Unbreakable

Rajat stared at the glass of milk in front of him. The transparent glass which could hold so many other delights held the vile viscous white fluid Rajat had been trying to run away from for the last seventeen years.

‘Ma, I’m in college now, this is insane. You still treat me like some child. C’mon Ma even in mess I eat only what I want? Please can you take that disgusting thing away from me? Yuckie, Ma Now there is Malai on the milk. I will puke. Please’

‘Rajat, C’mon now, don’t act like a baby. Have your milk now. If I didn’t force glasses of milk down your throat you would have never gotten to college.’

‘Ma, I know, but this absurd how can you force me to do something I don’t want to; what about my choice, my will? Doesn’t it mean anything to you? I guess I am so ‘Kiddish’ because you don’t let me exercise my choice often enough. Choice is being you know.’

‘Beta, have this milk for me, I won’t force you again. I have made it now don’t make me waste food. God will get angry. So many people don’t have anything. C’mon Raja beta, have your milk.’

‘Ma, now I am definitely not going to drink that glass of milk. I do not and will not believe in God, I believe in free will and choice. We have milk in our house because dad works hard for putting food on the table; I made it to college because you were good parents and I a decently good student. There is no such thing as destiny, no such entity as GOD. I hate the idea that I am not in control of my life. We are the masters of our own destiny and we reap the consequences of our actions or inactions. I am not going to drink that milk and that’s final.’

‘You are one shameless ungrateful brat, you know that. Two years in IIT and you think you know everything. Forgive him my lord he doesn’t know what he’s saying or doing. I’m going to keep this milk in the fridge, please drink it later when you are sane again. We raised you so well son, what has happened? Oh Lord!’

‘Whatever, I’m going out for a concert; Nikhil is picking me up in his car. Don’t wait up for me for lunch.’

Abdul Khan stared at the glass of water in front of him. He felt as if he had sweated out more liquid than what was contained in that glass. Mentally drained and emotionally jilted, Abdul was on edge. His Life depended on what the outcome of this interview was. Abba was not well and his siblings needed to be put through school. He had to cut short his engineering education and get a diploma instead. He needed a job desperately. He needed this job desperately. The interview with Shah and Shah Electricals of Chawri Bazaar had gone well; there were two other candidates with him, both vocational school certificate holders who seemed to know nothing about machine fitting. He had answered all the questions put to him. He forced himself to be confident for a while and sit up smartly; they would be coming in any instant. The job had to come to him. It was destiny, Allah’s will. He would settle all of Abba’s bills and settle all his siblings in their place and then someday finish his degree.

The door opened and Mr. Shah, the head of human resources came out to announce the results. For a while time seemed to stop in the room as Abdul quickly glanced at the other candidates in the room. All their eyes met in an odd moment of quiet prayer, best wishes and selfish concern. Inshallah! Abdul muttered under his breath. The selected candidates for the openings are Owais Shah and Rajesh Patel. I’m sorry Mr. Abdul; we think you are wasting your talent here. Have a nice day.

Abdul was shell shocked, quickly recovering and without paying any heed to the fake looks of sympathy he was getting from the other two he confronted Mr. Shah.
‘ This is not fair, Sir. Not fair at all, I don’t think I’m wasting my talent sir, if so I would never have applied for the position. If I am more qualified than them and I’m willing to work, why am I not given employment?’
‘Son, Listen we are doing this for your best interests.’
‘ Sir, please I need the job, I am not under employing myself, trust me. I beg you.
‘I’m sorry son….’
Abdul out of sheer desperation fell at Mr. Shah’s feet. Sir please I beg you.

‘Son, get up and come in. Let me see what I can do’.
As soon as they were inside, the HR manager’s tone changed completely.

‘Alright enough with your theatrics, Mr. Abdul you made a fool out of me and yourself out there. Let me explain why we didn’t hire you in terms you will understand. Do you know the demographic breakup of India by religion, Mr. Abdul? It has an 80% majority of Hindus. My company has a 100% majority of Hindus. Get it?’
The shocked look on Abdul’s face said it all
‘Good. If you make a ruckus outside I will make sure that security sees to it that you never get a job. Good Day, Mr. Abdul.’

