Real Independence on I-Day

Way back in 1992, the same day according to the English Calendar was a black day for the Karnataka Police. They had lost two of their eminent officers S.P Harikrishna and Shakeel Ahmed while trying to catch the notorious Veerappan in the Meenyam forest. Details can be obtained here.

What I am going to tell here is not related to it in any sense. It was the eve of Independence Day and Veerappan scalped two important wickets of Karnataka Police. The very next day, I had experienced the first ever death in my home.

August 15th 1992. I got up at my usual 8 o' clock. Came down to brush my teeth and perform my daily karma. I was in my 4th standard. Was getting ready to go to participate in the I-Day celebrations. Mohan Chikkappa was reading the days' newspaper and he was reading about the Veerappan news. He said that Harikrishna's body would be brought to the cemetary near dairy farm(Hebbal, pretty close to our house, 2.5 kms).

I went to bath. Mohan Chikkappa was going to wash his clothes. His habit is to listen to music and wash clothes. He had an apparatus which consists of a lengthy wire and a tape-recorder along with a flex box. He used to plug the wire on the flex box, carry it all over the open space where we wash clothes and keep the tape recorder there and play songs through tap or radio.

Bad day for him, the wire had un-noticingly dipped into the water tank beside and he had plugged it on. I was still taking my bath when i suddenly heard a sharp but short sound of pain. I thought somebody should have slipped. Suddenly(gracefully) the power went down after 5 minutes. But that was sufficient. His mother, my grandma came in search for him as she had called him and there was no reply from him. She saw him ducked in the water tank but was wondering what he was doing in there and why wasnt he replying. She went to him and shook him and was horrified when he came to her arms just like that!

She hurried and called everybody @ home. Everybody were panicking and nobody knew what to do. By the time i had finished my bath and was silently standing by the side of the hall watching the things happening around. Doc was called but were effortless. He was dead by then. There was a scar on his palm. A scar of 2 cm diameter and 1 cm deep i guess, made by the current passing through his body. Many methods were followed to save a dead man but in vain.

I can still recap each and every thing happened on that day. Some are worth not mentioning in this post (Dont ask about it). Our hotel was shut down and everybody were dumbstruck. All you could see were the weeping women, some men consoling our family members.

It was around 3 when post mortemed Chikkappa arrived home for the last time. It was reported that he was dead by accident in a current shock(which was obvious). Around four they took him to the cemetary, and was burnt again by "Electric Shock". They didnt allow me to go to cemetary thinking that i would get scared seeing things there. He had found independence on the Independance day.

When they were returning back, they saw Harikrishna coming to join Mohan Chikkappa.