Not a nice story

I was at a friend’s house in Bandra when the riots broke out. I walked all the way back to Colaba — passing gutted timber shops, petrol pumps, policemen in full riot gear. It was a long journey. Ending the day on the terrace of a Cuffe Parade building I saw the fires sending up dark fingers of warning. And I realised that this was not my city. There were other claimants.That it was divided a hundred ways. That under the optimistic surface something dark and ugly had always simmered.

Afterwards the city picked itself up. Attendance at offices hit record highs. The city went on. Until the Bomb blasts that is.

We heard the first rumbling thump while editing at Nariman Point. Somebody said a bomb had gone off. We joked that we would tell the client we couldn’t deliver his film on time because of a bomb blast. I had to pick up my mother from Bandra and drop her to Dadar TT to catch her train back to Calcutta. I had no idea it was going to be another long journey.

The area around the Air India building was a confused mess of shouting people and thick clouds of dust. We speculated all the way to Dadar on what had happened. At least three or four people must have died. How terrible. We had no way of imagining what had really happened. But at Shiv Sena Bhavan we fell silent. Here there were twisted cars blown across the street. Crowds. And silence. It was the strangest thingthat I had ever seen. A crowd of hundreds and rustling silence.

More silence at Plaza Cinema Hall. Not much to see, and no crowd. Just a black exclamation mark of soot smudged across the street. The train ran into a silent station. Goodbyes were said in whispers. Here was silence on the long ride back until the gaping raw hole that was Prabhadevi reduced to me tears. I thought of daughters,,waiting for buses to go home, who would never arrive.

Driven by impluse, late that night a friend and I went to the Stock Exchange. It stood, gapped and deserted. The street was a litter of glass fragments. I imagined the glass flying like knives on the wind. Stood there in silence. The silence that had steeped the day after the first explosion. I didn’t realise that I was saying goodbye to something that I had loved dearly. That I was marking the moment between before and after.

Afterwards the city picked itself up again. Life went on. Only small things seemed to have changed.

Small things. No more staying outlate.The city shut itself in by 9 o’clock. Out later than that you felt uneasy, found yourself growing watchful. Small things. Searching for houses we discovered those near Millat Nagar were cheaper. And it became a decision — did we want to take the `risk’ of living there? Small things. Saying goodbye to a dear friend who left the city, tired of the stares and whispers that followed her as the only Muslim living in a Hindu locality. Small things. Small whiffs of fear rising from the invisible wound. Small spoor of the invisible beast.

The city I loved with no reservations was Bombay. The other city I live in — but I watch warily, anticipating the sudden savagery, waiting for the eruption. Never entirely trusting it. Bombay was my friend, my cheery companion. Mumbai is where you think twice before you have an argument with someone while driving — you never know who he may be.

Mumbai is where you now ignore and keep walking when some lout passes a remark. You never know what could happen. Mumbai iswhere when the voice at the other end of the phone has a surname like Gawli, you freeze. Mumbai is where you don’t stand at the door when you take a local, in case the rage that lives by the railway tracks explodes into showers of stones.

Small things. Small things mark before and after.

Then last week I opened the paper and found headlines that cut my India neatly into before and after. Missionary and two sons torched. This cannot happen in India, I thought. This is not my India.

January 26 came straight after that headline, after the statements, and denials, and fuss. I was surprised by the sudden surge of patriotism that I felt. The emotion that was almost anger with which I thought, `This is my India and nobody is going to take it from me’. Then I watched the Republic Day Parade and realised that I was watching it half as goodbye. That I was marking the moment between before and after. That I had just seen the first crack.

But where do you go when the ground beneath your feet has been cut intwo?

Venita Coelho is a television script writer.