|
|
|
 |
A real and orphaned dream from The Ministry of Utmost Happiness, Arundhati Roy, Penguin Books, New Delhi, 2018.
In that (graveyard) setting, Anjum would ordinarily have been in some danger. But her desolation protected her. Unleashed at last from social protocol, it rose up around her in all its majesty - a fort, with ramparts, turrets, hidden dungeons and walls that hummed like an approaching mob. She rattled through its gilded chambers like a fugitive absconding from herself. She tried to dismiss the cortege of saffron men with saffron smiles who pursued her with infants impaled on their saffron tridents, but they would not be dismissed. She tried to shut the door on Zakir Mian, lying neatly folded in the middle of the street, like one of his crisp cash-birds. But he followed her, folded, through closed doors on his flying carpet. She tried to forget the way he had looked at her just before the light went out of his eyes. But he wouldn't let her.
She tried to tell him that she had fought back bravely as they hauled her off his lifeless body.
But she knew very well that she hadn't.
She tried to un-know what they had done to all others - how they had folded the men and unfolded the women. And how eventually they had pulled them apart limb from limb and set them on fire.
But she knew very well that she knew.
They.
They who?
Newton's Army, deployed to deliver an Equal and Opposite Reaction. Thirty thousand saffron parakeets with steel talons and bloodied beaks, all squawking together:
Mussalman ka ek hi stan! Qabristan ya Pakistan!
Only one place for the Mussalman! THe Graveyard or Pakistan!
Anjum, feigning death, had lain sprawled over Zakir Mian. Counterfeit corpse of a counterfeit woman. But the parakeets, even though they were - or pretended to be - pure vegetarian (this was the minimum qualification for conscription), tested the breeze with the fastidiousness and proficiency of bloodhounds. And of course they found her. Thirty thousand voices chimed together, mimicking Ustad Kulsoom Bi's Birbal:
Ai Hai! Saali Randi Hijra! Sister-fucking Whore Hijra. Sister-fucking Muslim Whore Hijra.
Another voice rose, high and anxious, another bird:
Nahi yaar, mat maro, Hirjon ka maarna apshagun hota hai.
Don't kill her, brother, killing Hijras brings bad luck.
Bad luck!
Nothing scared those murderers more than the prospect of bad luck. After all, it was to ward off bad luck that the fingers that gripped the slashing swords and flashing daggers were studded with lucky stones embedded in thick gold rings. It was to ward off bad luck that the wrists wielding iron rods that bludgeoned people to death were festooned with red puja threads lovingly tied by adoring mothers. Having taken all these precautions, what would be the point of wilfully courting bad luck?
So they stood over her and made her chant their slogans.
Bharat Mata Ki Jai! Vande Mataram!
She did. Weeping, shaking, humilitated beyond her worst nightmare.
Victory to Mother India! Salute the Mother!
They left her alive. Un-killed. Un-hurt. Neither folded nor unfolded. She alone. So that they might be blessed with good fortune.
She tried to un-know that little detail as she rattled through her private fort. But she failed. She knew very well that she knew that she knew very well that she knew very well.
The Chief Minister with cold eyes and a vermillion forehead would go on to win the next election. Even after the Poet-Prime Minister's government fell at the Centre, he won election after election in Gujarat. Some people believe he ought to be held responsible for mass murder, but his voters called him Gujarat ka Lalla. Gujarat's Beloved.
| |
|