Prologue


The Present



There was still enough time left for dusk. But the sky over the city of Delhi was getting darker with every passing minute. It was the end of May. Summer was at its peak. After breaking the previous year’s record, yet again, the maximum temperature in the city was at an all-time high. To escape the hottest part of the day, in the afternoons, people preferred to stay confined to the shelter of their offices and homes. The air was dry.

But that day was very different.
That day, late in the afternoon, the sun that was usually blazing in the western sky, was untraceable. Dense dark clouds that had flown in from the east had blocked the sunlight. It never got this dark so early in the day in the capital. But that day, Mother Nature too had chosen to wear black before time—perhaps as an act of solidarity; perhaps as a mark of protest.

In no time, the sky appeared visibly angry. Sudden intermittent bright flashes of lightning tore out from behind the dark clouds. A wild sky roared in anger—loud and clear. It threatened to rain.

It certainly wasn’t the arrival of monsoon. That was at least a month away. A spell of rain in the hot summer isn’t uncommon in Delhi. Intense heat for a prolonged period usually led to a shower. But the manner in which the rain was preparing itself to fall over the city of Delhi that day, was not a common occurrence. It was rather scary.

A few thousand feet below the angry black clouds were many thousand angry souls who had come out on the streets of Delhi. Agitated young men and women—college students and office goers. There was rage in their eyes, their young faces, their body language. They were a mass of anger and protest. And they were loud—louder than the loudest thunderclaps. It didn’t matter if they knew the person standing next to them or walking with them. They had all gathered for a cause that was common to each one of them—justice!

That was one word anyone could read on those several hundred banners and posters that the crowd unanimously brandished.

It had all become a phenomenon, which was unseen in Delhi till that evening. Every road that led to India Gate and Jantar Mantar, every train that arrived at Rajiv Chowk metro station, every bus that drove into central Delhi, was packed with youngsters. Delhi was witnessing a first of its kind mass protest. The young India that on weekends would have chosen to chill out in glamorous multiplexes to watch a movie or would have opted to sweat it out on the cricket grounds, had chosen to spend the weekend on the baked roads of Delhi.

On the other side of this young India was an old system that wasn’t yet ready to change itself. It was a system that on one hand had severely failed to maintain law and order in the state, but on the other hand was trying to control the chaotic situation it was faced with. Every single policeman in the city was on alert. Clad in their khaki uniforms and protected by their helmets, the troop brandished their canes from behind the barricades.

The scene was similar at each and every epicentre of protest. The gathering at the vast space in front of Rashtrapati Bhavan was the biggest of all, seeing which the Rapid Action Force (RAF) had been installed next to the state police. From tear gas pistols to water cannons, the law and order machinery had prepared itself to deal with the situation at hand.

A gathering of thousands at this one place was a sight to behold. Every single sound, be it the frequent voices over the hundreds of walkie-talkies in the hands of cops, the centralized loudspeaker installed over the RAF’s Vajr van, or the news journalists reporting live, all of it added to the noisy chaos. But the one sound that dominated and suppressed every other was the thumping hum of the crowd.

It remained undefeated.
Traffic that evening had come to a complete standstill. On a few key roads that led to the epicentres of the protest, the only vehicles allowed to enter were either the media vans or the police patrols. Everything else was in a deadlock.

Then came the moment when the much-anticipated occurrence happened.
It rained. Heavily.
Large drops that were powerful enough to disperse the crowd, to make people run away from the open streets and seek the nearest shelter, fell in sheets. The scene became even bleaker. Yet it wasn’t able to break the newfound will of this nation’s youth standing united for a cause. How could a spell of rain break those who’d already prepared themselves to face the monstrous water cannons?

Besides, they were waiting for the rain anyway.
So quite miraculously, the rain only ended up uniting them. Every boy and girl, every man and woman, held each other’s hands.

They made a human chain.
There was a message in it—that they were all together; that they were not going to leave and that they would brave the rain and the system.

Indeed it was an unbelievable spectacle, which looked more like a film shoot. But then our films and our society reflect each other. What often happens in society goes onto the celluloid and vice versa.

Like needles, the raindrops pierced the skin of all those present. The rain drummed over their heads. Gallons of water streamed down their faces. Eyes shrank and nostrils widened to engulf as much air as possible. Some breathed through their mouth. In no time their wet clothes clung to their wet bodies. Every gust of wind now began to appear cold.

