Chapter Seventeen

On 2^nd January 1993, Dad came home a very troubled man. Mother immediately talked—one may even describe it as babbling—about dinner: food being her solution to all of Dad’s problems. It showed on Dad too. For a police inspector, he would have been described as portly if he wasn’t as tall as he was.

“Sit down, love, and rest. I will make chappatis. I have kneaded the flour and kept it covered so that the chappatis become soft. You know you love soft chappatis. I bought the seventeen-rupees variety of wheat. I tried the fifteen, last time, and you did not like the chappatis. Maybe it is the level of gluten in the wheat. I will make the phulkas, the small puffed ones that you so like.” Mum, delivering a monologue of uneasiness about the silence, immediately went into the kitchen and started rolling out chappatis.

Dad silently pulled off his socks, went to the small shower, pulled the shower curtain that separated the kitchen from his bath. We did not have showers or running water, and a bucket full of water was what we dipped a plastic mug into and washed ourselves. The kitchen dipped into silence, except for the steel spatula on the iron pan as Mum fried chappatis on it, and the splashing of water as Dad’s shadow behind the curtain scooped water and poured it over his head in successive arm movements.

We followed his bathing silently sitting in the smoke-filled room, smelling fresh cooked dough on the pan and the spices blended in the fish curry Mum had put on the fire for reheating. Now occupied with soaping his body, we followed his bathing till we heard water splash once again. From years of experience, we knew not to disturb him with questions during this time. Dad did the questioning; maybe a fallout of the job in the police department. He did not take very kindly to being on the other side of the table. Silence continued till I broke the air with the BBC broadcast on the radio and Mum joined me in the living room, waiting for him to finish his bathing.

He stepped into the living room not much later and Mum once again bustled into the kitchen.

“Dinner is served.”

“Can we sit a while, here? I have something to tell you both.” Standing in his office earlier that day, Dad had been seized by the dilemma of how to mitigate the tension in the city caused by the pulling down of the Babri Mosque a month earlier by Hindus who had claimed it stood in the sacred place of Lord Ram’s birth. He’d stared at the falling plaster on the wall, making mental notes to get the maintenance department on the job. The f---ers, he thought, we have just renovated this building. Cheap f---ers, the walls are so thin I can hear everyone breathe in this bloody place. Then he realised the real source of his annoyance: his assistant in the next room talking incessantly on the phone!

“Yes, yes, we have the list,” he was saying. “Billimoria Building?”

At which point Dad leaned against the wall to hear more closely.

“Yes, yes, one family. Where? Second floor, corner room, above the Irani restaurant. Yes, yes, I am sure they are Muslims. Farooqui, what do you expect them to be, Brahmins? Of course I am sure they are Muslims. Okay, okay.”

Dad had no doubt that this was a call for a hit on the Farooqui family. He had been aware for a while that something was amiss. Chaos had set in. Cause and effect. Chicken-and-egg syndrome. If we don’t get them they will get us. There seemed no end in sight—the panic of survival from the very beginning of time! Disturbed, he went back to his desk and began to change the blotting pad on his desk, too distraught to move. He did not know how to address this. He came home a very troubled man.

Mum said, “Ali?”

“His family and their property.”

“Haven’t they faced enough? His father has just been killed.”

“These are not the best of times, love.” Dad now stood to go to the dinner table.

“Can’t you save them?” Mother, who had followed him as he sat to dinner, kept piling his plate with food now.

“This disturbance is more ground level, my dear. You know, grassroots, civilian. Leaders may instigate, but nothing happens without the participation of civil society. The police, though they have a role in maintaining law and order, are also part of that very same civil society. They form part of the same social fabric we are all woven from; same religion, same culture, same fears. They have families that are part of civil society. No, love, I don’t think I can do anything alone.”