The outsiders

The ringing of the bell awakes me.

I hear my mom rushing to open it. It is not my father. It is Sushil. I can tell that he has brought bad news. I can tell from the increasingly high pitched responses from my mother.

Sushil rushes into my room. My mother follows him whimpering.

"You have to leave immediately aunty. The mob has entered the locality and are forcibly evicting all non-Maharashtrians. Rumour has it that they are also looting all valuables from peoples houses. Please pack up all that is absolutely necessary and leave now before they arrive."

My mom objects tearfully, "But your uncle hasn't arrived from office yet. And you know the condition of poor Venu."

Yes I have a condition. It is called paraplegia, or in layman terms total paralysis from the waist down. A result of a stupid bike race that I was egged on to participate in by my college seniors 3 years ago. 3 years since I last stood on my own two feet.

"I will tell my brother to inform uncle when he arrives that I have taken you to the station. As for Venu, we will load him and his wheelchair into my Omni. I will come below the building in it in 15 minutes. Please hurry aunty, we have no time to waste."

Sushil left us in total shock. My mom immediately went to the bedroom and started dumping clothes, jewellery and my medicines into the attache.
I wheeled myself to the door, getting ready for the inevitable.

Sushil was lucky. He was a Maharashtrian. We also had considered ourselves to be lucky till about a month ago. We were south-Indians. The violence had begun due to a campaign by a political party to drive away the North Indian migrants to Mumbai. Encouraged by the tepid response of a weak state government, a police force which was sympathetic to the cause of the localites and the increasing disillusionment and growing frustration in the Marathi youth, the party had been forcibly driving out migrants from the north. Those who were on the wrong side of the economic divide.

Spurred on by their success with the North Indians they had now focussed their campaign against the "intruders" from down under. It didn't matter that my father had migrated to Mumbai from Kochi 25 years ago. Or that I had been born and had lived my entire life in Mumbai, and had as equal a right to call Mumbai my home as any other Mumbaikar. It only mattered to the mob that our surname was Reddy and that automatically made us usurpers of jobs meant for localites.

Of course the mob didn't just contain the zealots who wanted us out, it was infiltrated and run by common criminals who found this a perfect oppurtunity to conduct robberies in broad daylight. Which was why my mom fearfully stuffed her mangalsutra and other assorted jewelery into the depth of the bag.

We started to hear shouts coming from below the building. It had started. I called out frantically. "maa!! come on its time to leave."
My poor mom. How my heart went out to her. As I saw her tearful, worried face desperately trying to figure out all that needed to be taken and all that had to be left, I wished I could go to her, hug her and comfort her. But I couldn't. I was as scared as she was, but was helpless to do anything to alleviate our fears.

As I wheeled myself out of the house, I glanced one last time at the only place I had ever known as home. With our heavily beating hearts, teary eyes and hands numb with fear we got into the lift which would take us down to the ground floor.

When the doors of the lift opened below we saw a sea of faces malevolently staring at us, furious with hate. They had hockey sticks and lathis in their hands. There were men and women and boys and girls. My mom immediately tried to close the door of the lift again. But she was too slow and rough arms pulled her out of the lift. The attache was dragged away from her. She pleaded with them to let go of it. But they started raining blows on her head.

Unable to bear this sight I wheeled myself into the middle of the mob shouting out loud. "Soda tila (let her go)!!!" I caught hold of the hand of the man who had begun to punch her. He turned towards me and shouted out, "Kaay re madrasi kutrya!!! (You Madrasi dog!) "

I punched him hard in the groin and saw him fal down doubled in pain. Immediately I felt someone tilt my wheelchair from the side and I fell down to the ground. I felt someone kicking me on the groin, on my head. I saw a hockey stick being raised, ready to come down in full force. I closed my eyes, anticipating the sharp pain that would follow. But the blow never came even though I was still being kicked on my head. I opened my eyes slightly just in time to see someone holding the hockey wielding arm before I passed out.

When I came to again I felt someone dragging me into a vehicle. I could make out that it was Sushil. I could hear my mom's crying nearby. I realized that I was in Sushils Omni with my head on my moms lap. Her beautiful face had been bruised and blood was oozing from a split lip. She thanked God that I had come to consciousness. The attache case of course was gone.

Sushil turned around from the driver's seat. "Dude, I thank heavens that I came when I did. Those bastards would have killed you if me and my dad hadn't convinced them to let you'll go. What yaar Wino! Did you think you were Rambo or something trying to hit back at the goondas!"

'Venu the Wino!' Sushil had been calling me that ever since me and him had tasted that first glass of beer in Majestic Bar and I had gotten drunk after just that one glass. It made me want to smile, but even thinking about smiling made me cry.
I was glad that my mom was safe, notwithstanding my pathetic attempt to save her.

We reached Dadar Terminus where Sushil and his dad helped carried me into the station. The station was jam packed with people, families shivering in the cold, worried about their loved ones. There were a group of lathi-wielding men who were forcibly bundling people onto the trains. The police was nowhere to be seen.

I sensed Sushil talking to me. "Don't worry Wino, It's only a matter of a few days, maybe a week or two. I'm sure things will calm down. It's just that there's so much anger around nowadays."

I nodded to him. I know that Sunil and his dad had gone through great personal risk to to help us out. I instead asked, "Any word from my dad yet?"

"No yaar, As always at a time of crisis all mobile networks are jammed. I have instructed my bro to intercept him before he returns to the colony and bring him here. I'll go find something for you two to eat."

I nodded to him as he left us. I closed my eyes, emptying my mind of all thoughts.
Of course we would survive this. We were not being killed, just driven out of our homes. Sometimes that can be as devastating.

An hour later my father did arrive, and three hours later we were on a train to Kochi, to our ancestral home. As I saw the train leaving Dadar station, I found myself wondering about not just my beautiful city of Mumbai, but of my country in general. As a nation, we were breaking up, getting divided into individual little fiefdoms each antagonistic with the other. The outsiders. Get rid of them! Everyone had forgotten about the basic right of a citizen of every country to freely roam about and settle in all parts within it.

It wasn't just in Maharashtra. MP was evicting its Marathi population, West Bengal its Bihari immigrants, Karnataka its Tamil speaking population. Before the British coalesced together an empire called India, the subcontinent was divided into different kingdoms, each of which was at war with each other. 60 years after independance it seems we were condemned to repeat history.

It didn't matter anymore that I am an Indian.

Mera Bharat Mahaan!!