Mother Killer
Content warning for police brutality and homophobic violence.
T
wo constables burst through the door in the middle of the night and tore a half-awake Raja out of his bed and down a set of stairs, his spine, tailbone knocking into the concrete, over and over and into the elevator. Peeking from their doors and windows, people in Raja’s building speculated aloud the reasons for his arrest:
“Muslim?”
“Druggie?”
“Gay?”
The police station had yellowing, peeling walls and a faint stench of sweat and old tobacco lingered in the air. A greasy, agitated inspector pinched his groin between his index and thumb, using the pinkie of the same hand to excavate debris from between his teeth. He ran his tongue along his gutka-stained teeth and watched Raja squirm under his gaze.
“Is this him?” he asked, popping a fresh beeda into his mouth and wiping wet fingers in his hair.
“The beef eater, Saab,” the constables replied.
At that moment, a third constable entered the room, and the inspector impatiently barked, “What?”
“Saab ... a rape case in Yerwada, minor girl, MLA’s son ... ”
The inspector spat the paan in a corner, spraying the wall crimson. “This is why benchod, you will always only be a constable. This sisterfucker here has eaten our gaumata, and you’re bothered about some useless girl?” He was about to say more when his mobile phone on the table vibrated. He clucked his tongue, annoyed at the interruption. He read the message and roared out a horselaugh. “Answer this. What does an old woman have between her breasts a young girl doesn't?”
The constables looked stumped.
Finally, the inspector slapped the table with his palm and said, “Her belly button, benchod!” Then, he grew serious again.
“What’s on the face?” He dug his baton into the cavity below Raja’s chest.
“G-glitter,” said Raja, voice trembling, shoulders rigid, as if bracing himself, expecting to be hit. Not for the first time. His eyes darted to the side, avoiding eye contact as he shifted his wrists behind him bound by coarse rope.
“Huh? Louder. What is it?”
“G-glitter.”
The inspector abruptly pushed the stick deeper between his ribs, prompting a sharp, painful cry from Raja, eyes welling up with tears.
“You’re upper caste, no?” the inspector sneered. “And you still eat beef like those circumcised fuckers? Thoo!” A splatter of red spit landed just below Raja’s right eye. He recoiled in disgust, attempting to rub his face against the curve of his shoulder.
The cell they locked him in was endlessly dark, where he couldn’t tell his hand from his face. As the hours passed, a searing pain startled him from his sleep.
“Help, please,” he cried out into the void, “There are rats here.”
“Drink my piss,” someone yelled.
After three long and punishing nights, the constables finally pulled Raja out of the lockup. The sudden onslaught of blinding sunlight streaming through the windows was like a physical force. He could barely stand without support. One of them shoved him, forcing him onto his knees, directly below the inspector’s eyes. Perched on one butt cheek, the inspector spoke with a calculated indifference, “Look, you have two options. Either you rot in jail with no bail or sign this paper stating you agree to 90 days of community service at a nearby temple and that no harm was done to you at this station.”
The inspector’s words echoed in Raja’s ears. The pit of his stomach clenched tighter. He knew what the right thing to do here was. He also knew that the right thing to do wasn’t right for him. He didn’t fight himself when his hands shakily signed the letter.
Later, a shiny-headed priest in an orange robe thrust a spoonful of cow’s warm urine in Raja’s mouth to purify him, while a constable tilted Raja’s head back to ensure he swallowed the whole thing.
“Must have good practice opening your mouth wide, no?” the inspector said with a sly grin and the station’s walls shook from laughter.
A month passed. Raja still had trouble sleeping. One late evening, as he sat before the TV watching the news, a photo appeared on screen. Though the image was blurry, the face was unmistakably familiar. He felt a surge of rage and shame, like when in school everyone flung at him derogatory slurs like Gaandu and Chakkey.
“What makes a Brahmin boy from a conservative family pursue a PhD in Islamic Studies? And then, as a result and not shockingly, develop a taste for cow meat?” The show’s spectacled, wavy-haired host angrily posed the question to the panel of four floating heads occupying a corner of the screen.
