The Trial

By Andrew G. de Silva

There is a tense silence in the Court as the Judge waits for the return of the Jury. Two black-coated lawyers whisper to each other. The atmosphere is so peaceful that one can hear a pin drop. The Judge gravely strokes his wig. This is almost the end of a fatiguing period of incessant work for all taking part in this legal drama. There is a slight noise in Court as the Jurors return it. The Judge leans forward and asks the Jury whether they have arrived at a verdict. There is a gripping silence. I can hear hearts beating around me. My heart beats the loudest.

From my place in the dock, I see the Foreman of the Jury getting up. He does not look at me. So I know the verdict. I know that they will find me guilty. "We have, my Lord," replies the Foreman, "We find the accused guilty."

The thin, reedy man, who has been taking snuff at odd intervals and whom I have been calling my lawyer, seems to be stunned at the verdict. The entire trial comes back to me in one wave of emotional frenzy. I see the prosecution start the case by remarking that this is the worst murder in recent times. I agree with the prosecuting counsel. I think of the details of the crime: A boy of fifteen years is attacked by a chimpanzee and killed on the spot. The killing is brutal. The chimp has broken free from the chain that tethers him. He finds the boy trying to run away. In one leap he overtakes the boy and throws him on the ground. The animal tears its senseless victim's clothes to shreds. The struggle is short. The boy dies on the spot. I am on the spot myself - and what a spot. I come rushing on the scene, chasing my Alsation dog who is drawn by the sight and smell of blood. I have the dog's chain complete with collar and jingling bells. I find the chimpanzee quite calm and almost innocent looking. His evil deed is over. He almost looks a seraph.

I am still there. The crowd collects Reporters, Photographers from nowhere. A cine Cameraman too. Cops from the blues.

They take me to the Police Station. I am questioned. They question me in relays. They ask me the same question in at least ten different ways. I have the same answer. I tell them that I am innocent. They don't believe me.

All through the night they question me. I tell them that I never saw the boy before. They want to know what I was doing there at that time. I was taking the dog for a walk, I reply. They don't believe me; the dog is not to be seen anywhere. They ask me whether it's a lonely spot, "Yes," I say. Again they continue the same questions.

I am sweating. I am exhausted. Beaten. Chopped. I am without lunch, tea or dinner. It's morning again and it happened last morning.

I tell the Police I cannot sign any statement. I am a car driver. I know a bit of the law. They say they have recorded my words on tape. They may record my words on marble for all I care. I need a lawyer, I insist. I must see my master. They get my master. He's an industrial magnate; glass and plasticware. He is told I cannot be bailed out. My master gets me a lawyer with a weakness for snuff.

I hear the Prosecution say that I was at the scene of the crime because I had urged the chimpanzee to kill the boy. As I know the chimpanzee - what friendly relations - the animal does not attack me, says the Prosecuting Counsel. My lawyer jumps up, looks at the Jury, takes a pinch of snuff, looks round the Court and sits down. The Jurors are not impressed. They're like wooden statues and their eyes are like moving marbles.

The trial goes on. The two lawyers fight a verbal duel. They've got the details of the case right in their blood stream. It looks as if the chimp is also on trial. They are calling him by all sorts of names. The chimp is not impressed. At time he laughs; at times tears roll down his cheeks. I think the poor devil is off his nut. Why don't they have a lawyer for the chimp? They can plead he's off his top and get him out easily.

The lawyers finish their pieces. They're like funeral orations. According to the Prosecution, I am worse than Crippen, Haigh, Jack the Ripper - all rolled into one. According to my lawyer - bless the poor fool - no greater saint than I ever trampled a patch of grass.

The Judge sums up. He tells the Jury that if they believe that I knew the boy before his death, I am guilty. If they think that the chimp took my orders and killed the boy, I am guilty. If they doubt that the chimp takes orders from me or that I got the boy killed, then the benefit of the doubt goes to me. He tells them to consider the problem of the missing dog.

But why should I, Jacobus Ranaweera, get the chimp to kill the boy? I could kill him myself without the aid of the blooming chimp. Now it's useless thinking of all that. The Jury's verdict is there.