Tasneem Majeed was five months pregnant with twins. Her husband had conveniently forgotten about her ultrasound appointment today and had gone ahead and gone to his construction site.
‘Ammi jaan, I need to go get myself checked up, the hospital is just one bus away. It will only take five minutes. It is a free check-up, Ammi. Dr. Kafila set it up for me specially. She told me it is very important, I must go. They are twins, Ammi. I promise to take care’.
Ammi knew Tasneem was tough,’ Go child, take care alright make sure you get place to sit in the bus, health of the mother is important; when will men in this family learn?’ Tasneem slowly got up and put on her Burqa. Bus no. 21 would take her to General hospital directly from the local Chawri Bazaar bus stop 50 meters away.

Neeraj Singh was a man of the community. He was a bus driver for the transport commission and a local RSS hooligan. A large imposing man, he incited a mixture of fear and respect from the locals of Chawri Bazaar. Very few knew that the six foot four inch man they saw was actually a gentle giant. Neeraj really did not want to join the RSS nor did he hate Muslims; all he wanted to do was get a house near the bus station in Chawri Bazaar. But one of the conditions of getting a lease and joining the housing society was joining the RSS, so Neeraj silently did and now weekly Hafta collections from the Muslims of was one of his major activities. One must survive, Life forces you to; he thought to himself whenever his conscience forced him to feel guilty. He slowly pulled his Route 21 bus into Chawri Bazaar road, a long work day awaited him with 20 more round trips to do.

Nikhil zipped his car in front of the No. 21 bus; the concert was in palace grounds just beyond Chawri bazaar and they were getting late. The music was on full blast and all of Rajat’s friends were getting pumped up for the concert. Rajat on the other hand was unusually silent; guilt had initially hit gently him like soft powder snow and now he was stuck in an avalanche of guilt. How could he have said those things; Damn glass of milk. That is when it happened.

Abdul did not know what to do or what to feel, he was dejected and depressed. All his responsibilities and dreams, what was he to do? Dejection turned into anger. Anger he had never felt before. How could the Allah do this to him? There had to be some explanation. He never believed all the Mullahs and Quacks who called Hindus infidels and Satans. He had great Hindu friends. Today they seemed evil and manipulative. All Hindus were evil. Fuck the Hindus. Fuck the country. He was just trying to earn a living. He was a good honest citizen, a good son too.
Why me he wanted to scream out, ‘Allah WHY ME, WHAT HAVE I DONE??’
He wanted to go beat up Shah and his dumb security guards, he felt anger surge through his veins. He picked up a shiny pebble which was lying in front of him and threw in on the road with all the force he had. It was no use. He was fucked. He had to go and meet Baba in hospital now. He had to take it like a man. Allah would guide him and he would get a job next time, he told himself repeatedly.
‘AWWWW FUCK THE HINDUS, WHY ME ALLAH?’, he fumed. ‘Allah send me a sign what should I do, Abdul asked looking up to the heavens.

Rajat was dazed; time was already running in slow motion for him. He saw another guy on the road who was looking equally dejected. Human Misery, it is so universal, he chuckled. He wondered if he also attributed his miseries and successes to God. The guy for some reason then picked up a stone and threw it towards the car road as if to acknowledge the bond of shared suffering he shared with him.
Time slowed to an infinitesimal amount as the stone fly towards his window. Rajat instinctively flinched but remembered that the glass was unbreakable, made of advanced materials, It never shattered unless a very large force was applied to it. Ruf Glass like this only cracked. The stone could never shatter the glass. Could it? The stone came and impacted on the glass at an oblique angle and fell off. The resonance of the impact hurt Rajat’s ears, the loud music seeming like a whisper compared to the ferocity of the collision. But no one else even saw the stone hit let alone feel it. The glass did not shatter like expected; fine cracks appeared on it concentrically moving outward from the epicenter of the hit. The cracks moved out gracefully from the epicenter like ballerinas as the whole glass seemed to wobble and shake to Rajat. Finally a single shard of glass no bigger than a button broke of the epicenter and flew off the car. Rajat saw the little piece of glass fly in the air shining and glistening in the sunlight as it rose in the back draft of Nikhil’s car like a phoenix. The Wind picked it up after a certain height and it curved and looped and swerved and swooped beautifully till it disappeared into a window of bus no. 21. The bus lost control the next instant

Neeraj who was concentrating on the road did not realize that a shard was flying towards him. He saw specks of luminous objects everyday; it was always dust, No problems there. The shard of glass was pulled into the bus due to the pressure difference between the inside and outside and it went and lodged itself into Neeraj’s left eye. Neeraj flinched with pain as he lost sight in his left eye and lost control of the bus. He spasmed involuntarily due to nervous shock as the bus swerved out of control rushed towards the bus terminus.