A Bengali political science professor from the Jawaharlal Nehru University spoke first: “Onurag, Onurag, this is flabbergasting. I’m flabbergasted. Today, the gobernment is saying no beef, tomorrow, they bill say no Jockey undergarments. What bill be do? Cover our pribates with a langot?”
“What’s wrong with that?” a BJB politician shouted. “We’ve worn loincloth since the Vedic Period, including Lord Shiva. You think you’re better than him?”
“How do you know he bore langot? You bere there?” the professor asked, the twang of his accent altering his enunciation.
The politician hurled a water bottle across the table. “First learn to speak English properly, then you can wear Jockey.”
“First you show me your langot.”
A scuffle broke out between the two men. The camera stayed on them as the remaining panelists continued passionately with their arguments ignoring the tussle.
“Why should we learn English? That’s not ours either,” a former actor turned activist said. “Hindi is our national language.”
Back to the closeup of the host, screaming: “After the break, we talk to the cow killer’s parents. Do not go anywhere.”
Minutes later, Raja’s mother came on the screen, wailing, her face blurred.
“I have no son.”
The camera shifted to his father next. “We don’t even touch onion and garlic in our house. He should’ve been born to a Quran thumper.”
Raja felt immune to his father’s harsh words, because nothing Raja ever did or said was good enough for him. But hearing his mother disown him on national television made it hard for him to breathe. Like when his father caught him kissing a boy who had come over on the pretext of doing "homework" together. He’d chased them both around the house with a rubber chappal in hand.
“Tonight, the nation wants to know who is responsible for corrupting this youth? Is it the growing influence of the West or should we point fingers at the libtards within our own borders?” the host asked.
Three weeks later, Raja received a package at his apartment. It contained ten typed pages with detailed instructions about his community service, along with a signboard to be worn around his neck. The officious-sounding pages mandated that he follow a strict ayurvedic diet of fruits, vegetables, pulses and honey. A QR code led him to a password-protected online portal that contained his personal information along with an account of his offence. The website listed names of primarily Muslim men, accompanied by their photographs and criminal charges that ranged from possession to consumption of beef to cattle smuggling. His sentence also included financially supporting the upkeep of Laxmi, an orphaned calf.
Beggars, grouped by the nature of their afflictions, lined the approach to the Ram Temple. Devotees covered their noses and walked past the living to worship the unliving. They exhaled only once they crossed the temple’s threshold, where swiftly, the filth outside was eclipsed by the grandeur inside: towering ornate gates, carved pillars of granite, floors paved with marble, sparkling gold-plated domes, the air suffused with aromas of rose incense, marigold and fresh coconuts.
A constable escorted Raja to what would be his office for the next three months: a cramped five-by-ten room just off the entrance to the right. The space was lined with rows of small square cement shelves, each holding up to four to five pairs of chappals. Raja’s job was to collect the footwear, neatly arrange them in the shelves, provide the devotees with a token and fetch the correct pairs once they returned from their prayers.
The constable ordered him to wear the signboard that read in Hindi:
THIS MAN IS A COW KILLER.
HE’LL SERVE AT THIS TEMPLE WITH HUMILITY.
DON’T TIP OR ENGAGE IN CONVERSATION.
By order of The Honourable High Court of India.
With the board around his neck, Raja felt a familiar feeling, like when a boy in school had socked him in the stomach for "sounding gay." Hot, thick tears flew from his eyes as he stood in the stinking room, embarrassed and feeling completely alone.
Barely an hour had passed before trouble began. Some visitors yelled and threw their slippers and shoes at him. “Keep it,” they said when he tried to return them. “Would rather be barefoot than wear on our feet what your sinful hands have touched.”
The next day, a mob crowded him, spitting and shouting slogans.
“Anti-national.”
“Pig.”
“Mother killer.”
“Go to Pakistan.”
