“Rule number one: no
blasphemy. I'll not have the Lord's name taken in vain in my prison.
I believe in two
things, discipline and the bible. Here you’ll receive both.
Put your trust in the
lord; your ass belongs to me!
Welcome to Shawshank!”
I am not a hero. This is to the people who
believe, I am. To those people who keep telling me I have great qualities. To
those people, who think I am an inspiration. To those who care. To those who do
not care! To those who believe I am no one; I have reserved the best seats for
you.
I was born. My mother insisted for a normal
delivery. I struggled my way out. I don’t remember how it felt to see the light
for the first time. I don’t remember hearing the first voice. I don’t remember
anyone calling me. I don’t remember anything. No one does. If we experience
this state of ‘I don’t remember a thing’ in adulthood, either we are sleeping,
in coma or dead. But when you are a newborn, rules do not apply.
“The first night's the
toughest, no doubt about it. They march you in naked as the day you were born,
skin burning and half blind from that delousing shit they throw on you, and
when they put you in that cell... and those bars slam home... that's when you
know it's for real. A whole life blown away in the blink of an eye. Nothing
left but all the time in the world to think about it.”
There are a lot of things I don’t remember
though. Like, I don’t remember telling my parents I am happy with the religion
they provide. A newborn Mandarin duckling is bound to grow up as a Mandarin duck,
not a Campbell, neither an Indian Runner Duck.
I don’t remember telling my parents that I like
memorizing historical facts and solving math. I don’t remember telling them
that I am willing to volunteer 14-18 years of my childhood to schooling. But
they are my parents and they know what is best for me. Everyone sends their
children to schools. If they let us decide, we would never have learned
anything at all.
That, my dear reader, would have been a terrific
childhood. It is true that where I work, they don’t ask me to solve Calculus or
find the Bramaputra River on a map. But all those years of schooling and not
fooling around led me to this job. A job that consumes 11-12 hours of my daily
life, 5 days a week, 22 days a month, 264 days a year. That’s 3168 hours every
year. And 110880 hours in a lifetime, roughly
estimated. I am no hero. I am institutionalized.
“These walls are
funny. First you hate 'em, then you get used to 'em. Enough time passes, you
get so you depend on them. That's institutionalized. Goddamn right. They send
you here for life, and that's exactly what they take. The part that counts,
anyway.”
The first 16-18 years devoted for a job. Then the
rest of the years are devoted to maintain the job.
“This is a dog-eat-dog-world” our parents taught
us. If you don’t get the job, someone else will.
“Life moves on, dear” our lovers told us,
before they kissed us goodbye. If you can’t stay with me, someone else will.
“This is how it works in professional life” –
the managers told us. If you leave, we will hire someone else.
I am not irreplaceable. Someone else will. Who
is this ‘someone’ who is always getting everything? Certainly, it is not me. I
am anyone, everyone, no one, but definitely not someone. All the magnanimous
halfwits reach a stage at some point of their lives where death is not an
option and life is not a choice. Your old life blown away in the blink of an
eye and you are in the brink of madness, desperate to act normal. That’s when
you know it’s real.
Dear readers, I can't believe how fast things change
outside. They planted rainforest trees along this walkway in around 1993 but
now they are gone. The world went and got itself in a big damn hurry. Eighteen years
of education got me into this office. My head and hands hurt most of the time. During
the lunch, I go out to see the trees, I keep thinking someday they might just pop
up and say hello, but they never do. I have trouble remembering things and this
keeps getting bigger. Sometimes it takes me a while to figure out where I am, what
time of the day it is and who are the people I talk to everyday. I feel like
getting a gun and shooting someone. I want to be that ‘someone’ for once. That
is sort of like a bonus. But I think I’m too old for that sort of nonsense. I
don’t belong here. I’m tired of doing the wrong things all the time. I’m tired
of changes. I have decided.
Dear Warden, You were right. Salvation lay
within.
“And that's how it came to pass that on the second-to-last day of the job, the convict crew that tarred the plate factory roof in the spring of forty-nine wound up sitting in a row at ten o'clock in the morning drinking icy cold, Bohemia-style beer, courtesy of the hardest screw that ever walked a turn at Shawshank State Prison.
We sat and drank with
the sun on our shoulders and felt like free men. Hell, we could have been tarring
the roof of one of our own houses. We were the lords of all creation. As for
Andy - he spent that break hunkered in the shade, a strange little smile on his
face, watching us drink his beer.”
