[hums of a seemingly incessant alarm…]
Kamil scathingly looked at the whining instrument of lore and switched it off. Groggily he muttered,“..shit!!.. its 6:30 am already..” He could have sworn that he had just closed his eyes for a moment the previous night. Outside, the day opened itself to the same mundane happenings. The sun was brightly poring into his eyes through the window and he could almost chant the distant mumble of the quotidian commute of the train. He had to take the office bus at 7:30, so that he could reach office by 8:15, just in time for the status call. Or else, face the cynical rebukes of the misanthropic Mr. Rao. Absentmindedly, he put on the slippers. The dog on the poster by his bed said, “The light at the end of the tunnel has been turned off due to budget cuts….”. “Yeah right!!” he maundered.
For Kamil, life of late had become an estranged ritual of philosophies, of setting milestones that seemed farther than miles and achievements that never seemed to materialize. At 24, when “normalcy” meant steady girlfriends, a steady source of income and masks and blinkers, Kamil had been fired from his previous organization and in desperation, had to join a call centre at half the pay. He was lucky that he got a day shift, but the work hours were humongous and required a great deal of patience handling the clients. Kamil was baffled; life didn’t hold any purpose for him. A degree in Mass Communication and not many jobs available; finally a job with decent pay, but then recession strikes and job cuts and then life at the call center. Not that he had the responsibility of supporting the family; both his parents were professors at the local college in his hometown, but the job status wasn’t exactly what he looked forward to. And of course, Kamil was a ‘stranger’ in the excruciating world of girlfriends and relationships.
The hebetudinous white bus screeched to a halt at the bus stop at 7:35. It was a 14 seater and there wasn’t enough space to hold 20. Nonetheless, one needs to adjust with the situations and Kamil sat down between his blabber mouthed colleagues Ron and Harish. “What a start to a day…”, he lamented to himself. Ron was the propagator of masaala news inside and outside the office. He always boasted of his sources and talked through his hat about the dilly dallies of the tell tale affairs inside the office. Short and stocky with child like features belied by extreme hirsuteness with a quintessential asinine smile at anytime of the day, Ron seemed to represent the gossip group of the nation. He began to tell how he had allegedly spotted Reshma, the HR head with Rao talking about further cuts in the team and claims of team downsizing. The topic went to the scarcity of jobs with “as usualness” to the order of the day, accompanied by the alleged affairs of girls in the office. “Damn man!!.. Heights of disillusionment..” Kamil angrily stuttered to himself.
The rickety old bus decelerated under the brakes and squawked to a halt at the narrow alley on the new market. This was a shortcut that the new driver had started to take, shortened the entire distance by atleast a km, but being a busy road with vendors and hawkers it took almost the same time. But today, it seemed different. In place of screaming vendors, there were screams of people running helter skelter in pandemonium. Kamil glared outside and saw a large group of people, smeared with orange and red, armed with flame torches and lathis and swords and wrapped in orange clothes in their head. They were shouting “Hey Ram, Sai Ram..maro kato….” The shops were in flames, the ones that seemed to have glass doors were smashed to smithereens and their contents spilled outside. The air smelt of putrid ash and charcoal. On the other side of the road, there were two Maruti 800s with their hoods on flame. There were the scorched remains of what seemed like a Hero Honda Splendor. The news had reported about possible disturbances in the new market area, with karsewaks proclaiming it a state holiday on the death of one of the leaders, else strikes and curfews would be imposed. But, destruction at this level was unexpected. The driver immediately stopped the vehicle and pelted outside. “Run run .. run. Get out of the vehicle…”All the employees immediately scampered out as the karsewaks started beating the bus with lathis and swords. Kamil ran to the shelter of a broken shop as the frenzied group chanted the Ram Dhun and poured petrol on the windows and top of the Mazda. The air immediately blackened with the soot, yellow and orange as the bus was set to flames. Kamil scuttled forward desperately making phone calls as the sirens of the Police became distinct.
The Police will make lathi charges, take whoever they find in custody and use the dispersal mechanisms of tear gas shells and water hoses. Public Violence had crossed all thresholds in the nation. Administering doses after doses of political gimmicks, inter party conflicts and the communal shroud as a buttress to every activity, public violence seemed like a repeated use which had acquired a tacit legitimacy over the years in the community. On one hand, when secularity preaches of oneness even in times of distress and the great Father of the Nation dreamt and preached against loosing one’s sense of judgment at any point of time, these means of political agendas had destroyed all sense of solving problems democratically. Democracy was at chaos burning itself at the pyre of Sati with delirious people chanting all around. Schisms of socio-cultural-linguistic mitosis, dividing itself again and again into smaller groups are an indication of this history hardened divide. The Great Indian Dream has simply become the Great Indian Divide.
Kamil looked around and saw leaders of parties had arrived on the spot, accompanied by half a dozen military personnel. In times of internal strife and turbulence like these, when the common man needed people who can handle disturbances, the government had succumbed to fissiparous and civil disharmony. Democracy was in shambles, stripped and assaulted time and again in the name of religion. But without proper institutions to support it and the civic culture which could safeguard it, Indian democracy has remained notional or nominal. In this situation it could be easily subverted by the communal movements and fascist forces. The political system has fallen prey to the maneuvering of the power politics. There are no effective civic organizations to watch over and guide the democratic process. In absence of democratic culture and values necessary for the healthy functioning of the democratic system, democracy had been reduced to mere mobocracy, representatives elected by mobs, driven by faith and feelings.
The taxi had been sent from his office, so that all the employees could return to their homes safely. Kamil saw his designated vehicle and sat inside along with two other colleagues. Somehow, he didn’t share the feelings of safety that his colleagues had started muttering. He looked at his soot blackened face in the rear view mirror of the car. He saw the face of a common man, a god fearing Indian and realized that the Great Indian Dream had fallen. He closed his eyes.
