ISSUE 39

The road was empty. Not a soul in sight. Forsaken by God and abandoned by humans. Except for a pack of ravenous dogs, weak and bony, scavenging for something edible as sunshine poured down like rays of punishment right from hell. A right turn and a few hundred yards ahead, a barricade was erected. A jumble of barbed wire and stone. Manned by a group of men in uniform, swinging lathis and wagging AK47s. A weird kind of uneasiness loomed in the air as if death was in town, flowing like a breath of grey air, hiding behind the dilapidated electric poles, stalking, ready to pounce at the first sight of humans.

‘Man, the internet is so slow. Have been trying to watch this video for half an hour. Fuck 2G,’ a skinny cop said, his nose buried in his phone.

‘Riyaz, get your head out of that screen. You might catch corona from it,’

‘At such speeds, no chance,’ Riyaz replied, still waiting for his video to buffer.

‘Oi, who is that driving in the middle of a curfew? Riyaz, stop that motherfucker.’

Approaching the hastily put up barricade was a white Alto with a big red cross sign on the windshield. Riyaz immediately covered his face with a tattered mask, lifted his stick like a magic wand and the vehicle came to a halt.

A worn-out stethoscope and a crumpled white apron lay on the passenger seat. The driver, his face hidden by a surgical mask, his hair dishevelled like a stray dog, his eyelids almost shut, produced a crumpled piece of paper, his foot hovering above the gas pedal.

‘What is this?’ Riyaz opened his mouth to reveal a set of large teeth, yellow in colour, pointy and crooked. He turned the piece of paper in hand, over and over, trying to make sense of it.

The driver heaved a sigh, his patience clearly on ice, ‘Look, I am a doctor, and the piece of paper in your hand is a curfew pass. Now if it is alright with you, I would like to return home. It has been an exhausting day and I have to report back to duty by nightfall.’

‘Not so fast, hero. How do I know you are a doctor?’ Riyaz muttered, his eyes still scanning the piece of paper in his hand.

‘Ok, take this,’ the man handed over an ID card; ‘Now can I go?’

‘Remove your mask and let me see you first. These pieces of paper are sold on WhatsApp.’

The doctor obliged. ‘Is that enough?’

‘Why are you raising your tone? You should not be out in the first place, and just because I am being nice to you doesn’t mean you will grow big on me, little man,’ Riyaz said matching his tone and then raising it by few decibels. A subtle cue to his battalion to join the flaying of the doctor.

‘Why the fuck are you out breaking curfew?’ asked one.

‘These motherfuckers don’t understand we are doing it for their own sake,’ said another.

‘I say we take him to the station.’

Now, they were speaking over each other. Now, spitting abuses at him.

‘Get out of your car,’ the burly man with a scarred face ordered. The doctor tried to protest, but a swift blow of a stick to the windshield of his car stopped him, and he got out. ‘You should have taken the official bus.’

‘Sir, in current circumstances that would be dangerous. I am only following the protocol.’

Nothing puffs up the chest of the policemen as much as the word protocol. After all they are following protocol when they deny a father his right to earn bread. They are following protocol when they stop a mother from buying milk for her kids. They are following protocol when they harass an elderly person who is out searching for his youth. They are following protocol when they stop a dying man from dying in peace. Protocol, a word casually thrown around in our parts, like a flick of a wrist.

The doctor was pushed and shoved and abused and humiliated. Pummelled like a mule, beaten like a carpet, his teeth clattered, and his eyes went moist. His ears lost hearing, his head went into a dizzy spin, as if someone was sucking air out of his chest with a fancy vacuum cleaner.

By the time his world stopped spinning and the ground under his feet became somewhat stable, he was shoved back in the white Alto. Counting his blessings, thanking the heavens, knocking on wood, he made a swift escape. Lucky to escape with a bloody nose and cracked glasses and a shattered wind shield accompanied with few scratches on the ailing car. Wasn’t this the reason he was still driving an Alto? Doesn’t break his heart when a stray stone is hurled or an agitated lathi meets it with full force.

Later that day, Riyaz changed back into his civilian attire, submitted his ID and deposited his power back at the police station and merrily ambled to his quarters. It had been a hard day. He had thrashed most of the violators, stamped on their self-respect, kicked their teeth and made the world a better place. A safer place. Kept the corona-motherfucker at bay. Now was the time for a hearty meal and delicious sex. He had earned it. Time to practice some of the new-found moves. Test if his wife could keep up. That girl in the video was pure elastic. Lip Smack! Birds fluttered inside his stomach at the sight of his house.

