Hunga sprinted towards the bamboo thicket with his knife. The grove of lean yellow bamboo culms covered with green leafy hats whistled in the wind. His hands moved fast, browsing through the stems to find the thinnest ones. He cut out a bunch of them and ran towards the village. The tiny mud huts thatched with palmyra leaves stood in a cleared circular forest land like mushroom buttons that sprouted after the overnight rain.

“Dodhi, Munga, Sodhi, Ayta…he called out loud as he approached the village. Such high-pitched alarming calls were reserved for occasions when he had spotted a leopard nearby or when he heard the city men dressed in khaki, who call themselves police, menacingly rushing towards their village through the forest path in their noisy vehicles or when one of the children were found caught in the undercurrents of the river. The whole village came out of their huts in no time.

“Ayya Swamy is in jail and he can’t drink water as there is no straw in the city,” the anxiety in Hunga’s voice was palpable. “Get your knives, fast…” he yelled at them while dropping the bamboo stems in front of his hut. He looked at the stunned villagers irritatingly, “no time to gawk at me. Take your knives and cut them into small straws,” he said.

“What happened to Ayya Swamy,” Munga asked him while grabbing the knife from his wife.

“I met the forest guard. He said Ayya Swamy is not able to drink water as there is no straw in the jail or anywhere. You remember, his fingers used to tremble when we saw him last time and he was sipping water with a thin pipe called a straw. It seems he has been in jail for a few days now. We have to hurry. Make a few straws and we will leave for the city early in the morning,” Hunga’s hands moved fast. By then the entire village had left everything aside and were cutting and drilling the bamboo pieces, while some got a large pot of boiled water and threw the finished straws into it. Another set picked up the straws and spread them on the mat under the sun.

By early morning a group of ten people set off through the forest path with a bunch of shining yellow bamboo straws. The bamboo stems never had such an important task before them. They walked a few miles to reach the highway and squat by the road waiting for the not-so-frequent passenger vans that could take them to the city.

In the 7×9 feet prison cell, a column of air that was stale with exhaled breath and the stench of human urine hung from the dark, grey stony ceiling. The scanty light that entered through the prison bars made the dirty fungus-clad walls barely visible. On the stone slab, Ayya Swamy’s body lay like a plant whose roots were cut. Like the wilting leaves of the plant, his limbs lay motionless. He struggled to push out some juices from the salivary gland to smear the parched throat. He wanted to get up and walk towards the water pot in the corner of the cell. But his body and mind had become two different entities. His body, like an unruly stubborn boy, behaved strangely. It refused to heed to the commands of the mind.  The mind would keep on requesting the lazy body to lift the torso, and the hands and move the legs. But the stubborn body would ignore the requests as if they were an old woman’s rants. It would lie there till the police guard remembered to pick a pill from the medicine box and drop it into his mouth. That was the only time when he would have some water. Once the lazy body was up, it would keep agitating against the diktats of the mind and would register its protest by trembling the hands uncontrollably. Swamy thought his body was deriving a sadistic pleasure by shaking the fingers vigorously and not letting the water tumbler reach his mouth. The body had become his enemy.

“When are you getting me a straw?” he asked in a voice that he somehow managed to push out of his mouth. Slender plastic straws in light blue, green, pink, and white hues were the only thought that filled his mind for several days.

“We can’t just give away whatever you want. Orders have to come from the top,” the guard’s hoarse voice had all the rudeness of the rotten system.

“My client is an octogenarian suffering from Parkinson’s disease. He is just asking for a straw to drink water from a tumbler and it is being denied. I have not seen an absurd situation in my entire career. What has a straw to do with the allegation of terrorism? Aren’t we humans? Is there a drop of humaneness left in the system? If someone has to file a case to get a straw, it is a travesty of law. I seek a bit of kindness from the honourable court,” Advocate Pinto concluded his argument.

“What does the respondent say about this,” the judge asked.

“We just need 15 days to reply to this application,” the advocate representing the police said. The court granted the time.

Hunga and his friends squeezed themselves into the crowded van that drove through the highway cutting across the sparsely vegetated dry lands outside the forests. After a couple of hours, they could see agricultural lands on both sides. By afternoon, city structures had started becoming visible. Hunga put his head out of the window to get some fresh air and kept curiously watching the large buildings, bridges, and pictures on the billboards. “They should be several times more intelligent than us. We are not able to build anything beyond the huts. See how they have built tall buildings, bridges and vehicles,” he told Sodhi in a voice full of awe. Sodhi shook his head in affirmation.By the roadside, he saw large metal bins stuffed with discarded dirty stuff. “They build beautiful roads and buildings and place dirty metal baskets in front of them and let the garbage overflow to spoil the beauty. Their sense of beauty is strange,” Sodhi exclaimed.