By the end of the week, Raja’s fingers were calloused, his wrists and arms throbbed with pain. He often thought of his mother. She’d once caught him touching the house help’s sandals and dragged him to the bathroom to wash his hands in the sink, smelling them after every rinse to make sure there was not even a trace of stench. With a handful of salt in her fist, she first moved her arm clockwise, then counterclockwise, mumbling: “Mariamma, save this boy from evil eyes. Never should any misfortune fall upon him.”
His home and clothes reeked of rubber and leather. Even after scrubbing himself raw in the shower, the stench refused to part. Looking at his reflection now in the bathroom mirror, he saw a worm: small, invisible, inconsequential.
The following week, BJB workers rubbed grease on Raja’s face and garlanded him with torn slippers.
“Say, long live mother India.”
“Long live … mother India,” he repeated.
“Say, cow is my mother, it is wrong to eat my mother.”
“It is wrong to eat your mother.”
The worker slapped him. “Don’t get smart with me. Say, my mother.”
“My mother.”
They still beat him.
Looking at his reflection now in the bathroom mirror, he saw a worm: small, invisible, inconsequential.
With his face blackened, and his clothes ripped and stained with blood, Raja walked to his home. Not a single autorickshaw, bus or taxi halted for him. No one asked him if he was alright, needed medical help or wanted a glass of water. The sky, a deep, bruised plum, transported him back to the small town he grew up in, where at street corners, red-eyed, dishevelled women with crimson tongues and betel nuts between their teeth made money by tapping black wands on people’s palms and reading out their future with well-planned pauses as if the goddess Mariamma herself was whispering their kismet. He longed for that sort of make-believe, a soothing voice, even if lying, to assure him that all will be well.
As a boy, he yearned for nothing more than his mother’s affection. She indulged him, allowing him to wear her old saris, as he mimicked her by dabbing her perfume in the crook of his neck, on his wrists, behind his ears, enjoying the tingling sensation it evoked.
She wouldn’t even look at him now.
Raja had always felt indifferent towards his father, a stubborn, complicated man, insistent on having rules for everything. During Raja’s teenage years, his father imposed upon him the agonizingly public ordeal of the holy thread ceremony, demanding that he perform the Vedic rituals thrice daily. He frequently lectured him on the purity of brahmins, the privilege of being born into such a caste. “The aim of a brahmin’s life is to attain moksha and unite with the divine,” he said often.
However, Raja’s own exploration and understanding of the world led him to draw conclusions that contrasted sharply with what he was being taught. He grew to resent religion and everything it represented, for the way it controlled its believers through fear and coercion. As Raja began to find and assert his own voice, the rift between him and his father widened. His father once advised him against consuming onions and garlic, categorizing them as Tamasic foods, primarily eaten by Muslims and those from lower castes. He claimed this was the reason these communities had numerous offspring, crudely comparing them to animals.
“Didn’t Thatha have ten children?” Raja asked.
In response, his father angrily gripped his arm, pulling him towards the bathroom. The door shut behind him with a thud. His mother wailed outside. That night and the few nights that followed, Raja moaned in pain, unable to sleep.
College offered him the freedom he’d always yearned for. In the haze of ganja smoke, he lost himself in the pages of prohibited literature and entered the world of live sex cams, where, for only a dollar, handsome, clean-shaven men were nice to him.
Day after day, Raja squatted in his narrow booth, cleaning and guarding people’s footwear for free. Two months went by.
One day Raja looked up and saw a man enter the temple. He was flanked by his parents. He recognized their identical pinched noses, pronounced front teeth, and sloping foreheads. Mani. He looked the same: petite frame, sharp jawline, oiled curls bouncing with every step. That perfect mole that sat beneath his nose.
Seeing Mani again after these many years instantly reminded him of the marks from his Appa’s chappal—red and burning across his thighs, arms, cheeks. Of the lesson he’d learned: it was safer to hide who you are than reveal your true self. Despite that, Raja and Mani had continued seeing each other until a job transfer took Mani’s family to another city and they lost touch.
