For forty years, the Peacock had waited. Cell 15A was where he was locked up, but to the Peacock, it was more of a dungeon than a cell. No one knew who he was; no one knew where he came from. The people who had known him were all dead and gone, and all anyone knew about him now was the name Peacock.
The Peacock was kept in solitary confinement, and that’s how he had known life to be. He was a young man when he came in, for something he didn’t remember anymore. If anyone asked him if he was innocent or guilty, he would simply shrug his shoulders and look away. Truth was, he himself wasn’t quite so sure of it now after all these years, having heard so many versions of his life from so many people.
The Peacock was known as the Peacock as he always kept a peacock feather with him. How he got it, no one knew. The feather had been with him for as long as anyone could remember. He could not have got it with him when he came in, as the custom in the prison was to strip search every prisoner who comes in. Hidden drugs, blades, even strange bits of paper were found from the strangest of places, but nothing of the sort was found on the Peacock. A year into his sentence, however, on the anniversary of his incarceration, it was decided that he would be taken outside to the courtyard for a stroll and a bit of fresh air, under heavy guard. As the door was unlocked, they found the Peacock sitting there calmly, cradling a bright colourful peacock feather in his hand. They didn’t know where he got it from, but the name stuck. Soon, they forgot his real name, and he became the Peacock for the rest of his life.
His life had been in the prison. His youth, his best years, they were spent alone, in the company of the four walls that held him, and his beautiful peacock feather. Most of his days were spent looking through the high window at the ceiling outside; after a while, he began to notice the different hues of the sky every day. His nights were spent in the darkness, wondering about life, about the purpose of it. He used to think of the many people outside of those four walls, and how they had reasons or purposes in life. Did he have a purpose in life?
In the eyes of the guards, he was just another prisoner. If you asked them, they would probably tell you that the Peacock did not have any reason for existence in life. It was close to the truth, but while everyone else stopped thinking at that point, the Peacock didn’t stop. He kept thinking about his reason for existence – one driving force for his life, something that justified his existence. He wondered for many initial months about that, and found that there was only one thing he wanted. It did not matter if he was right or wrong, guilty or innocent. Freedom was all he craved for, and since that day, that freedom, both in the abstract and the tangible form, became the driving force of his life.
Over the span of forty years, the Peacock hardly ever spoke. As the days passed by, and the guards got changed, one by one, his voice was lost. Soon, there was no one who remembered what the Peacock’s voice had been like – another small addition to that mystery of his being. There were those who wondered why he didn’t speak, and what it was that he used to keep thinking, but overtime even those people slowly faded away. Soon, he was just another face amongst the many prisoners, the only difference being the bright peacock feather he owned.
The new set of guards came, and the annual trips to the courtyard stopped. Now, the years were lost in the sheer flow of them, and the Peacock aged away, thinking and wondering and fantasising about that tantalising dream that dangled in front of him. That was all that fuelled him for those many years that he spent on that cool stone floor, or the warm, firm mattress on his bunk, cut away from the rest of the world. The only assurance he had about the existence of an external world was the small square of sky that he could look at from his room. Every morning, he would have the sun sliding into the room through that little window, and fall on his face. The warmth of the sun was the first thing he felt every morning, and in spite of being a prisoner, he woke up with a smile on his face.
It was the sun that shone through that little window every night that gave him that ray of hope, the assurance that freedom was just above him. Once or twice, a lone Magpie would fly and sit on the ledge of that window, tapping on the glass. The Peacock wished that the magpie would stay there forever, that it could teach him what freedom meant, and how it felt to be able to fly and dive and swerve under the blue skies, that it would witness the day when that dream finally came true, that the Magpie would one day see the Peacock fly.
There was one little luxury allowed to the Peacock – the luxury of books. The guards had a small library, and the prisoners were allowed one book at a time, and they could take all the time with that one book as they wanted. After all, they were in prison, and they did have all the time in the world while they were in there. So, the Peacock went ahead and used this luxury as much as he could. Over the years, he became a prolific reader, so much so that the guards had to make a new rule of one book per week just for the Peacock. Even so, no other prisoner read as many books during their stay as the Peacock did.
He respected the writers, as they had found that calling in their lives. The books that they had written, the stories they told, the words they said – that was the reason for their existence. The Peacock found a lot in common between him and these writers, and wanted to know them as much as he could. So, he read, one book after the other, and kept hoping that one day, he too would find that calling in his life, that one day, even his purpose of life, his reason for existence, would be fulfilled. Like the writers wrote their books, dreaming of the stories and plotlines, the Peacock thought endlessly about his freedom, the way it would come about. He waited for that moment to come patiently, for he knew that in the moment, when his life would be given reason, the wait would be worth it.
So, he waited, and little by little, in his own ways, he moved forwards towards that thing that he wanted for such a long time. He ate right; he exercised every day, and seldom fell ill. He firmly believed that whatever may happen, his body was the best instrument he would ever get. Minute by minute, hour by hour, fitness regime by fitness regime, book by book and word by word, he went from a helpless trapped soul in a dungeon to being a man focussed on one thing in his life. He had found his calling too, the reason for his existence, over time – freedom. The realization of that purpose didn’t come about as an epiphany. It came about gradually. He didn’t believe in fate in his youth, as most young minds don’t. In his little cell, with one conversation chasing another in his mind, his focus kept growing.
