Kabir

Bastard. He’s stealing my jokes. Chatting up the girl. Even managing to make her smile. Then he talks about her singing and suddenly she is sad. Harish tries very hard to get her back into the conversation, but she is far away, lost in some memories that make her keep blinking back tears. She uses her hair as a curtain to hide her face. That beautiful hair. I want to reach out and run my fingers gently through it.

Harish tries his desperate best, but it is only when we hit the chocolate that Diya begins to talk again.

‘What I can’t understand is why nobody is doing anything,’ says Harish. ‘I mean, where is the army? Where are the Black Cat commandos?’

‘Guarding some doddering old politician,’ I say.

‘Man, someone has to do something!’ he says.

‘They should have done it a long time ago,’ I say. ‘If you let injustice lie until people are willing to pick up guns to get what they want, then you’ve let it lie too long.’

‘Injustice? They’re terrorists, man!’

‘But they have a point. Their temple was pulled down.’

Harish is furious. ‘But they blew up things in retaliation, didn’t they? Bomb blasts across Mumbai. In trains.’

‘And in other places, riots happened in which the police stood by doing nothing. Mobs went in search of Muslims with lists in their hands.’

‘They blew up the twin towers, man!’

‘Stop it, you two!’ says Diya suddenly, furious. ‘Stop it. If you try to figure out who started it you’ll have to go back to the beginning of time. One injustice does not justify another. Everyone has done unjust things to each other. Everyone has killed. There is nothing you can do about the past. You can only decide what you are going to do about it today.’

Harish and I are silent. She is so angry, but she makes so much sense.

‘What can we do about it, man?’ says Harish. ‘It’s all political.’

‘Yes,’ says Diya. ‘A lot of it is political. A lot of it is manipulation and manufactured. Yes, politicians and religious leaders use it all.’ Her voice turned to contempt. ‘But we let it happen. It’s people like us who believe things without checking the facts. Who turn a blind eye when bad things happen. Who don’t stand up and say—this is wrong!’

‘Come on. We can’t change anything,’ says Harish.

Diya speaks softly, but her voice is filled with feeling. ‘I used to think like that. Until Sharmila made me promise.’ Her eyes go the old lady bent over the dying man.

‘I’ve been thinking about what I can do. And I think there are many times when you can stand up and say—this is wrong. That’s where it starts from. From ordinary people who are sick of all the hate taking a simple stand. Writing to newspapers. Stopping someone from saying ugly things. Just saying to someone, “No, that is wrong”. I think that’s where we start from. From us. From each one of us.’

She suddenly realizes she has the attention of the whole group. Everyone has stopped eating and is staring at her. She shrugs and quickly looks down, letting her hair fall across her face. She uses that hair like a curtain. To shut herself off from the world.