Sunset

It was a usual autumn evening with nothing usual about it. Streets were deserted, shops closed, flags kept fluttering over cycles parked in a row. At the end of the lane could be seen an old man walking away with a long stick in his hand. His hand clasped around it, was tight and sweaty. He sauntered along for a few more steps and eventually stopped, probably too weary to carry on any further. The burden of a single, unholy evening seemed to be mocking at him, in the face of his entire pool of worldly woes gathered across his years. He sat down to rest by the lamp-post at the edge of the street and looked back at the bloody lane lying wasted in front of his eyes.

As the twilight faded and darkness crept in, nonplussed, lights flickered on in the houses. They oozed out into the lane through small chinks in the windows. A handful of bricks from the stack left abandoned by the construction workers were lying scattered, pell-mell across the lane. The old man was staring at a lone slipper lying unclaimed; pointing towards the blind end of the lane where a heap of indistinguishable assortment was dumped in a bundle. On its left was a small rented hall which was previously used as storage for the local liquor shop. But they had to move to a more spacious go-down when their business expanded. Opportunity thus having presented itself, the local youths wanted to have the hall to play carom and watch cricket matches. They could move in a carom-board and a television very quickly. And so they got to be the keepers ahead of anybody else who might have had other designs. The boys, however, in order to buy some goodwill, started organising a charitable feast every year during Diwali. But it was not just a celebration of the symbolic victory of good over evil. It was more tangible than that and less grandiose. It was about the feast, the feast that exalts the awe of lights and the joy of Eid-ul-fitr, which by some logical design perhaps, falls around the same time. It thus became a happy solemnisation of an unwrinkled homogeneity of two inseparable wheels of their centripetal society.

It was, however, the end of September and the festival season was still more than a month away. But by some strange turn of fortune, a blotched history of the world outside, long forgotten by them, reared its head up again. It was as if providence had come knocking on the door. This rumble shouldn’t have made its way into their lives but television with all its subtle polarisations had made broad inroads inside, seamlessly joining their small town with all of those people whose likes, dislikes, opinions or anguish mean nothing to them. These folks liked to celebrate their little joys once a year and they were happy about it. Despite that, the palpable stiffness running under the sheets throughout the country was also visible on their faces. Old people looked resigned; the young whispered and threw furtive glances here and there. Business was halted and money was neglected.

The old man barely scrapped his living by sharpening knives. When he went out to buy bread and eggs that morning, his wrinkled forehead was oddly smooth. His normalcy was abnormal. His simplicity was inscrutable. In the evening, tongues of smoke were still rising idly from his torched cottage while he was sitting down beside the lamp-post staring at the single slipper. Somebody had randomly tried to splash water over the engorging flames. All the mayhem had subsided by then and a haunting silence had enveloped the lane. The hall at the end of the street was locked and forsaken. He did not know whether it was a revenge for loss or a celebration of victory. He could not understand their emotions. He could only see blood in their eyes. The frenzy of an alien sentiment came and rocked his world, a sentiment that nobody among them understood completely. He could see it in their eyes; a misplaced sense of an identity that had been forced upon them, an identity that promised a dynamic exit from their mundane existences. The adrenalin must have been blinding. But it also had to settle down. He could sense the fear of their act now settling on their conscience. Something imperceptible had snapped that evening. But he did not try to make sense out of it. He just wanted to blame somebody to feel better because he could not fight back. But there was no feeling better. The damage had been done. His eyes fell again upon the obscure bundle lying a few yards away. The old man shuddered impulsively. The bundle consisted of some torn clothes, a single slipper, a college-sack and the curled up, limp body of his foster grand-daughter. Her wavy-brown hair was dirty, the clip still loosely hanging on to a couple of strands. Her eyes were wide open with terror, her defiled modesty staring back, enraged. She was clutching the small strip of the cloth that was used to gag her to death. Her wrists were purple with struggle and her heels bruised as they had chafed desperately on the rough floor.

He had found her when she was eight years old, orphaned in the last communal riots that had shaken the country to its roots. She used to help him out with his daily chores and he paid for her education. The symbiosis was mutual and unspoken, as was the relationship between them. The old man walked towards her and stood still for a long time. He finally bent down, sat on his knees and shut her eyes with painful tenderness. And suddenly, the terror that was screaming out from her face seemed to evaporate into the darkness. She looked serene once again. There were still no tears in his eyes. He covered her with his sprawling red gamocha and started walking back, reached the edge of the lane, and sat down again by the lamp-post. It was reckless, insane and ignorant. But however ignorant or reckless it might be, the stimulus behind it germinated elsewhere. It came as a much bigger design, a predicament that concerned a huge lot of people. But somebody had managed to narrow it down for him - the end of his beloved grand-child.

A window opened timidly and the sound of a television came sailing adrift. A serene voice announced evenly: “The verdict for the demolished mosque was met with a positive response by both communities. Although there seems to be a passive discontent among certain sections, incidence of violence is absent. The Prime Minister said that it is a victory of the idea that is India and that he was very happy to...” The newsreader went on, but the old man had fallen asleep, beside the lamp-post, exhausted, leaning on his stick for comfort.