The Judge leans forward and asks me, "Is there any reason why sentence of death should not be passed on you?" I look at the chimpanzee. The chimpanzee looks at the Jury. The Jury look at me. Must I say that I never saw the chimp before? Before I found the boy horribly murdered? Must I say that the chimp was never mine? Must I protest my innocence? What can I tell the Judge?.

But there's a disturbance in Court. Somebody gets up from the benches. He's a shady-looking fellow, the sort that wears odd clothes and sells betel. One may mistake him for a street palmist. I think he's the chap who had the cine camera.

"My Lord," he says, "this man is NOT GUILTY". The fellow must be mad, I think. Here's a mad chimp, a mad man, a mad Prosecuting Councel, a mad Judge. Have I come to a mad house? Laughter in Court. "Silence".

"Let him speak," the Judge says. I think this Judge fellow is mightily puzzled. He doubts my guilt. He doubts my innocence too.

"My Lord," says the man in funny clothes and there's a terrific noise in the chimp's cage (close to the dock) as the animal dances about - "this man came on the scene when the deed was done. The chimpanzee was trained to kill and he killed when I gave him the orders. He was to have 'killed a dummy, not a real live boy'. I was making a film of the scene. But the chimp got out of hand. If the accused had not come on the spot, the chimp would have killed me too."

"What happened to the dog?" asks the prosecuting lawyer.

A foolish question, I think. The dog may have taken a jump into the sea, lost itself or been knocked down in an accident or robbed by the guy in funny clothes.

"How do I know?" counters the chap. Laughter in Court.

"What prevented the chimpanzee from killing you?" asks the Judge.

Two Cops have come from nowhere and are standing on either side of the man. The noise in the cage increases.

"The accused made a noise with the bells in the dog collar. That tamed the chimp at once. He's trained to be obedient to bells."

The man pulls out a string of bells. Peals them.

The chimp is silent. The two Cops remove the man. The Judge nods to me.

Yes, I am free.

(All characters are entirely fictitious).

Wackiest Weddings

"It's the same all over the world. Little girls hate little boys, then they get married," says the British Airways Advertisement. Everyone dreams of getting married at some point in their lives, and everyone has their idea of a perfect wedding ceremony. Not all of us can have virtual reality weddings, or get a priest to agree to don a wet suit and help us tie the knot under water. But maybe some of us can do it the Pamela Anderson way and get married on a golden beach, with the sun and the surf surrounding us.

Yes, all of us can dream, can't we? Your wedding day is the most important day of your life, where you take centre stage, for a few magical moments. So it's natural to want to go all out on the arrangements and try and come up with something truly special.

The conventional 'something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue,' wedding, with a long white dress and lots of roses, and if you're lucky, a horse and carriage, is still favoured by many couples. But nowadays people want something different, and venues and wedding arrangements are getting wackier by the wedding.

So what plans do the 'as yet unmarried' have for their dream weddings? And do those already married wish they could have done it differently?

Nawaz Khan is a 47-year-old Pakistani national. "I wish I could have got married at the Taj Mahal in Agra, on a moonlit night, with the shadows of the Taj Mahal falling on the water, and the water reflecting my happiness." He wants to wear a turban and ride up to his blushing bride on a handsome stallion, or alternatively have the girl of his dreams arrive, 'to steal my heart away," in a rose-bedecked carriage, drawn by four pure white horses.

"I love the traditional Indian weddings, with their street processions, and the band and the dancing. To get married that way would be heaven. Wow!", he says, with a dreamy faraway smile. So how, in reality, did he get married? "At the registrar's," he says, with a laugh.

While many of us have a variety of ideas about the way we want to get married, many of them are maybe within reach. The bride will be dressed in a long white flowing dress, the altar bedecked with flowers, and so on. Not so for 72-year-old Harsha Jayawardene, a grandfather of two. But maybe with some careful research and planning, his dream too might be possible one day, but for some other younger couple, he says.

