by Keya Ghosh
They have the head of an NGO. ‘The judiciary has failed us. For every terrorist sentenced to death, another ten walk free.’
The chief of police. ‘We are studying the situation.’
The home minister. ‘We are studying the situation.’
Then a familiar face flashes on screen. Bhai Thakur. His voice is more strident than all the others. It rises out of the hubbub, loud and hypnotic. ‘Only people of one religion are being held hostage. All of you who share the religion of those innocents who are being held, will you not rise up and take revenge?’
Bhai Thakur had started as a small-time goon, terrorizing an area full of slums. Then he learnt that religion could be a ticket to power. He claimed the position of saviour of the majority and became the power behind a string of violent riots, all aimed at minority communities. He is a big name in politics now. He’s got there by whipping everyone into a frenzy about preserving Hindutva. Between rabble-rousing speeches and goons that bash anyone who protests, he has managed to get a foothold in the Hindu heartland. Today, he is wearing his trademark orange.
‘Will we stand by and watch our brothers and sisters being slaughtered by those who would ruin our country?’ He is warming up nicely. ‘All you terrorists be warned—it is said in your holy book “an eye for an eye”. We will take much more than an eye.’
This is too much for the old man. Mr Bhonsle stands up again and shouts at the screen. ‘Shut up! We don’t need this made worse by madmen like you!’
‘He’ll get us killed!’ another woman shouts. A salesgirl is shrieking away. An expensively dressed woman begins screaming, ‘Let me go! Let me go!’ A frantic fear seems to seize everybody at the same time. The noise grows as panic spreads. The terrorists look uneasily at each other as the hostages scream and shout.
Salim ends it with a bullet. He shoots at a TV screen that has Bhai Thakur screaming his endless stream of hate. The screen explodes like a bomb going off. The hostages all instantly fall silent. Bhai Thakur continues to rant on the other screens. No one dares to listen.
Salim speaks softly and menacingly. ‘You have all forgotten rule number one. Shut up and sit down!’ Everyone fearfully subsides.
Salim says, ‘Men like him make measures like this necessary.’ Another terrorist spits on the ground. ‘Do you think he would hesitate to cut thirty-six Muslim throats?’ says Salim. ‘But I am not him. I am still a reasonable man.’
Salim’s tone is quiet, conversational. ‘I have made reasonable demands. Now the government just has to be reasonable. A little plane so we can fly away—and all of you will be free.’
Not one word from the hostages. Even Mr Bhonsle is quiet. The only sound is the low moan of the security man who is dying very slowly.
The show is over. The armed men divide us into four groups, not willing to risk rebellion. I stick close to Diya and get shoved into her group. The other groups are moved to different sections of the store with a man each to guard them. They go quietly, all following rule number one. Salim goes with them.
We stay in the electronics section and watch TV.
It’s me and Diya. Harish. The old man. Malini and her two kids. Two salesgirls. One of them slightly older. The younger one looks like an intern. They cling to each other. We’ve kind of all just hung together and have been placed in one group.
Mr Bhonsle mutters, ‘That man was right. The government will never agree. We are dead people.’
‘Will you shut up?’ says Malini. ‘The children are listening.’
Silence falls on us.
It is broken by a scream that goes on and on. The moaning of the gut-shot guard has become part of the background, like the non-stop chatter of the TV screens. Now he suddenly shrieks and convulses.
‘Somebody please help me,’ says the old lady. ‘I need help!’ Beside her, the man writhes and screams in a puddle of his own blood.
Kabir
All the men with guns are watching. No one is making any move to help. I feel ashamed for all of us. That old lady is worth more than all of us together. She turns away from the guards and looks at us. ‘Please,’ she says. ‘Help.’
One by one, our little group turns away. Mr Bhonsle with a grunt. Malini with a helpless shrug. The two salesgirls drop their heads quickly. The old lady’s eyes are sunk deep in wrinkles. They fix on me.
I get to my feet. A guard waves a gun at me. I get back down and crawl over to her.
