by Keya Ghosh
‘A good man?’
‘Bhaijaan, please. He is like a brother to me.’ I knew I had said the wrong thing. I knew it in the silence. I saw it in the expression on my brother’s face—I had signed Aman’s death sentence with my words.
My brother put his face close to mine. I could smell the alcohol on him. ‘I am your brother,’ he said. ‘I am the same brother who was in their jails for three years. Who never saw light for three years. Who bore pain. Who bore torture. Who bore everything. For what? For you.’
‘I know, bhaijaan,’ I said. ‘I know. Forgive me.’
‘And you have forgotten me for . . . this?’
‘No. I can never forget you. Forgive me.’
‘Forgive you? When you turn your back on everything that I did for you? When you betray us? Betray me. Betray your own brother.’
‘You are my brother. I cannot betray you,’ I said.
My brother put the gun in my hands. ‘Go on,’ he said. ‘Prove that you are my brother. Put a bullet through his head.’
The gun was heavy in my hands. I looked at Aman on his knees in front of me. He looked up at me. His face was calm. Almost smiling.
‘Shoot him,’ said my brother.
Diya
It’s time for the next death. The minutes have counted down and I haven’t noticed. Everybody has their eyes on the door. Some eyes are sliding over to Kabir. It’s his turn.
‘Tell me,’ I say. ‘Tell me before—’
We hear Salim at the door. Kabir looks at me. We have run out of time.
But it is not to our group that Salim comes. He walks past us and into another room. Kabir takes a deep breath and closes his eyes.
On screen, the presenter is wearing a black band. He sombrely announces that they will no longer be telecasting the executions. Instead, they will observe a one-minute silence. He asks the nation to join him. The noise of the television running non-stop suddenly becomes silent. The screen shows the national flag.
We strain our ears in that sudden and unexpected silence. We hear garbled shouts. Screams. Then the unmistakable sound of a single shot. It is followed by a volley of shots. There is silence again.
Somebody hears the sudden silence. Somebody is in this moment. But it is not me. I am lost in darkness. I am lost in a story that I don’t want to hear the end of. The minute of silence takes forever to slide past. I count the seconds slowly. I cannot bear for them to end. I cannot bear to hear the end to Aman’s story.
The voices on the television set come back. Their horror, their sorrow is shrill in the room. I speak under the cover of the noise.
‘And you killed him?’ That’s not my voice. I don’t recognize it.
Kabir opens his eyes. There are tears running down his face as he replies, ‘No. I laid the gun at my brother’s feet, and with folded hands I begged for Aman’s life.’
Kabir
I begged. I grovelled. ‘Bhaijaan, let him live. Please.’
‘Has he made you mad? Has he turned your mind?’
‘No, bhaijaan.’
‘His father is the man who orders the bullets. Who kills our children in the streets. Who fills the jails with the innocent.’
‘He is not responsible for what his father does. He has not killed anybody.’
‘And will we not kill the children of those who kill our children?’
I never thought I would say it. ‘An eye for an eye will only make the whole world blind.’
This enraged him. ‘Blind? The whole world is blind already! It does not see us. It is deaf. It does not hear us. It does not care for us.’
‘Please, bhaijaan. I beg of you. I beg for his life.’
‘Shoot him,’ said my brother. ‘Or you will have betrayed everything we believe in. You will have betrayed me. Shoot him.’
I looked into Aman’s eyes. The moment he had talked about had come. ‘No, bhaijaan. I will not kill,’ I said.
Aman smiled at me. There was blood dripping down his face. He was on his knees facing death. And he was smiling.
My brother picked up the gun and pulled the trigger twice.
One.
Two.
I closed my eyes. I closed my eyes and stumbled away. I heard Aman fall in the snow. I did not turn my head to look back. I couldn’t. My tears froze as they fell from my face and lay like diamonds on the ground. In my head I saw Aman, smiling up at me with such pride.
