young man, who sat nearby me, in the auto, took his kerchief and tried to stop the bleeding."aargg..."  The bullet was shot right into the left shoulder, very much near to the heart. I was not sure, whether it hit the heart or not. I have heard that, if a bullet strikes right at the heart, the person who was shot will find himself dead the very next second. But still I can feel the pulse.

    I knew that it will take at least 10 minutes to reach the nearby hospital. Now, when the hospital was just 2 minutes away, I heard a deep growl. The last sound. Nothing can be done from here on. 

    We still had to go to hospital. Doctor checked the pulse and showed the sign of disappointment in his face. Nothing can be done. No one has seen who the assassin was. Only known clue is the car number. He can be anyone. Might be someone provided with wrong judgment. Everyone seemed disappointed. After all the investigations and post mortem, the body was taken back to home.

    There I saw my Jyo, my sweet Jyo, crying over my dead body.