‘Warm the food while I freshen up.’

His wife, little petite Raheela, moved like a swan as her long ponytail bounced from one hip to another. Like a guilty child waiting for her crime to be discovered, she put a plate of steaming hot rice and a tiny bowl of palak in front of him. It was all going to explode any moment. Her eyes remained fixed on the plate when his voice thundered through the house.

‘What the fuck is this? Where is the lamb? Am I supposed to eat this green paper?’

Her eyes blinked, eyelids fluttered but never left the plate, even when Riyaz smacked the ground next to her with all his might, as if to shake the globe off its axis. Her eyes, now swelled up with tears, did not dare leave the plate even when her father was brought back from the grave and served abuses on a platter. Her gaze only broke when the plate full of rice whizzed past her head and onto the freshly painted wall. I will need to clean it soon or else it won’t come off, she thought to herself.

His voice rose up even further, entering the falsetto zone. His wife was well-aware of the different frequencies of his voice. There was a low frequency, reserved for seduction – very evident during their courtship over phone calls that sometimes lasted entire nights. There was also a normal tone he used when talking to men sharing the same pedestal. A different variation of it, sprinkled with sugar and butter, was reserved for men with shiny metal stars on their shoulders and men driving fancy cars. And then there was the angry – do-not-fuck-with-me tone, pitched high at a monstrous frequency that would blast out through his vocal chords when anyone tried breathing fresh air during a curfew imposed for their own sake, when a commoner’s voice rose above a certain decibel, and lately, when his wife displeased him. At these instances, his voice would shift into a different gear altogether, as if a loudspeaker was installed deep inside his throat: Has cat got your tongue? You fucking swine! Answer me? Is this how I get treated. After a hard day’s work, what does a man want? A nice meal! Is that too much to ask? Answer me, you piece of trash?

Afraid of what fate had in store for her if she delayed opening her mouth, she started meekly, ‘I was preparing … the lamb but I don’t know … what happened … I fell asleep … and by the time I woke up, the gravy had burned.’

‘What do you mean you burnt it? What sort of a fucking excuse is that? Didn’t you smell it? Where did your nose vanish? Went out on a stroll, eh?’

He went on and on, relentless, rabid, like a dog possessed. No stopping him. Like a meat grinder. His wife shivered and quivered, choked on her own tears. But the man was blind to it. His eyes only saw red.

It took him half an hour to realise he might have jeopardised his chances of getting laid. Should he have been less harsh? Of course not, she deserved it. But the question now was, how to convince her to drop her salwar? He could always force it but that is not what he had planned. It always felt like doing a corpse then. He had so many things planned. So many different poses. Thanks to the internet, the Kamasutra was truly global. He was well armed with tricks that would have helped him cross the hurdle of anger but she had to agree, and there lay problem now. She seemed to be out of it. Crying, and coughing and moaning non-stop. And not the kind of moaning he enjoyed.

‘What is the matter? Are you alright?’ he asked her. His voice toned down to the time of courtship.

‘Nothing’

‘Come on now, jaan, you are clearly sick.’

‘I will sleep it off.’

There went his chances of coitus. But he was not a quitter. Not at least in matters of sex.

He brought her a glass of water and sat by her side, gently caressing her forehead. But her cough, which by now had turned her into an engine, refused to go away.

‘Jaan, your temperature is running really high. Are you feeling alright?’ His voice faltered between high and low.

Within an hour she was exhuming heat like a steam engine. And her cough was relentless. Fearing the worst, he picked her up and took her straight to a hospital. ‘Please God, don’t let it be corona, Please God. I will stop watching porn if you grant me this favour.’

As if God was bargaining.

He followed the paper signs posted inside the hospital campus that said Corona Patients and reached a dingy hall overflowing with people. A poultry truck would have been in a better shape.

‘Where is the doctor?’ he slammed the table.

Someone pointed towards a white door and as soon as he opened the door, he froze in his boots. Behind the desk, dressed in a white coat was a doctor, whose expression changed as soon as their gaze met. His spectacles were cracked and there was loose cotton inside his nose.

Absolute silence. No one uttered a word. Until the Doctor found his voice again.

‘Why are you not wearing a mask?’