Pretending to stretch his arms and neck, Raja stole glances at Mani, staring at him long enough that eventually their eyes met. He was too shy to yell his name across the temple courtyard, so he sat there, writhing, trembling, repressing the urge to touch his lips to Mani’s. What was a curling, winding black hole this morning was now a feeling of discovering an old, never opened gift.
It was clear that Mani had recognized Raja too. When he came up to the booth with his parents, his eyes seemed to say, Is it really you? How long has it been? It made Raja’s skin tingle, the same way it did back in his room that afternoon. The loss of his relationship had for years felt like a missing organ.
Yet, just as this newfound light warmed him, the wisps of those rising memories quickly vaporized as if singed by a hot iron. The darkness returned, stronger, darker, enveloping him once more as he realized where he was, the state he was in. The thought of pursuing this any further seemed futile, the belief that Mani would never reciprocate his feelings. He couldn’t bear the weight of Mani’s disdain, his rejection, and so, whatever was bubbling under the surface retracted quickly. He reverted to being all business, back to the job at hand.
The loss of his relationship had for years felt like a missing organ.
Mani’s parents were oblivious of Raja’s identify, even though he’d been to their home multiple times, pressing aunty’s aching, swollen feet as she rested on the vintage rocking chair, mumbling, Such a good boy, such a sweet boy. He looked up from that thought, waiting for Mani to turn in his sandals as well. Instead, he turned and walked back outside, ignoring the bewildered cries of his parents. He returned barefoot.
When it was time to head to the sanctum, Mani faked a phone call to hang back, sending his parents ahead of him. Raja wanted to say so much but didn’t know what to say or how to begin.
“You look the same,” said Mani and a light spread through Raja, hearing the voice he’d longed for, for so long. “How … this?” Mani's tone carried curiosity and a hint of amusement without any judgement.
Raja sighed and relayed everything that had unfolded. By the end he was no longer ashamed, instead, felt a sense of relief. The two of them revisited memories, as comfortable and familiar as old, favourite songs whose words they still knew by heart. As Raja typed Mani’s number into his phone, he couldn’t stop smiling and shaking his head in disbelief.
“What?” said Mani.
“Just wondering what might’ve been if we hadn’t lost touch.”
“Forget what ifs, better to think about what’s next.”
Raja felt a mix of pride and wistful remembrance.
“I know, right? Wise beyond his years,” Mani said.
A week passed, during which they spent every day together. From morning till dusk, parting only at the end of Raja’s shift.
One warm, sun-ripened day, they were lost in conversation, catching each other up on their favourite shows, celebrity gossip, dreams. They were in the middle of speculating about the reasons for Kanye’s descent into madness.
“Remember when he went up on stage during Swift’s acceptance speech?”
“Ugh, mega cringe,” said Mani.
Just then, an uneasy, square-jawed, middle-aged man arrived to collect his slippers. Sweat poured from his face and soaked through his shirt. Raja stopped talking when the man glanced at him as though he’d bitten into a clove mid-biryani. Raja lowered his eyes, mortified. The man collected his slippers and slapped them on the floor, making a knowing hmm sound before walking away.
Raja was the first to speak. “Sorry.”
“For what? That dick?”
Days had meaning again. Raja and Mani filled their nights talking on the phone.
“You know if I repeat your name fast-fast-fast, I feel like a fish opening and closing its mouth,” said Raja.
“Is this you flirting?” Mani asked. “Are you flirting?” Mani let out a loud cackle and Raja’s cheeks were the colour of the sky at dawn.
Going to hotels posed a risk, because of the questions asked at reception and the chance of staff tipping off the police—or worse, a politician. Even pubs, parks, and theatres had become unsafe with the rise of Shri Ram Sena, a new party with non-negotiable morals they fiercely enforced. Just last month they had dragged young men and women out of a pub, beating them up for violating Indian values. Public displays of affection were particularly risky. If caught, men paid by having the geography of their faces redrawn, while women were subjected to the indignity of having their families informed. For these reasons, Raja and Mani met at restaurants, making out quickly, sloppily, riskily in stinky, cramped restroom stalls.
