The Sea-Face

The sea-face was full of people. She was waiting for him at the shore staring at the Bandra-Worli sea link. She remembered the time when it was being built. She used to come at the sea-face with him to see the enormous structure. “By the time the sea link is complete, we will be together. We will buy a car and go for a number of rides through the sea link”, his voice rang in her head. The sea-face was special for them. It was here that he had proposed her. Their first kiss, first argument, all the dreams about the future, all of these memories were cultivated here at the sea-face. It was difficult for her to get out of her house then. She used to lie about a sewing class in the afternoon and meet him. “Come back before the namaaz”, her abba used to say. She obeyed and never missed the namaaz in the evening. He used to live in the very next chawl with his family. After picking her up on the way, he would take her around Mumbai. He was a firm believer in Siddhivinayak Ganpati and used to take her to the temple at Prabhadevi every Thursday. Other days they would mostly spend time at the sea-face.

Today she was sitting at the same spot where they were spotted by her khala which started the catastrophe. She was dragged on the floor towards the only bedroom in their house and was forced to solitary confinement. Her two mothers, three younger brothers and two elder sisters were watching all this as if it was a lesson for them. There was no mode of communication with him. After a couple of days, she was helplessly shouting from the room, “He will be waiting for me, just let me meet him once”, but to no use. She had lost all hope to see him again, but one dreadful meeting was still planned by the destiny. The locality they lived in was communally sensitive. One fateful day, provocative statements by a communal leader led to riots in the area. There were loud knocks at the doors of her house. Everyone including her abba were frightened to open the door. Soon the knocks turned violent. The mob tried to break the door open while the family members resisted by pushing the door with their backs. But it was not long enough that the mob succeeded in getting inside. She was inside the inner room, too scared to say a word. She sat silently through the murder of her father and mothers, through the screams of her sisters while being raped, through the loud cries of her brothers while being mutilated, skinned and killed. Failing to notice another room in the house, the mob left the house with corpses on the floor.

There was complete silence for some time. Then she heard a person enter the house. “Ruksana” – he called out. It was him. She did not know how to react to his call. While she was elated to hear his voice and pleased with the thought that she will get to meet him after so long, she was imagining the horrendous scenes outside the room and feeling the fearsome pain of losing her loved ones. “A-A-Anirudh”, she called out in a broken voice. He broke open the door of the room and took her in his arms. He could smell her hair once again. He kissed her like there is no tomorrow. She did not have the courage to go outside, but he held her hand and took her out. A fierce cry came from her throat on seeing her family destroyed by the mob. The corpses of her siblings and parents lay all around the blood-colored floor. ‘The corpses in riots cannot expect cremation’ she thought to herself and agreed to leave. In order to keep her safe from the fanatics, he took her to his house in the next chawl and asked his mother and younger sister to take care of her. His father was against this but he was too bogged down by the riots to oppose.

While we humans discriminate each other basis race, religion, caste, creed, color, etc. death does not believe in discrimination. It is fair and unfair to all equally. His chawl was attacked by the fanatics of the other community, his house was bugged and the family met a similar fate. The mob detected that she belonged to their community and did not advance at her. But they hurt her with the weapons when she tried to defend his family. She was lying helpless on the floor, wounded, when they cut his father’s head and hanged it at the door near the aakash-kandil. She tried to get up and stop them when they were raping his sister. She was just crying loudly when they tore his mother’s abdomen and took out her intestine on one of the swords. But she could not see him. A few of them had dragged him outside just before the massacre.

The next she woke up was at a hospital bed in a nearby government hospital. All she could hear was loud wails, all she could smell was death, all she could see was corpses. She took a couple of months to recover from the injuries. She saw a lot of politicians visit the hospital in these days, some promised a relief package, some promised a revenge. Today morning she was discharged. She had to visit the sea-face today. The sea-link was to be inaugurated today. She could see a host of VIPs with their convoys at the sea-link. She recollected that the minister who was to inaugurate the sea-link had visited the hospital with a kerchief at her nose. A few days back she had got to know from one of the neighbors who visited her at the hospital that his body was found in pieces at the chawl. But she knew she would find him here. She was waiting for him, to come and hug her and take her for a ride on the sea-link. As it started to turn dark, she saw her hopes setting with the sun. Neither her namaaz nor his Siddhivinayak were able to help them be together in this life. She climbed the rocks at the sea-face and jumped into the sea. She was swimming towards the sea-link. She knew she would meet him there. She swam and swam till she disappeared with the sun.