2.30 a.m 17^th May

There’s been no electricity in my house since 2.15 am this morning. Not having had the forethought to equip this house with so much as a torch, I pad around using the screen from my smartphone to show me the way around. Not that I need it. I’m intimately familiar with the shapes of this house. The corners I will always bump against, whether day or night. The squeak of the bathroom door. The one spot on the tile in the kitchen that feels rougher under my bare toes than all the others. Yes, I know this house, even though it is not technically mine. I’ve only been a tenant for seven years.

So, in the semi darkness I peer at the switchboard. Sweat pools at the nape of my neck: the slow whirr of the fan had been my sole defense against the summer night. Tak-tak-tak, and then stillness. Then the sound of a buzzing, quickly followed by the sting of a bite. I hate mosquitoes. They are the bane of the earth. Ok, I hate lizards more, but I’ve never been bitten by one-

The switchboard seems ok.

Perhaps the electricity will be back soon.

This is not, after all, 1991 and having to spend forty eight hours without electricity at home because the line man can’t apparently even be bribed to restore a fault in the line.

This is 2014, and things are better.

Acche din aane wale hain, I mutter to myself.

I feel like I’m 13 years old again, itchy and hot and irritated. Helpless.

My nighttime prayers of so long ago come rushing back.

I get anxious when the electricity goes off, it’s a thing with me.

I need the hum of the fan, the possibility of switching on a light to dispel the dark.

pleasegodpleasegodletthelectricitycomebacki’llbegoodpleasegod

2.45 am 17^th May

I open the door.

Why is it so bright?

The corridor is bathed in moonlight.

It’s cool, outside. A hint of a breeze.

Leaning against the railing, I sigh in relief.

Then the buzzing again.

Damn it.

There’s probably a good reason for mosquitoes to exist, but at this moment I want every single one of them to die.

Or shut up.

I can be very militant about creatures.

3.am 17^th May

I went to bed angry.

Now I’m awake, the anger feels heavier than in my dreams, a leaden feeling in my stomach.

However: there are things to investigate.

Padding downstairs, I find the bright red glowing knob on the main switchboard that indicates that’s all well in my life has been snuffed out. There’s a blue light and a yellow one, though, that indicate that my neigbours are sleeping the quiet and blessed sleep of the righteous.

This does not make me feel better.

Loving your neighbour and not coveting their stuff is all very well, but at this point, I’d give a lot to be able to sleep under the cool breeze of a fan.

3.30 am 17^th May

I leave the door open, to let the night-touched coolness in and then wrap myself in a chaddar to avoid the mosquitoes.

Not a very smart plan, but listen, it’s 3.30 am and I’m tired and sleepy and angry and I can’t believe that a few hours ago my country elected a mass murderer to rule over us for the next five years. Most likely ten.

Fuck these morons, I think.

I can leave, if I want to.

I get to walk away from this shithole that’s never going to get better.

3.45 am 17^th May

Fine, I’m scared.

I’m angry because I’m scared and I feel helpless and this is not what I signed up for when I was 6 years old and learning to sing Jana Gana Mana in school for the first time.

There was the idea of a country.

You’re taught a map.

You’re taught to name the States, Union Territories and their capitals.

Your father is proud when you can reel them off in a line, in alphabetical order.

Jaya he, jaya he, jaya he, you sing softly, standing to attention under the watchful eyes of your teacher.

3.50 am, 17^th May.

One of my earliest memories.

I remember the day that Indira Gandhi was assassinated.

I was in class 1, on my way to my “first language” class (Hindi).

We’ve just finished learning the alphabet, and we’re well on our way to forming basic sentences.

I remember people running around in the corridors.

The prime minister is dead, someone says.

I only know her as the lady with the gray hair whose picture Appa shows me sometimes.

But I know she has a grand daughter named Priyanka.

Because every time I’m asked my name, and I reply, the inevitable joke comes: oh, you’re a Gandhi.

It’s years before I can respond: no, I’m a Mathai.

In later years, another question became familiar to me.

Oh, you’re a Christian? How come you have an Indian name?

I think about my name on Facebook now.

I wonder if it makes me more liable to be arrested sometime in the future, or less.

This is not what I signed up for.

4 am 17^th May

My thoughts are circular: tightly wound coils of dread and anger that squeeze the breath from my lungs.

I need chai.

elaichi, adrak, patti.

These should soothe me, they usually do.

I take my cup and the heaviness in my heart to the terrace.

The moon shines brightly down from a clear sky.

