The Power(43)

The temples to Kali are full of worshippers. There are soldiers who join with the rioters. And Tunde is there, too, with his cameras and his CNN pass.

In the hotel filled with foreign journalists, people know him. He’s seen some of these reporters before, in other places where justice is at last being meted out – although it’s not considered good form to say so. Officially, in the West, the thing is still a ‘crisis’, with all the word implies: exceptional, deplorable, temporary. The team from Allgemeine Zeitung greet him by name, congratulate him – with a slightly envious tone – on the scoop of the six photographs of Awadi-Atif’s forces. He’s met the more senior editors and producers from CNN, even a team from the Daily Times of Nigeria, who ask him where he’s been hiding and how they could have missed him. Tunde has his own YouTube channel now, broadcasting footage from around the world. His face begins each broadcast. He is the one who goes to the most dangerous places to bring the images no one else will show. He celebrated his twenty-sixth birthday on a plane. One of the air stewards recognized his face and brought him champagne.

In Delhi, he follows behind a pack of women rampaging through Janpath market. There was a time that a woman could not walk alone here, not if she were under seventy, and not with certainty even then. There had been protests for many years, and placards, and shouted slogans. These things rise up and afterwards it is as if it had never been. Now the women are making what they call ‘a show of force’, in solidarity with those who were killed under the bridges and starved of water.

Tunde interviews a woman in the crowd. She had been here for the protests three years earlier; yes, she had held up her banner and shouted and signed her petitions. ‘It was like being part of a wave of water,’ she says. ‘A wave of spray from the ocean feels powerful, but it is only there for a moment, the sun dries the puddles and the water is gone. Then you feel maybe it never happened. That is how it was with us. The only wave that changes anything is a tsunami. You have to tear down the houses and destroy the land if you want to be sure no one will forget you.’

He knows exactly where this part will fit in his book. The history of political movements. The struggle that moved so slowly until this great change happened. He’s putting together an argument.

There is little violence against people; mostly they are turning over stalls.

‘Now they will know,’ shouts one woman into Tunde’s camera, ‘that they are the ones who should not walk out of their houses alone at night. They are the ones who should be afraid.’

There is a brief scuffle when four men with knives appear in the crowd, but this is quickly dealt with, leaving the men with twitching arms but no permanent injuries. He has started to suspect there will be nothing new here today, nothing that hasn’t been seen before, when the word comes through the crowd that the army have formed a barricade up ahead, across Windsor Place. They are trying to protect the foreign hotels. They’re advancing slowly, armed with rubber bullets, and shoes with thick, insulating soles. They want to make a demonstration here. A show of force to let the world see how a properly trained army deals with a rabble like this.

Tunde doesn’t really know any of the women in this crowd. There is no one who would shelter him in her home if the army came. The crowd is becoming more tightly pressed together; it has happened so gradually he barely noticed it, but it makes sense now he knows that the army is trying to squeeze them all into one place. And then what will happen? People will die here today; he feels it up his spine and into the crown of his head. There are shouts from up ahead. He doesn’t speak enough of the language to understand. Tunde’s usual mild smile fades from his face. He has to get away from here, has to find high ground.

He looks around. Delhi is constantly under construction, most of it unsafe. There are buildings from which the scaffolding has never been removed, shopfronts that slant awkwardly, even some half-collapsed places still partly inhabited. There. Two streets up. There’s a boarded-up shop behind a wagon selling parathas. A kind of wood scaffolding is fixed to the side of the building. The roof is flat. He shoulders his way through the crowd urgently. Most of the women are still trying to move forward, shouting and waving their banners. There’s the hiss and crackle of electrical discharge somewhere further ahead. He can feel it in the air now; he knows what it feels like. The scents of the street, the dog shit and the mango pickle and the body odour of the crowd and the frying bhindi with cardamom become more intense for a moment. Everyone pauses. Tunde pushes forward still. He says to himself, This is not the day you die, Tunde. This is not that day. It’ll be a funny story to tell your friends back home. It’ll go into the book; don’t be afraid, just keep moving. You’ll get good footage from a high vantage point if you can just find a way up there.

The lowest-hanging piece of scaffold is a little too high for him to reach, even by jumping. Further up the street he sees that other people have had the same idea, are climbing on to the roofs or into the trees. Some others are trying to pull them down. If he doesn’t get up there now, he could be overwhelmed in a few minutes by others trying to take his place. He yanks over three old fruit boxes, piles them on top of each other – takes a long splinter in his thumb as he does it, but doesn’t care – climbs on top of the boxes and leaps. Misses. Comes down heavily, the shock sending a jolt of pain through his knees. These boxes won’t last. The crowd is surging and chanting again. He jumps again, this time with more force, and there! He’s got it. Bottom rung of the scaffold ladder. Straining the muscles in his sides, he hauls himself up to the second rung, the third, and then he can scramble his feet up on to the rickety structure, and then it’s easy.