Category: Writings

At the age of five, Hiroshi wanted a big brother. “If I had a big brother I would tell him all my problems and I’m sure he would be able to fix them,” he told his parents. His parents instead gave him a horse on his 6th birthday. Not to worry though, it was one that didn’t need a stable. “Mommy and daddy have made it for you,” his mom told him with a smile. Hiroshi made his eyes sparkle as he held the polished wooden horse that was slightly too big to fit into the six-year-old’s tiny hands. “You’re my big brother from today!” he told the horse.
The horse was named Taro and was twenty years old. Hiroshi knew this because he asked the horse.
“Since you’re my big brother I must know your name,” Hiroshi told Taro. Now he spoke for Taro, “my name is Taro, I’m delighted to be your brother!” He made the wooden horse bob on its spot as he spoke for it.
“Taro-kun!” Hiroshi beamed, now speaking for himself, “that’s a wonderful name, it means the eldest son. Now I must know your age too Taro-kun.”
“My age is twenty,” the horse bobbed up and down. Hiroshi didn’t even know his own age then nor did he know what it meant to be twenty. Twenty was simply a number he had learnt to count up to in school and he thought it was cool.
Hiroshi started taking Taro-kun to kindergarten. He knew it wasn’t allowed. He took the horse with him regardless and talked to it during playtime.
“Come play cars with us,” the other boys told him. Hiroshi pretended not to hear and continued playing with Taro-kun.
“What a weirdo,” they told him and left. The other boys made their cars fly and do somersaults. Hiroshi made Taro-kun fly and do somersaults.
Although there was more space to play in school, there was no better playground for them than Hiroshi’s own room.
“Let’s go to the mountains and pluck some mushrooms,” Hiroshi told Taro-kun and made the horse take a huge leap and land on his bed, “ta-da! We have arrived!” He exclaimed.
“Watch for the colourful mushrooms, they are the nasty ones,” Taro-kun warned.
“What will happen if you eat one?”
“You will start giggling endlessly; so much so that eventually you will die by choking on your own laughter,” the horse nodded assuredly.
“That sounds fun but scary,” Hiroshi said and began picking up the crazy balls that he had scattered on his bed. After they were done collecting mushrooms they shifted back to the carpet which they had decided was the ‘Freedom Island’, the island in which Hiroshi ruled. They had to come to the island by boat as the flooring between the carpet and the bed was the sea. Once on the island they made their way back to Hiroshi’s desk which was supposedly home. It was where their adventures always began.
On that particular day, when his mother called for dinner, Hiroshi told her that he was already done.

When he began going to elementary school, Hiroshi still wanted to take Taro-kun along, but Taro-kun couldn’t go to school like him because he was a wooden horse.
“You can’t bring toys to school,” Mrs.Yanagi told him when he took Taro-kun with him. He didn’t like her. One day she asked the whole class to draw their hero. The other boys drew Ultraman, One Punch Man and all the other ‘mans’ that existed. Hiroshi drew Taro-kun.
“Hey what is that?” the other boys asked him.
“Taro-kun,” Hiroshi mumbled.
“What? Who?”
“It’s my horse.”
“A horse?! What can a horse do?” One of them said, “hey, that thing is wooden,” another one of them guessed from the drawing. “What can a wooden horse even do?” “Hiroshi’s such a sissy,” they said and left. They flapped around their papers before them as if the papers were their heroes.
Hiroshi gave his drawing a last touch of pastel and went to show it to Mrs.Yanagi. She looked at the drawing and then at him from above her reading glasses, then back at the drawing.
“What is this?” She asked.
“Taro-kun.” He replied.
“Who?”
“It’s my horse.”
“Horse?” She asked as if to confirm whether she heard him right, “oh, uh-huh, okay,” she adjusted her glasses as if she missed something major on the paper and returned the drawing to him. That day he walked home dispirited, kicking each pebble on the way.
“At school everybody thinks you’re useless,” Hiroshi complained to Taro-kun, “I wanted to punch them all so hard, but I didn’t.”
“That’s Hiroshi for you!” Taro-kun exclaimed bounding, “you should shove your fists in your pocket whenever you feel like punching someone.” It was what Hiroshi’s mother had told him once. He liked it. He thought it was cool.