The view is anything but spectacular: tight clusters of houses, telecom towers, apartments that loom. A few trees that sway.

A mass of people, whose dreams, I imagine, waft up into the night air, mingle, fade into the dark.

The house next door to the right belongs to a Muslim family, the one on the left to a Christian one. My landlord’s family is Hindu.

What does that matter, really?

Right now, here I am on a terrace, awake at some ungodly hour, because there’s no fucking electricity.

The cup in my hand has cooled down to just the right temperature.

The first sip doesn’t scald.

You have no idea how important that is, really.

 4.20 am May 17th

I don’t know this yet, but a some hours later, someone will say “the past is the past” and I will restrain myself to making as civil a reply as I can.

Right now, the past and present mix in a sleepy haze in my head.

I think about newspapers filled with pictures of young people immolating themselves.

What, I thought then, could be worth burning up for?

I think of growing up in Hyderabad, and learning the phrase communal violence.

I think of the word curfew.

I think of twelve year olds fighting over a school project because we needed to blame someone for the violence that we didn’t know enough to understand.

They started it, my Muslim classmate and friend said.

I said what does it matter? Everyone’s dying.

He looked at me strangely, and perhaps that, right there, was the beginning of my disconnect from reality.  

Why can’t we just have an interfaith monument, someone said.

Why don’t we have a school, someone else said.

Twelve year olds can be remarkably innocent and incredibly wise, at the same time.  

At Sunday School, I learnt The Beatitudes: Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God.

When school reconvened, we all still sang the national anthem, still stood to attention.

But something had changed, something was gone.

There was an idea of India, and then there was the reality of it.

And my name meant something: something more than me, it meant there was a box someone could put me in, it meant there were some doors that may be shut to me, it meant – what did it mean?

How come you have an Indian name?

Jaya he, jaya he, jaya he.

 4.45 am, 17^th May

The birds are awake now.

Being in a minority community in India is, in some ways, always being on the outside of the glass peeking into a room that remains shut to you.  

The room where all the other real Indians are.

Sooner or later, you hope, somebody is going to realize that yes, you deserve to be let into the room.  Someday you’ll get to stop fending off questions about your name, why you don’t drink (Don’t all Christians drink?), why you don’t eat beef (don’t all Christians eat beef?), do you guys wear saris at your weddings?

No, I don’t think America is the greatest country.

No, I can’t go “back to Rome where you came from”, because my parents and grandparents and great grandparents are from Central Travancore.

Thank you for your magnanimity in not killing large swathes of my co-religionists. You’ve killed some, sure, but hey, thanks anyway.

No, I don’t really want to go to Karachi either, but if you’re offering me a ticket, I just might.

I like to travel.

Partly because I always get to come back home.

An idea of India, that I came back to in 2006 after a few years abroad in large part because I couldn’t bear the way I missed the dirty streets, the noise, the neem trees. Because that city with all its comforts and expressways and 24 hour shops and gleaming spires was still a place where I wasn’t a citizen.  

You can walk away again, I think, leave this shithole if it gets too much.

The sound of the azaan startles me; forces me to expel the breath I didn’t know I’d been holding.

Allāhu akbar, Allāhu akbar

Ash-hadu an-lā ilāha illā allāh

I don’t know where the mosque is, I think. I’ve been here seven years, and I don’t know. For that matter two streets away is “Church Street”, but I don’t know where the church is either.

It doesn’t matter to me that I don’t know where they are.

It’s enough for me to know that they are.

The prayer has barely ended when I hear the sound of the temple bells, followed by a voice raised in praise.

Something stills in me.

There is something so familiar about this- this is waking up every morning in Hyderabad to the sounds of the bhajans from the local temple, this is going religiously to church every Sunday, this is the dome shaped silhouette of my school, this is opening up my palm to receive prasad from Tirupati, and this is begging my mom for biryani from Paradise Hotel. 

Whatever else has happened and will happen, there is this. 

I will be angry again, later, in the hours and days that follow.

And that’s ok, because I know the shape of what I’m fighting for.

It’s right here, in this moment, as the sky lightens and there’s the clang of the gate as the lady from the house opposite steps out to draw a simple kolam, wet hair trailing down her back.

In the hours and days ahead, there will be periods of anger and bitterness and rage and despair.

But right here, right now, I can breathe for a moment, and it can be enough.

Down the road, a man in a lungi steps outside his house, walks to the street corner and empties his garbage right there, out in the open.

I breathe in again, and it’s almost dizzying, how light I suddenly feel.

It must be enough.