The Ghosts of Veteran Lines

TS Eliot, in one of his poems, claims that: “We are the hollow men/ Head-piece filled with straw”. You can understand this sentence any way you like, because I do believe that the reader also has rights—including the right to interpretation. As a student of literature, I, too, pondered these seemingly abrasive words, but have come to know, increasingly in the last few years, that Eliot, in 1922, mind you, was lamenting the death of the old world-order. Again, in that seminal year of 1922, WB Yeats foresaw the second coming of—the apocalyptic “rough beast”. In our time, the North-American Indian also grieves: they should have erected a WALL, sometime before the marauding Europeans eclipsed and contained and decimated them. In the year 2020, my country, my India, sentenced me and my community to living on the brink—of extinction.

I gave the clarion call in 1917, but no one cared to listen. However, as long as the WORD is alive and well, there is hope, for without hope, we will truly be ghosts.

The story below is my swan-song (said the ugly duckling).

“Long live Veteran Lines”, is my epitaph.

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Poppy glided past the Church surreptitiously. He did not know, exactly, why he seemed to cling to the shadows, but that was just his way. It had not always been so; over thirty years ago he had attended Sunday morning services regularly, but now he felt that he was not even a memory.

The old bus-stand at the cross-roads looked forlorn; it seemed as if it had lost its soul, for the rickety bus that trundled through, on its way to “Gowl Bazaar”, had been re-routed aeons ago. It was now the haunt of lovers who had no other place to go. It was still a partial shelter on a rainy day. It gained even further notoriety when, not too long ago, a corpse was found stretched out on the seat. Poppy looked at the tiny mausoleum wistfully and passed on, hiding in the dark afforded to him by the tall wall that encircled the barracks. First-cross-street was bare at that unearthly hour, but he had promises to keep further down the road.

He hardly noticed the new, tall, garish buildings to his left. With their don’t-you-dare-to-peep-inside boundary walls, Poppy could not stifle a sigh. This could not be his beloved colony; every new house seemed steeped in silence and secrecy. The combined pall that these places exuded only reminded him of his own hole in the ground, in the cemetery not too far away. “Whited sepulchres”, he said to himself, “that’s what they are. Gone, gone, completely gone—all the boisterous fun, all the impromptu parties, all the joy of knowing that life is meant to be lived, all the pain, the stress, the heartache of loving (and sometimes losing it, too). Will they ever comprehend that life must go on?”

Poppy took a left turn at the beginning of the fourth lane and immediately he felt relief. The old house was still standing; in fact, it looked flourishing, almost green to the very door. He knew that his friends were around, so he gave out a low wolf-whistle. He was immediately answered: Tony and Nobby and Eric and Herb floated towards him, under the not-too-old rain tree. All of them wore expressions of dismay, but they tried not to show any emotion.

“What the bloody hell has happened? Herb asked pointedly. “This place is worse than hell”. “Nothing can be done about it,” said Tony, adopting a matter-of-fact tone. “We let it go to seed,” Nobby chipped in, “We didn’t do anything to stop this from happening”. “Aha”, said Poppy, with a chuckle in his voice, “We’re to blame, is it? All of us, eh? What about our young ones? Shouldn’t they take some of the blame? They just upped and went, leaving the rest to God and kingdom come. Aren’t some of them leading double lives too, pretending and parading and pestering and hectoring other people? Tell me: who do you think are the real ghosts? Are we? Are they? Are the people who are still around not living in the shadows”?

“Why do we gather here? To find peace and joy and comfort, but these things too seem to have vanished into the void. It seems to me that we are all ghosts, all zombies, all puppets. Yes, the living and the dead, we are all in hell. The only reason we try to escape from the darkness is because we feel that we are set free, just to see that we—I mean all of us, everyone, no exceptions—are in hell, nor were we ever out of it”.

The five spectres shivered—Ollie came gliding towards them in the late-night breeze. “Did I miss anything?” he asked, pleadingly. “Not much,” Poppy whispered, “All of us just agreed that all of us are in hell, forever and ever”. Ollie drew back, aghast. “That’s not true”, he said, “I just heard that some of us managed to escape into the kingdom of Heaven”. “That’s bull”, Herb snorted. “No, no, it’s the truth”, Ollie said, without batting an eye-lid. Two-hundred-and ninety-six of us are guaranteed a place in our home-land. The rest, dead or alive, or even partly living, have been consigned to hell-fire and utter darkness”.

“How did whoever-it-was come up with such an exact number”? Nobby asked disbelievingly. “This is not pure math,” he scoffed.

“That’s just it,” Ollie explained, “it’s politics, the final refuge of the devil. All you have to say is that two-hundred-and-ninety-six is almost three-hundred and they will all applaud you for your Spartan courage. Make it six hundred and they will compare you favourably to that charge of some foolish brigade or other. What matters is that you repeat the venomous dose of alternatives till the victim dies. And we know that the grave is synonymous with silence. But there is still hope: they may exonerate all of us or, more likely, send other impure, unworthy souls to keep us company”.

A siren blared out its time-to-start-working warning. The six friends knew that a bell was tolling for them too. They slunk away, hurrying to their individual refuges, happy that they at least belonged to Mother Earth; happy too, that death was indeed the greatest leveller and that purgation awaited every soul before it reached the Divine.