Smoke

January for me was the season of exams and gajar ka halwa and my birthday. This year it is different- no schools, carom and cricket all day long and no gajar ka halwa. Some people have demolished a mosque in Ayodhya and there are riots in my city. We can see lines of smoke on the horizon most days. Black and grey, going up into the sky- not straight- but crude.

My birthday is next Wednesday, but I don’t think we will have a party this year. Every year, Ma bakes a cake, Baba gets samosas and chips from the Agrawal stores and I get gifts- pencil boxes and water color sets and coloring books.

There is a curfew, so no school. Also no veggies and fish for us. I am bored of the rajma and dal every day lunch and dinner, but there are no vegetables in the market, only dry stuff.

We play cricket on our roof most of the day. And rest of the day it is carom.

We also try and collect rocks, bats, iron rods- whatever we can find that can be used as weapons to defend our home when mobs of those guys attack our colony. Everyday there was news about planned attacks by mobs on our colony.

So rocks and iron rods on the rooftop.

There are breaks in the curfew so that women and children can go to the shops. Going to the shop with ma, that is the only break from cricket. I never knew I can be bored of playing, all the time. I wish I had one of those video games- I know I can never be bored of video games.

No studies and no homework; I heard Ma and Baba talking about general promotion of the whole class to the next grade. That would be totally great.

Sometimes during the day, there are shouts of Jai Shri Ram from apartments in our colony. All of us kids also join in the shouts.

And most of the time there are lines of smoke on the horizon. One day we heard that the small tailor shop in the colony market has been burnt. I never realized that the tailor was not one of us.

The uncles from my colony, and my father too, they meet up in one of the apartments every evening and talk about what is going on. They ask the people staying in the corner houses to watch the roads leading to our colony, all day and all night. My father went to the Joshi residence one night to stay up whole night.

They also talk about how those people need a lesson, how those people get all the benefits that we should have got because of the politicians and why things need to be settled once and for all.

Arun has one of those oiled bamboo staff that he shows off with (rotating it all around like the movies, but he can’t really manage to pull it off- he is very thin). Harish has a nun chuck- his uncle got it from Hong Kong.

Last night, someone parked a tempo on our road- one of those pig snorted once. Ma and I take a tempo to the New Market when she needs to do shopping. I like the samosas in New Market. I can eat them all day.

The tempo parked on our road was painted a pale yellow color with green seats. There were flowers painted around the passenger entrance.

I don’t know anyone who owns a tempo in our colony. The tempo wala people live in the slums.

We played with the tempo for a couple of hours. I was the driver and Harish was the conductor- trying to sound like the conductors- nnnnneeeeeeewwwwwwwww markittttttttt!!!!! Arey Madaaaamm aaa jao, ekk rupiaahhh ekk rupiaaah.

The tempo was smelly, like old socks.

Someone put the tempo on fire last night.

I sleep in the drawing room- we have three rooms lined up like train carriages- the drawing room, the bedroom where my parents sleep and the bedroom where my grandparents sleep. The drawing room windows open to the road.

I woke up last night- maybe it was the bright orange, dancing light on the window, maybe it was the smell of smoke.

Baba was also up. We ran to the window and saw the tempo on fire. There was a strange sound- like cats sometimes make- crying, shouting and shrieking at the same time (it always scares Ma for some reason)

We ran downstairs with a balti of water. There was crowd on the road- Arun, Harish, their dads, other uncles and aunties- all in nightclothes.

No one was doing anything, all of us were just looking at the orange dancing fire. The smoke made my eyes water.

Someone got a balti of water and threw it on the tempo, we also started filling our balti and Baba threw it on the tempo. Then I saw this old man crying and shouting. I had never seen a grown up crying like that. He was pointing at the burning tempo and crying, and shouting for help. I could not understand what he was saying. We were helping with baltis of water, but now the fire was very hot, so we had to throw the water from a bit far away- most of the water was falling on the ground.

There were some new smells now- smell of cooking meat. And lots of smoke- thick black smoke and more noises that I have never heard. Animal sounds.

Suddenly Baba shouted at me- go home, right now! He also shouted at Arun and Harish. He pushed us away- towards the gate and shouted again.

I didn’t want to go away. I had only seen burning cars in movies- now one in real life (even it was only a piggy tempo).

We hid in the darkness below the stairs and peeked out.

Someone, maybe the crying old man, was screaming- he is burning, save him, please for God’s sake, save him. Baba saw us peeking and shouted, like I have never seen him shout- “Go Home Right Now!. I got scared and went home. Thamma, my grandmother was up; I sat next to her and complained about Baba.

I tried to stay awake for some time. I was waiting for Baba and Ma to come home. So that I can ask them about the burning tempo.

When I woke up today, I ran to the window to see the burnt tempo. There were a lot of policemen around the burnt tempo- there was no tempo- just something like an outline of the tempo and a bad smell.

Baba shouted- get in right now.

I was home the whole day. It was evening now- time for cricket on the roof. Harish and Arun are already there on the roof. They are talking in whispers. Arun tells me- do you know who was it?

“Who was what?”

“The man sleeping in the tempo.”

“But the tempo got burnt”

“And the man too”

“A man was in the tempo, who was he?”

“That is what I am asking, moron.”

A man got burnt. Arun shrieked in his excitement “Was he one of us or them? Papa says it was one of them, we killed one of them.”

But there was a man in the tempo.

“Papa says he was hiding in the tempo to attack us in the night, papa says maybe Gaurav bhaiya and his friends started the fire, papa says finally that good for nothing fool did something for us.”

There was a thin line of smoke from the shell of the tempo and that weird smell.