OF MONSTERS AND MEN
The sins we are guilty of committing on a daily basis don't necessarily have to be of leviathan proportions. As with anyone around the world, the life of the average Bangladeshi is littered with sins and misdeeds, some so trivial they don't even register in our minds. However, that is not to say that we are not capable of committing the deadly sins as inscribed centuries ago. There is no respite from the horrific acts that we, as human beings, are capable of carrying out. These short stories explore the recesses of human nature where the line between good and evil is blurred beyond any recognition.
Lust
Mr J M Khalil was an ordinary man with a seemingly ordinary life. He woke up at 6 am, went to work, left at 6 pm, and every now and then on his way home he'd pick up some chocolates or a packet of crisps for his two children. His wife would prepare lunch for him to take to work and would have dinner ready for him in the evenings. At 8 pm his wife would bring a tray of tea and biscuits to his study – a dusty little room with tattered books piled ceiling-high – and she would often fall asleep before he retired to their bed for the night. He was never unkind to her and despite his slightly aloof nature, she felt some semblance of love. She never questioned why he would retreat into his study as soon as he finished dinner – he must be a very busy man, always working hard, even at home. She didn't really take an interest in that aspect of his life because she simply would not understand any of it. She didn't even know how their computer worked.
Perhaps if she did, she'd know that it had folders upon folders of photos of schoolgirls that he had taken almost every day for the last two years. There were girls as young as 13 and 14, in their uniforms, playing outside. She would also know that he had been escorted off the premises of several school buildings for harassing the young girls.
Mr J M Khalil was an ordinary man but in reality, he had a very abnormal life.
Sloth
He had perfected the setup of his room so that he wouldn't have to move too much to get what he needed. In fact, the only time he really got any exercise was during his trips to and from the bathroom. His favourite armchair was positioned close to his bed so he wouldn't have to walk too great a distance to get in and out of it, and it was facing his TV, to which his Xbox was connected. His chair had pockets on either side where he kept the TV remote, a calling bell for the servants, and his mobile phone. He had an extension cord where his phone charger was plugged in, lest he had to get up and use any of the other sockets around the house. He had the A/C remote nearby too, which he turned on at regular intervals because he didn't want to get up and turn the fan on.
At home it was just him, his younger brother, and his mother. His mother turned a blind eye to his laziness once she realised her lectures fell on deaf ears. Most days it was like he wasn't even home, and occasionally she'd hear him move around in his room but that was the extent of it. They rarely spoke unless she went into his room but he was always busy with his games and she saw little point in interrupting him for small talk. She was grateful she had her younger son for company, even though he came home from university quite late in the evening.
One day, she developed a fever. He could hear her cough from his room for a few days until he realised he had an old pair of noise-cancelling headphones lying around somewhere. He only found out about the fever because one of the maids told him about it. He decided he'd check up on her later. At one point he even thought he heard her call for him, but he figured that if it was urgent, one of the maids would attend to her. A couple of hours elapsed before his phone started ringing but he was too engrossed in his game to pause it. Whatever it was, surely it could wait. It rang about three more times until he checked the caller ID. It was his brother. Why was his brother calling from the next room? It was probably an accident. He continued his game, pausing again because he realised his phone had died. He groaned as he reached over to plug it into the charger. Once it came back to life, it began buzzing with missed calls and text messages.
The message previews flickered across his screen and he caught the words “maa” and “hospital” and “ICU”. When he called back, all he could hear was his brother wailing.
Greed
The total bill came to just over Tk 5000. Although his father gleamed with gratitude from across the table, Anik merely scoffed as he handed his card over to the waiter. Still, he was willing to part with that amount of money, mere change in comparison to what he had planned. He looked over at his father. This was the first time in 25 years that they had gone out for a meal together, as a family. Tonight, however, was a special occasion. For him, anyway.
When they got home, he got the paperwork out from his briefcase and went into his father's bedroom. He had also prepared a cup of tea for him for the first time in years. “Baba,” he said, startling the old man. He sat down at his feet and handed him the tea, and then pushed the papers and a pen towards him. Gratitude gave way to defeat, and a pained expression crept across his wrinkled face as he picked the pen up, and signed the various contracts. The house they lived in, all the land he owned in their ancestral village, everything – all signed over to his only son. He wondered where he had gone wrong in raising Anik, when he became so ungrateful, so impatient. He had promised all his property to him upon his death but it just wasn't enough anymore.
As soon as the last document was signed, Anik snatched them away. He didn't leave the room though. He sat and watched his father sip the tea until he had finished it. He sat and watched as his father started convulsing, and he sat and watched his father breathe his last. The house was finally his!