Now that Hiroshi couldn’t take Taro-kun to school, he found a new way around it. The wooden horse wasn’t there by his side but that didn’t mean he couldn’t hold any conversations with him. Whenever he closed his eyes and would call for him, Taro-kun would always be there.
“How do you think the letter ‘wo’ is written?” Hiroshi whispered to Taro-kun during class. Mrs.Yanagi had given them a Japanese alphabet test. Hiroshi remembered that the letter ‘wo’ (を) was very complicated.
“It’s the one that looked like a worm popping out of an apple,” Taro-kun whispered back.
“Ah yes, that one!” Hiroshi slowly wrote ‘を’ but he wrote it the other way around. He stopped and frowned at it. “Which way was the worm coming out of the apple?”
“I think you got it right. But I suggest you try flipping it to see if that clicks better,” Taro-kun said.
“Hiroshi!” Mrs.Yanagi shouted, she was glaring at him from above her reading glasses, “you’re disturbing the others.” Hiroshi eyed her sulkily and looked down at his paper. Indeed the worm coming out of the other side clicked better, so he left it as that. He thought he should go back home and report it to Taro-kun.
Once home, he complained to the horse, “Mrs.Yanagi still had a problem although I didn’t take you to school!”
“Well, technically you were at an advantage during the test,” Taro-kun replied.
“No, I think she’s jealous that we’re having so much fun!” Now he was fired-up to find new ways around this problem.
Hiroshi quickly picked up his alphabet so that he could try his new strategy. In grammar class he hid a paper under his desk. He caught a moment when Mrs.Yanagi was looking away.
“Hey, you there?” He wrote on the paper.
“Ne—igh!” Taro-kun answered. Hiroshi was overjoyed. He eyed Mrs.Yanagi.
“She hasn’t a clue!!” He wrote.
“Yippie!!!” Taro-kun replied. Hiroshi’s strategy was a success. He enjoyed it so much that he even wrote when he was home with Taro-kun.

When Hiroshi was 12, he still wrote dialogues but he had begun interacting with different characters; rather he observed them interact with each other. He was the mastermind who could control them as he wanted. He could make them laugh, cry, dance and even kiss and marry! He enjoyed the power he had.
The first ever character that occupied his mind and wasn’t Taro-kun was Goro. He was an elephant. He was wooden too. Then came Emi. She was a rabbit with silky black fur. He realized that they didn’t all have to be wooden. And then came a kangaroo and then a parrot. Then there was Akane. She was a space-explorer. He realized they didn’t all have to be animals either. And then there came Hibito, Chiyo, Eiji, Hiro… Finally there were so many that he abandoned them whenever he grew bored of them. He filled notebook after notebook with their stories.
At the age of 14, Hiroshi’s family decided to shift houses. The notebooks that he had filled when he was 12 were discarded, he didn’t mind it too much. He filled new ones with better stories. When Hiroshi was clearing his room, he found the box in which he had stored all his old toys. It was full of legos, colourful blocks, foam puzzles and balls of all sorts. Among them, he found the wooden horse. He paused for a moment, then picked up the box by its handles.
“Mo-m, you can throw these out too,” he called out and dumped the box on the pile of notebooks that he had kept out in the corridor.
By the time Hiroshi was 17, he had written a few novellas. He had posted some of them on several online platforms. He had readers now! He would wake up at five in the morning and would rush to his computer to check whether any comments came in overnight about his stories and characters. He would reply to each and every one of them, even when he didn’t have much to say.
“Why don’t you try participating in a contest?” His mother asked him one day while he was having dinner. He looked up to her, unblinking. The corners of his lips slowly lifted up to form a wide grin. He gulped his food down and locked himself up in his room.
A month later, when he checked his inbox an email had arrived. The mail read ‘congratulations!’ in huge letters. He had won five hundred thousand yen. That day he was the one to treat his parents.
“You should try publishing Hiro!” his father grabbed his shoulder tight and said.
“You’re thinking too far ahead, dad!” Hiroshi complained and they all laughed.
That day, while Hiroshi was at the cash register he dropped his phone. The device’s screen cracked. At that point, Hiroshi had no idea that things had started going wrong.

Hiroshi struggled to put the full stop at the end of the sentence that he wrote by expending every ounce of energy. He had trouble remembering the events as he penned them. The tears were helplessly flowing down his cheeks but he was unable to wipe them away. When he had received his medical report six months ago, he had desperately wished that it was a mistake. He had read it over and over to make sure he was reading it right:

Patient name: Kitamura Hiroshi
Sex: male
Age: 18
Ward no: 37

Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease patient (CJD)

Although his memory had started failing him, only this he remembered as if he had read yesterday.

