A powerful blow struck him on the nose and he collapsed before he could protest. The blistering tar of the highway road made his body writhe and slither. His breath reduced to short bursts. And when his lungs strained to absorb a mouthful of air, the blood rushing madly towards his brain suddenly found an outlet through his nose, and spurted out like a vigorous stream of a broken fountain. 

Kicks and punches rained over him from all directions and he was sprawled on the road- motionless and defenceless. He rolled his eyes but his sight was clouded. The clots of red had bursted unevenly over the white of his eyes. His ears were numbed and a white noise echoed around between them. 

A steel-toe boot kick rocked the area between his ribs, and blood spilled from his mouth. A rough hand twisted the nape of his neck, and another pulled him up by his hair and smashed his face on the ground. The streams of blood passing through his white shirt had mixed with his urine and excreta, and swamped his underwear.

There was a brief pause. As if an unexpected scroll had arrived from the emperor’s court, pardoning the convict. 

Lying flat on his chest, his face drenched in the pool of his own blood, he felt lighter. The Earth embraced him with the same warmth a mother holds her child after a painful birth. In the veranda of his old house in Saharanpur, his mother was kneeling down on a red and blue silk musalla (prayer mat), a yellow dupatta wrapped around her arms. Slowly and painfully, she moved her hands up in the air, lifting the dupatta along. She closed her eyes and muttered something in Arabic; thenlet her hands drop freely on her knees. On the silk musalla, the yellow dupatta outspread like Ishaaq (Isaac) laid before Ibrahim (Abraham) prior to his sacrifice to God. A pressure cooker’s loud whistle broke the equanimity. He smiled to himself: “It’s nihari (meat curry)!” 

A piece of blue sky appeared from among the dozens of heads hovering over him. Someone pushed an iron rod up his rectum. The sky turned black, blacker than tar. Another rod hit his face, dislocating his jaw. He wanted to scream but could only groan. 

The crowd swelled on all sides, grew wilder. Men carrying sticks and rods and bricks. Their mouths snarling hatred and aggression, and slogans and curses. If he did not run now, he would be ripped into pieces.

Just then he realized that his limbs were tied with coir ropes. 

In desperation, he closed his eyes and pleaded to God for help. For a moment there was silence and nothing came after that. With eyes closed and mind at pretentious peace, he unfastened the knots of the ropes, and shook himself with all the strength left in his body. He woke up from the nightmare. 

                                                                II 

“WHERE AM I? 

WHERE AM I? 

WHERE AM I?” 

He began yelling in fear that had gripped his soul. 

“Maaa… Maaa… heyyy… Heyyyaa…” 

“Fuckk!” “Fuckk!” “Fuuuuckkk!” 

His heart was beating aggressively, and his clothes were drenched in sweat. In the room there was pitch black darkness. 

He started to recollect how things were organized in his bedroom. He knew he was sitting on his double bed which had a Nidra mattress. The room had an attached bathroom, one almirah, a writing desk and maybe a watercooler as well. He glided his left hand over the bedside table and his fingers touched his Blackberry phone. He checked the time on the phone. It was 2:52 am.

He leaned backwards on the headboard of the bed and waited for his nerves to calm down. There was something frightening still crawling inside his stomach. His attention went back to the Blackberry phone. He remembered he had purchased it with his own money, the savings from his first few salaries. But the QWERTY keypad under his fingers felt alien. He remembered that many years ago, he had sold the Blackberry set and bought an iPhone.  

But he was awake. In his room! 

That sharp pain between his ribs came back with a frightening intensity. 

He left the bed to switch on the lights in the room but couldn’t find the right wall. After circling the room with the support of walls, he started crawling on the floor. His head hit the door and he stood up at once. He frisked the door apprehensively. It had no latch or bolt or knob. 

He tried shouting but nothing came out of his mouth. He tried jolting the door but couldn’t gather the strength in his body. The bangs and thumps fell on the door limply, and his frustration grew at every failed attempt. 

“The phone has a flashlight!” he exclaimed and slipped his hand inside the pocket. The phone disappeared as soon as he reached for it. 

In sheer hopelessness and terror, he reclined against the door, covered his face with both hands and sobbed and sobbed. 

A loud bang from the other side of the door startled him. Another thunderous boom followed, and he moved away from the door in fright. It was followed by kicks and thumps and it seemed the door wouldn’t be able to stand the forceful blows for very long. It was now evident that the crowd had chased him to this house.

                                                                     III 

“It’s a dream. It was a dream. Dream. Dream.” 

He sat cross-legged on the floor and began murmuring to himself. 

The floor was ice cold. He took long breaths and focused on inhaling and exhaling the air through his nose and mouth. His muscles began to relax and his bottoms adjusted to the floor’s temperature. 

There was a packet of cigarettes in the same pocket from where the Blackberry had disappeared. He felt it pressed against his thighs and had a strong urge to smoke a cigarette. But the recently acquired quiet was too precious to lose for a cigarette, and by now he had also become doubtful of things he was seeing and feeling. What if the cigarette packet also disappeared if he reached for it? 

His attention kept shifting from his breathing to the cigarettes to the violent explosions at the door. 

Even if he got hold of the cigarettes where would he get a lighter from? He kept a spare one in the attached bathroom but he was not sure if he was in his current flat or some other place.  

There was a warm yellow light peeking out from under the door of his attached bathroom. It was on his left. He just had to open his eyes to see whether it was his imagination or if he had returned to his flat, to his world. The eyelids refused to take the risk. The noise at the door had gone away, far away. The heartbeat had returned to normalcy. He gave another push and his eyes opened. He turned left. The bathroom door was there. From the pocket he took out the cigarette packet, kept his poise and resisted the excitement in his muscles. He stood up, brisk-walked to the bathroom, picked the lighter from the window sill, sat on the commode and lit a cigarette. After a few cigarettes the pain in his mouth and stomach went away. He finished the packet in his bed. Then he checked the time on his phone. It was 2:52 am. He typed a message “Call me as soon as you see this message.” on his Blackberry and went to sleep.   

                                                                       IV 

A clamour of noises and loud banging of steel plates and loud explosions shook him up from sleep. He checked his iPhone. It was 9:30 am. The sound of the uproar was coming from the window. The fear from the previous night travelled back to his limbs and he hurried towards the window. On the way, he stumbled upon a stool and his face hit the couch’s armrest. It was like the first blow he had received on his nose in the dream. Immediately, he stood up, and lurched forward. 

In the street, there were hordes of men carrying tirangas and lotus and saffron flags and trishools in their hands. All euphoric and unruly. A DJ truck was playing “Bharat ka bacha bacha, Jai Shri Ram, Jai Shri Ram…” The whole street was coloured saffron and red. 

He hadn’t yet fully recovered from the memories of the dreams and this chaos on the street below added more disorder to his confusion. He looked at his phone again. It was his iPhone and not the old blackberry. He scanned his flat- the sofas, the curtains, the bathroom, the walls and the doors. Nothing uncanny about anything. And yet the sense of belonging had somewhere ruptured. The pain between his ribs flared up. 

He went back to the window to make sense of the happenings. In bewilderment, he switched on the television. On a nationalist news channel, a news anchor was screaming at his viewers: “Narendra Modi wins India. An unprecedented victory. A historic mandate.”

A drop of blood reached the tip of his nose, hung there for a few seconds and then hit the tiled floor, shattering the eerie quiet in his head. 

He turned towards the door of his flat. The mob could arrive anytime.