It was a grey, wet day and Mani asked Raja if he wanted to walk to the sanctum with him. Raja hesitated.
“I’m not religious either,” said Mani, “I just come here for the halwa.”
Chuckling, Raja nodded discreetly at the CCTV cameras pointing at him.
“You really think there’s someone in front of a screen watching all day whether you’re working or not?”
Raja erupted into laughter, harder and louder, until tears stained his cheeks. He removed the signboard from around his neck and moved it in half circles. It felt good, having that weight off himself.
“Let’s go,” Mani said, taking Raja’s hand and leading him up the marble stairs engraved with the names of donors.
“Even God is not immune to the pleasures of money,” said Raja. “The more money you can throw, the closer you can be to him. For five thousand, you can join an express queue. For ten, the priests will allow you to spend a few seconds longer than the riff-raff. For 15, you can sit on Ram’s lap,” said Raja.
“And for 20, he would let you suck … ”
Before Mani could complete his thought, Raja was on the floor snorting with laughter.
The air inside the high-ceilinged sanctum was cooler, perfumed by camphor and sandalwood incense. Pillars and walls depicted mythological tales: a stricken, dying Jatayu breathing his last; Ram returning to Ayodhya with Sita; Sita giving the agnipariksha, her trial by fire.
Raja rolled his eyes. “What kind of a Supreme Being, so-called paramapurusha doubts his own wife’s chastity?”
“The kind insecure about his penis size,” said Mani with a smirk, as Raja fought to control his laughter.
Mani rested his head on Raja’s shoulder, their fingers laced together. Mani’s hand was warm, moist with sweat. But soon realizing where they were and aware of the man at his elbow, Raja straightened, reluctantly letting go of Mani. The man behind him smelled of the artificially earthy smell of Gokul Sandol talcum powder, Raja’s Appa’s favourite. The texture more like boric acid powder for a carrom board than something for the face. Exchanging a glance, Raja and Mani decided to leave the queue for the safety of the courtyard. As they tried to slip away, the man seized their wrists.
“What’s the rush, love birds?”
Others in the queue craned their necks to get a good view.
The man looked rabid, foaming at the corners of his lips.
A nerve in Mani’s neck spasmed. “Section 377 has been repealed,” he said.
A knee to the stomach and he collapsed on the floor. Raja went to grab the man’s collar, but the man slapped him with so much force, Raja’s neck felt like it had separated from his body.
“He’s the cow killer,” someone shouted.
“Get him,” someone else said.
“No-no-no, not here,” the priest announced, impatiently. “Out, out. And someone fetch me cow urine. Need to purify the sanctum.”
Outside, in the temple’s sprawling courtyard, the crowd pulled, pushed, and kicked Raja and Mani.
“We didn’t do anything,” Raja kept saying, as devout, god-fearing men partook eagerly in safeguarding their culture and values. Finally, content with the bloodied, naked, shivering forms of Raja and Mani, they left.
Shortly after, the police got there and released their wrists tied to a banyan tree, loosening the thick ropes usually reserved for keeping barn animals tethered to their posts. They drove them to the police station instead of the hospital first.
As Raja recovered at home from a punctured lung and broken ribs, an email, followed by a letter and a phone call informed him of the dereliction of duty and the subsequent increase in penalty: an additional hundred days of service. The email also included a low-res photo documenting Laxmi’s progress. She was doing well.
Mani also received a letter that prohibited him from going within a hundred metres of the temple for the remainder of Raja’s service. Raja’s request to change the temple for safety reasons was rejected.
Temple visitors continued to spit derogatory words, calling Raja “Chikney” or “Rasgulley,” referencing his effeminate features, while he kept his head low and hands moving. The only thing that kept him going all day was seeing Mani after work. The way he patiently, lovingly kissed him with his soft lips, trekking every inch of his face.
