I should have just mailed her the letter. Stayed as far away as I could. But Aman had taken that promise from me. And in the end, it’s only that letter in my pocket that keeps me going night after night. It’s taken me more than a month to get here. I should hand it over. Before I get shot and it stays with me forever, with her never knowing.

I touch the letter lying just over my heart. Not yet. Not just yet.

It’s getting difficult to sit quietly. Everybody is tired, aching, dying to go to the toilet. The television sets blare on and on.

The demands seem to have caused a furore. Opinion is divided into two camps. There is the ‘He’s a terrorist and we can’t give in to terror, or it will be worse’ camp. And there is the ‘Innocent people are being held—let’s do whatever it takes to set them free’ camp. Both sides yell at each other in television debates. And we wait. Our pictures are aired again and again. The picture in which Diya used her hair to cover her face.

Bhai Thakur is getting a lot of play on TV, mouthing off about how we’ve encouraged the minorities too much. How every Muslim is a terrorist. Each time he appears, all of us wince. The terrorists mutter and spit. Their anger makes the place tense. The bloody bigot is going to get us shot faster.

The channels have begun tracking down the hostage story. Mr Bhonsle turns out to have a wife who refuses to talk to reporters and shuts the door in their faces. She sounds just like him as she snaps, ‘You people! No manners! Leave me my privacy!’

Other wives weep. Fathers beg for the return of their children. An old grandmother holds out her arms and wails, ‘Take me! Take me, not my children! What will I have left to live for?’

Malini sits up suddenly and clutches her younger child to her chest. Her husband has appeared on the screen. He looks tired and almost ill with worry. Manu begins jumping up and down, shouting ‘Papa!’ He is an ordinary-looking man with spectacles and a shock of hair that falls across his face. He looks numb with fear. His spectacles keep slipping down his nose as he talks. ‘Malini, I’m sorry. I should have said sorry in the morning. You have to come back. Please. I have to apologize. Come back to me.’

Malini’s chest heaves and she begins to cry. ‘We fought. There were no diapers, and he said he didn’t have time to go and get them. He would have been here instead of me and the children.’ Diya tries to comfort her, but she cries on and on, her shoulders shaking with silent sobs, so that she doesn’t wake her sleeping son. Manu keeps asking when Papa will come and take them away.

Then, several phones start ringing together, their racket cutting through the voices from the television sets. It’s the landlines on the desks.

Salim comes into the room and picks up a phone at the counter. ‘I have been expecting your call,’ he says. ‘How are you, SP Sahib? The last time I saw you was in court.’ He smiles. ‘I asked for you especially. You put me behind bars. You can atone by helping me get away.’

The harassed father appears on one of the TV screens again, making an appeal to the terrorists to release his wife and children. Manu suddenly begins screaming for his father. ‘PAPA! I WANT MY PAPA!’ he shrieks. A petrified Malini tries to put her hand on his mouth to stop him. He begins to shake and thrash around.

‘MAKE THAT CHILD SHUT UP!’ shouts Salim.

We try. But he fights us and keeps yelling. Malini is shaking in fear. She slaps him. Holds him. Diya tries to hold on to him. But Manu does not stop. He is rigid and drumming his heels on the floor and screaming. We don’t hear a word of the conversation that Salim is having. Then, suddenly, Manu goes limp and begins to sob bitter tears.

Even without the sideshow, I don’t think Salim’s conversation goes too well. He isn’t smiling when he hangs up.

Kabir