Behind me I hear the rustle of someone else moving to help. It is Diya. The two of us bend over the guard.
The security guard is in another world. But even in that world, there is pain. His eyes have rolled back in his head and he is screaming. A thin, high-pitched scream that goes on and on.
We once had a dog when I was small. A little bitch that I befriended on the road. My mother agreed to keep her only if she was sterilized. When the effects of anaesthesia were wearing off after surgery, that dog howled and howled. She had no idea where she was. She just kept howling. The man is like that. He is very far gone. But he keeps screaming without stopping.
‘I don’t know what to do,’ the old lady says. ‘I just don’t know what to do.’
I could have told her there’s really nothing she could do. But the screaming moves me to action. I gently lift the cloth she has pressed into the hole in his stomach. Blood pulses out of it but the hole is small. I’ve seen enough of these to know that the problem is on the other side. The exit wound is normally massive.
Diya is trying hard not to look at all the blood. ‘Come on,’ I tell her. ‘We have to turn him over.’ She takes a deep breath and nods. Brave girl.
He is a heavy man and has gone absolutely limp. We struggle to turn him. Everyone watches. And he just keeps on screaming. We get him on his side and Diya gasps. The exit wound is huge. Like someone has taken a hammer and smashed him. Diya closes her eyes.
‘No!’ says the old lady. ‘I didn’t realize—’
‘Give me cloth,’ I say. ‘Lots of it.’
Diya pulls off her dupatta and hands it to me. I wad it into the hole. It isn’t enough. The old lady begins ripping strips off her kurta. I use them to try and keep the wad in place. But my hands are slick with blood and I can’t tie the knots. They keep slipping loose. Diya leans over and holds the knot steady with trembling hands. Through all of it, the man screams.
She is so brave. So scared and so brave, determinedly helping me even as her hands tremble. Those beautiful hands. Covered with blood.
We put the man back down. The coppery smell of blood is in our nostrils. Diya’s face is white.
I say to her, ‘You did well.’
The old lady looks at me. I guess my face tells her what’s going to happen. She stands up and shouts at the terrorists, ‘This man needs a doctor! NOW!’ Nobody moves.
‘I said, this man needs a doctor! Can’t you hear me?!’
One of the men pulls out a mobile phone and speaks into it. A few seconds later, Salim comes through the door.
‘How many times do I have to say this?’ he says. ‘Shut up, sit down, and don’t cause trouble.’
That old lady isn’t shutting up. ‘This man needs a proper doctor. Just let him go. You’ve got all of us. Just let him go.’
‘What makes you think I care if he dies?’
‘You have demands. You’re negotiating. You have to give something to get something.’
‘Not when you hold the gun,’ says Salim.
‘You think you’re going to get out of here? You’re in a mall. In the middle of the city. There are hundreds of policemen. You are going to die.’
‘I have no problem with dying,’ says Salim. ‘I just want to take a whole lot with me when I go.’ He turns and begins to walk away.
‘Shoot him,’ I say. Salim stops and looks at me.
‘He’s going to die anyway,’ I say. ‘Just spare him the agony.’
Salim stares at me for a long moment. Then he grins. ‘I could have shot him a long time ago. I want him to
suffer.’ He starts walking away.
The old woman speaks. ‘I hope that one day you beg for a bullet. Beg for it and no one gives it to you. I hope you struggle for every breath in agony.’
‘Allah Malik,’ says Salim and closes the door.
The old lady sits down slowly. She raises the man’s head gently and places it in her lap. She strokes his hair. The screaming gradually stops. Her tears fall on his upturned face. I sit quietly on one side of her. Diya on the other side.
‘I am glad that I’m going to die soon,’ she says. ‘The world can’t break my heart any more.’
Diya
We sit there watching a man die. When I left the house this morning, all I wanted was one hour alone to think. I thought I had problems. Nothing compared to the problems I have now. Here I am, watching a man die and waiting for my own death.
The old lady wipes his face. ‘I’m tired,’ she says. ‘I’m tired of this hate and anger. This has become such an angry world. So ready to kill.’
