Cauldron of Chaos at Charring Cross

The heat gently eases its way into all creation - natural and man-made. It is invisible, but its murmur can be heard, its heaviness can be felt, its fire can be smelt and the dryness can be licked inside the mouth and lips. The streets puff out the steam blowing it back to those walking on it. It chases people inside while continuing to suck water molecules out of their skin leaving it like clay with dried olive oil. Even the beggars disappear.

It slowly embraces those who remain outside in its sights. It gradually seeps into their body, mind, shalwar/pants. Frustrations, irritations, delusions grow manifold beating down all resistance that begs for calm. The gentle ferocity of the heat causes God’s greatest creation to submit and be solely its slave. Either that or be driven into the arms of insanity.

Thus the heat produces two almost neat classifications. Those who are it’s slaves and those who are insane. And there is no restriction to move from one to the other. Very few are on the borderline of the two.

ASI Sultan Sikandar was of the borderline variety. He was a tall officer with broad shoulders and grew an uncomfortably big bristle-like mustache that dripped with perspiration like and old water tap that won’t shut. He could not remove it, as his wife would sooner die than be deprived of its tickling sensations as he caressed her warm body. He carried with him a look of bewilderment witnessed on those trying to hold their own in a sea of slavery and insanity.

He had gained fame and notoriety for his work in consistently providing swift and hassle-free justice for the ever-changing mantles of the nation’s power structure. The entire police personnel respected his efficiency in the face of all odds. Be it in the country’s largest city or the largest province, whenever they heard their wireless radios go on in the dead of the night, resounding with the sounds of spraying bullets, they knew that Sultan Sikandar had managed to increase his enemies. However, despite the respect, the police personnel did all they could to maintain as much distance as possible from him. Sultan Sikandar was the most wanted man on the criminal’s list.

Constant pressure from the department and media had forced the provincial government to cut the role played by Sikandar. He was quietly thanked for his services and given less aggressive tasks to handle. This was another world for him. After having his personality shaped by an alertness that prepared him to fight death at every corner, he now feared losing his extra-sensory attributes with the trivial duties he was handed. His ‘borderline’ existence was abstractly defined by his experiences. For example, it was difficult to say whether he avoided death or prolonged life. But he lived it like one stuck in quick sand. He would struggle to come out, but only accelerate his demise. He desperately tried to convince himself that by successful elimination through gunfights or set-up encounters, he was avoiding death (or rather prolonging life). Whatever he may have thought, his look of bewilderment had become all the more pronounced due to the present duties.

On that June day, Sikandar along with dozen or more police personnel stood watching a group of protestors. The gathering included politicians from across the political spectrum, bureaucrats relieved of their duties and others dissatisfied with the government’s policies. They sat across from the provincial assembly at Charring Cross on the city’s main road artery. A sign printed in Urdu conveyed their attempt: Bhook hartaal: Qaum ki pyaas sirf sachi jamhoriat say ttandi ho gee. They had come prepared for the temperature by bringing along portable electric fans to keep the heat at a bearable distance as they sat under the shade.

To Sikandar, this ‘rally’ was a nuisance. More so since it was placed in the middle of one of the busiest intersections of the city where the flow of traffic made any action difficult. His subordinates, who normally looked to him for orders, seemed too subdued by the heat to bother about anything. Yet he had orders to ‘take care’ of the participants under the new ordinance prohibiting public political gatherings.

...Outside the Shaahdin Manzil, in a blue Suzuki, sat Rozaiba profusely sweating staring into the rally trying to focus in on the events but only managing to see through and beyond them. His thoughts had been smeared with conflicting emotions often felt during a restless youth. He had taken his first step into the criminal world that offered him the opportunities he was otherwise unable to attain. As he sat there, he felt he had torn himself from the past and was already in another world. Yet before him were the same sights, the same fragrance and it reminded him of the security he had forfeited. He thought about his parents who had ceased to beseech him for quite some time though traces of worry remained on their foreheads. How he wished he didn’t have them. How he wished he didn’t have a little sister who would erupt into the most beautiful smile at his arrival home or kiss him saying ‘khuda hafiz bhai’ as she left for school and made him forget his anger and frustrations even if momentarily.

Rozaiba bit his teeth to fuel the determination that had brought him thus far. He could no longer bear to live a stagnating life that teetered on an edge and played with him by confronting him with everlasting morals on one side and an alluring but elusive life of opportunities and riches. At age 23 he had now made up his mind where his intentions inclined. He would fight time for his own space.

All he had to do today was drive off according to the specified route through the various capillaries, alleys and outlets that came out of the main road.

I pick up my will,

and strangle the past.

I destroy to create,

a life that may last.

Only a few moments separated him from a stagnant life and the mere possibility of an opportunity for a better life. Suddenly, someone startled him by putting a hand on his shoulder saying: chal vai, uddee uddee javaan hava day naal. It was Raja Langrra, the ‘hit man’ who needed to be driven to safety and had calmly entered the car as Rozaiba struggled with his thoughts. Raja’s droopy eyes revealed a self-assured calmness that was almost morbid. Rozaiba wiped the accumulated sweat from his eyebrows with his thumbs, snapped it out the window, started the car and veered it toward the intersecting alley…

As Rozaiba was staring through Charring Cross, juggling with his emotions, Sikandar had decided to take action on multiple fields. He ordered the traffic policemen to halt the traffic flow to and from all directions. By doing this he was able to get a good view of those on hunger strike without any obstruction from moving vehicles. The strikers, who were doing their best to keep the heat away looked at the men in black shirts and put on a brave face. That is when Sikandar pulled a brilliant move- it was also to be his last. The power supply to the adjoining areas of Charring Cross was cut off. This shut off the traffic lights, it shut off the stereos blaring music from the shops, but most importantly, it shut the fans that were cooling the protestors.