By then, every other sound had died down. The only sound that prevailed was that of the rain. All this while the youth of Delhi stood still holding each other’s hands. Many of them had been shivering. So they tightened their grip. It felt as if they were passing strength and energy to each other through their hands. It was a different Delhi that day—never heard of and certainly never seen earlier.

In that much-awaited rain of May that brought the temperature down, young India was boiling.

It was waking up from its long uninterrupted sleep. Scores of media people and camerapersons captured it all and broadcast it live to the rest of the nation, which participated in the same emotion and aggression through this coverage.

But far away from this, where the battle between the citizens and the system was going on, there was another place—a place where a battle between life and death was in progress.

It had all begun from here—the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, well known as
AIIMS.
The deathly silence in the ICU of this government hospital that evening was loud enough

to wake up the entire nation. It was on every news channel. The camerapersons covered every movement of the bureaucratic and political cavalcades that arrived at the gate. The reporters captured every minute detail that the team of doctors had shared with them.
This state of affairs persisted for a long while. The world outside AIIMS continued to wait in anticipation. The sky above Delhi continued to cry.



AYEARAGO. . .

One




That day marked the arrival of a new batch of students in Delhi University (DU). Just like the thousands of students in DU about to step into a brand new beginning, a whole new life was ready to welcome Rupali. And she was ready to embrace this life.

Rupali Sinha, an eighteen-year-old, confident, merit-list student from Patna, had made her parents proud. She had received an admission call from a top-ranked DU institute which was also her dream college. Even before she had taken her Class XII board exams, she had always dreamt of walking down the corridors of this college. She had been a bright student throughout her school life, but she knew that given the competition at the national level, it was going to be very difficult for her to make it to this institute. However, she had also believed that it was only difficult, not impossible. And with her sincerity and hard work, one day she would be there.

And so she was.
To pursue commerce from this college had been her biggest short-term goal. Except that now that she had achieved her goal, she couldn’t help but feel nervous and excited at the same time. After an overnight journey and spending a good part of the day on the train, she had arrived at the college hostel in the evening. It was not too dark yet. She was soon allocated a room and given the keys and direction to the room by the warden’s assistant.

It was room no. 107 on the ground floor. Rupali was relieved that she didn’t have to carry her bags upstairs. She walked through the slightly dark, quiet corridor and opened the door to her room. She placed her bags on the floor and looked around the room in the faint light that entered from behind the curtains.

She smiled. It was a sweet room. Large, spacious, an iron bed each against two facing walls, two almirahs and two study tables. She had been told that she would have to share the room. But since her soon-to-be roommate hadn’t arrived yet, she chose her side of the room. She then switched on the light and opened her suitcase to unpack. She took out that day’s newspaper from one of her bags and laid out the sheets on the shelves of the almirah. She only arranged the few things that she would need immediately. The rest of it she planned to arrange the next evening. She slowly pulled out a bedsheet and pillowcase that her mother had so lovingly packed from the pile of clothes in her suitcase. Next came a nightie, a towel, a couple of everyday clothes, and her toiletries which she began arranging in the almirah.

Intermittently, Rupali heard voices in the corridor. She stepped out of her room to check. She saw girls who, just like her, had just moved into the hostel with their luggage. If they happened to notice Rupali, she greeted them with a smile. And they smiled back and moved on to discover their respective rooms. Rupali stepped back into her room to resume her unpacking.

She ate the leftover fruits from her journey and didn’t feel hungry enough to go to the mess to eat. She left the exercise of stepping into the hostel mess to check out the place for the next day.

After arranging her room, Rupali thought about freshening up before going to bed and headed for the hostel washrooms.

As she washed her face and brushed her teeth she caught her reflection in the mirror and

saw a tired-looking face with faint shadows under her eyes. She realized she had barely slept the night before leaving for the hostel. The emotional atmosphere at home and the excitement had kept her awake all night. She decided to get a good long sleep. After all, she wanted to wake up fresh for her first day at college. But when she lay on the bed, the thrill of going to college the next day kept her from dozing off. She kept tossing and turning.