She looks at me and Kabir. ‘You have to change things. You have to find a way to stop this. All this anger over religion. All this fighting.’
‘We can’t change anything,’ I say. ‘What can we do?’ I hate it when old people turn to us and say it’s up to us to change the world. They screwed it up. And we are supposed to clean up the mess?
My answer makes her really angry. ‘If young people say they can do nothing, who is left?’ She grabs my arm fiercely. ‘You have to try. You must try and try and never give up. You can make the difference.’
I don’t see how I can make any difference. But then Kabir speaks up.
‘You must become the change you want to see in the world,’ Kabir says softly.
‘Yes,’ she says. ‘That’s right. That is it exactly.’
She looks down at the dying man who has his head in her lap. ‘That’s what I tried to be. If I was lonely, I went out and talked to other people who looked lonely. If I was sad, I went out and tried to make someone happy.’
Her voice is soft. ‘It has been so many years since I was loved. They all died. My husband. My children. All my relatives, one by one. But I just found new things to love. I have a cat. I feed seven dogs on the street.’ She smiled at the memory. ‘They really love me, those dogs.’
She sighs. ‘I can’t afford to feed them. Not on the little bit of money that I have. So I steal. I don’t do it for myself. I don’t mind going hungry. But I want to feed my dogs and cat.’
Kabir says, ‘You’re not a thief. And you’re the bravest person I know.’
She smiles at him. ‘Thank you.’
She takes my hand between her soft creased ones, and then Kabir’s. She holds them tight. ‘You must stay alive,’ she says, ‘and then you must make that life count.’ There we are with our hands joined in hers. I avoid looking at him.
My life has never counted. I’ve always been just a pawn that my father used in all his grand plans. No one has ever asked me what I want. And I have never been able to change anything in my world. But that old woman makes me want to try.
‘I will try,’ I say.
‘Yes,’ says Kabir. ‘I’ll try.’
His hand is very warm. It makes me nervous. She lets our hands go and I pull mine back, trying not to make it look like I’m doing it too quickly.
‘Is there anything else we can do for him?’ she asks.
‘No,’ says Kabir.
‘Then both of you go back and sit down. I don’t want you to get in trouble. Just go.’
I put my arms around the old lady. ‘I don’t even know your name,’ I say.
‘Sharmila,’ she says. ‘Not that I ever was. My husband said I was badly named. He used to call me Jhansi ki Rani.’
Kabir kneels there, looking awkward. The old lady reaches out and pulls both of us into an embrace. She holds us close. We awkwardly bang shoulders, heads. We both pull back hurriedly when she lets us go.
As we crawl back to our places, the old woman is singing. A simple lullaby that a mother would sing to a child. Her voice cracks and wavers. But to me it is the sound of love.
Kabir
When that old lady hugs us, there is one moment when I’m so close to the girl that if I turn my head our lips will touch. I turn my face away, not even letting my mind go there. My heart, of course, thuds and skips.
All those nights that Aman had spoken of her, I had fallen asleep imagining a girl with sunshine in her hair. So many nights wondering if he saw her as she was or if it was just his love that coloured his gaze. Then I saw her. Now, I can’t take my eyes off her.
I should have just mailed her the letter. Stayed as far away as I could. But Aman had taken that promise from me. And in the end, it’s only that letter in my pocket that keeps me going night after night. It’s taken me more than a month to get here. I should hand it over. Before I get shot and it stays with me forever, with her never knowing.
I touch the letter lying just over my heart. Not yet. Not just yet.
It’s getting difficult to sit quietly. Everybody is tired, aching, dying to go to the toilet. The television sets blare on and on.
The demands seem to have caused a furore. Opinion is divided into two camps. There is the ‘He’s a terrorist and we can’t give in to terror, or it will be worse’ camp. And there is the ‘Innocent people are being held—let’s do whatever it takes to set them free’ camp. Both sides yell at each other in television debates. And we wait. Our pictures are aired again and again. The picture in which Diya used her hair to cover her face.
