Karan Mahajan - The Association of Small Bombs

His eyes were closed and he inhaled deeply on his hotel bed. He was lost in the movie of his past.

He read the papers the next day. No news of the “Indian Mujahideen,” which is what the group was called in the press. No news of arrests — when the police made even the slightest progress, they immediately gloated to their sidekicks in the media, subpar individuals who were thrilled, like all Indians, to be instructed and beloved by institutions, people who had lost the ability to think for themselves. It was the media he hated even more than the police, when he thought about it. The police the world over are ruthless, corrupt, brutal. He had read the biographies of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King. He knew what the blacks suffered in the U.S. But even there, in that unequal country, with its million injustices papered over by money, there had been a notable organ like the New York Times bearing witness, journalists who had written about Martin Luther King. What about here? How many times had Tara and he contacted some absent-looking, dead-eyed, dead-souled, half-listening journalist at a major newspaper, one of those people who nodded and took no notes and then shook his head and said, “But what’s the story?”

What’s the story? The story is that thousands of innocent Muslims are being killed in plain sight, that innocent Muslims are being harassed in America for a crime they didn’t commit, that innocent Iraqis going about their business now wake to hear American armored vehicles razing the sonic towers of the muezzin with their sirens while gangs of disaffected young men in office clothes shoot back from the alleys, reloading their AK-47s — and here is a group that has found a nonviolent way to address the problem of our times, that’s throwing aside partisan concerns and inviting activists of all castes and colors and creeds to march alongside it, a new movement on a par with the independence struggle.

What would Gandhi do if he were alive today? Ayub wondered. Would the press even notice him or would it quickly slink on to stories of starlets spreading their legs in hotels the minute a protest came to nothing? The future of the country is in the hands of the media. But the media is blind and thinks its future is in the hands of consumers, and so it gives them what they want — sex and violence. And that’s why, to punish all of them, to show them the end result of this strategy, I’ve come to plant a bomb.

________

That day he received an e-mail from Tauqeer, outlining the plan. “I’m sorry we were so delayed,” it went. “But we were solving logistics for the chocolate shipment. So it was best not to contact you.” Was I under watch? Ayub wondered. Was the man selling corn outside the Ahmeds’ house paid to see when I was coming and going? Did I pass their test?

Tauqeer went on to tell him how to call and what would be required.

Ayub read it all with a sense of wonder and excitement. “Allahu Akbar,” he said for the first time in days, praying from the very bottom of his lonely heart that nothing would go wrong.

Ayub felt much better already when he met Shockie — he was relieved to see him; it canceled days of headaches immediately. They met in a park full of children playing cricket amid roving swarms of mosquitoes. Shockie, paunchy and coachlike, in his trademark sleeveless sweater, touched his curly sweat-soaked hair. His green eyes blurred and multiplied the greenery around him.

They sat next to each other on a concrete bench — a cool surface for this time of year.

“You didn’t get too scared, I hope,” Shockie said.

“No, sir, the question didn’t arise. My main concern was that the people I was staying with shouldn’t get suspicious.”

“They’re people with money, no?” Shockie asked. “They should have no problem with hosting one guest.”

“Yes, sir, but the rich are the most stingy,” Ayub said, trying to appear (for an imaginary audience) as if he were looking at and talking about the cricket match unfolding before them. “Howwazzaat!” a cricketer exploded. “They’re screaming more than playing,” Ayub said. Shockie had been smoking; Ayub could tell from the ash crumbling on his black pants.

“That’s how it is with this country’s sportsmen,” Shockie answered, rubbing his hands together to get rid of the ash on his palms. “Also with the politicians, leaders, wives — everyone.” That was the other thing about his hands, apart from the missing fingers, that Ayub noticed — they were rounded and swollen; the heels of the hands were like hillocks.

“Sir, if you don’t mind my asking, what was the logic of making me stay there?” he asked again. “You could have e-mailed and I would have moved.”

“There was no logic.”

Ayub went quiet, spreading his arms on the bench.

“You have to obey what you’re told, that’s all.”

Illogic, Ayub thought. Yes, there was something deeply illogical about how the group functioned, how it was organized, how it held its meetings — it prided itself on irrationality. He was the one still stuck in the old system of rationality.

“Nothing contributes to being caught or saved,” Shockie went on. “No precautions. Nothing. It all depends on loyalty between members. Most people — they notice nothing. You can assemble a bomb in front of them, set it afire, and they wouldn’t realize what had happened till they’re dead. Look at how openly I’m talking to you in this park. That’s trust. If we trust each other, anything is possible.

“When I’ve set bombs in Delhi,” Shockie continued, “I’ve come from every direction, wearing every sort of disguise. I’ve made big mistakes. Once the bomb didn’t go off. I had to come back. A lot of people saw my two friends and me. In those days they used to do a lot more prosecution on circumstantial evidence — so we used to travel in groups. To be illogical. The more illogical you are, the better you are at this game. The shopkeepers even saw and noticed us — they told us to move — but later, no one could remember our faces.”

This is why innocents are in jail, Ayub thought, his old self surfacing for a second.

“People get too wrapped up in themselves,” Shockie said. “And you know what happens when a bomb goes off? The truth about people comes out. Men leave their children and run away. Shopkeepers push aside wives and try to save their cash. People come and loot the shops. A blast reveals the truth about places. Don’t forget what you’re doing is noble.”

Ayub nodded. “You know, the friend I was staying with — did Tauqeer tell you? He was injured in a blast you set off in 1996.”

“I didn’t know,” Shockie said, his green eyes suddenly flicking on.

Was there a power struggle in the group? Ayub wondered, scratching a nail into the concrete of the bench. Had Shockie been demoted to aging coach against his will?

“That’s how I met him,” Ayub continued. “He was in that group that gave legal aid to Muslim undertrials. I mention him because what you’re saying is right — when the blast happened, he had gone with his friends. And instead of helping them he just walked off. He says he was in shock and doesn’t remember why he did this. He didn’t even phone home — he was only a boy then, twelve — but he kept walking. And if you look at him today, his entire personality can be extrapolated from that one incident. He likes to pretend nothing bad has happened. To date he’s suffering pain in his wrists from your blast,” he said, glossing over his own role in Mansoor’s recovery.

“It is too bad a Muslim got injured.”

“Don’t worry too much. They’re quite unreligious, the people in that family.”