When dreams take shape, sleep runs away.
The hostel bed added to Rupali’s anxiety. It felt different to her body and made her uncomfortable. In that sleepless state, she began to think of home and realized how far away she was from Patna; her hostel was going to be her new home in Delhi. Minutes later, when sleep had still not come to her, she recalled all that had happened in her life in the past forty-eight hours—how her proud father, who served as a travelling ticket inspector (TTI) in North Eastern Railways, had taken a day’s leave to perform a puja at home. It was to seek blessings from the Almighty, before Rupali left Patna to start college. How her caring mother, a homemaker, had made sattu and laddoos especially for her. As Rupali thought of her mother, she peered in the dark at the tiffin boxes which her mother had packed for her and which were now sitting on the table next to her bed. She reached out and ran her hand lovingly over them. She realized how in making them her mother had poured in all her love and care into them. She also thought of her younger brother, Tanmay, who had secretly cried all night before she was to leave for Delhi. She remembered how he had, wordlessly, given her a tight hug, probably for the first time in her life, at the Patna railway station, where her entire family had come to see her off.

This was the first time that Rupali was on her own, away from home. But she hadn’t yet started missing her family or her house. There was still some time for that to happen. Instead she was happy thinking about her parents, who, unlike many other parents in Patna, or for that matter, the whole of Bihar, had given their daughter the much-needed freedom. They had allowed her to go out all by herself, to a different city, to learn how to stand on her own feet. The night passed with many such thoughts interspersed with a feeling of anticipation for what the next day would bring. It was only in the early hours of dawn that sleep finally took over her tired body.

When the morning arrived, the phone alarm broke Rupali’s sleep. Through the thin curtains on the window on her right, sunlight made its way into her room. Even before she’d fully opened her eyes, Rupali slid her hand underneath the pillow and turned off the alarm. She took a moment before she got up. And when she did, she sat on her bed with her legs crossed, and folded her hands in prayer.

‘Shanti! Shanti! Shanti!’ she quickly whispered after which she opened her eyes again. ‘Finally, the day has arrived!’ she thought to herself in delight. She jumped out of bed and

pulled apart the curtains. A broad smile took birth on her lips as the sun streamed through the window, flooding her room in abundant light.

The morning view outside her window was beautiful. Situated in the extreme west, her hostel offered her a view of the entire campus that spread in the east. Over the rally of trees, at a distance, she could see the giant clock on the terrace tower of the red-brick college block. And just outside her window, at the entrance of her hostel, there was a huge lawn. She could see the shrubs marking the periphery of it. In every corner of the lawn, there were more than a dozen plants with multicoloured flowers blossoming on them. Butterflies fluttered from one flower to another. A female gardener was busy watering the plants.

Rupali was happy she’d got a room with a view. She loved the greenery and nature. She started humming a few lines from her favourite Hindi song as she picked up her things to go to the common bathrooms to get dressed.

‘Hi! Are you from first year too?’ Rupali excitedly asked the girls at the common washbasin bay, most of whom were busy brushing their teeth. Unlike the previous evening, there were many girls in the hostel that day. Some of them reciprocated Rupali’s enthusiasm as they nodded vigorously with toothpaste frothing in their mouths.

Interestingly, Rupali’s simple ‘Hi’ had broken the ice with quite a few girls who were too shy to initiate a conversation with the others till then. Soon the ‘Hi’ grew into a series of conversations as well as a few cross-conversations. This instantly put Rupali at the centre of every discussion that was taking place around her to the background noises of toilets flushing on the left and tap water running in the bathrooms on their right.

From introducing each other to becoming acquaintances and, from that, to discover new friends, things quickly changed into a happy chatter at various washbasins on various floors of that hostel that morning.

Unlike others, Rupali was very quick with her morning chores. She wasn’t confused about what she was going to wear on her first day to college. As a matter of fact, she had already kept aside all that she was to wear—a white churidar, a pink kameez along with a white dupatta. She matched her attire with the white sandals that she had chosen for herself when her father had taken her out for shopping. She put on her pink earrings and the bangles that her brother, Tanmay, had bought for her with his pocket money. A dainty watch on her left wrist and a touch of her favourite light-pink lipstick completed her look.

Just as she was about to step out, a rhythmic tick-tack of high heels from the far end of the corridor came to a dead stop outside her room. Then there was a knock at the door.

Rupali opened the door.
There stood a girl in skin-tight blue denims and black stilettos. She was wearing a loose off-shoulder light grey T-shirt that showed off the straps of the black tank top she was wearing un