We are alive…

It was 5 O’ clock in the evening, and we were standing on the pavement of a not-so-busy area of the famous Connaught Place market, trying to locate a vintage coffee house. With our hands on our foreheads to avoid the direct sun rays falling on our head, we looked upward toward an old, medium-built shopping complex, which engulfed in it several pigeon holed shops, to search for the coffee house.

And there lurked from the opening of the second floor an old white wooden plaque broken from the right bottom side indicating the coffee house in faded bold letters. This was the coffee house that Anil had incessantly talked about for 10 minutes before reaching the place.

This coffee house boasted of its rich past. People belonging to political fraternities and elite classes often frequented this place once, and the place claimed to have been a hub of all major political conspiracies.

After climbing the steep, dark staircase of the first two floors, when we finally approached the entry point of the Coffee house, we were greeted by the murmurings of the old people, who seemed to be occupied with some secretive, contemplative talks. The ambience pervaded in it a touch of seriousness. From the broken glass windows, the light streamed in the room in sufficient amount—which tried to cover up the serious, dull ambience.

As our feet moved forward crossing the threshold, we could see some eyes glinting toward us as if trying to probe ‘How come these young guys here?’ and as if curious to know ‘Have Café Coffee Days stopped their Indian operation?’

We looked around focusing our eyes in different directions to find a place, but the entire place seemed packed.

Exercising our eyes for a while, we finally managed to locate an empty table near the half broken window, which gave an outside view of the activities happening on the roadside. The table was broken from the middle and bent to whichever side the more weight was put, so we preferred not to put our hands over it. Air conditioners didn’t work; in place old Usha fans rotated in fast speed over our heads, offering no respite from heat. With that kind of air, it was hard to conquer sweat, so my hanky found a way out of my pocket and delicately moved over my sun-attacked face.

After resting ourselves for a while, we cocked our heads in every direction to look for a waiter, but the place seemed to be deserted of them. After waiting for a while and filled with disappointment, we moved to another room in search of a waiter and luckily found an empty chair opposite to the manager’s desk to sit on. With his spectacles touching the tip of his thick nose, he looked grimly towards the long register, which he held loosely on his hands, and seemed oblivious of and uninterested in the activities happening around. It seemed as if he was bored of his monotonous work— and his life as a whole. From the group of Uncles sitting nearby, one spoke a few words of the famous Pakistan transferred Indian revolutionary poet, Faiz Ahmad Faiz:

“Har admi main hote hain 10-20 admi. Agar kisi ko dekhna ho toh kayi bar dekho (Every man has in him 10-20 men. If you want to see a man, see him many times).”

It seemed he had followed those lines a lot during his lifetime, and now he was telling others to follow that. Oh! quite late.

Suddenly from nowhere, a waiter, wearing white clothes and a Gandhi cap, appeared in front of us and asked for an order. “What is there in the menu?” Anil hungrily asked. With an obsequious smile, he quickly babbled a list of items on offer. “Three coffees and two cutlets, please.” The waiter vanished, and we waited in silence till the order arrived.

After having a quick round of coffee and delicious cutlets, and looking around the old, dilapidated interiors of the coffee house, we had come out wondering why this place registered such a memorable past.

Weather was sultry outside as a result of the intermittent drizzle a day ago, but the air carried in it a touch of approaching evening freshness. Evening had started to register its presence by the fading sunlight, casting a long shadow of the buildings on the wide road. The roadside market buzzed with different activities— it was packed with people of different age groups ambling inquisitively, hawkers attracting customers by their loud offerings, and sleepingly autoricksaw drivers waiting for their customers. Several shops on the roadside formed a pattern of eclectic choices to the passersby, who often stopped for a while to have a look at the items on offer.

Looking at the poster outside the Rivoli theatre, my friend screamed, “Hey, you guys want to watch Singh is King?” My another friend’s chuckling voice showed interest. With a twisted nose, almost at an angle of 60 degrees, I immediately followed, “I’ve watched it. It’s ok.” Nobody said anything after that, and we moved on along the pavement. “What to do then,” said Anil complainingly. “Let us first explore some books, and then we’ll go in a pub to have some beer,” I said. It was warmly agreed, and I saw two happy, blinking faces.

We moved further looking for a bookshop. Just nearby on the pavement was one, touching the iron-grilled boundary of the wide road. With rapid strides, I moved towards the place and, on reaching the place, I leaned forward to have a good look of the books dispersed over a thick piece of cloth lying on the rough, cemented pavement.

I’ve often observed that I loose my control when I am surrounded by books. I should have been a librarian in my past life.

