Free The Solitude of Emperors by David Davidar Page B

first attacked me. Raising the lathi he carried, he brought it down on me in a fury. I hadn’t been expecting this and could do nothing to defend myself. The blow landed on my head and I staggered back from the force of it. Mustn’t fall, mustn’t fall, was the only thought that went through my mind. He struck me a couple more times and I remember thinking for one so small he seemed tremendously strong, but I felt no pain, that would come later; all I was aware of was the encroaching darkness.
    ‘Behenchod, this is for you to remember us by,’ he hissed, spittle flecking his beedi-blackened lips. These last blows, I would later realize, had very little to do with religion. The man probably earned a meagre daily wage in a factory or godown, enduring the myriad humiliations of the blue-collar worker without any means of getting his own back. Until now.
    ‘Eh, bewda, come on, let’s go,’ one of his friends shouted back, noticing his absence. ‘We’ve got a couple of juicy Muslim women for you to play with on the next street.’
    My attacker glared at me for a minute more, then turned away. It was over.
     
    ~
     
    My experience of the riots was as nothing compared to the hundreds who died or were tortured and maimed, not to mention their families and friends who would remember the days the evil on the city’s streets had invaded their pathetic shelters. There were two major spells of rioting: the first when I was attacked, and the second a few weeks later when gangs of rioters owing their allegiance to fundamentalist Hindu organizations began to kill Muslims even more systematically, aided by sections of the police force. I saw none of this for I was immured in Jaslok Hospital, where I was treated, at Mr Sorabjee’s insistence and expense, for a mild concussion and a high fever brought on, according to the doctor, by the shock I had suffered as a result of the attack. There were other symptoms that any victim of trauma would recognize—memory loss, insomnia, stomach aches and depression—as I retreated into a personal darkness, away from a world I couldn’t handle. When I was discharged from the hospital, Mr Sorabjee wanted to send me home to K—, but I pleaded with him not to, afraid that if my parents discovered what had happened, they would not allow me to return to Bombay. He came round in the end, but arranged for me to have counselling, and virtually placed me under house arrest in the hostel for nearly two months.
    When the grey world I had sunk into was finally dispelled with the help of my therapist and a regime of antidepressants, I became obsessed with the riots. I read every word about them in the papers, watched reports on the television in the hostel’s mess, and was desperate to get involved in some way with the peace marches, mohalla committees, fund-raisers and other measures that were being initiated as concerned citizens tried to put the city back together again. Failing that, I wanted to return to work on the magazine, it would give me a measure of engagement with what was going on. Mr Sorabjee was in the thick of the action, working with the energy and focus of a man half his age, but he would not allow me to leave my room and even threatened to dismiss me from his employ if I insisted on getting involved; all he would agree to was my helping with the magazine from the safety of the hostel. Every morning at 11 his chauffeur would come to my room with a stack of brown paper files and a large Thermos filled with glucose-enriched, freshly squeezed mausambi juice, and would return the following day to pick up the completed assignments and deliver a fresh batch.
    During my days of rest and recuperation, although I chafed at the restrictions placed on me by Mr Sorabjee, I marvelled at my good fortune in finding such a benefactor. When we are very young our allegiances are extreme, and I recall that it seemed as if the course of my life was set for the foreseeable future and that nothing would stop