That Old Man in White Suit

Anwar was snoring loudly sleeping on the floor when his eyes slowly opened up hearing the fights on the water filling queue at ghetto. He got up and straightly went into his bathroom, came out with bucket in one hand and a twig in other and headed towards the queue. Anwar was a fun loving boy of nineteen, extreme slim as toothpick, dark skinned and enough long as required by everybody living there for cleaning the rooftops of houses during Diwali days. He was no less than donkey that worked for hours and yet didn’t complain. Like every day, he stood in the long queue waiting for his turn to get water chewing his twig. While he was returning back through the corridor, he saw down an old man in his seventy’s getting out from an auto rickshaw, giving fare to the driver and trying to pull his suitcase upstairs. Anwar as obvious went downstairs for the old man’s assistance and introduced himself and went on talking till he reached to room allotted to the old man but the man spoke nothing more than thank you. Anwar picked up his bucket and left to his room which was exactly opposite to the old man’s room. The old man had a rare habit of closing his main door therefore every day whenever he used to sit in his room, Anwar had a full view of his activities. He came across an unusual thing about the old man. Firstly he noticed that the man always remained in a pair of black salwaar kameez and wore no other cloth. Then each person of that ghetto observed this and assumed the man a lunatic. But old man had got nothing to care about. He was a person with peaceful and quite nature who never created any nuisance to the people living there except his habit of gargling in the balcony. He used to sit ideal for hours giving a thought to something far from Anwar’s thoughts. Anwar had sensed it so earlier that the old man had buried a deep sorrow in his eyes. Even when he used to visit him, he spoke very less. Anwar also bade him good night looking around his grungy room with one chair and folding bed and a white kurta pajama hanging on one of the drastic walls which seemed like the sign of peace after some kind of destruction had happened in the past. One day he ridiculed the old man for his clothes and the way he gargled that everybody got disturbed but the old man shared a sense of laugh with him telling him that he’ll get to know very soon.

Months passed by and Anwar became very fond of the old man. He used to do his all works and on one such evening when he came back from the market, he saw the old man with tears falling from his eyes in a corner. He showed pity to him, gave him a glass of water and made him sit on the bed. “What happened?”, asked Anwar. Old man as in mood of revealing his all the secrets told him that he was twelve years old when he saw his father dying in his lap. “My father had no home to live and…” his voice became heavier as one drop of tears flowed to his cheek. “…to die. He was thrown away in the garbage dump after he was finished and I was defeated and suppressed at every point since then. This white suit hanging on the wall is of that man only who was never found. Today I have earned mine as well as my father’s lost dignity. I lived the life wandering here and there but now I’ve got a place… to die.” Anwar was listening to him with the wet eyes and at last when he got up to leave, old man called him and wished him good bye and good night as it was the last time he was meeting him. Anwar too came back to the room, closed the door burdened with a thought that why the old man told all that to him. Somehow he managed to sleep and in the midnight’s hour woke up at the call of nature. As he came out of the toilet with his eyes half opened saw the old man changing his clothes. He wore his father’s white kurta pajama. But Anwar more concentrated on the sleep.

Sun was already peeping inside the room when Anwar woke up and went into the toilet. He was sitting inside giving a thought to the last night when the images of the old man flashed before him. He rushed towards the old man’s room and as soon as he opened the door, he found him lying dead on the bed wearing that white suit. An image of the old man changing his clothes remained stiff in his mind while he was standing still there in the room.