Diya
I don’t want to believe it. I don’t want to believe what he has come thousands of miles to tell me.
Let this end another way. Let him not be dead. Please. Let there be a miracle and another twist to the story.
Let him not be dead.
His voice is choked with tears. ‘I lost two brothers that day. The one that God gave me. And the one I chose.’
His grief is silent. Tears roll down his face, and he makes no sound. Finally, he says, ‘I should have kept quiet. I should have not said a word. I opened my mouth and I killed him. I could have saved him somehow, but I didn’t.’
Kabir
I fell to my knees in the snow and stayed there. I heard them drag him away. ‘We’ll dump him at his father’s door,’ said my brother.
Still, I knelt unmoving in the snow. I heard my brother say, ‘Leave that one be. He is no longer my brother. He is a traitor. Let him be. He is nothing to me now. Aazadi does not need traitors.’
I heard them walk away. I could not move. I knelt there until the day bled away into night. Then I got up and began to walk. I never looked back once. I could not bear to see the stain on the white snow.
The snow was falling. I walked on with the darkness thick before my eyes. I was lost in a world of night with no path before me. Everything around me began to vanish. There was nothing left except darkness and bitter cold. I was shaking with my cold and grief. There was no point in carrying on. I lay down in the snow and looked up at the stars. They were so beautiful.
A house of stars. I’d dreamed of it so often. Drawn it so many times that my mother laughed at me. ‘You’ll have to put on a roof,’ she always said. ‘Or the snow will get in.’
And I always asked, ‘But then, how will the stars get in?’
I gazed up at the sky and knew that I had finally found the house of stars that every man finds at the end.
Then I heard his voice in my head. ‘Get up. You have to get up or you will die.’
I laughed. ‘But I want to die, Amanbhai.’
‘You cannot,’ he said. ‘You made a promise you have to keep. You have to find her.’
‘She is too far away,’ I said. ‘The stars are closer. Leave me here. I am going to count them.’
‘You called me bhai. You cannot break your promise to me.’
‘You are dead, Amanbhai. I want to be with you.’
‘No. I need you to be with her. She is alone now. Get up.’
‘Please, bhai. It is so peaceful here. No more killing. No more pain.’
‘Get up.’
‘I hate this world, Amanbhai. People kill other people. I hate it. I won’t be part of it any more.’ I lay there and told him all about my pain. ‘I left my mother and father. Today I left my brother. I lost you. I have no one. The world has taken every scrap of love I ever had. I lost two brothers today. If I stay here, at least I can join one.’
But Aman only said one thing again and again. ‘Get up. Keep your promise.’
At that moment, I had a choice. I knew what I wanted with all my heart. I wanted to lie in the snow, peaceful at last. There was such peace alone out there in the woods under the stars, with the snow falling and the world holding its breath. But I had made a promise, and I chose to keep it.
Struggling back to my feet was the hardest thing I have ever done. The snow was still falling as I began to walk, putting one foot in front of the other. Aman stayed with me at every step. We walked together through that long, long night.
After that, he never left me. Not for a moment. It was his voice that gave me c
ourage. That kept me going.
We hid together. We lied and stole food and just kept going. And we talked about love.
‘What is the point of your letter? You are gone.’
‘I want her to know I loved her. And love never goes away.’
‘Lies! Lies!’ I shouted. We were on a train. Heads turned to look at the madman talking to himself in the doorway. ‘It all goes away. Nothing good stays. Only hate and killing and blood remain.’
‘No,’ he whispered. ‘Love never goes away.’
We were in the back of a truck that was travelling through fields touched with a fuzz of green brought by the spring.
‘You’re dead. What use is your love?’
‘Love is never wasted,’ he said.
We were in a deserted bus stand in an unknown town, late at night. ‘What is death, Amanbhai?’ I asked.
‘Knowing you can never again be with the one you love.’
‘I have been dead for so many years, Amanbhai,’ I said. ‘No one has ever loved me.’