In those years of solitude, he wondered about fate. He started realizing that maybe, this was the reason he was born, that maybe this was the reason that his life had turned out the way it had. There are always an infinite number of possible outcomes of an event in the universe, yet here he was sitting in that little cell. It must have meant that for him to be at that point of time in that particular place, out of all those infinite possibilities, the string of events were such that it decided for him to be here. Fate, somehow, never seemed to stop following his thoughts around – yet he was not as naïve as before. Over the many years that he had spent with himself in that little cell, he had begun to accept fate, and it was because of that thought that he started wondering if it was fate, in a manner of thinking, that had brought him to that place, that had brought that little peacock feather to him, that had made sure that his thirst for freedom could be given the opportunity to manifest itself in such concrete, tangible form.
He looked at the peacock feather in his dark calloused hand, and wondered if that was a part of fate as well; if it was in the plan right from the start that the peacock that wore the feather proud, would one day lose it. He wondered if it was chance or fate that had brought that peacock feather from the peacock’s tail to his hands, whether the peacock that had shed the feather knew just how much it inspired the trapped Peacock
During the first few months that the Magpie had been visiting the Peacock, he envied the Magpie. He would stare hungrily at the way the Magpie could flutter its wings and go right out of the window, but then the Peacock always noticed that come what may, the Magpie always returned. Over time, the Peacock started feeling a slight pity towards the free bird; in spite of being free, it couldn’t really fly away wherever it wanted to. The bond between man and bird had grown to a point where the bird unknowingly was tied down to the man. The bird always had a choice to fly away, and yet it didn’t – it couldn’t. The familiarity of the cell, the comfort of an area well known to the Magpie always drove the Magpie to the little cell. The familiarity was in a big part due to the presence of that familiar smiling face that was always present in the cell, with the big brown hands that never wanted to grab. Once, the Magpie had mustered up the courage to swoop into those hands, and although the hands were soft and warm and gentle, the Magpie’s instincts were too strong. Except that one time, the Magpie’s mind never allowed him to settle on the man’s hand.
It was the Magpie that first noticed the absence of the Peacock that day. Expecting the Peacock to be there, awake and waiting for their late evening tryst, he fluttered into the little cell. The cell was empty, and the Magpie’s little mind was confused. It called out to the man he had befriended over the years, but got no reply. He waited for a while, and then that night, with a heavy heart, went his way.
The Peacock had known that this would have happened, that in some way or the other, the Magpie would be hurt, but mighty fate was stronger than a tender broken heart; and so, sitting free on the roof for the first time in many, many years, he tried to hold back the tears as he heard the Magpie’s lament for a disappeared friend.
The Magpie’s cries that night alerted the guards. They knew the sad song belonged to the Peacock’s bird-friend, and they rushed forwards to the cell to see for themselves what the matter was. The door swung open, and the empty cell greeted them. Instantly, the sad song of the Magpie was replaced by the shrill cries of the guards – there was an escaped prisoner about. The Peacock heard the uproar, and smiled gently to himself; it was time.
The rooftop was at once the safest and the most dangerous place in the prison. Sitting there, the Peacock felt like one of those many birds that he had hoped to become for a long time, and yet he knew that he would be spotted soon. The cries were getting closer and closer, and still, he was a free man, sitting on a rooftop like a carefree bird, cradling that big peacock feather in his hand. The guards spotted him sitting there, and yet he was impervious. The guards yelled, they screamed, but the Peacock was too busy enjoying that freedom which he had been craving for so long. The rifles were loaded, and the shots were fired. Bullets flew all around him, buzzing around him like superhero bees on a mission to catch him dead or alive. That was the Peacock’s cue – he knew sitting there on the rooftop, he was a sitting duck. And so, with the bullets still buzzing around him, he got up and embraced his freedom.
He took a deep breath, a free breath. He felt the outside air, filled his lungs with it, and wished he could reach up and touch the grey night sky. He was ready, he was free, and his destiny was fulfilled. He had pushed his name a little beyond that line which divides the mortal from the immortal, man from superman, human from a wild, free beast. He looked down at the guards, and saw that they were angry – a mere violent human emotion, a needless by product of frustration. He smiled, yet again, and looked at the feather.
“It’s time to fly, my love,” he said to the feather in a low voice. Then, one last time, he looked back to the guards below, shaking their fists at him and firing the bullets that seemed to go anywhere they liked. His white teeth gleamed in the darkness as he smiled yet again, and whispered in that low voice, “See ya suckers! I’m outta here now…”
A stray bullet from many miles below caught him on the back of his head, and he fell from the roof. The peacock feather slipped out of his hand, and the wind caught hold of it. For a while, the feather flew with the wind, then gently floated downwards, and was swallowed by the darkness that waited below.