Mani came to Raja’s apartment, always after nightfall, always disguised as a woman. It was Raja’s idea. It was less dangerous—though still frowned upon—having a woman over late at night than being caught with another man. After arriving, for a minute or two or longer, with the lights off, they stood holding each other, cherishing the folds and curves of their bodies and waiting for their beating, buzzing hearts to simmer down.
To celebrate the end of Raja’s community service, Mani got tickets for a special event. The location, revealed only on the day of, was a bungalow in a secluded area, filled with happy men and women in makeup and jewellery, dresses and heels, leather and latex. Never before had Raja witnessed these many people being themselves.
Moments later, music roared from the giant speakers, a mix of dhol, drums and ululation. Raja recognized the entry song as the room erupted with delight. Colourful strobe lights bounced off the walls and Raja jumped up and down, like when Amma had bought him a red bicycle with a banana seat and pink tassels hanging off the handles.
LuxRose, the country’s first drag queen, came down the stairs, slowly, seductively, like everything and everyone belonged to her. She made her customary lingering kissing sounds on the microphone that seemed to go on and on forever.
The screen behind her lit up. A photograph of a six-year-old. A string of “awws,” traversed across the room.
A younger LuxRose. A gentle violin played in the background. LuxRose’s shoulders trembled. She wept as she spoke to the child.
You’ll be bullied.
You’ll be shamed.
But know that you’re loved.
Raja flinched at a memory from school. The name-calling, the casual violence.
To her 14-year-old self, Lux said,
You’ll be raped.
Locked in a toilet.
Punched at a bus stop for wearing makeup.
It’s not you, it’s them. They are the problem.
The show ended with an electric dance performance.
At the post-show meet and greet, Raja wanted to say so much to LuxRose, about their shared pain, similar pasts, but was so overwhelmed that he held her hand and started weeping.
Later, they walked to a tapri, which apart from tea and snacks, also sold “CHILD COLD BEER”. Many from the event were also present, pointing out the misspelled sign to each other and giggling, and still talking about LuxRose. Raja ordered two cutting chai and shared a smoke with Mani.
“Thank you for this gift, for bringing me here,” he said.
“Of course,” said Mani.
“Do you really have to go to Sydney?”
Mani ran his thumb across Raja’s cheek. “As soon as the contract is signed, I’ll rush back.”
The Nepali watchman ditched his beedi and did an about-face when he saw Raja approaching. Raja found that odd but didn’t give it much thought, his mind still occupied with Lux.
He got into the elevator and pressed the fifth-floor button. It had taken him weeks to get inside the lift again. After the constables had yanked the grill shut, they had prodded him with their sticks: how can you like a penis better than a pussy? A phantom pain grew between his thighs.
The elevator thudded to a stop. He closed it and the cage disappeared like a shooting star. The bulb in the landing wasn’t working again. Turning on the torch on his phone, Raja cursed the society president for not doing his only job: keeping everything running. He fumbled for the keys in his pocket, lost his grip and dropped them. “Fuck,” he mumbled. The keys didn't clink as they hit the floor, the sound more muted, like they'd landed in a puddle.
By now, he was aware of a putrid smell. He aimed the phone's flashlight at his feet to find his keys beside a severed cat’s head and body. A wave of nausea welled up inside him. He clutched the railing, fighting back the urge to throw up.
Desperate to get inside the house, he grabbed his keys, disregarding what was clearly the animal's blood on his hands. His gaze then shifted to the message scrawled across his door:
DIE, FAGGOT.
Raja considered running back down the stairs. Where would he go though? He could call the police. Would they help him? How will he explain this? He didn’t trust himself to form a coherent sentence. They may even dismiss it as a prank. Should he call Mani? No, he shouldn’t alarm him.
He rushed inside, to the bathroom, vomiting the chicken pasta, garlic bread and chai on the white basin. His stomach spasmed as he emptied his evening meal, a discoloured, thick mess. He gargled with Listerine to get rid of the bitter, acidic aftertaste in his mouth. Running the tap, he scrubbed his fingers and nails with soap to wipe his mouth and wash off the blood stains.
