An airport expansion scheme was in progress, and the passengers were packed into a temporary corrugated- iron structure. Construction was just beginning when he had left for Dubai eight years ago, he remembered. Waves of heat ricocheted off the shimmering sun-soaked metal, buffeting the crowds. The smell of sweat, cigarette smoke, stale perfume, and disinfectant roamed the air. People fanned themselves with passports and customs declaration forms. Someone fainted. Two peons tried to revive the man by arranging him in the stream of a customs officer’s table fan. Water was sent for.
The baggage searches resumed after the interruption. A passenger behind Maneck grumbled about the slowness, and Maneck shrugged his shoulders: “Maybe they received a tip that a big smuggler is coming today from Dubai.”
“No, it’s like this all the time,” said the man. “With all flights from the Middle East. What they are looking for is jewellery, gold biscuits, electronic goods.” He explained that customs had become more zealous because of a recent government directive, which offered special bonuses — a percentage of each officer’s seizures. “So they are harassing us more than ever now.”
“All my carefully folded saris will get crumpled,” complained the maris wife.
The officer looking through Maneck’s suitcase pushed his fingers under the clothes and felt about. Maneck wondered if there would be a penalty for setting a mousetrap inside one’s luggage. After much groping, the officer withdrew his hands and let him through grudgingly.
Maneck squeezed the bag shut, rushed outside to a taxi and asked to be driven to the railway station. The driver was unwilling to make the journey. “It’s right in the middle of the rioting. Too dangerous.”
“What rioting?”
“Don’t you know? People are being beaten and butchered and burnt alive.”
Rather than argue with him, Maneck tried elsewhere. But every taxi driver he approached refused the fare with the same warning. Some advised him to check into a hotel near the airport till things quietened.
In frustration, he decided to offer an incentive to the next one. “You’ll get double of what is on the meter, okay? I have to get home, my father has passed away. If I miss the train I will miss my father’s funeral.”
“It’s not the meter I am worried about, sahab. Your life and mine are worth much more. But get in, I’ll try my best.” He reached for the meter, flipping the FOR HIRE indicator upside-down with a clang.
The taxi extricated itself from the swarm of vehicles that throttled the airport lanes, and soon they were on the highway. In between checking for traffic, the driver observed his passenger through the rearview mirror. Maneck could feel the man’s eyes on him.
“You should think about shaving off your beard, sahab,” the driver spoke. “You might be mistaken for a Sikh.”
Maneck was very proud of his beard; and so what if people thought he was a Sikh? He had started growing it two years ago, grooming it carefully to its present state. “How can I be mistaken for a Sikh? I don’t have a turban.”
“Lots of Sikhs don’t wear turban, sahab. But I think clean-shaven would be much safer for you.”
“Safer? Meaning what?”
“You are saying you don’t know? Sikhs are the ones being massacred in the riots. For three days they have been burning Sikh shops and homes, chopping up Sikh boys and men. And the police are just running about here and there, pretending to protect the neighbourhoods.”
He pulled over to the extreme left of the road as a convoy of army lorries approached the taxi from behind. He shouted to Maneck over his shoulder, over the thunder of the vehicles. “That’s the Border Security Force! The newspaper said it was being sent in today!”
The convoy passed, and his voice returned to normal. “Our best soldiers, the BSF. First line of defence against enemy invasion. Now they must guard borderlines within our cities. How shameful for the whole country.”
“But why Sikhs only?”
“Sahab?”
“You said only Sikhs are being attacked.”
The driver gazed into the rearview mirror with disbelief. Was the passenger feigning ignorance? He decided the question was indeed asked in earnest. “It started when the Prime Minister was killed three days ago. She was shot by her Sikh bodyguards. So this is supposed to be revenge.”
Now he turned and looked directly at Maneck. “Where have you been, sahab, you didn’t hear anything of what has happened?”
“I knew about the assassination but not the riots.” He studied the cracks in the vinyl seat in front of him and the driver’s frayed collar visible above the seatback. Small boils, not yet ready to burst, shone upon the man’s neck. “I’ve been very busy, trying to come back in time for my father’s funeral.”
“Yes,” said the driver sympathetically. “Must be very difficult for you.” He swerved to avoid a dog in the road, a yellow mongrel, mangy and skeletal.
Maneck glanced through the rear window to see if the animal made it to safety. A lorry behind them squashed it. “The problem is, I’ve been out of the country for eight years,” he offered as a further excuse.
“That’s a very long time, sahab. That means you left before the Emergency ended — before the elections. Of course, for ordinary people, nothing has changed. Government still keeps breaking poor people’s homes and jhopadpattis. In villages, they say they will dig wells only if so many sterilizations are done. They tell farmers they will get fertilizer only after nussbandhi is performed. Living each day is to face one emergency or another.” He beeped a warning to someone trudging along the shoulder. “You heard about the attack on the Golden Temple, no?”
“Yes. Things like that are hard to miss,” said Maneck. Where did the fellow think he was returning from, the moon? In the silence that followed, he realized that in fact he knew very little about the years he had been away. He wondered what other tragedies and farces had unfolded in the country while he was supervising the refrigeration of the hot desert air.
He encouraged the driver to keep talking: “What’s your opinion about the Golden Temple?”
The man was pleased at being asked. He turned off the highway near the outskirts of the capital. They passed the burned-out carcass of a vehicle, its wheels in the air. “I will have to take a longer way to the station, sahab. Some roads are better avoided.” Then he came back to Maneck’s question. “The Prime Minister said Sikh terrorists were hiding inside the Golden Temple. The army’s attack was only a few months ago. But the important thing to ask is how the problem started many years ago, no?”
“Yes. How?”
“Same way all her problems started. With her own mischief-making. Just like in Sri Lanka, Kashmir, Assam, Tamil Nadu. In Punjab, she was helping one group to make trouble for state government. Afterwards the group became so powerful, fighting for separation and Khalistan, they made trouble for her only. She gave her blessing to the guns and bombs, and then these wicked, violent instruments began hitting her own government. How do they say in English — all her chickens came home for roasting, isn’t it?”
“Came home to roost,” murmured Maneck.
“Yes, exactly,” said the driver. “And then she made the problem worse and worse, telling the army to attack the Golden Temple and capture the terrorists. With tanks and what-all big guns they charged inside, like hooligans. How much damage to the shrine. It is the most sacred place for Sikhs, and everybody’s feelings were hurt.”
Maneck was touched by the poignant understatement. “She created a monster,” the driver went on, “and the monster swallowed her. Now it swallows innocents. Such terrible butchery for three days.” His fingers clenched the steering wheel, and his voice was shaking. “They are pouring kerosene on Sikhs and setting them on fire. They catch men, tear the hair from their faces or hack it with swords, then kill them. Whole families burnt to death in their homes.”
He drew a hand across his mouth, took a deep breath, and continued to describe the slaughter he had witnessed. “And all this, sahab, in our nations capital. All this while police do their shameless acting, and the politicians say the people are upset, they are just avenging their leader’s murder, what can we do. This is what I say to the stinking dogs
“But I thought the Prime Minister was not much liked by the people. Why are they so upset?”
“It’s true, sahab, she was not liked by ordinary people, even though she went about like a devi in a white sari. But let’s suppose she was beloved — do you think ordinary people will behave in this way? Aray, it’s the work
