Name: - Sandeep S.

Pillai
Class: - SY BMM: Roll no: - 13
Subject: - Creative Writing
(Short story)

The Communal Saffron

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The Communal Saffron

‘Hey today its Razia’s birthday! What have you got to gift her?’ Rohit
asked me. ‘Oh, is it so? I didn’t know that and by the way how did you come to know
about it?’ I doubted that if Razia was so close to him that he knew and remembered her
birthday. ‘Dude, I keep a track on with those fair girls in our class………’ he went on
advising me to do the same. I wondered if it was possible, for an innocent girl like Razia
to maintain a good rapport with a stupid boy like Rohit who never made any sense in his
speech.

My class teacher warned me again, from talking to the cute Punjabi boy
sitting next to me. I always pondered if being a dark skinned always meant that you
deserved warnings and threats for no mistake and if the mistake is really done by a fair
boy then he deserved a compliment and that too ‘CUTE BOY!’. She once again started
singing the lullaby from the Economics text book while most of the class closed their
eyes to dream about the low marks in the following exams. I agree that the dream is not
as horrible as my teacher’s nose which always turned red, especially when she looked
at me to warn and threaten. ‘India is filled with racist teachers, priests, professors and
their brothers and sisters. They do love their country but only if it had good roads, clean
gutters, airports in every thirty kilometers. They are proud of its rich and varied heritage
not because of its culture………’ I spoke to myself with my lips moving so that the Cute
boy could hear it and feel no proud about his complexion.

I was busy waiting for Razia looking at the door. It seemed that my eyes were
at the door to heaven and that I was standing in the deepest part of the hell. The door
moved slowly. It looked as if someone weak enough to open it was trying to do so.
Slowly did the door separated from its frame and I could see her.
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‘Ah, it’s Razia, the birthday girl. Happy birthday Razia!’ I shouted in deep excitement.
The following was not very different from the same warning that I heard a few minutes
ago. This time I deserved it. But the most interesting part for me was that it was me who
wished her the first in the whole ‘class’. The word ‘class’ meant a lot to me because it
was the only world that I belonged to when I was outside my house. To the one end of
this world was the door to heaven, to the other end it was the boundless piece of sky in
the window. So it was me who wished her for the first time in my own world which
meant a lot to me.

She was still standing at the door waiting for the horrible nose to turn red and
warn her for coming late and not to repeat it anymore. The same happened and I was
once again successful in predicting what my racist teacher was about to do. Razia wore
a smile on her face that looked more bright than her yellow glittering ornaments and her
new dress which had pieces of mirrors stuck on it. The sun rays from the other end of
my world fell on these tiny mirrors and reflected on her eyes which threw light on my
dreams to make it more clearly visible. I could see green veins running across her thin,
fair arms and it disappeared somewhere near her wrist where she wore a golden
bracelet with thin gold coins hanging from it. The horrible red nose once again turned
and pointed at Razia and so did mine. She was with the same smile. A thin black line of
mascara appeared on its place whenever she closed her beautiful round eyes in reflex.
The waves in her hair touched the shore of my heart every time it moved whenever she
walked around the corridor of my ‘class’. The dupatta which she wore slipped down her
shoulders while entering the class and my eyes, unlike the other pairs in the class were
at those which stared at her delicate neck and her heavenly beauty.

‘Thank you, my sultan’, she said before sitting down on the next bench
behind me. I worried if my hair behind were arranged properly because that was the
only part of mine that she could see when she sat behind me. After all, the hairs of a
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sultan are never meant to be dirty. I always felt that all those who spoke to her were
lucky, she was that a soft spoken girl. The only one she shouted at was me and she
used to do that with the same smile on her face which made me do more and more
stupid things in front of her only to see that smile again. Tough she always had a smile
on her face; this one was only for me.