He tapped lightly where his collarbone, first rib and sternum met, repeating, “I’m ok, I’m safe,” over and over, like he’d seen someone do on TikTok. They said to do this when anxious. Disrupt the emotional pattern you've wedged yourself into. Raja ran his hot palms over the cool porcelain to calm his nerves.
He rang the station anyway and was met with a recorded female voice repeating, Your call is important to us. Stay on the line. The next available representative will be with you shortly.
Any loud, sudden noise—the watchman’s tuneless whistle or a dog’s bark—startled him. I’m ok, I’m safe, he whispered again. Somehow he fell asleep, until his phone rang, shrill and penetrating, snapping him out of his groggy state.
“Hello?”
“I know where you live,” a male voice answered.
Raja threw the phone away and curled up against the wall, sobbing.
The next morning, he was starving. There was nothing to eat. The bread had mould and the milk had curdled. He called the grocer to list the items he needed, and the grocer relayed it to his assistant:
“Brown eggs.”
“Eggs!”
“Amul butter.”
“Butter!”
“Wheat bread.”
“Bread!”
However, when Raja gave his address for delivery, the man disconnected the call.
Raja tried the police station again in the evening. Still no response. He finally ordered chicken biryani from a nearby restaurant, but a moment later, called them again and switched his order to vegetable biryani, a safer choice.
At night, he heard footsteps outside his door, accompanied by the sound of something heavy being dragged. Sweat pooled in his armpits. They were going to break down his door and kill him. The thought made him firm his grip around the knife’s handle. After some time, however, the footsteps descended.
At first light, he decided, he’d book a hotel. Once there, he’d call Mani and explain everything. Mani would fly back, and everything would be alright. They would leave the country. Maybe go to Mexico or Turkey, somewhere, anywhere far from here.
In the morning, Raja was yanked out of his sleep by the blast of patriotic songs praising the nation’s glorious democracy and secularism. The sound surged from the speakers set up in the society’s open area, framed on each side by tall, beige buildings. Ignoring the music, he began packing—toothbrush, deodorant, phone charger, some cash.
When he went to open the door, he discovered the exit was blocked with what felt like gunny sacks filled with sand or concrete. They were impossible to move. He tried everything—pushing, shouldering, kicking—nothing worked.
“Help … let me out please … help,” he screamed, hoping his neighbours would hear him. He yelled again and again. He ran to the balcony, calling, “Hello? Hello, watchman? Watchman!” He waved his hands frantically. Passersby glanced up at him with amusement before going their way.
He hurried back inside to call Mani. “Pick up, pick up, pick up, pick up,” he muttered. Mani didn’t. He tried the station and got the same canned response. “Fuck.” He called Mani once more. His parents, who hung up when they heard his voice. He believed there was goodness in the world. The love and kindness he witnessed at the LuxRose event was real. He went to the balcony again to beg for help. None came.
Hours passed. Dehydrated and spent, he lost consciousness.
It was already dark by the time he awoke. He was parched. The kitchen tap hissed without producing a drop of water. This was how his life was going to end. The police would find his rotting body, perhaps, after neighbours complained about the smell from his flat. Onurag, the news anchor, would excitedly announce his death on his channel, proclaiming that cows were free yet again to roam the streets. BJB supporters would party. Mani would find out about his passing and go mental.
Somehow, newspapers and letters from the government kept arriving. One was a reminder to never store, cook or eat beef. The glossy two-pager extolled the virtues of vegetarianism. Another envelope contained photographs of a pregnant Laxmi. Both the mother and calf were healthy. One newspaper headline read: Government Cracks Down on Anti-Nationals. Across the country, cow vigilantes were teaching Muslims a lesson by suspending their dead, mutilated bodies from trees and posing for the cameras.
Raja felt weak, dipping in and out of consciousness. He thought he heard his phone ring. “Hello?” said Raja, “hello?”