We argued and fought and talked. Every step of the long way, he was there. And he led me to her.
Now I am in a mall, waiting to die. And Aman is gone. He left me. He led me to the girl that he loved, and he left me.
‘He led me here,’ I say. ‘From Kashmir to Mumbai is a long way. I came to keep my promise. That was the only atonement that I could make. So, I came to find you.’
She looks at me as if I’m a monster. She looks at me as if I’m telling lies.
‘Aman is dead,’ says Diya. Her voice is blank.
‘Yes,’ I say. ‘I’m sorry. I am so sorry.’
‘And you are a terrorist.’
‘They call themselves freedom fighters. I don’t call myself anything. I don’t want to fight. I don’t understand freedom that is built on violence. It took the death of Amanbhai to make me understand that.’
‘Aman is dead,’ she whispers. There are tears seeping into her voice now.
‘Read the letter,’ I say. ‘I came all the way to give it to you. He made me promise, and I had to keep that promise.’
She looks down at the letter in her hands. Aman’s words. The last thing he’ll ever say to her.
Aman
My beloved Sunshine,
I love you.
My father keeps telling me that I am too young to even understand what love is. I keep telling him that Romeo was sixteen and Juliet was fourteen. I think grown-ups forget what they were like at our age. They don’t remember that they knew love.
This is what I know.
That I can tell when you enter a room without looking. That I hear your voice and my heart beats faster. That the first time I saw you, I was lost. That it is you. Only you. You are the one.
I know that I was searching for something. And you are the answer to everything I was looking for. I know that life changed the day I saw you. It bent around the shape of you. And now it will always be different because I have loved you.
The world is a dark thing filled with hate. But your love has been my light. My nights have been lonely. But your love has kept watch with me. My days have been filled with fear, but your love has laughed at my side. You are never away from me. Every moment you are in my heart, in my thoughts. Who can ever separate us? When you live here in my heart.
When you get this letter, I will be gone. But my love will always stay.
I know you will hurt. You will cry. Don’t, my beloved. Don’t. I could not bear it.
I want you to know that you have been loved. And no one and nothing can take that from you. I want you to remember that each time you feel alone. I want you to remember that each morning. I want you to remember that in the dark nights that never end. I want you to remember that with each cup of coffee you ever drink. You have been loved. As fully, as completely, as one human being is capable of loving another.
You have been loved with all my heart.
I love you. And I always will.
—Aman
Diya
Once, when I was little, I had a little box, all pink and gold with a tiny lock in the shape of a heart. I put all my treasures in it. Whatever treasure means to a six-year-old. Clips, a chewed-up pencil, a shiny bracelet.
Then I decided I was going to fill it with love. I insisted my father put his love in it. That my mother fill it with her kisses. They did so, laughing. Then I closed the box tightly so that I could save that love all my life. But in the morning the box was empty.
It has stayed empty all my life. The older I got, the more I realized that it was empty. My father never really loved me. My mother didn’t dare.
The last thing that Aman did was give me a gift. He gave me a treasure box. A box filled with so much love, it is enough to last my whole life.
Kabir
When she looks up from the letter, her eyes are filled with tears.
‘I’m sorry,’ I say.
She jerks back from the words. Then she snaps. She flings herself on me, slapping me, hitting me. ‘Sorry? That’s all you’ve got left to say? You should have saved him! You should have let him run away. You should have saved him!’
I make no attempt to defend myself. I just sit there while she hits me and shouts. I let her rant at me. She’s only saying the same things I say every night to myself. I let him die. I know that already. It’s a splinter in my heart.
The terrorists drag us apart. They are laughing.
‘Lovers’ fight?’ one of them asks. ‘What did you say to her?’
She wrenches herself free. She gets as far as she can from me and curls up like a child. Manu runs to her and puts his arms around her. He glares at me. I watch helplessly. I have to let her cry and do nothing. It hurts.