Bhai Thakur is getting a lot of play on TV, mouthing off about how we’ve encouraged the minorities too much. How every Muslim is a terrorist. Each time he appears, all of us wince. The terrorists mutter and spit. Their anger makes the place tense. The bloody bigot is going to get us shot faster.
The channels have begun tracking down the hostage story. Mr Bhonsle turns out to have a wife who refuses to talk to reporters and shuts the door in their faces. She sounds just like him as she snaps, ‘You people! No manners! Leave me my privacy!’
Other wives weep. Fathers beg for the return of their children. An old grandmother holds out her arms and wails, ‘Take me! Take me, not my children! What will I have left to live for?’
Malini sits up suddenly and clutches her younger child to her chest. Her husband has appeared on the screen. He looks tired and almost ill with worry. Manu begins jumping up and down, shouting ‘Papa!’ He is an ordinary-looking man with spectacles and a shock of hair that falls across his face. He looks numb with fear. His spectacles keep slipping down his nose as he talks. ‘Malini, I’m sorry. I should have said sorry in the morning. You have to come back. Please. I have to apologize. Come back to me.’
Malini’s chest heaves and she begins to cry. ‘We fought. There were no diapers, and he said he didn’t have time to go and get them. He would have been here instead of me and the children.’ Diya tries to comfort her, but she cries on and on, her shoulders shaking with silent sobs, so that she doesn’t wake her sleeping son. Manu keeps asking when Papa will come and take them away.
Then, several phones start ringing together, their racket cutting through the voices from the television sets. It’s the landlines on the desks.
Salim comes into the room and picks up a phone at the counter. ‘I have been expecting your call,’ he says. ‘How are you, SP Sahib? The last time I saw you was in court.’ He smiles. ‘I asked for you especially. You put me behind bars. You can atone by helping me get away.’
The harassed father appears on one of the TV screens again, making an appeal to the terrorists to release his wife and children. Manu suddenly begins screaming for his father. ‘PAPA! I WANT MY PAPA!’ he shrieks. A petrified Malini tries to put her hand on his mouth to stop him. He begins to shake and thrash around.
‘MAKE THAT CHILD SHUT UP!’ shouts Salim.
We try. But he fights us and keeps yelling. Malini is shaking in fear. She slaps him. Holds him. Diya tries to hold on to hi
m. But Manu does not stop. He is rigid and drumming his heels on the floor and screaming. We don’t hear a word of the conversation that Salim is having. Then, suddenly, Manu goes limp and begins to sob bitter tears.
Even without the sideshow, I don’t think Salim’s conversation goes too well. He isn’t smiling when he hangs up.
Diya
Salim hangs up and goes over to Malini. He leans down until his face is in hers and then shouts loudly. ‘I thought I told you to keep that brat quiet!’
Malini is glassy-eyed, exhausted, holding Manu as he sobs, her other child clinging to her arm.
She suddenly seems to focus on Salim—and something snaps. ‘You do it,’ she says. ‘YOU DO IT. You keep a child that is hungry and thirsty quiet!’
Salim’s face changes with surprise. But she just keeps going, ‘My children need food. They need water. We need diapers. We need to go to the toilet. We cannot go on sitting here like this. WE CANNOT!’ She is having a complete meltdown. ‘I will not sit here and listen to my sons crying FOR ONE SECOND MORE!’
Then she seems to realize what she is doing. Her hands go to her mouth and cover it. The fight goes out of her and the terror comes back. She scuttles backwards away from him, clutching both children close, looking horrified at what she has done.
Salim looks at her. Then he shrugs. ‘Give them water. Arrange for them to go to the toilet. Escorted every time. The door stays open. You stay visible. Even the ladies.’ The man with him nods. ‘And get that kid some diapers. He’s starting to stink.’
He walks away and Malini puts her cold hand in mine. She’s breathing in short gasps, unable to believe what has just happened. She has screamed at Salim Mukhtar. And he hasn’t killed her. We are getting food and water. Thank God.
Kabir
People have different things on their lists of stuff that makes them feel good. Sex tops a lot of lists. Massages. Showers.