“Raja? Sorry, I lost my phone. Can you hear me?”
“Mani? Hello?”
“Hello? Can’t hear you.”
There was a beeping sound, Raja’s phone died. Power and water had been out for three days. He stared at his screen, the phone pressed against his cheek, imagining it to be Mani’s warm touch.
Night fell. Sudden and loud banging sounds came from outside the door. Alone and scared, Raja couldn’t stop shaking as he approached the living room. Looking through the peephole, he saw a group of men violently thumping and kicking at his door, shouting curses and slogans. The groomed face of the bearded prime minister on the lapel-pins of their shirt pockets seemed to approve.
Raja’s heart pounded like a drum in his ears. Like all the air had been squeezed from his lungs, his chest tightened, each breath thick, suffocating. Stifling back sobs rising in his throat, he threw himself against the door to keep it from breaking. His scream started as a low, wobbly sound barely escaping his lips. Gradually, it grew and grew, stretching into more urgent cries until his voice cracked and faded back to a whisper.
The mob kept hammering.
“We will cut off your fingers.”
“We will chop your nose.”
“We will slice your tongue.”
The room began to whirl and the floor beneath him seemed to shift. Objects around him—the TV, the sofa, coffee table, plants, lamp, his books—started flying in every direction. In that moment, the walls opened their mouth, vast and gaping, and swallowed him whole. Raja collapsed into a deep, dark, unending tunnel.
He woke up to find himself inside a dreamlike expanse of massive, lush foliage, a surreal wall of green. And stretched before him was an infinite, curving pathway, flanked by soaring, ancient trees and dense, tangled undergrowth—no soul, creature, or sound to be heard—not even birdsong.
Where was he? How did he get here? Where was Mani? Where were those people about to slaughter him?
He rose to his feet, not one piece of clothing on him. He took one step, followed by another and another and continued walking. From the break of dawn to the high sun of noon, through the dimming light of dusk, through pouring rain, through drought and biting cold, he walked and walked. His feet, raw and lined with cracks, pulsed with pain. His journey seemed endless, pointless, yet he pressed on without pause, without knowing where he was heading and why.
Tears streamed down his face as he thought of his mother. Time blurred. Days to weeks, weeks to months flickered by. At last, he reached a banyan tree. Worn and unable to take one more step, he set his body under the tree’s soothing shade. And lived there, coiling into himself, pulling his arms and legs closer, assuming a fetal position. Before long, branches and leaves began to grow from his body, tearing through muscle and flesh.
“I didn't do anything ... I didn't do anything," he mumbled in his sleep, repeatedly, in a tormented, fractured voice.
A passing cowherd heard the uttered phrase and assumed Raja to be an enlightened soul, sent from above to absolve them of their troubles. He told people, those people told other people and before long, crowds gathered from afar to seek Raja’s blessings. They came bearing gifts of milk, honey, silk, cows, rice, money, flowers, and fruits.
They began calling him Bargad Baba, having found him under the banyan tree.
With his eyes shut, he would say things like:
"Whether from head, arms, thighs or feet you sprang, does it matter?"
"Whether leaves you chew, flesh you consume, or fruits you eat, does it matter?"
"Whether a man you cherish, or a woman or all or none at all, does it matter?"
Suddenly, he would ask, “Where’s Mani?”
One day, as if by some divine intervention, Mani moved through the crowd, having wandered for days to get here. He’d heard stories about a sage. Their eyes met, and without a word, Mani came and stood beside Raja, staying there for the remainder of their lives.
Everyday, devotees lovingly fanned Raja’s face, washed his feet, and drank the water as holy prasad. As dusk approached and the evening sun painted the sky tangerine, Baba would retire for the day. Mani waved the people off, promising that Baba would tend to their worries tomorrow.
Their eyes met, and without a word, Mani came and stood beside Raja, staying there for the remainder of their lives.
Once alone and together, they passed between each other their notebook, taking turns to list all the things that made them happy:
Mani.
Raja.
Mani.
Raja.
Mani.