"Don't laugh," he begins, "but old people are allowed to dream too, aren't they?" He wants to find a primitive tribe somewhere in the jungles of Africa or the Amazon, paint his face the way they do, get dressed up in their idea of wedding finery, and get married according to all their traditions. "I think that would be exotic and different, and a unique way to celebrate a unique day," he says, but clearly his wife's bemused look meant that she prefers the conventional wine and roses wedding they had so many years ago.

Shehana Ali, a 35-year-old housewife, says that she if she was to have a wedding ceremony all over again, she would do it the same way she did 12 years ago. "Nice and romantic, with lots of flowers."

Instead of all the fuss of the material aspects of the wedding, Sona who works at YA TV says she would focus on the fact that a marriage is "a union between two souls who make a commitment to the one above and to each other." She says that instead of going into the material aspects of the wedding, she would like to focus on the spirit in which it is conducted.

How many of us would like our carefully arranged dresses, our make-up and painstakingly tamed hair, to be sacrificed to the merciless battering of the sea breeze, for the sake of a romantic wedding on the beach. Jehan, a 22-year-old, who didn't want his real name revealed, as he doesn't want to be publicly associated with this kind of thing, says that ever since he was a child, he has always wanted a wedding on the beach. But then, he doesn't have all these details to worry about.

"I want to get married on a moonlit night with the whisper of the waves breaking on the shore. Plus, that means there won't be too many people, as not many can be bothered standing on a beach in their Sunday best, and I can be alone with my bride." But, he says, above all this, his dream wedding would be simply to marry the girl he loves.

Let's see if the advertisement has got it right. We asked nine-year-old Amali how she would like to get married. "I don't like boys. They're always teasing me and pulling my hair. And they're all dirty."

Fazleeha Miskin wants to get married on the beach too, "with very few guests." She doesn't want brides maids or best men. Instead, she says, she would like to have lots of little flower girls and page boys. Fazleeha wants to wear a saree, as she wants as Indian an atmosphere as possible. But, she insists, the most important feature of this is she absolutely has to 'ride off into the sunset, on my honeymoon, on a handsome black stallion."

Nineteen-year-old Sanjay Sinniah wants to get married in the Pacific Islands. Sounds romantic, and... normal, doesn't it? Wait till you hear why. In his case, the mother-in-law paranoia seems to have struck home. "They have this custom there, where you get to do away with your mother-in-law." Answering an incredulous look, he says, "I swear, I really do, it's a custom there."

Anita Pillai's idea of a dream wedding is somewhat different, more the conventional type, you could say. "I think most weddings are a lot of show, so I want a really simple wedding. I want everybody to get a beautiful tiny bible, and for there to be a beautiful service with lovely songs," she says. "I want it to touch people's hearts, to show them God is real." Then, as most young girls fantasize, she wants her husband to declare his love for her by singing her a song.

But, she says, she does want a beautiful dress and to look gorgeous, and for the church to be decorated with loads of pale roses. Also, she stresses, strictly no alcohol at the reception afterwards.

Chris Danbolt wants to exchange vows 'somewhere in the Caribbean'. But the details may surprise you. He wants to start the ceremony off on a cruise ship. The priest and the newly-weds have to dive over the side, and the couple has to exchange vows underwater. As it is his fantasy, he says, he goes a little further, and says it would be nice if it was an arranged marriage, and the couple saw each other for the first time, underwater, as they exchanged vows. "Oh, and instead of bridesmaids, I would throw in a few dolphins to act in their place. Then the couple would surface, and continue with the reception.

Maybe Nishan Weerasinghe's fantasy wedding, is relatively more achievable. He wants to dress up as Tarzan, and get married to his Jane in the jungle. Then, he adds, "it wouldn't be a legal wedding though. I'd first wait for one or two years, to see if she was a suitable wife, and then present her to the world, with a decent and traditional, church wedding."

If everyone got to act out their fantasy weddings in reality, the wedding guests can be assured of visiting a number of very interesting places. And who knows, once people get used to the idea of wacky weddings, dreams could come true, in more ways than one.

More Mirror Magazine * Young Inspirations * The Cure for Split Ends

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