The Riot

It's quite canonical for a boy of 15 to get a bicycle in my neighborhood. The nuances involved in maintaining your CoG was a great pride of my age. The usual practice was to return from school, head to the bicycle shop, rent it for an hour (which was worth a rupee), and go on a wild trip around your local. My family had been living in this local for nearly 6 years now. I, by this time have learnt every available street here. The joy of riding a cycle was indeed a treat; finding new routes using it were a double treat.

I somehow managed to coax my father to allow me drive to my school which was just a few streets away. There came my first basic need, a bicycle. I failed to convince my father to buy me a new one, he still wasn't sure of my driving skills and dint want to invest on a new one. But then my uncle sprang from nowhere and generously offered his not-so-sure-of-the-year bicycle to satisfy my need. In his phone conversation he assured me that it was still in good condition and that I was surely going to like it. On my first sight of this great cycle which was absolutely covered with rags and grease, only one thing amazed me rather bothered me, can this roll on the road. Unbelievably when my father and I took it from his house, the seat came out. Seeing this father mocked me saying "ah this machine does need some alterations! It's been through year's right?!" I nodded" maybe ya, saga would be a better word for this one!" It was taken in an auto rickshaw to my place and we drove it to a repair shop and spent a couple of 100s on it. After twelve hours of rigorous work the mechanic delivered my vehicle all glossy and clean. Probably it would have been one of my brightest smile over my childhood, I felt like I got the one most important thing in my life and I need no more anything. My future indeed proved me wrong here. My mother made sure I dint drive my bike to school. She somehow fooled my father into this saying the bicycle was way too bigger for me and coincidently I had my sister fall from it just after I got the hang of this machine. I had no voice over this argument and indeed accepted for my mother's concern. By this time I had my cousin come over to my place and it was October.

My locality's geography has a striking religious touch. On the four corners of my place there were four Muslim masques. On the geographical centre of these was a Hindu temple. Over the inner circle there was one church. I always felt whether this geography was a highly intended planning in order to neutralize every community throughout this region or was it highly unintentional. I had always believed that religion was just your trademark, as long as you don't bother with it much you are not going to be disturbed. I'm never an atheist too. Maybe to go by the current vogue, I shall say I'm agnostic. October is the month of Ganesh Chaturti and on the end of this Hindu festival it's a tradition to take the ganesh idols in a procession to be submerged in the Bay of Bengal. Yet another was traditional. Since the mosques were in all corners of my locale, it was unavoidable for the procession to skip all of them. It had to cross over one important mosque. The procession was so badly timed in the past that exactly when the mosque calls for the prayer the procession had to cross over it. This indeed stirred the minds of few fanatics and there always was trouble during this time. I had never actually seen these so called riots till then but had heard enough rumors. This time my cousin a couple years elder to me urged my father to go and witness the procession. I too accompanied them. The beautifully plastered idols shined in the setting sun. Almost every artist's imagination of different forms of Ganesha was seen there. Unbelievable sizes and inexplicable beauty was all this procession until we came over to that turning.

The mosque authorities warned the pedestrians to switch off the bajan songs being played till they crossed the mosque. Apparently no one listened to this threat and walked as if there was no mosque there. A heated argument broke out with the clergies from both sides and suddenly the atmosphere around the place started appearing gloomy as more people rushed forward shouting unintelligible slanders. People started grumbling saying someone hit someone. But neither of them was sure who hit first. This agitation was more than enough for a conglomeration of thousands of men to pounce on each other, one forgetting his prayer, the other his duty to submerge the idol. Thus the tradition continued yet again. The vigilant cops came to the scene just after the fight and instantly ordered for the release of smoke bombs to clear the crowds. All this was happening around the three of us and we somehow got placed exactly in between the wranglers and the police. The moment we saw some stones being thrown over the sky, we decided to flee from these to a side street when the police dropped the first smoke bomb. Had I experienced anything worse than this itching and pain over my eyes, I would say none. It was white smoke everywhere and the next thing I remember was my mother shouting at my father in the doorstep of my house. Seeing all of us with our eyes gone red as chilly, she was all irritated and shouted on my father's irresponsibility in taking us to the procession. We then took a shower and spent the whole evening without a word between each other. The whole silence over the house showed the intense anger my mother had. The very next day we saw the headlines of our daily and once looking at the cover story, my father and I laughed. We pointed our finger over the picture covered in white smoke and said "We were here."