Hiroshi still made an effort to write, although his hand went all over the place, so that his muscles didn’t forget how to move. With effort, Hiroshi turned his head and looked out of the window. The sky was clear and as blue as it could be. The warm summer light was showering through the window, tingling Hiroshi’s cheeks. The cicadas were crying loudly outside. He wished to be anywhere else under the sun but in this hospital bed. He knew a way around this problem. He closed his eyes and he was in a field. Yellow fields as far as his eyes could reach.
Hiroshi expanded his lungs and took in the sweet earthy smell around him. He felt someone approaching from behind. He turned.
“Long time,” Taro-kun told him.
Hiroshi widened his eyes, “You look lovely,” he said with a smile. Taro-kun who stood in front of him wasn’t wooden anymore. He realized that he didn’t have to be. He was tall with a vibrant chestnut coat. When Hiroshi looked at his horse more closely, his smile faded, “why do you have so many scars?”
“This is what they have done to me after I left your side,” Taro-kun told him, “I was taken in by another family.” Taro-kun lowered his head. “I feel abandoned,” he whimpered. Hiroshi noticed that his hooves had grown so much that it curled in, grazing the skin on his shin and his ribs were jutting out from malnutrition.
“I’m so sorry, it’s all my fault. That must have been painful.” Hiroshi sympathized, “but it’s okay, we have our strategy,” he said with a smile returning to his face. He blinked and Taro-kun’s scars were gone, making his coat shimmer and his hooves were primly trimmed in shape, “see?”
The horse neighed delightedly, “we always have our way around things, don’t we?” he brushed his muzzle against Hiroshi’s cheek making the boy giggle. “Now we should find a way to take you out of that filthy bed so that Mrs.Yanagi doesn’t find you there.”
“Yup,” Hiroshi replied.
“Let’s make a dash to the end of the wheat fields! I bet she won’t follow us till there.” The horse kicked in preparation. Hiroshi tried to run but something jerked him backward. He spun around to see. The hospital’s IV tubings and the electrocardiogram’s cords were all entangled around his arms. He looked at Taro-kun helplessly.
“Can’t they be taken out?” Taro-kun asked.
Hiroshi yanked one of the cords out, then he did it for another. It was easy. He tore them all out.
“I’m free now,” he grinned at his horse and broke into a sprint. The horse galloped beside him.They ran beyond the fields, Hiroshi gritted his teeth and beat his legs as fast as he could, his head tilted back and the wind gushed against his face. He saw a door far ahead. It looked familiar. He strode towards it then tore it open. On the other side was his old room.
Hiroshi walked in slowly. A familiar smell filled his lungs. He put his hand on the bed. The crazy balls were still scattered on the mountain-side. He looked at his Freedom Island then his eyes slowly drifted up to his desk. Taro-kun was home. He walked over to it and gently picked up the wooden horse. He brushed the dust off it.
“Let’s go harvest some mushrooms from the mountains!” He said.
“Watch for the colourful ones,” Taro-kun replied.
Hiroshi walked back out into the fields and closed the door behind him.

On the hospital bed Hiroshi’s body lay limp. His mother cried by his bed, hugging him tight and the ECG monitor displayed three flat lines, motionless.

---

It was a dark and stormy night. The scrabble tiles lay scattered on the floor, half lit by the candlelight and Shomir’s hands were on Kittu’s neck. “I swear I won’t speak a word about it,” Kittu choked under the pressure of his roommate’s hands that gripped even tighter. “Let go,” he croaked, “I thought we were friends.”
Bipin and Bashu who were the only other two in the dark room pounced on Shomir and ripped his hands off Kittu’s neck, throwing him on the ground and leaving the other boy coughing and gasping for air. “Dude, you’ll kill him too,” Bipin hissed. The candlelight flickered. The room fell silent and for a few seconds it was just the drumming of the loud rain ringing in their ears.
Shomir buried his face in his hands, “it’s over, it’s all over,” he whimpered and made himself as small as he could. Bashu was inching towards the door. “Stop it Bashu,” Kittu told his roommate and then looked at Shomir, “it’s not over yet.”
Kittu slowly stood up. He walked over to Shomir, extended his hand to rest it on Shomir’s shoulder, hesitated for a moment and picked up the scrabble tiles beside him instead. Bipin who was still standing on guard knelt beside Kittu and began collecting the tiles with him. Kittu eyed Bashu who then joined them hesitantly. Shomir had diminished himself into no more than a trembling lump in the room. His shadow on the wall towered over him as if it would gobble him up. It wavered violently as the candle’s flame quivered.

