The Mind Creative March 2014
Joypur was known to all and sundry as a sleepy town during the
eighties. Nothing really exciting ever happened. The summer of
1980 was different though. What began as an offhand laughable
rumour, turned into a storm of panic stricken reports of a
psychopathic killer who lurked around the lonely streets;
decapitating the unsuspecting passersby. For the residents of
Joypur, who had not even had the excitement of having a mugging
or a single murder in recent months to break up the monotony,
all this was indeed very exciting. Soon the unknown killer was
named “Murkatta” – the head chopper and with the excitement
came some unexpected outcomes. Hateful neighbours, who
detested each other with ferocious intensity, suddenly warmed up
to each other with stories about the “Murkatta”. Others, in the
Parihar Chowk suburb, spoke (with ghoulish pleasure, of course)
about the possibility of Mr. Chopra who worked the late shift being
a prospective victim. Mothers would rush down to the fences
whispering excitedly about the next strike and street corners,
corner shops, social dinners and schools would be agog with tales
of the Murkatta.
The increasing pace of the reports and rumours soon made it
impossible to distinguish between fact and fiction. In fact,
everyone soon realized that no one had yet seen a body with the
head chopped off. It was always a second hand report. And those
were in no short supply. A dhobi was rumoured to have been
beheaded during his early morning trip to the river for the first
wash of clothes and a beggar was rumoured to have been
discovered with his stricken head laid on his stomach while a
woman (a poor vegetable vendor) going early for her purchases
from the sabji mandi, was found without her head in the Centenary
Park.
However, the rumours came to a head when the decapitated body
of a rich trader was actually found by one of our neighbours. The
panic came home to roost and excitement was quickly replaced
with fear. No one was sure if this was the handiwork of the Murkatta
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