Hero

"You better stop shooting and save some bullets. You only have limited number of those." says a voice in the dark. Rajat opens the chamber of his gun and sees that there are only 6 bullets left. He looks around from behind the piller, which is covering him from the gun fire from the other end and sees the mess around him. He sees plenty of glass pieces scattered all over the place. There are bullet holes in almost everything in the room. The cotton pieces from the sofa are floating in the air. The only thing that is not damaged in the cross fire is the TV, which is at the far corner of the room and it is playing the dubbed version of the mandarin movie Hero starring Jet Li. It's 7:30 on the wall clock with a broken minute hand, which seems to have stopped ticking when a bullet hit it. He checks his watch, it's 10 now. He says, "as if you have an unlimited supply." "No, I don't and that's precisely why I have stopped shooting already" replies the voice from behind the bar table. Rajat remembers hitting him on his foot before he jumped behind that table.

There is silence for some time before Rajat speaks,"how long are we planning to sit like that? It's really painful sitting quietly waiting for eternity." "We can talk, if you are interested." the voice replies. "What should we talk about?" Rajat questions. "Have you seen that movie? The one on the TV right now." the voice continues speaking, "can you please increase the volume a bit?" Rajat looks for the remote and finds it lying in front of the TV on the floor. He answers,"Hero! I have seen this one, in mandarin though. Had to read the subtitles to make sense of the dialogues. It's really painful watching the movie reading subtitles when you don't understand the language. By the way, remote is too far from my reach and I am not exposing myself to your gunshots." "I am not shooting at you right now." the voice explained. "But you will at the first opportunity" added Rajat.

There was silence again. Rajat puts the gun on the floor beside him and pulls out his vallet from his pocket. There is a picture of a woman. He looks at the picture and touches the face in the picture gently with his thumb. A smile runs over his face, which soon changes into comtempt. "Don't you wanna know, why I want to kill you?" he asks looking back towards the bar table. "I know and I don't blame you for that. I might have done the same, had I been in your situation," the voice replies, "but I cannot let myself die just like that. I will try my best to live, even if it means killing you."

"So, do you remember the story of this movie, Hero?" the voice said after few minutes of silence. "Barely. I watched it mostly because I like this Chinese marshal art. People flying in the air fascinates me." Rajat replied with little indifference. "In the movie a nameless warrior played by Jet Li conspires with three other great warriors to get an audience with the King, so that he can kill the king and revenge the killing of his family by king's men." the voice continues, "When he finally is in front of the king and is about to kill him. The king unafraid of his death, examines the scroll by one of the three great worriors involved in conspiracy and realises that the ideal warrior is he, who has no desire to kill." the voice speaks further, "When the nameless warrior realises the true intentions of the king, he leaves him unharmed."

"What's your point?" asks Rajat looking at the picture of the woman in his vallet. "Nothing. I was just talking about the story of the movie. By the way, in the end we are told that the King of Qin united the Middle Kingdom under one rule, unifying the Chinese language, its weights and measures system, completing the Great Wall of China and ushering in the Qin Dynasty of a unified China. The King of Qin became Qin Shi Huang, the First Emperor of China. So you see, his intentions were never wrong and had the nameless warrior killed the king that day, China would have never been the great empire it became later." the voice answers. The voice speaks further after a small pause, "When you barged into my house, you were very angry. You were not thinking clearly. Now you seem calm. Think about it. My intentions were never wrong." Rajat doesn't say anything.

The voice has stopped talking and there is silence once again. Rajat, who is still looking at the picture, takes the picture out of the wallet, puts the wallet back in his pocket, picks up the gun, stands up and starts walking slowly towards the bar table. He walks behind the bar table from where the voice was coming and looks down. He keeps the picture on the table, pulls a handkerchief from his pocket and wipes the gun clean of any finger prints. He keeps the gun on the picture and looks down again. Rajat gets his cellphone out of his pocket and dials a number. "Hello!...Rajhans Hospital?...I am calling from Swarn Bhavan, there is a man lying unconcious here and he seems to have lost a lot of blood due to a bullet wound on his foot." He disconnects the call and slowly walks out of the room.