The Association of Small Bombs(72)

What if a bomb goes off now? he wondered. And I am finished here itself, never to have a chance to follow through? When the bus dropped him off in a puddle outside the Surya Sofitel hotel he felt an acute sense of loss.

Zakir Nagar, Jamia, Sarai Jullena, New Friends Colony, Community Center—these were parts of South Delhi he knew well; most of the Muslims from his group lived in these areas and he himself had lived in Batla House when he’d moved to Delhi. Being back home, or in the vicinity of home, set his nerves tingling. He was overwhelmed with sentiment for his youth here, the time he’d spent showing Tara around—Tara, who’d grown up in Delhi but admitted she knew nothing about Muslims; there had been no Muslims at the prestigious Delhi Public School where she’d studied—and he kept looking at the women in the fevered light of afternoon and thinking they were his former love. A city of a thousand Taras! That was Delhi. He passed through the door of a nondescript building and up some stairs artfully covered in paan spit and came to Sharif’s office.

“You’re early,” Sharif said, surprised; he had not been expecting him. “Come, come. God, it’s hot outside for October, no? Look at how you’re sweating. Will you have water? Mohsin, yaar, bring water for sahib.”

The office wasn’t much to look at—one of those seedy low-roofed places where every piece of furniture is covered in a layer of dirt or a plastic sheet and the computers and printers have long turned a milky brown or gray.

As Sharif spoke, Ayub smiled and held his chin in his hand and pretended hard to listen. Then, suddenly, Sharif was pointing at him. “You’re OK? Your eyes are very red. Do you have a fever? You look very tired—you have dark circles under your eyes.”

Not just that—Ayub was out of breath. “I’m OK, uncle—it’s very hot outside,” he managed.

“Where are you staying now?”

“With a relative,” he lied. “Nearby only, in Jamia. Batla House.”

“They’re giving you enough to eat, I hope.” He smiled, his large, hollow teeth visible through his graying beard.

“Yes, uncle,” he said, trying to smile, but failing to fall back into the natural stream of conversation.

“You brought your biodata?”

Ayub stiffened.

“It’s not that important,” Sharif said. “You’re the friend of my son and that’s the most important thing. There’s nothing in plastics that can’t be taught. You’re from Lucknow, right?”

They’d had this conversation many times at dinner and Ayub had long since learned that Sharif was not a good listener. “Actually, Azamgarh, uncle.”

Sharif nodded. “Yes, yes, Azamgarh. Named after Azmi—the father of your Shabana Azmi, no?”

This wasn’t quite right, but Ayub did not disagree. “Yes, uncle—actually we’re very distantly related to them. Even the train to Azamgarh was named after him. My great-grandfather was his cousin and a freedom fighter. He was quite a famous poet. But after him, the family went into decline. I have many cousins—the smart ones are in the Gulf, but most are uneducated. I don’t know how such a rapid decline happened in two generations. Now there’s just the name, nothing else. The whole town lives off the name.” Ayub was surprised at his own confession. The A/C made the place excessively cold. Maybe he did have a fever.

But Sharif was not thinking about Ayub or his family. He was thinking, rather—after a long time—of the Khuranas, of how similar Ayub’s story was to that of Vikas’s family, how so many great families had come crashing down after independence, as if the end of the revolution had robbed them of their raison d’être and they were condemned to forever looking back at towering figures from the previous era. Had these figures even been that great? Or was independence like any industry in India in which a bunch of mediocre entities with money cornered the market and congratulated themselves endlessly? Sometimes, in his darker moods, Sharif felt there had been no great figure in this country ever, that it had always just rolled along, a moody rock, a sticky mess of fictions and chaos and egos—like this fellow: Was his grandfather really great? Or had the mediocrity of the present made him think so?

“I see, I see,” Sharif said, smiling. Then he began to describe the job. Midway through, he stopped. “You should go home, beta. You seem very sick. This is a formality anyway. The job is yours if you want it.”

“Thank you, uncle.”

“Don’t thank. Any friend of my son is a friend of mine.” Then he said, “It’s up to you to raise your family name.” He said it cheerfully.

Ayub, his heart crinkling like a tissue, nodded desperately and went out.



His heart was thundering; it wouldn’t stop. Forget it, he told himself. There’s no way to fight it off. Accept this excess energy. He took a bus back to his room and spent the last scraps of the afternoon masturbating, crying, moaning, alternatively hot and cold, joyful and ready and alone and sick. Then it was time. He went to the designated shop in Paharganj, picked up the backpack with the bomb, and took an auto to Sarojini Nagar. The bomb was made of ammonium nitrate and charcoal tied with a thread—it was shaped like a coconut. A mobile phone was attached to a mass of materials and covered up with a gauzy cloth, so that if someone were to open his backpack, it would look like he was carrying a coconut for a ceremony.