Envy
People envied everything about Faria. Her charm, her flawless skin, her golden complexion, how affable she was, her sense of humour, the clothes she wore, and her hair – especially her hair, which was long, sleek and jet-black. Everything! It was the reason she never had a solid group of friends, because admiration soon turned into resentment, and people she spent time with would slowly start to distance themselves because they felt like they were always in her shadow. Faria never understood why her
friends would go from wanting to make plans every week, to barely messaging her in months. Of course, with the jealousy came rumours, about how she was so pretty she must have a queue of guys lining up outside her bedroom, about how girls who look like that are only good for one thing, about how she thought she was better than everyone because she had the trendiest clothes and shoes. The list went on and on, and some of those rumours inevitably floated back to Faria, who would barricade herself in her room and cry all night. She was struggling enough as it was with her health problems. It broke her heart that people could be so petty over something as trivial as hair.
Every night she looked at herself in the mirror. Her hair was long, sure. It was silky and smooth, sure. She took good care of it. It was in good condition because she never dyed it once. Every night she would run a comb through her hair, and then take it off and place it on her wig-stand. She looked at the tufts of her hair, her actual hair, that survived the chemotherapy, and she sobbed, wishing her friends knew.
Wrath
“Jorina?”
Silence.
“Jorina!”
Jorina hurried into the master bedroom, wondering if she had done anything wrong. She was positive that she was ordered to make tea with two teaspoons of tea leaves, with separate pots of condensed – not regular – milk, and sugar, and a plate with three biscuits. She repeated it over and over in her head, there's no way she could get it wrong again. Her cheek was still smarting from the last time. He was standing by his bed, arms crossed.
“Why does it take so long to answer? Are you deaf?”
Jorina looked down at the floor and shook her head.
“What did I ask you to bring me? Are you stupid? 3pm, every day, what do you bring me?”
Jorina glanced over at the tray she had sat down on his bedside table. She saw the tea, she saw the condensed milk, she saw the sugar, and she saw the plate of biscuits. She counted them quickly – 1, 2...there were meant to be three. Everything on the tray was untouched. Why were there only two? She made sure she counted. She went towards the tray to pick it up so she could take it back to the kitchen but he slapped her so hard she fell back and hit her head on the wall. Her sobs grew into loud wails as he picked her up by her pigtails and slapped her again.
“Scrub that blood off my wall” was all he muttered as he stepped over her body and went outside for a cigarette.
Gluttony
Imran and his friends had a habit of crashing weddings. It was harmless fun, a victimless crime. He had little else to and this unofficial national pastime suited him just fine. Imran also loved kachchi. In the last 6 months or so he had visited about 50 convention centres attending as many weddings, and ate at least two heaped plates of his beloved kachchi.
Imran was not a healthy man.
Last night he hoisted himself onto a rickshaw after a particularly successful wedding where he managed to have three servings of food. He was oblivious to how slow the rickshaw was moving – maybe he was used to it – and was contently rubbing his stomach when he felt it rumble. As the rickshaw pulled up to a set of traffic lights, he felt unfamiliar pangs of pain radiate throughout his body. He was perturbed; he wasn't due to have a snack for another 15 minutes. The pain spread up his torso and throughout his chest as he frantically rummaged around in his pockets. A little beggar boy hobbled up to him, oblivious to his growing panic, and pleaded with him for some food, saying he hadn't eaten in days. Imran waved him away and kept searching, and then pulled out a half-eaten pack of biscuits he had saved for emergency purposes. Perhaps he was just hungry, yes, that was the reason he was in so much pain.
The rickshaw pulled up to the front of Imran's building and turned around, but instead of seeing an outstretched hand holding his fare, he saw Imran slumped over, covered in biscuit crumbs.
Pride
Sadia refused to even consider meeting the men that her aunts tried to introduce her too. There was always something lacking – not handsome enough, not rich enough, not enough qualifications, not high-ranking enough – and despite the pleas of her family to at least meet the potential suitors in the hopes that she'd change her mind, she merely looked the other way. She could do so much better, she told herself daily. After 25 years of being spoilt rotten by her family and relatives, she was convinced there was no one good enough for her, and she was more than happy to settle for a life of solitude as long as she didn't have to put up with anyone she deemed to be beneath her.
That all changed, however, when Sadia met Abrar. He was a colleague's cousin and they hit it off instantly, and seven months later their families were organising wedding preparations. Sadia was ecstatic. She finally found a man worthy of being her husband, and he seemed to tick all the right boxes. He was the strong silent type, something she adored, because he had a bit of an edge and he wasn't one of the boring nice guys that her family tried to set her up with. She couldn't wait to start their married life, something she never thought she'd say. She was a princess and she had finally found her prince. No more boring nice guys.
She wished she had gone for a boring nice guy when her prince started to beat her every day.
By Zahrah Haider
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