‘Dada, come here…’, Amir heard his younger brother Ari shout to him.
‘What is it?’, replied Amir, sitting under the mango tree, reading a book.
‘Come na!’, Ari shrieked again. This time, Amir could detect a tremor in his voice, a tension. He walked over to where Ari was.
Ari was standing in front of a neighbouring house, leaning with both hands rested on the wooden door. He was as tall as a six year old boy is and could see the scene unfolding in the backyard behind the door only between the planks of wood.
In the backyard, there was a dark man squatting on the ground. He was clad only in a white dhoti, everything else about him being black. In his left hand was a chicken, fluttering desperately. In his right was a long knife. The man was trying to control the chicken with his one hand, but the chicken seemed to be in no mood to give it all up so easily.
Ari watched the chicken. Amir watched Ari.
The dark man, finally fed up trying to stifle the chicken, pressed all its feet with his right leg, and in one quick action of his knife, separated the creature’s head from its body. The head flew in the air and fell a couple of feet away. The dark man recoiled sharply from the spectacle, as if in deep disgust.
Ari watched the chicken head. Amir watched Ari.
The rest of the chicken’s body still fluttered for a few moments, Ari constantly staring at it, waiting for it to finally stop.
It eventually did. Amir tried to pull his brother away from the scene, but Ari wouldn’t budge. Amir finally decided to leave, unsure of what had disturbed him more – the incident or the look in Ari’s eyes.
The above is a shot-to-shot description of a scene from the movie Pratidwandi by Satyajit Ray. Liberty has only been taken with the names of the characters.