I liked the cover of a book, held it on my hands, and tried to look inside of it. My friends peeped from the backside— looking at their respective choices.

The cover of the book I was holding read The Age of Kali by William Dalrymple. Cocking his head from the left side of my shoulder, Anil said excitedly, “He is a good writer. He wrote The Last Mughal.” The book seemed to be good to me too. I was still in the process of deciding whether or not to buy it when a loud sound brought the calculating process of my brain and the cheery movement of the marketplace to an abrupt halt. Hardly had we got time to think what it was, another earth-cracking sound just in front of us made the book I was holding fall off my hands. The sounds had enough power to fill in the atmosphere a feel of terror. The sound emanated from the Central Park— the place at a distance of only 150 meters— which was covered by a wall and a thick bush, blocking the view of the blast site. Some people came running down from the gate in such a manner as if uncertain what actually had happened.

People who were carefree a minute ago seemed panic stricken; they ran toward their respective vehicles in order to flee away. A boy and a girl whom we had seem roaming intimately with each other for quite a while were now running in opposite directions. It was perhaps their first date.

Immediately, after the blasts, dark smoke had billowed in the sky and had hung above the blast area. Our mouths were agape in utter disbelief. Maneesh hurriedly said, “What to do now?” “Let’s quickly move back,” Anil responded even more hurriedly. With our feet moving forward and our heads still turned backward, we ran away directionless to leave the place. We waved our hands towards many autoricksaws, but they were already full, so we moved swiftly towards the main road to find one. Jostling with the buses and scooters in the slow moving traffic, we managed to catch a bus. Maneesh had to go to a different place, so he took another route.

We were relived to be inside the bus, but still clueless what actually had happened. After a few moments, Anil’s mobile clinked, indicating an SMS from Maneesh. Anil read “There was an autorickshaw that blew up”. Even the bus didn’t seem safe now. ‘What if the third bomb was implanted inside this bus?’ the thought came. But then who knows, it could be on any of the other auto rickshaws outside. Soon the bus filled to its capacity, but traffic showed signs of no movement. In a matter of few seconds, there came barging from the backside a series of ambulances and fire brigade buses, all screaming loudly to find a way forward. Everybody in the bus seemed to be speculating in that noise about the blast. They had their own versions of the incident, but nobody was certain of what actually had happened.

To our relief, in a minute’s time, the vehicles in front started to move, clearing the way for our bus to take the left turn and pickup the speed. My friend’s mobile rang, and his serious sounding Tamil conversation of a minute removed the curtain of mystery. Moving the mobile swiftly down from his ears, he said with elated eyes, which seemed to be popping out of his spectacles, “There were five blasts—one in CP, one in Janpath, one in Gaffar market, and one in M Block market.” With my mouth wide open, I hissed “Oh! My God”. Situation was far grimmer than what it looked. These serial blasts had taken place only a month after a series of blasts in Ahmedabad, Bangalore, and Jaipur. On the way back, Anil’s cellphone rang at regular intervals to give us the updates.

With the air touching my face from the open window of the moving bus, my thoughts moved towards the people who were victimized.

People go merrily with their family members for shopping, and nobody expects all this. In such incidents, some family members loose their lives while some by way of destiny are alive to moan over their family members’ death, which in no way is a better condition. The blood splattered dead body of a smiling and close family member just a minute ago becomes a torment for the life time. The person lives, but the heart-rending images remain hung on the deepest core of his mind just to wake him up often in the night. The ones who were now dead on the roadside didn’t know it would happen to them. They didn’t want that. They had just come to enjoy and to find some joy in shopping for themselves and their family members.

Anil and I didn’t talk much on the way back home except the updates that he gave me on regular intervals.

On reaching home, I switched on the television and there flashed pictures of the blast area—blood, unconscious bodies, and crying people. Sniffer dogs were running and sniffing around the blast area, and police personnel were trying to match their energy levels. A young balloon seller, crying helplessly and who claimed to have seen the terrorists who planted the bombs, was being taken by the Police. The newsreader reported that there were many more bombs planted in that area, but they were defused now— one at India Gate, the place we crossed walkingly in the daytime; another one in a dustbin outside Rivoli where my friends had wanted to watch the movie and the pavement on which we had walked carelessly for quite some time and where I held that book on my hand; and a few others in the Central Park, a place where my friend was desirous of going to buy some DVDs.

It was unbelievable to think that we had walked in every that area that could have snatched our body from us and thrown us without our wish to another unknown dimension if only those remaining bombs had blown off. I couldn’t believe that we had walked “so closely and so happily” with death for 30 minutes around that dustbin outside the Rivoli theatre.

Isn't it really an "Age of Kali?"