Bhelpuri at Sunset

 When I truly let go of the memory of the ideological suicide I’ve committed that day, and forget even the lust to fulfil my innermost desires, be they for revolution or for Bhelpuri, with exhaustion, I look up at the sky that is bubbling with the colour blue. The clouds are pale and frothing the way the waters froth at the shore. The golden sun, that is dissolving into the horizon where skies and waters unite, leaves behind a pinkish black hue that is yearning solely for the chase of that starless midnight blue that is a shade darker than cobalt. My eyes become purple with intoxication. There is nothing left for me to become but sleep. I wait for revolution when I dream. I wait for the songs of revolution to wake me up from my abysmal nightmare, but the sleep in which I am sinking does not let me awaken.

Outside the metro station, on some days, I munch Bhelpuri. These are the days when at sunset, on my way back home from the government office, I feel defeated by the anomalies of government. These anomalies intrude upon me like my fellow commuters in the metro. The commute wrings out the eternity humanity so often promises me, and the spices of Bhelpuri fulfil in me something I cannot describe.

In the year 2019, when I received the sacred ‘government job’, I was unaware of the shit I was getting into. The city was burning at the time with protests. Blood was flowing with freedom.

Silence has always been my personal form of protest. When I was a child, the photography of dissent I saw in a certain magazine captured my political imagination. The dissent I befriended makes sure I will never walk alone. The power of the page impressed upon me a scar that I wear with pride.

The mind is a dangerous place to be trapped within when it is at war with itself, and all the wars I wage are with myself.

Government slaughters individual freedom quietly and dissent at once. Especially here, where it is difficult to find a moment’s peace. It is so overcrowded everywhere we go. To be able to think is to be mute, and to be mute is a saving grace where the mob is winning.

In the metro, on my way back home, the evening sky tells me and my fellow commuters, I think, the class to which we belong. Every time the political environment of our nation heats up, I am reminded of the time I signed up for a government job and stabbed my old self in the gut. The government office is a hotbed of hatred. I remember how I barked within the four walls of the government office when I saw that bigotry and fascism had no shame. Eventually I stopped barking, tucked my tail between my legs, and learnt to sigh with my eyes closed. Now and then I try cheap tactics to agitate people around me, but as I write these thoughts down, I am aware my thoughts have started to sound tyrannical. Today, a majority of people are indifferent to the barking of a mad dog, because even a bullet in between the brows wouldn’t make a sound. The sound of silence that is so deafening has become for me a close friend.

On some days, when I do not want to face the same dilemmas I’ve often faced, and do not wish to eat a chunk of my own body with agitation, immediately after exiting the metro station, I ask for Bhelpuri and insist on extra green chillies.

How I see it, the reason someone protests are personal. So, in that strain, altruism is at the root of solidarity. Those unaffected by injustice always have something or the other to say. Even an old friend of mine, someone I no longer talk to, misunderstood my definition of protest and solidarity for years. I agree I am passive. Today, when I am confident in my politics of resistance, I can assert that solidarity matters. Resistance does not always have to be revolutionary to spread its wings. Small acts of disobedience exercised every day sometimes have more power than something historical. Change must come from within. What the government denies is the opportunity to ask important questions at the right moment because it is both insecure about its ability to help others and, at times, incapable of doing so entirely. But we must all wear our red flags with pride so that the world around us knows who we are and adapts to our ways. We have to be master strategists to be peaceful in this country.

Our society has this weird mentality of self-interest. As a consequence, our government simply does not care about repercussions. There is something about the power of leading that is susceptible to becoming corrupted with tyranny. I am afraid that is what is happening within me as well.

The taste of green chillies gets the heart pumping again. I am no longer reminded of the catastrophe which befell me that day. I am more concentrated on huffing and puffing in a manner which appears less ridiculous and more sophisticated. But even after hiding for hours behind a few important books of human civilisation, I am afraid of my own convictions the most. Even that tiny piece of newspaper in which my Bhelpuri is wrapped wears its stains more confidently than the news printed on it in ink.

Even a fool must be aware that to be a rebel without a cause is stupidity. To what extent then must we educate ourselves and how? Will we hear from a government which itself does not know what is good and what is evil the definition of good and evil? This isn’t about the voice of any one person or a handful of people. This is about we the people.

The days I reach out for Bhelpuri are days when I wish a fanatic mob to erase the existence of disorder from the face of the earth. Anger is injurious to health. On such days, if I learn about a fresh set of detentions or police brutality, I feel dystopia closer than the kingdom of heaven. But what is the way around anarchy? Annihilation is something strange my mind follows my discontentment up with if I choose to remain passive in the face of the government slaughtering my guilty soul.

That day, protests had erupted again. I was busy dutifully commuting between home and the government office. Metro stations were shut down. There was unrest in the crowds. My mind had started to feel suspicious once again. I began getting visions of nuclear destruction. Death is a great leveller. Violence was wrecking my mind with impunity. I was reminded by an omniscient voice that our struggle must be non-violent. There are many colours of revolution in the world of ideas, and every whisper counts.

I was overreacting. I calmed myself down a little. From a space of varied emotions, when I was counting my breaths, I came back to my immediate surroundings and found myself sitting in my office chair. The walls were moving, and the fog had disappeared. The exhaust fan was spinning with a wobble. I alone was complicating things in my head.