The reaction witnessed was immediate. The hunger strikers looked toward the sky as if it were about to fall. God’s wrath was anticipated. The heat swooshed in all around them. It entered their bodies forcing particles of water to escape from their skins and made their clothes stick to the body. It destroyed their rhythmic breathing patterns by entering into their lungs. It forced them to take longer breaths to attain the minimum oxygen requirements. Most of all, the heat began evaporating their virtuous resolve.

As the heat was taking it’s toll on them, it had been making the traffic impatient as well. The carbon monoxide and the heat formed a devastating mixture. A van driver who had lost it, let go of his brakes and pressed the accelerator so that he could go on to his next stop. Following him was another car and motorcycle. All the remaining drivers looked at each other wondering if they all would unite in this act of civil disobedience. As the van and the corolla zoomed past Sikandar, he looked at his fellow policemen, who stared back and then stared at the traffic policeman who stared at his partner on the motor cycle, who was desperately trying to get it to start while smiling sheepishly at Sikandar.

The protestors used up their last gasps of defiance in the heat. They had tried to wipe off their sweat with their handkerchiefs. It was not possible to keep up as each pore seemed to be overflowing. Try as they might to overcome the obstacle, fanning themselves with newspapers, magazines, books or even their hands, they could not halt the annihilation.

Sikandar ordered the police to dispel the strikers out of the chowk. As they began to move forward, batons in hand, the protestors gave in to the heat and got ready to channel their anger toward the emerging policemen. They got up and walked a few steps to face them. The traffic composed of inherently impatient drivers was now dripping with anger and were done testing their engines. Somewhere at some point, a connection of nerves in their bodies had been burned up and snapped. Perhaps that created amongst them all a telepathic sense to simultaneously drive on – and that they did. Their eyes lighted up with the sight of the open road they were now going to embrace. They zoomed in from all directions until they ended clogging each other up. Maybe it’s much like a crusader charging forward in battle to an afterlife, assured of a heavenly reception only to end up being fried in hell.

The traffic had engulfed the protestors and the policemen as Sultan Sikandar looked on in disbelief. The heat ‘now hath made his masterpiece’. Sikandar made his attempts to control the situation. The protestors, chased by the police, ran around cars, trucks, vans and motorcycles. They looked for any object- pebbles, chipped concrete or even garbage to throw at the police. One extremely agitated protestor took off his slipper and threw it at Sikandar. It ricocheted off the ASI’s shoulder and hit the asphalt. The ASI was too busy to retaliate as he was trying to bring some sense into the whole situation by giving orders to his personnel. The police seemed to have a personal vendetta to settle as they went mad trying to lay their batons on anyone they could. The protestor, after having thrown his slipper, was about to run away when a rush of reason came to him. Why not go and retrieve the slipper? After all, it’s difficult and irritating walking around with one bare foot on a hot surface. So he tried to sneak to get the slipper back only to be met with a wave of lashes by the police just as he was about to put his foot in it.

As the heat manufactured this scenario, amidst the honking traffic, curse-filled drivers and passengers, hungry protestors, and revenge-ridden policemen, the sounds of gunshots went unheard. That Sultan Sikandar began stumbling two-steps back and one step forward went unseen. He managed to cross the road, twirled around, adjusted his feet onto the sidewalk successfully. However, he was unable to see the blind man selling cheap sunglasses, whom he stumbled over as he fell onto the sidewalk breaking his nose and then rolled over into the gutter with one leg still on the sidewalk.

ASI Sultan Sikandar could see the leaves above him ever so slightly swaying, playing with the sunlight that beamed through them onto his face giving him a cool floating sensation transporting him back to the time when as a child he would float down the canal Mianmir on an inflated tire tube that he had stolen and open his eyes to find the same sunlight gleaming down through the leaves of the scattered trees- the world seemed beautiful then. It did not deliberately conspire to hurt. Life did not seem so burdensome then.

It did not seem burdensome now. The look of bewilderment had vanished from his face replaced by one of relief that no one could disturb. Not even the blind-man who sold sun glasses and whose goods the ASI had scattered and who now stood, facing the wrong way, aiming his wrath at him and praying to God that the perpetrator may have an animal-like death one day.

It was the sight of the upset blind man valiantly cursing no one in particular that attracted the attention of passerby’s who then saw the ASI laying in the gutter. The pool of blood continued to get bigger and the primary source seemed to be the head though no one was sure as the nose was also damaged and with the help of the dense mustache, many streams of blood were formed and flowed across the ASI’s face. A crowd developed soon, all staring at the deceased. It was only after seeing the crowd and the blind-man cursing that a couple of the policemen came to inquire only to discover their officer’s death. They would later reveal that they could not recall just when ASI Sultan Sikandar had stopped giving orders.

The heat grew in its confidence, the traffic continued to excel in its mayhem, and the crowd increased seemingly spellbound by the magical and mysterious effects of death.

On a fruit cart outside the Alfalah cinema, sat an old man with legs crossed. Kids claimed the old man with the small white beard would levitate during the most grueling hours of the day. However, upon pointing this out to their elders, they were be scolded for bothering them about non-existent nonsense. The kids were lead to believe they were seeing things. The old man sold drinks on the cart from which a pre-recorded statement blurted out through the speakers claiming the drink as a cure. When the power came back on, the statements began automatically repeating themselves over and over again till people stopped listening and they had lost their meaning:

um dha ras, dho ropay dha glass, dho ropay dha glass, garmee thoun nijaat pao, jism nuun ttand pao, dho ropay dha glass, dho ropay dha glass…

[Mango juice, two rupees/glass, two rupees/glass. Attain freedom from the heat, cool off the body, two rupees/glass, two rupees/glass…]