Spring Man
Fabiyas M. V.
Hashmi puts on her new white sari with black blossoms. A silk sari cannot alter her body, but it multiplies her charms. She has no way to flit with her cronies, wearing the new dress. She feels a kind of narcissistic admiration before her vanity table.
With a sudden shudder, her gaze strays across the mirror. Being a scorching summer, at least one of her bedroom windows is always open. Through the sari-gap, her crescent stomach reflects in the mirror… but just above her shoulder, a pair of strange eyes and a long protruding nose at the window!
Hashmi turns back, shrieking.
Hashmi’s brother, a sinewy young man, darts along the dirt road with a bamboo stick in his hand. His friends, and an old man too, from the neighborhood follow him. Flashlights create chinks in the darkness. Forgetting the rules of the lockdown, they search in wells, thickets, the old deserted house… but it’s a wild goose chase.
Hashmi’s brother comes back, panting. Yeah… I saw… a dark tall… APPARITION!
Soon the police come and disperse the crowd. They don’t believe Hashmi’s brother’s words. An apparition is an illusion, like the moon rabbit.
They threaten to beat the people unless they return to stay at home.
Ten minutes later, Sanu’s mother screeches. The door stands open, and her daughter lies unconscious with her legs across the threshold. She carries Sanu from the floor to the sofa, music and the sound of anklets still dancing from the TV.
What’s going on there? Sanu’s dad, who is trying to cool his body off, squawks from the bathroom.
With tears and fear, Sanu’s mother sprinkles water on her girl’s face. Sanu remains still, but after what seems a thousand seconds she regains her consciousness. She claims she had seen a thin, Stygian shape, leaping from one areca palm to the next in the grove beside their house.
All are on pins and needles, even though nobody has reported this Spring Man’s atrocities.
Gradually the police come to suspect that there is some truth in the story about the Spring Man, spreading through the region like another epidemic. A police officer in khaki uniform warns people on TV:
The Spring Man has supernatural powers. He can run at the speed of a cheetah, and leap easily like a monkey from one tree to another. He is about seven feet high with sooty skin. His visage is unclear, albeit he has two lustrous eyes and a nose like the beak of a black-headed ibis.
A video goes viral, frightening the rustics: the Spring Man caught by a CCTV camera. He walks in the street light, carrying something on his shoulder. A lean tall figure. Half-naked.
There are many coolies from Bengal in Manayur village. Being confined to the labor camp, some sleep most of the time, but many of them are restless. The police, under much pressure, take the tallest of them into custody.
Who’s this? Joshu cries.
This stranger is very tall indeed. As black as soot. Long-legged like a giraffe. Only his fiery eyes and enormous nose are visible. He stands near the old well. Just a quick leap, and he lands on the top of the house!
Spring Man… SPRING MAN!
As Joshu cries aloud, Spring Man leaps and lands on a branch of the nearest sapodilla. In seconds he disappears into the dark. Joshu is like a statue, frozen in fright.
But there is one dauntless, learned man, who has written two detective novels, in the village. He never hesitates to tell people that all their traditional rituals are nonsensical. He even corrects their concept of god. According to him, God is the one and only invisible, omnipotent, and creative force permeating the whole universe. His fellow men loathe his views.
Unfortunately, his name, Velanji, is little known in the literary world.
Velanji cogitates about the Spring Man. What the hell does he gain, frightening people? How could he escape so easily? Velanji wishes the Spring Man would come to his house.
Pacing up and down in his study, Velanji rules out the presence of a ghost. Then who is the mysterious creature? A superman from an unknown planet? No, never. Velanji is a rationalist to the core. He conjectures that it may be a rowdy boy, or more specifically a young man, bored of the lockdown, who creates the trouble. A drug addict or a maniac.
Or it may be someone playing Blue Whale, an internet game involving a series of tasks that end in suicide. Velanji slumps down in his cane chair under the weight of speculations. Yet his thought-producing machine works on…
And what about the supernatural athleticism? Velanji reads as well as writes, he has heard about the Marvelous Spring Jackboot, a rare modern product, wearing which, one can leap too high and run so fast. Not to be made in these surroundings, but a person might have bought a pair online from some foreign country. Far more plausible than some night monster!
Neglecting his wife’s warnings, Velanji sets out with an iron bar in his right hand and a jack knife in the pocket of his pants. He searches high and low for the Spring Man, but in vain.
Leaves are still outside. Even crickets are silent. Summer rain may come soon. Then a terrible noise breaks the quiet. It’s a kind of howling never heard before.
Oh, what’s that sound? Velanji looks out of the window, startled. A wild animal near my house?
He remains stock-still, while his eyes fumble with the dark night. What’s that shape? A sudden fear jerks his mind. A figure lurks near the henna shrubs, forty meters away from his windowsill. Who’s that at this time of night?
Velanji comes downstairs. Without disturbing his family, who are fast asleep, he takes his iron bar and the jack knife, opens the front door silently, and then walks across the grass to the henna shrubs.
Through gaps of the henna twigs, he watches the half-naked figure, in black shorts, sitting on the sugar sand with his legs stretched. He is smoking a cannabis beedi, looking up at the sky. Velanji waits, holding his breath. The stranger coughs. A dry cough. Then the moon emerges out of the clouds, unveiling the identity of the stranger.
My Gosh! Aap! Velanji whispers softly.
Velanji sees a black burqa, specially altered, and a pair of uncommon boots, beside him.
Aha, thinks Velanji.
After tossing the beedi stub, Aap puts on his Spring Jackboots and the burqa. No shirt. Slowly getting up, he walks like a rooster in the moonlight. Velanji follows him stealthily.
The infamous Aap is an addict of hashish and arrack. Few people know his original name is Sharaf. Aap came to Manayur with his uncle at the age of five. His parents in the neighboring state of Tamil Nadu had been killed in a communal riot. His widower uncle was a mason.
The unexpected demise of his uncle, when Aap was in the tenth standard at Govt High School Manathala, rocked the boat. Aap had to leave school to keep his head above water. He became an apprentice in an automobile workshop, but before long he was trapped in the bad company of the village. His hut on the bank of Kanoli canal became the evil hub of the village, where he and his delinquent friends gambled, watched porn videos, jacked up…
Opening a wooden gate, Aap enters the front yard of an auto rickshaw driver’s house. He rings the doorbell, rousing the driver and his family from their sound sleep. Just before the door opens, Aap darts back to the gate.
Which is when Velanji, who is hiding behind the nearby coconut palm, comes forward with enthusiastic pace and strikes him a heavy blow on the head with the iron bar in his hand. The Spring Man falls down with a thud.
Maniacs and drug addicts are everywhere in the modern world. At any time, they may come through layers of darkness. They are fond of fantasy, insane adventures and sadistic pleasures. These antisocial elements are cancerous in our society. We, the Police, are sometimes helpless. Today’s world needs valiant men like Velanji…
Velanji sits on the dais with pride as huge as the Himalayas. Ways of honor are diverse, and it often comes out of the blue, he muses, and smiles at the audience.
He always cherished the dream of winning a literary award. But even if he won the Man Booker Prize, he wouldn’t get this much applause from his fellow men, who rarely read books.
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