Silence of the Statues

There are 12 of them, all pointing to different directions. Their bodies are covered with Black cloth. Their hands are tied. Their faces are covered too, and there is rope around their neck. They seem like they are there to be hanged. They are standing there in the scorching sun when the mercury in thermometer reads 49 degree Celsius. They seem to be silent. The crows are flying above their heads not realising that they are just statues. They all stand in a park. The surrounding road is very busy with people running in their mad rush. They don’t pay attention to these statues any more. They are invisible to them.

When I passed through them, I heard someone crying. I thought to myself, the heat must have got on to me. I asked the auto driver to stop there. I heard a definite sob. Who was it? Who was crying? Suddenly I saw them, 12 of them, standing there, breaking their silence. My auto-driver was shouting at me: ”Sahab 50 Rs.mein Idhar dhoop mein rukna nahee chalega”. I ignored the sob and came back to my place.

Later I found that these statues were built to represent the glory of our mother nation, India. The hard-earned money of the Indian taxpayer was wasted on them like water. There were multiple corruption scandles and many people made fortunes in the process. The end result was a case in the inefficient judicial system of India, which put a stay on inauguration of these statues. The motive behind the case filed was the struggle for political mileage between different parties of Indian political system. In a country where the eighth wonder of the world can become a reason for dispute, this was a complete non-issue.

In a far village, a child was waiting for his father to return. A case had been registered in the local Kotwali that a man, who had gone to the city to build the monument of Indian glory, was missing. Some of the other workers say that he had gone mad before he was missing one morning from their tent near the construction site. They say that he sometimes used to wake up in the night and start to utter random things. Some say that he talked about selling one of his kidneys to pay the fees of his child’s education. Some say he had died but sometimes he could be seen near those statues. Some others say that he had become one of the statues.

I again went again to that place the next day. I found that one of the statues was covered in blood. Onlookers said there was a man there in the morning crying. But I could still see a man standing there and pointing his fingers at me.

Later that night I had a dream, where the same man came to me and said," I don’t need any sympathies from you. You are also a part of the system. Because you ignored me when you could have made a difference!!!"