Why do the tears of those we love hurt us so much? More than if we cried ourselves. She cries, and it is me who is falling apart.
I don’t care if I die. I have done the last thing I promised to. Now nothing ties me to this world.
Salim comes back into the room. I stand up. I am ready.
Salim looks from me to her. She is weeping and won’t look at me. He bends over Diya.
‘What happened? Little tiff? Say goodbye now. He’s going to die.’
She turns away. She won’t look at either of us.
With one of his sudden changes of mood, Salim is angry. ‘He is going to die, woman. All he wants is a kiss before he dies.’ He grabs her hair and forces her face around.
‘No,’ I say. ‘Just let her be.’ I shudder to think of her lips on mine like this. In hatred and grief and anger.
Salim speaks in a coaxing whisper. ‘Don’t you want to give him a kiss before he dies? That’s all he wants!’
Diya turns her head and spits in my face.
‘Women,’ says Salim, laughing. ‘Unpredictable’. He lets her hair go and she reels back. He turns to me. ‘Shall we go?’
I turn for the door. I’m ready to go.
Nobody moves. No one says a word. Then I hear Harish’s voice. ‘Wait! You have to wait and listen!’ He’s pointing at the TV screen. The anchor is back on, and her tone is different.
‘The spokesman for the government has just made an announcement. The government will meet all the demands of the terrorists unconditionally. A plane will be fuelled up and ready to take off for any destination they choose in forty minutes’ time.’
No! I want to scream at her. Don’t shove me back into life again. I’ve done what I came to do. I have nothing to return to. Don’t save me.
Salim gives an exultant shout. His men mob him, hugging him and slapping each other on the back. I am forgotten. I stand there, stunned. Then I feel someone tugging at my jeans. It’s Harish. ‘Sit down,’ he begs. ‘Just sit down.’
I sit.
I sit there, blankly, while a spokesman of the government appears on all the channels simultaneously. He is making an announcement of the demands that the government has accepted. I stare at the screen, not able to hear him, dazed. All I can see is him scratching the
side of his nose again and again as he reads. Something keeps nagging at me. This is wrong. This is all wrong.
It is my brother’s voice that floats into my head. Just before we did our first ‘pickup’, he had vanished for three weeks. When he came back, he briefed us about all he had learnt. He taught us to read the official responses. ‘Be very sceptical of offers. If they are going to send someone in, first they’ll make a generous offer to get you off guard. Everyone gets relaxed. Which means slower reaction times. Less shots get pulled off. More hostages survive.’
I come out of my fog, and my brain works overtime, picking up clues and putting them together. This is classic misdirection. Give the kidnappers a false victory before you move. If they were going to send in a team, they would do it now, when the terrorists were buoyed with a false sense of victory. We were just about to get raided.
I know what I have to do. What Aman would have wanted. I have to get her out of here alive.
‘Harish,’ I whisper. ‘You have to be ready.’
‘Yeah, I know. To leave. To get back to our lives. I’m going to be a new man. I’m going to do everything differently, I swear!’
‘Listen to me,’ I say urgently. ‘No one is getting out of here. Not through the front door.’
‘What?’
‘I think the government is going to send in a commando team to get us.’
‘What? Really? What about them meeting the demands?’
‘Lies. Lies to distract the terrorists. Get them off their guard.’
His face falls. I have never seen anyone so disappointed. ‘Are you sure?’ he asks in a small voice. ‘Shit! Why doesn’t Salim figure that out?’
I look at where Salim is hugging and backslapping his men. ‘Arrogance. He thinks he has them by the balls. Fanaticism. He thinks God is on his side. Who knows? Stay alert. And if anything happens, we have to head that way.’ I point towards the inside of the store.
‘Why? The way out is in the other direction,’ he says.
‘We’ll never make it out from the front entrance. All that glass. That’s where they’re going to be coming in from. The only thing to do is get farther away. So we don’t get shot by mistake. Wait for the army to mop them up.’