Kittu thought about 2 years ago, when they were all still university freshmen. When he had come to live in the chummery, it was already Bipin and Bashu’s third month there. Their daily lunch and dinner used to be rice, dal and some fried vegetables easily cooked on a portable gas stove that Bashu had got from some second-hand dealer. Bashu was an expert at getting hold of deals and stuff. He made their university life a little bit easier and definitely more fun. Occasionally on weekends, they used to eat out and drink if they had saved up enough on their monthly spendings.
On some weekends, it used to be the cinema. Bashu always used to get hold of the tickets from somewhere and came back beaming, waving the tickets above his head. Bipin and Kittu were always delighted to tag along.
It was in Kittu’s second month with Bipin and Bashu that Shomir entered the chummery. They were all excited to welcome their new comrade in their chummery life. The more the merrier, they thought. He seemed to enjoy the food that was made but was never the one to cook on the portable stove. The three did not mind. They always saw Shomir seated at his desk, checking his wristwatch every ten minutes or so, he would either be doing the extra economics assignments or would be reading a really fat book with tiny fonts or there would be times he would just stare out of his window, in which case the three of them left some lunch aside for him without calling him to eat.
Shomir never came along when they dined out. The first and last time they had asked him, his reply was simply “no, I’m good,” and then he would adjust his wristwatch. The same went for the cinemas although Bashu always got an extra ticket for him.
For the holidays, they would save up and even ask their families whether they could go on trips. For the trip to Darjeeling, Shomir said he would stay back and he remained all alone in the chummery. As for the last semester’s break, in which they planned to go to the Sundarbans, Shomir had said he would return home to meet his family.
Shomir lost his parents during the break in an accident. One fine Sunday, when his three roommates were idling about in the lounge of the chummery, he had come up to them. Kittu remembered the moment. All three of them had stared at him blankly, waiting for what was going to come. Shomir had never really walked up to them before. The statement came and they all exclaimed in dismay. Shomir stood still and heard what they had to say. When they were done, he turned and walked back to his desk, rubbing his watch that was always on his wrist.
Their daily cooking had gradually started becoming more creative with occasional fish curry or at times they would try to make noodles on the small gas stove. Shomir had offered to cook one day. Kittu almost choked on his own spit, Bipin dropped the bowl he held and Bashu exclaimed, “it will snow today!”
“I had learnt to cook from my mother,” Shomir had said, “she was a chef in the house.” The first day he had ever cooked for them, he made them burnt chapattis. “Shomir’s ma please come back! Your son needs more cooking lessons!” They had joked. Shomir laughed at that.
From then on, he joined his roommates for the dinners outside and went with them to the cinemas. He said he went with his parents too. “I had even gone to the huge cinema halls in Bombay where my dad used to work,” he had said. When they had gone out to dine at the tiny canteen called Mama’s Kitchen, Shomir boasted about his trip to Agra. “I had eaten the most delicious dinners when we had stayed in the Taj hotel” he had said. When the four of them were cramped up in an autorickshaw and were going around town he told them about his dad’s BMW. “We used to go for great rides,” he had said regretfully. Shomir’s dad seemed to have been a rich man. It must have been a great loss for him, they had thought then.
Kittu’s hand stopped picking up the tiles. It hit the floor instead, forming a fist. He wished the storm had never come and wished the powercut had never happened. He wished Bashu hadn’t brought out the scrabbles out of nowhere like he always used to do with things, maybe he should have summoned a few more candles or some torches instead. Then maybe he could have finished his pending assignments and Bashu and Bipin theirs. Shomir could have continued reading another of his big fat books like he always used to do. And he wished that Shomir hadn’t forgotten to wear his wristwatch that night, under which he had been hiding an ugly scar all along.
“I-it’s a dog bite!” Shomir had stammered pulling his hand back immediately after he had placed his last tile on the grid. ‘Family,’ the tiles spelled. “Tch,” Kittu had clicked his tongue, placing his brow in his hand and shaking his head. Then he looked straight into his friend’s eyes. “Tell me the truth, that is no dog bite,” he had said calmly. Shomir clenched his jaw but had kept his expression unchanged. “How can you tell?” He asked. His face was half hidden in the dim candlelight. Bipin and Bashu watched the both of them intently with knitted brows. Shomir squeezed his wrist harder. The downpour of the rain had seemed louder in their ears.
“It’s a cigarette mark,” Kittu had replied slowly, “isn’t it?” He had realized then that Shomir’s dad had never had any jobs in Bombay. There had never been any cinema halls, luxury hotels nor any BMWs. In reality, there had never been any accidents at all. “How did you kill your dad?” He asked quietly. “Or did you do them both?” Bipin and Bashu sat wide-eyed and Shomir had pounced across the scrabble board.

Kittu let out a long, deep sigh. He stood, walked across to where Shomir still hunched himself over. “Shomir,” he called out. The candlelight flickered and the roar of the rain had never seemed louder. Shomir looked up at last to the ugly scar that wasn’t on his own wrist but on his friend’s bare stomach.