The World School

Imaan was in a world school… one of those so called international schools that were sprouting up every where, and giving Indian students the globally competitive edge, or making world citizens of them, I forget which. Any way, the classes were all air conditioned, and the teachers wore long skirts, and spoke impeccable English, some of them even managed a credible accent.

Imaan was in class 5; they called it something else though in school, the term was borrowed from an American private school, and believed to be more acceptable, naturally I will not bother mentioning it.

One of the truly ‘global’ aspects of the school was that it subscribed to several foreign newspapers… and every class had a ‘journal’ period in which choice bits of information were read out from these. These mostly consisted of the front page news, and on prescribed days, editorials.

During one such journal period, Miss Florence, Imaan’s class teacher was reading an article on contemporary American culture… when she read the title no one in class put up his hand to ask what ‘contemporary’ meant.

So she began, and the boys and girls followed. Her voice was nice.

She got through the first two paragraphs without a snag, and then slowed down a little.

See, Imaan was one of her favourite students. His homework was always complete, and his parents always attended PT meetings.

 The paragraph she was reading dealt with the impact of terrorism on American culture, from the cold war to present day, she choked a little, tried to skip the words entirely, then coughed them out… Islamic terrorism, and quickly carried on to the next section, hoping no one would see how red her face had got.

She glanced over the paper at Imaan. He was busy staring at the poster of a teddy bear behind her on the wall… she had not been caught, feeling less guilty she slowed down again, and finished the article with her usual poise.

Later that afternoon when all the children were going home, she called Imaan aside, ‘I hope you don’t mind what that article said, they don’t realize that all of them are not terrorists.”

Imaan made no reply.

That evening after the namaz, he asked his father, “Dad, what does terrorist mean?”

The (Right?) Answers

There wasn’t much more he could do, they were pretty sure of that. He wasn’t though, naturally. What he thought was immaterial, how could he know?


It was dark outside, the kind of dark that reduced trees to shadows, and the wind in them to a phantom. The kind of dark that was so opaque even the houses looked like blocks of black within the larger black, so black that it went on forever.


Where were the stars he wondered? Where had they gone?


Of course, he could not know; how could he, when they did not?


The stars had left, left for good perhaps, or perhaps merely stepped into the jury room. They were discussing them, all of them, including him and the others. The stars themselves were divided into two, one and the others: the one was trying to argue in favour of them, from below, on earth, while the others were pretty sure there was nothing that could be done.

4.2 Steps to become a Hero: A story in as many parts.

Step 1: The need to do something

Amit wasn’t looking for anything, he was in fact, hoping to manage, JFA, Just Falling Asleep, something that had become harder and harder since 3 years ago. That night hadn’t been his fault, but he had been there, and watched helplessly as flames rose in the building, and he had that helpless feeling, watching the hungry orange and yellow tongues, with bursts of brilliant blue and green, climb up the sides of the building, while the top floors bellowed smoke, in deep angry coughs, first, and then in an endless stream, as the windows kept bursting. The Nikhil tower, like most buildings of its generation was virtually airtight, and it took an immense amount of air pressure to burst its windows, but somehow, it happened, with the smoke and flames, and as more windows shattered onto the streets below, the fire gained new strength, from the updraft.

It had been suffocated earlier, when the building was still sealed, but now, it was growing joyously devouring everything, melting steal, crumbling brick, shattering glass, and turning the tower into an impregnable fortress of fire and death. And He stood across the street, watching it burn, getting his own little preview of Narka (hell). The length of the building had already been charred on the outside, before the windows starting bursting. The bright Neon blue and yellow facade now looked a sick black, with red brick showing in places. And in places where the flames started to grow, the brick crumbled, falling in small clumps to the streets below, soon to be joined by shattered glass.

And he had been there, the whole time, watching the flames grasp their first faltering handholds on the 4^th floor, still contained inside the building, inside one apartment; then he’d seen the people in the apartment wake up; and they screamed, he couldn't hear them scream, but he saw them, and he saw them panic. They ran out on the street, the youngest girl crying for Boski. Who was Boski? A Dog? Something was still moving in the apartment, frantically, trying to jump over something, and he could make out shadowy things falling over, or catching fire.

On the street, the father was holding his daughters tight, while their teen age son and his wife were holding hands, watching their home and lives go up in smoke. The father was doing some calculations in his head already, and the mother was saying a silent prayer, that the insurance come through. It usually never did, there always was something in the fine print you didn’t do, which was grounds enough to deny you your money... always!