Tasneem felt her baby boys kick furiously in the womb as she stood in the terminus. She stroked her stomach to soothe her boys. Patience my children, she said aloud soon you will be out. We will be separated and yet we will be together, isn’t life mystical. She did not see the bus hurtling towards the terminus without any intention of stopping like many others standing with her there. ‘I hope I am a good mother Insha’, her sentence was cut short as the bus rammed into the terminus.

Rajat gaped in horror as he saw the bus ram into the terminus as the car whizzed towards Palace grounds. A chill ran down his spine as he saw death and the lack of control one had over its coming.

Abdul could not believe his eyes; the scenes unfolding in front of him seemed unreal. He had just seen a bus, his no21 bus ram in to the terminus and take out a pregnant Muslim woman amongst other bystanders. A crowd started to gather around the Terminus. There was chaos all around as people trapped or injured by the accident both inside and outside the bus tried to free themselves. Cries of pain filled the air. Abdul felt a sudden spurt of adrenaline as he ran towards the accident area to help the trapped out.

Neeraj was badly injured in the crash, half blind and his ribs broken. It was a miracle that he managed to survive. Any smaller man would have surely died if it were to withstand the same pressure Neeraj’s body withstood in the crash. Arms and legs came in and pulled him out. Someone in the crowd screamed- He killed a pregnant Muslim woman. A Muslim trader screamed, ‘Hey that’s Neeraj, that RSS nutcase he hates Muslims he must have done it on purpose I saw him beat up another Muslim trader a week back. Let’s get him’. The crowd lost control as they started beating Neeraj.

Abdul as he arrived on the spot was informed that the accident was the fault of a Muslim hating RSS pracharak. He forgot about the trapped and injured and went after the faceless Muslim hater who had killed a pregnant Muslim woman. You infidel, he screamed as he lashed ferocious blows on a helpless Neeraj. As the crowd grew more chaotic and violent, all individual consciousnesses were lost to the mob. So was Abdul.

Rajat half heartedly attended the concert, none of his friends were too concerned about what had happened; Nikhil shrugged off the whole incident as part of our Indianness, poor traffic and crazy mobs. He was more concerned about his father’s car and the window. Rajat did not make a fuss; peer pressure had defeated him once more, no choice here either. The boys decided to avoid the Chawri road for traffic reason and headed back home by Mall road. When Rajat reached back home, he was met by a worried, crying mother,’ Son we were so worried, Thank god you are safe, the entire Chawri bazaar area has erupted into riots, there was some accident and some pregnant Muslim woman got killed by a RSS bus driver and he was mauled by an angry Muslim mob, the RSS retaliated and now Chawri is a war zone.

Rajat’s head spun. Wait, no it can’t be, the chances were one in a billion; could it be the glass shard he had seen disappear into the bus. What were the chances? It was possible. The driver lost control; he must have been blinded, unless he was psycho or something, which seemed more unlikely somehow. Whatever it was it was strange, even god could not have scripted such a bizarre event, a single degree shift in wind direct would have prevented the catastrophe, but it didn’t; the ruthless efficiency from the catalyst to the end of the event was unbelievable. How could something like an accident cascade into such a massive riot, it just defied belief. But what shocked the him the most was that the people caught in the riot were innocent people, normal working folk and law abiding citizens with families, doing their own thing .But the controls of their life were wrested; yes, wrested , not voluntarily given away, wrested from them so effortlessly by something like a shard in an instant. What were the odds that something like could or could not occur to anyone tomorrow, something so random, so arbitrary, so uncontrollable. Rajat could not sleep. He felt this fear, he could not explain; the fear of randomness of disorder, unpredictability and loss of control in spite of all his best efforts. He felt insignificant and small. Had he no control in the grand scheme or whatever it was? Was everything scripted by some other power or was there no script at all? Both situations were equally scary.

Rajat got up in the middle of the night and ran up to the fridge. He opened the door and stared at his glass of milk. He picked the glass slowly and tried to drink the milk, it smelt curdled. He gagged involuntarily and put the milk back in the fridge. He just could not force himself to drink it. He still hated milk, nothing could change that. He smiled to himself. He felt alive. He went back to bed and slept.