Works of Island Artists - a selected selection

 

As a the web-master I get to choose some work to plonk on this site.

WEAPON OF MASS DESTRUCTION  by Bill Anthony

 

‘No, not a blazing hot day again,’ I said to myself taking the seat immediately behind the driver’s partitioned-off space in a Calcutta tram. I was home from boarding school for the summer holidays in the month of May and on my way to meet a few school friends.

 

The Calcutta tram is a two-carriage affair with the front carriage for office workers, bhodrolok (gentle folk) and the like while the rear one conveyed tradesmen, labourers and so forth to their various destinations. It was around 10 am on a bright and humid morning in the middle of the rush hour.

I had a ringside view of the pavements crowded with passersby, visitors from the countryside and the proverbial hawkers calling out aloud and flaunting their wares for all to see. Shops were doing a brisk trade dealing in textiles, wearing apparel and footwear, medicines, jewellery, food takeaways. There was the everyday noise, scenes and smells one grew up with living in an Indian city. There was colour and movement, blaring music, the cobbler for shoe repairs, the wayside stall selling mouth-watering snacks, refreshing green coconut juice as a thirst quencher in all that heat, beggars with palms outstretched, lepers wrapped in bloody bandages and rags being pushed on trolleys, traditional singers, the roar of two-way traffic, and mounds of rotting vegetation and refuse.

 

We were at a crossroad. The copiously sweating traffic policeman, under cover from the sun, in a red turban and a faded white uniform showing damp patches, stood on a raised plinth, and signalled us to stop with a hand signal. He then blew on a whistle to let the traffic resume in the other direction. At the next whistle it was then our turn to move forward.

In front of us was a handcart – a vehicle for transporting goods from A to B. It is made from wood or bamboo and on two wheels. One person pulls while the other at the rear pushes. The operators need a permit to ply their trade. This cart was loaded with barrels of rice wine, in pyramid fashion, neatly tied down. In the hot surroundings that day one could smell the rising sour-smelling vapours swirling through the open windows of the trams and buses.

We had barely travelled a few metres when suddenly our tram driver slammed on the brakes and kept ringing his foot-bell and swearing and yelling at the handcart operators, ‘You bunch of p-----, have you also inebriated your bloody cart?’ We were thrown forward and then it became clear what had happened. One wheel of the cart was wedged in the tramline while the other was free. Some of us quickly got out to lend a hand.

Behind traffic had come to a standstill. This was followed by a cacophony of shouting, honking and swearing while pedestrians and passersby gathered to watch the proceedings. A police foot-patrol was nearby and came over fast to the cart operators who joined palms and begged forgiveness for the holdup. They could not produce their permit on demand and were to be locked up and the goods confiscated. The middle aged policemen approached the two with handcuffs at the ready.

 

I noticed the sweat drenched operators quickly whisper something to each other. Soon the front man tripped the nearest policeman and ran off to a resounding cheer and handclapping by the audience, at the same time the other was grabbed by the second policeman by his loin cloth. At this the second man undid his loin cloth and fled and disappeared into the crowd. The crowd applauded again and again and some were astounded by the enormity of his huge dangling weapon. This raised guffaws, lewd jokes and lascivious remarks before the crowd thinned and we were on our way once more. I have not seen anything as funny and as entertaining since! What about you?

 

 

When We Were Six  by Ratman

 

Looking back I suppose I was the odd one out, the stranger whose accent separated him from everybody else. This was White Rock BC and I was old enough to go to school, and most of the time I liked it. Sure it was strange; we had to buy milk in cartons, chocolate flavour was nice and there was a puppet show we had to bring a penny, one cent, to watch. There was a pond between the junior and senior schools that froze up during the snows on which kids skated. The school building had at least two floors which was strange to me knowing schools with only one level.

I was amazed when one boy was brought to school in his father's car and clung on to the door pillar screaming to go home and was whisked away; this a regular Monday morning performance and the rest of the week he was absent.

 

School in Canada was confusing and although I remember snippets of it the memories are jumbled up into one truncated episode. Except that is for the Weird Kid. There's always a weird kid in every school, a real outsider, and as like attracts like being an outsider myself I made friends with him. So, okay, the kid was strange but at the time nobody wanted to be friends with me and I needed somebody to talk to.

 

He suggested we walk home together and at first that was all we did and like most small boys we chatted, threw stones and ran around noisily. But one day he suggested a different game and led me to a vacant lot where there was an old garage. It was big enough for three or four cars and I suppose somebody must have used it as a repair shop because there was a bench on one side with hanging lamps and a small back door. What the Weird Kid showed me was different.

 

Close to the back wall there was a wooden armchair to which he led me giving me excited glances as we got nearer. This is my favourite game, he said and stopped beside the chair, his hand touching the wood lovingly. "I will show you," he said. And with deft movements that he had obviously perfected he gathered two different coloured strands of flex and wrapped one to each of the chair arms, and another two he draped over the top of the chair. He took the four free ends, and pointing gleefully to a black painted square on the wall he pushed the ends into holes in the wall and plugged the wires in with rag.

"Now, we do this," he said and took a polished wooden stick from the floor and pushed that into another hole making sure it was pointing up. "Now, you tie my wrists and ankles to the chair when I sit in it and we can play."

As he took up position and I tied him as he said I asked what we were supposed to be playing.

"Don't you know?"

I shook my head but I was beginning understand that it was something odd.

"Look, all you have to do is pull the lever down and watch. You'll soon get the hang of it." He turned his head toward the wall where the drawn in box was with the wires hanging from it. "You should tie my head but this time just pull that lever down. Count it down from five."

I realised he meant me to pull the piece of wood down and so, with still no idea what he wanted I did as he asked and watched in horror as on my count of zero he made strange zizzing noises and twitched and twisted in the seat until at last he stopped and flopped sideways, silent.

I walked over to him and stood beside the chair looking at him, puzzled. Suddenly he looked up at me grinning, a lop sided grin that worried me; I hadn't seen anybody look like that before. His eyes were alight with some inner glow and his whole being seemed to exude a satisfaction that I could not share.

"What is it?" I asked, softly.

"It's the electric chair, dummy, it's what they do to murderers," he said and grinned. "Now its your turn."

 

And looking at that grin, the insane fanatical grin I was glad he was tied to the chair; and that was where I left him.