Rashomon Effect

Part-I

“I don’t understand it”, cried the poor cobbler. The wind rustled through, heavy rain pouring all over. “This must be a mistake”, “It has to be”, the monk mumbled. Thunder blazed and the rain continued. The two men were sheltered in the decrepit, old lounge. In its time it must have been a famous hotel by the road for travellers and tourists who passed by this road to visit the nearby mountain but now it was reduced to nothing but few pillars, torn down roofs with water running through and walls of wood not holding by much. Since the new road opened with a shorter passage to the mountain, people slowly stopped going by this road and due to lack of business activity the owner ultimately abandoned this building and left. This was Rashomon- The corpse of a resort which was now sheltering these two stray men from the storm. Then came running another man seemingly to find a hideaway from the rain. “Ah! Looks like the rain isn’t going to stop anytime soon”, the man said. “I don’t understand it”, “I don’t understand it”, kept on saying the cobbler. “Aye baka, what are you crying about?”, asked the man. “I don’t understand it, it doesn’t make sense” “what don’t you understand? Tell me maybe I can help”. “Oh no, no one can. It’s us the humans, what have we done?”, the monk intervened. “See we have a very wise and enlightened man among us” “come on both of us can surely help you”, the man said. “It is about a story. A story no one has ever heard before. A story of lies. A story of murder.”, said the monk. “Then it shouldn’t be such a surprise. Murders happen all the time here. You know they bombed an entire town not too far away from here, you know how many died there?” “But this is different. I’ve been through wars. I’ve seen assassinations, witnessed countless heinous crimes but this one is different. How can the humans become like this? I have lost faith in humanity. ”, replied the monk to the man. “Oh begin already, I want to hear this extraordinary story of yours”.

The monk went on, “A human’s existence on this planet is limited. In the afterlife he has to pay for all the crimes he has done in this life and in the past lives. He must pay for his crimes only then he will be free of this cycle of life and death, of hate and suffering, or greed and malevolence. Yet in his lifetime, humans commit all kinds of sins, lives his life without sincerity or devotion for God. Humans have become so self-centred, the human soul has decayed…” “oh stop with the preaching.” , interrupted the man. ”I did not come here for a preaching session. It was just this rain so I thought it might be good to kill time by hearing your story. Tell me the story, only the story.”

“Yesterday when I was walking to the monastery after a preaching session at an old man’s home who used to be a postmaster and just retired from 40 long years of service. He called me to hold a sermon with his family members on the occasion of his retirement and new life.” “oh no not another religious propaganda”, said the man. The monk looked at the man with sharp eyes, gesturing that he’s coming to the point. “when I was returning from there, on my way, I saw a man and a child in a car, race past me. I could not get a clear view but I saw the child was tied with a rope to the seat and his mouth was taped. I tried to follow them but they were too fast but I noted the car’s number with which the police tracked that person down and caught him. We were called in to testify this morning.” “I, I was there”, murmured the cobbler. “It was in the evening, in a ditch few kilometres away from the road where they maybe passed the monk. That ditch is a desert like landmass through which only a single solitary road passes by. There is no other settlement or even a street light around there. I was dragging my cycle home from my shop where I mend shoes. That day I received a special order from a regular customer to replace the heel and outsole of a pair of shoes which he needed the next morning for a job interview. So I decided to take them home. There after walking a few minutes into the ditch, I saw a red car crashed on the right side of the road, there was still smoke coming out of the bonnet. Somehow it crashed with the single elephant tree there was in that ditch, which even after five years of going from that way, I never really paid attention to. There was no one in the car, just a wallet in the back seat. There was a rope lying there and a few feet away from the car there was a corpse of a man. I had never seen a dead body before in my life. I screamed and ran away from it as quickly as possible. I was so terrified, I even dropped the shoes I was carrying in the bag when I grabbed my bicycle and headed towards the nearest police station.” “So that’s it? Who was that man? Who killed him? What happened to the kid?”, said the man. The monk took over, “then we saw the whole thing unfold at the trial. The dead man was allegedly the kidnapper but there was another person involved except the kid. They caught him through a call from a doctor’s clinic nearby, who told the police that a suspicious looking man was waiting there with a gunshot wound and arrested him. What happened after at the trial is still unbelievable. It was so horrible, my heart refuses to believe that. “What? What did he say? Did he admit it?”, again asked the man. “He and the kid both were present at the trial. The kid ran away and collapsed near our monastery. We reported about him to the police. We heard both their testimonies and it doesn't make sense. Its baffling really. They all gave different accounts of what happened. All were repugnant, crying aloud the vile nature of humanity. It was hard believing anything after that. My faith is shaken …...”

"This time the story is inspired from Akira Kurosawa's masterful morality tale- Rashomon"