When the daze lifted off my mind, a brand-new doubt emerged as to why, despite empathy and solidarity, the collective conscience could not improve the human condition. I was musing quietly over how strange a phenomenon humanity must be for its evolution to be this incomprehensible, when from the noise occupying that room, I extracted the message that everyone present was gathering around for chai and samosa. When I am at work, I am hypervigilant and on autopilot. I saw this particular development as a threat to my freedom. I did not wish to let go of my dream of revolution because at least my dream possessed logics real life did not. There are days when Bhelpuri is a much more responsible decision than disobedience, but I simply cannot accept the samosa at the government office. I felt as though I would have to pay for it with my life, so I refused and did not move an inch from my seat. My heart silently wept with the craving for something spicy. This was the same wagging of my tongue that so often led me to ask for Bhelpuri. I sank back into thinking about what would awaken the collective conscience. I think it is selfless when self-harm is inflicted for the wrong that has been done to someone else. I see nothing wrong in that. So, why should I keep dissent to myself, and why should the government refuse to remain a member of the audience and jump in with its machinery to interfere with my right to free speech?

Right at that instant I felt a sharp pain shoot up in my stomach. The thirst for revolution does not disappear as the craving for Bhelpuri. Although it is true I am the opposite of an activist, I am a passivist, if anyone had seen the questioning look on my face, my contorted brows, the raised cheeks, the thin straight lips upon which a string of questions sat waiting their turn, and the frowning chin, they would easily tell how uncomfortable I was with the silence I forced upon myself out of fear.

I know that the excessive force the state uses on some innocent, some malevolent dissenters is in fact reserved for passive servants like me who take less than a second to turn a blind eye to responsibility. The madness of the apolitical government servant has to stop. It is madness, I know, and I am not the only one with this ideology. Anarchy mustn’t have to prevail for the sake of being apolitical. Peace does not have to be a suicide mission. Is it not tyranny to shovel war on the grave of peace, the way I shovel Bhelpuri down my throat with a tiny plastic spoon?

It was not time yet for another one of my celebratory eves of defeat. People in that room were idly chatting.

I wanted to share that despite studying philosophy, politics, and literature, I had not yet understood if government was necessary. Laws speak otherwise, and I understand we shouldn’t move against laws for our own good. Why then are people ordinarily distrustful of bureaucracy, of police, of courts? I think that some mysterious arrested development of the mind is to blame for the apathy and the sycophancy.

The screen I had been staring at aimlessly for two hours suddenly falls asleep, and I am forced to turn to the gathering due to the interruption. I am exhausted from mental fatigue. It's hot outside. Everyone is having fun, but it appears as though grief has decided to creep beneath my skin. I feel appalled at the state of the government and at humanity. Someone asks me what I am thinking. I say I am only watching the clouds travelling the sky. I do not ask whether someone retired, got transferred, or wished to celebrate their anniversary. I keep my voice to myself. Samosas are the currency of the government office, something from which I refrain because I know I will have to die to digest it. I know that neither the chai nor the samosa is for free. Everything comes at a cost.

Often, I feel convinced that I will join the communist party, but these ideas are too grand even for myself. The enchanting smell of samosas fills the room. It is met with cheers and cries of being brought to the table at once while they are still hot. For some reason, I feel disgusted and nauseous. I wondered if there was something wrong with me because I could not even dare to look at those little pyramids of India.

By the end of the day, I had been overwhelmed by negativity I inflicted upon myself. Literally, no one had said anything awful to me, and still I made myself feel this way. Before the disrespect for the rudimentary and backwards mentality began to show on my face, I picked up my bag and left for the metro station at once. I could not bear becoming two-faced. Somewhere deep within, I also knew that, despite all its flaws, no matter what, the government had also given us a long glimpse at a welfare state, or at least the ideal image of it. We all know what utopia might look like. We are still full of idealism. Most of us, if not all of us.

What about them, those who have lost all hope because they suffer every day and every night, while I roam freely with my belly full? On my way back home, in the metro, I sink into hopelessness once again. But I am glad I left that room in the government office for a silence which is equal to the silence of mourning for the revolutionaries who brought us our freedom from our past. Every wound the state inflicts on innocence is a wound inflicted upon itself.

The ordinary government servant is lost in the way of progress, in noting observations, in bridging the gaps of conflicts of interest with unappreciated diplomacy. When reason dies, insignificant people like me resort to ideological suicide because blind obedience is the foremost religion of the government servant, and the disorder in the office is the evidence of his atheism. This fruitless tree must be uprooted with a reimagined civil disobedience because obedience is at the very root of this collective indifference. My heart weeps as I watch humanity die a slow and painful death. The lust for control has corrupted the ethical foundations of government. When a handful outweighs the majority, it should be painted on the walls that the function of the government is only to protect the tyrants. On some days, I do not regret leaving my work desk empty because I know I cannot perform this ideological suicide any more. Not many people relate to how I feel. But I cannot stop grinding my gears and thinking outside the box. I know I am not the only one who feels, at times, I am no longer aware of why I am performing the work I am performing anymore. What is work anyway?

I feel my head spinning as I exit the metro station. I reach for Bhelpuri. I find my tongue wagging wildly with craving. The munch of this rich snack quietens my anxiety a little, but only briefly. I am suddenly wondering why I did not accept the samosa earlier that day. My conscience is screaming at me, and there is not a sound. Existence inside this cave is heavy. From this hollowness within, I wonder if I have always carried this shadow of ignorance. This shadow is the absence of the impressions this world can wash over me. This existence is nihilistic. The world impresses its cosmic dance upon my experience of life. I no longer resist. I allow them to flow through me as we are one.