And Amit, he was there, watching the fire start, and grow. Suddenly he saw the dog, come into view. It was scared, and cowed, with its tail between its legs, it was submitting, in its most humble mode to someone. But there was just the fire, unfeeling fire, that didn’t realise, it has mastered the dog, and now, it if it stopped, would have a useful servant in him, no the fire, just continued to grow, and started feeding on the curtains of the window... the flames grew around it, first in two tall columns, and then as the bracket caught fire too, he was boxed in. In desperation he put his paws against he glass of the windows, but they didn't yield, reality rarely does. Amit could make out his mouth, barking or yelping, confused. He wondered why the girls weren't doing anything, why he wasn't either, actually, he wondered, why he didn't feel anything, but that was only slightly, and strangely disquieting, after all, what was he supposed to do?

Ironically, it wasn’t the fire that killed the dog. The heat melted the plastic fittings of the curtain rod on one side, it fell, in a great scything arc, and the motor mechanism for drawing the curtains, caught the dog on the temple, and knocked him over, he never got up again. But you couldn't say for sure, if he’d died then, or later, from the smoke. To Amit, he’d died right then, and in being witness to his death, he’d felt strangely complicit, in the fire’s destruction, as though by virtue of being there, he shared the blame.

And it was this feeling of complicity that created in Amit the need to do something, though, of course, he wasn’t quite aware of his situation yet, in fact, he was more aware of the other effects of watching the fire and that was insomnia. Probably the disorder of the century, taking over from ADD, and representing the shift in cultural programming, from approaching problems with genius to simply throwing man power at them, sleepless nights equated effort, equated results, even if the results were negative, there always was the weekend, where a team could work 48 hours straight, or several teams for that matter. And so there were no more great inventors, just great corporations, that strived and strived to assemble the perfect team to create new devices and ideas... and there was no intrinsic worth of a mind, or brilliance, all that mattered was how many times you were willing to throw yourself at a problem... And if you wouldn’t adapt to this brute force approach, there was no place for you, if you wanted to sit back and think about the problem, you weren’t fit to fix it. There was no more genius, you just worked, and worked it out. Human beings, had first created, and then adopted, and now were in the process of perfecting the process of running a program. And just like those machines that first responded to the ‘run’ command, human beings were losing taste for sleep.

How did the Ship get there? (in the bottle)

I met the old man in a café. An old coffee house, meant for the old bureaucrats. It stood for everything English, if not everything imperial. Only men who visited it as young men came there now, for some reason it had lost popularity. It would be convenient to blame consumerism, the place had no ads, or neon lights to recommend itself, but the coffee was bad.

But people still came, even when the place served nothing, it would still have memories.

I walked in out of curiosity. Just to take a look around, at what I thought the 50s looked like. I could not. My eyes immediately found him. He was sitting in the far corner, nursing a cup in his hands. The steam wafting up made his face indistinct. He was bald, though he had a French beard, with stubble along his cheeks. His ears were slightly too big for his face. And when he put his cup down, I noticed a broken, twisted nose, and beady eyes, under bushy dark eyebrows. His lips were hidden by the beard. He wore a ‘bush’ shirt as they were called, open at the collar, and worn outside the trouser. His trousers were grey.

His face was wrinkled around the eyes, and mouth. But they weren’t angry wrinkles, nor laughter wrinkles… just old wrinkles. He’d seen a lot.

I sat down next to him.

“Good afternoon,” I said, I really didn’t know what else to say.

“Good afternoon,” he replied, then he looked at me, and seeing it was not some he knew, his expression changed. He seemed apprehensive, perhaps he did not like new things, or people.

“I’m Eduard, I work with the pioneer, I’m a reporter.”

“Oh, and what do you report?”

“Well that depends on what’s happening.”

That amused him, he smiled. “Do you enjoy it?”

Surprised by the direct question I replied, “It has its moments.”

“Spoken like the true journalist. A balanced answer which says absolutely nothing. Like most the papers these days, not even the facts feel solid.”

“I’m sorry to hear that you don’t enjoy our paper. We do try our best.”

“I’ve never read it, or any other,”

I would have asked how he knew about our facts being soft then, but I decided I wanted to actually have a conversation with him instead.

“Forgive me; my name is Richards, Jeffery Richards, as a matter of fact. I do nothing.”
“That sounds far more interesting than reporting nothing.”