Kabir

There was only one thing wrong with Aman. Gandhi.

I never knew anyone who had a worse case of Gandhi than Aman. He had read every single book the man had written. He could quote him, analyse him, memorize him. I put it down to his father being in the business of violence. He told me the story.

Aman’s earliest memory was of his father returning from a lathi charge. The front of his uniform was splattered with blood. Aman began crying, thinking that his father was hurt. But it was the blood of other people.

Aman stumbled upon Gandhi accidentally when his father was transferred to Moradabad. His mother was dead by then. The city was in the middle of riots, so his father kept him at the police station during the day to keep him safe.

Tired of waiting through the day for his father to return from riot duty, he began reading the books in the police outpost. There were twelve volumes of Gandhi’s writings on one small shelf. They were covered with dust and a couple had been eaten by termites. No one had ever read them. But Aman read them with fascination, asking the policemen for help with the big words.

His father would come back late at night after dealing with the riots all day. He never talked about what he did. The next morning, Aman would read about it in the papers. The fatalities. The blood that flowed in the gutters. How many bullets the police had fired. Sometimes there were pictures of those who had been gunned down.

He began to dread sitting down with his father. He watched him wash his hands before dinner and wondered whose blood was on those hands. He tried to talk about Gandhi to his father, tried to tell him about the strange, exciting ideas that were flooding his head.

His father laughed. ‘Gandhi. We salute him twice a year. And every day we do everything he told us not to, just to keep this country going.’

His father had become a man whose only answer was violence. That was all his life had come down to. He was paid to be a last stand. A butt against the head. A bullet through the brain.

It was not his father’s choices, but Gandhi’s principles which began to make sense to Aman. By the time the riots ended, Aman had that man inside his head for good.

How we argued, Aman and I.

I could understand hating violence. But worshipping Gandhi? Well, okay, he got us freedom and all that. But what did his non-violence get him? Three bullets in the chest from someone who disagreed with him. Bullets beat bhajans every time.

But try telling that to Aman. Gandhi was his God. How we fought.

‘You must become the change you want to see in the world,’ said Aman. ‘You want a more peaceful world? Then you stop being a terrorist.’

‘If I stop, will everyone else stop? Will the army no longer beat up people in the street? Will riots stop? How can one person change anything?’

‘All the change you can ever make is in one person. Yourself. You want change? Start with yourself. Put the gun down.’

In that instance, he meant it literally. We were outside in the cold. I had set up a tin can as a target and was practising my aim. With every shot, the birds rose into the sky, chirping away frantically.

‘And that will solve everything?’

‘As long as you have a gun in your hand, you are part of the problem.’

‘It’s not me!’ I said, hitting the can and making it skip through the snow. ‘I never started this. They forced me to take this path.’

‘No,’ said Aman. ‘It was your choice. You didn’t have to reply to hatred with hatred. If even one person chooses not to reply with violence, things will change.’

I laughed at him as I set up the target again. ‘Gandhi is dead,’ I said. ‘If he had lived, there would have been no place for him in this world.’

‘He is alive. They killed the man, not what he stood for. Otherwise why are we arguing about him? There is a place for him. The day there is no place for love and compassion in this world, the world will die.’

I kicked the can and looked around. The world looked pristinely white, as if it had been made anew. As if there were no darkness, no rottenness anywhere at all.

‘They held my brother. They tortured him. And he had done nothing. Someone has to pay!’ I said.

‘An eye for an eye can only make the whole world blind, Afzal,’ said Aman softly.

I couldn’t think of an answer to that one.

‘Look at you,’ he said, ‘stuck in the middle of nowhere. With a gun for company. Practising to kill. Can you really aim it at someone and kill them?’

‘If I have to. Yes.’ I aimed and shot. He had made me so mad, I missed.

Aman waited till the flat echoes of the shot had died. ‘No, you can’t,’ he said. ‘You are not a violent person. You cannot kill.’

‘I can!’ I said.

He smiled and shook his head. ‘One day, a moment will come when you will be asked to kill—and you won’t be able to. Then you will realize the truth about yourself.’

‘I know the truth about myself,’ I said. I held up the gun. ‘This is my truth. I will use it when I have to.’

‘On me?’ said Aman. ‘What if you had to use it on me?’ He walked up to me, grabbed the barrel and placed it on his chest.

I pushed him away.

‘You can’t shoot me because we’ve become friends. But think how every stranger is someone’s friend. Every stranger is a person like you. Who hopes. Who loves. Who is afraid. Who wishes he could hold a girl’s hand. Who all will you kill?’

I wrenched the gun away and walked back to the house. Aman followed me, still talking. ‘You have borrowed your brother’s truths. One day, you will understand that violence is not the answer and can never be.’

‘It is the answer,’ I said. ‘I will kill if I have to. The day I let down my brother will never come.’

‘Oh yes, it will,’ he said, smiling. ‘One day, you will know you cannot kill. Then you can start your life again.’

It was an argument that went on for several days. Aman could be incredibly stubborn when he chose to be. In his own quiet way, he was very persistent. We returned to it again and again.

His insistence made me angry. It made me furious that he thought I wasn’t man enough to pull that trigger.

‘Gandhi,’ I said bitterly. ‘His ideas have turned your head.’ We were on the roof, shovelling the snow off it. It had started to creak and groan under the weight of the snow, and I was afraid it would collapse.

‘That man helped me make sense of the world,’ said Aman. He shook his head. ‘God, it made my father crazy.’

Aman finished reading the Gandhi books and started a non-cooperation movement of his own at home. He was twelve. His father was part of an elite hit squad that was sent in to handle difficult situations. He wanted his father to get out of the business of being an official killer. So, he went on a hunger strike. His father raged, shouted, argued. Then he decided to ignore Aman, figuring that his son wouldn’t be able to keep it up.

Aman lasted seven days. On the seventh day, his father came home to find him passed out near the door. He took Aman to hospital, where Aman refused to let the doctors touch him. When they put him on a drip, he pulled it out. Finally, they had to tie him to the bed.

His father walked into the room and saw his son tied to the bed. He just turned around and walked out again, returning with a cup of ice cream. Aman refused to eat it.

‘Why?’ asked his father for the umpteenth time.

‘You’re all I have left. I don’t want you to be a killer.’ Aman hesitated before he said the next words. ‘And I don’t want you to die.’

His father sighed and began undoing the knots holding him in place. ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘Eat the ice cream. I’ll apply for a transfer tomorrow. But I will not leave the police.’ It was a bittersweet victory for Aman. But he never gave up the fight. He had spent years locked in a struggle with his father, both of them too stubborn to give up.

I never believed in Gandhi. I never thought his words worked in the real world. ‘All you know is theory. Theory and high ideals you read in a book. What do you know about violence? About being beaten up?’

‘I’ve stood there and let someone beat me up,’ said Aman. ‘I had to have six stitches.’

‘You?’ I said disbelievingly.

‘It’s not easy to stand there and let someone hit you,’ said Aman. ‘But I had a choice between reacting like everyone else. Or living by my real beliefs.’

That was when he told me about the bike ride.

‘I like bikes,’ said Aman. ‘I hadn’t really thought of where I was going to take her. We just rode. She put her arms around my waist, and her hair kept blowing into my face. It smelt of lemons. God, both of us were so happy and so free.’

He shrugged. ‘I will always remember that bike ride. It was the last time the two of us were simply and happily together.’

A car had come up behind them and forced them to the side of the road. It drove so recklessly that Aman had to stop his bike. The doors opened and the goons poured out. They went to grab Diya. Aman fought to get them off her.