I liked Razia. Initially it was only because she was a keralite like me and that
she spoke English with a Malayalam accent blended in it. I was still answerless to
Rohit’s question about her birthday gift. How could I convey it that anything of mine was
for her? I saw it only when I had planned and turned around to gift her, a pencil sketch
that I drew during the last month that after the lecture she had many classmates who
just completed their sleep, standing around her with many boxes in their hands wrapped
in coloured glitter papers. I found it very illogical to convince myself that a piece of paper
with a sketch of a woman on it meant a lot to Razia than those glittering boxes. I lost my
tears, but those made its way out from my heart and not from my eyes. And so my piece
of paper was now wrapped in a glittering stream of tears that no one could see, not
even Rohit. After that I came out with a folder in my one hand and my heart on the
other. She came out after me. She was with her friends. She knew the olive green
coloured folder which I used to file my sketches. She always admired sketches and no
one knew that those drawings were only for her. I made it to ask her to select her
favorite sketch and she did it and within no time I got it out of the file and handed it to
her with my heart dancing in joy. She took it with the same smile on her face which
always did drive me crazy. She said something that didn’t touch my ear drums since
those were paralyzed like the rest of my body when I saw the gaze of her bright eyes.
Those were the rarest diamonds emitting sharp brown rays out, out to my world where
she ruled.
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I was finding it very difficult to define the depth of my happiness, then. It was a
class break for the next one hour. Students switched their Cell phones on and plugged
into the radio stations to hear some updated news on the Hindu-Muslim envy regarding
the Holy land of Ayodhya. A riot had broken out in various part of the country. We did
also hear about a riot which broke out, in our very own city. Many students ruled it out
as a rumor. Suspicion aroused whether it was really a rumor when our teacher came
and dispersed the class for no reason, when asked for. It was Hindus on the road
hunting for beard man wearing a white cap and ladies wearing burkha. I was worried if
Razia would be safe through her way back to home. At first, I was relieved that Razia
was not in her Burkha since it was her birthday. But it was still skeptical that her
eyebrows and her beautiful eyes defined her religion very well. Any one could smell her
attar and come towards her, knowing that it’s a Muslim girl who had used the attar sold
only at a Dargah in the small town. I ran in search of my angel who came to my world,
all through the other side of the door to heaven. I could not find her anywhere around
the corridors of my ‘class’. I ran outside the college building. By then the sun had
partially disappeared into the lowest frame of the windows of my ‘class’.

A man with turmeric and saffron colour powder on his forehead and blood on
his palm came running to me and held my collar. He saw the locket with lord Shiva’s
picture hanging on a black thread, tied round my neck. The very next second he
released his red hold on me and threw some saffron powder on my hair and made his
way towards another boy aside. Before I started running again I could hear a boy’s cry
and I turned to find the very same man who coloured my hair and face yellow and
saffron coloured that boy’s neck red with his own blood. The man held a trishul in his
hand. Then did I understand that the saffron colour on my forehead was a signal for
other rioters to leave me safe. I wished, only if I could colour Razia’s forehead saffron
with the same powder which protected me.
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I heard a girl crying amidst a saffron haired crowd. I ran towards the crowd. I
pushed some men aside to reach the centre to see what was going on with an only
prayer in mind. Oh my goodness gracious, all I could see was Razia sitting down on the
road with hardly any clothes on her body to hide her shame and four saffron colour
haired vultures tearing her apart. I could see the site where the only one I loved was
being treated in such a brutal way. I knew she was as vulnerable as a pearl in a half
open shell; it was so that I ran for her safety. I protested and pulled one of them back
with tears bursting out of my eyes from the volcano that blasted in my mind. No one
from the crowd tried to help me. The sound of my panting was not at all louder than my
Razia’s cry. Now it was two of them that I was dealing with the support of my cursed
weak body. It was not at all a tough work for them to slap me a tight one on each of my
cheeks and tied me to one of the street lights and abused me. They called me a traitor.
The only mistake with Razia for these saffron haired men was that she belonged to an
Islamic family. Till then I was at least relieved that Razia was now safe that they were
dealing with me. But then these men again turned back to Razia. They kicked her
genitals. They bitted her, tore her breast with the trishul that they held. She cried in
deep pain. Her eyes were at me. It was not Razia being torn killed; it was me killing
myself that I couldn’t save her. She moved in pain like a fish taken out of water. It
gasped for water but Razia did for her life. She cried, yelled, pleaded for her life. But
they turned a deaf ear towards her cries. Razia fell down again with a sharp edge of the
holy weapon pierced into her delicate neck. She shivered wildly in pain. But still her
eyes were at me. It lost its light and brightness. Now tears stopped and blood flowed
down from them. Were those the same eyes which I looked into whenever she walked
around the corridors of my ‘class’? Those always did appeal of her innocence. I cried
and pleaded to the men around to release me. I wanted to take her on my laps, to run
my fingers across her hairs and feel her good. They looked at me with the eyes which
looked at a mad dog with blood flowing down his lips. It was their very own daughter
being killed in such a brutal way and these men were enjoying the site of every piece of
her flesh being smashed. “JAI SHRI RAM” those vultures yelled.
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Razia was dying and at this moment she was silent. It was at this time that she
spoke to me in silence. Her eyes wrote and I started reading it very clearly but before I
could complete understanding those words from her heart she brought her eye lashes
close to each other. And now it was only her soul that walked back into my
‘class’………. .

I fainted.

****************

Every day and night I talked to her and gifted her many sketches lying on my bed
which was numbered 13# in a regional mental hospital. Days, months, years passed in
her thoughts. My new world consisted of no windows but only a single door for the
members who rested on the other 19 beds. I never wanted to go out of this new world.
They would ruin my new world of dreams where I stayed with my round eyed girl, Razia.
Here I can at least be with her for the rest of my life which I always founded to be a
small one for the same. This is a new life. In the last one she stepped into my world
from the door which opened to heaven that existed on the other side. Now she is sitting
next to me……………….
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-Sandeep S. Pillai