The overflowing garbage in the bins was strewn around. Amidst the garbage, Hunga spotted something. “Straws…like the ones used by Ayya Swamy,” he shouted. “Then why did the guard say that the city does not have straws?” he wondered.

They stood in front of the tall impervious outer wall of the jail and the iron gate in the evening. Hunga hit the grey rusting iron gate once and waited for some time. On getting no response, he hit it strongly several times. The wicket gate opened and a khaki-clad man came out. “What do you want?” he asked, giving them a suspected look. He closely scanned through their wrinkled, old dresses and their dry unkempt hair, which made them look quite out-of-place.

“We heard that there is a shortage of straws in the city. We have bought a few for Ayya Swamy. Can you hand them over to him? He should be having real trouble in drinking water,” Hunga arched his back as he held out to him a bunch of straws neatly wrapped by a few teak leaves and tied with plant fibre.

“Who told you that we would receive such stuff?” the guard’s face turned red.

“We heard that Ayya Swamy has difficulty in drinking water without straws and that’s why we have come from the forest,” Hunga stammered.

“So you all are his accomplices. We will put you also in the jail, else leave at once,” he shooed them away with his wooden lathi. The men moved back. “Sir, we do not want anything else. We just want you to hand this over to him. He can’t drink water. He will die out of thirst,” Hunga pleaded.

“Don’t you understand what I say? Move, move away,” he lunged towards them, batting the lathi as if to hit them. The men moved back. They did not know where to go. Under a tree at some distance from the prison, they huddled up as the sky turned crimson and then dark.

The next morning, they kept watching the prison door shutting and closing from under the tree. Each time someone appeared at the gate, they would rush towards him and would return after he declined to entertain them.

By noon, advocate Pinto parked his car in front of the prison door and alighted. While he was engaging in a conversation with the guard, he noticed the men waiting for his attention.

“Who are they?” he asked the guard. “They have come here for Ayya Swamy,” the guard said disinterestedly. Pinto moved towards them. “What have you come for?” he asked them. The men grinned delightedly and moved closer.

“We just want to give bamboo straws to Ayya Swamy. We have come from the forest for this,” Hunga’s voice was full of hope.

“I am his lawyer. I am fighting in the court to get him straws,” Pinto said. “Why do you have to go to court? Does the court provide straws these days?” Dodhi wondered. “We have it. You don’t have to buy from the court anymore,” he said.

“The police have declined to give him straws and I am seeking a directive from the court. The court will ask the police to give and then they will have to.” Pinto tried to make things clear for the forest dwellers.

“But why has the police declined straws? They are cheap and you cannot use them to harm anyone. Moreover, how can you deny water to someone? Even in our forests, we do not deny food or water to anyone,” Dodhi said while looking at his friends who nodded their heads in affirmation.

“You won’t understand the system. It is complicated,” Pinto gave up.

“How much ever complicated, how can someone be denied water?” Hunga was not convinced.

“But why have they put him in jail?” Hunga was curious.

“They have alleged that he supports terrorists – criminals who kill innocent people,” Pinto said.

“They are wrong here. He cannot kill anyone. Even when men in khaki used to come and destroy our huts, he would stand in front of their vehicles, but would always tell us that we would win because truth and justice are with us. We won’t harm anybody and give a chance for them to punish us. He can’t do any wrong to any person. Take us to the officers, we will tell the truth,” Hunga said.

“They have got some books written in support of terrorists from his house and he has been arrested based on that,” Pinto said.

“Is reading books a crime? By reading a book, does one become a terrorist? Then all you people who read and write should be arrested, right?” Hunga wondered.

“It is complicated, I am waging a legal battle for him in the court. The police have asked for 15 days to reply to my request for straws,” Pinto said.

“Fifteen days? Till then who will survive without water? What is there to reply to such a request,” Dodhi raised his voice in agitation.

“We thought you city dwellers were more intelligent than us. But you don’t even know such a simple thing?” Hunga was sarcastic.

“We are full of unexplainable contradictions,” Pinto sighed. “Let me talk to the authorities here and enquire about his health,” Pinto said while walking towards the gate.

The men waited for him near the gate in the hot sun. Sometime later a white van drove in sounding an alarm and the gate closed. A few minutes passed and the gate opened once again allowing the white van to drive out fast. From the van, Pinto waved his hands and the men ran after the vehicle. While running, the bunch of bamboo straws fell from Hunga’s hands and lay scattered on the ground.