The streets weren’t safe after dawn.
Unless they put on a sunscreen suit.
The ones who dared to venture out in the daytime had to be put on sedatives as they were seen sloganing, “clean air, clean water, right to education.”
The situation was so grim in that country that the sale of sunscreen lotions was skyrocketing as people were instructed to apply it even after the dusk settled in, in case, a stray sunbeam polluted them.
Jhumku the brother of Imli had decided that enough was enough, that he would be visiting his erstwhile bright, intellectual sister who used to question every wrong, who would ask for logic even behind simplest rituals. Afterall, a brother’s duties don’t end after getting their sisters married off.
He knew he had to take immediate measures when he heard that his beloved sister had now been chanting all the time, “With Sabal, everything is possible”
His flight landed in Vikaspur when the skies were still dark. Jhumku heaved a sigh of relief as Imli had instructed him on the phone to reach her house before the slightest tint of orange coloured the horizon.
He had to get his ‘sun pass’; a vital document, made, by bribing the officer with two plates of samosas.
Imli shed happy tears on receiving him. Jalebis, fafdas, gujiyas, prepared with the help of cookery shows, filled Jhumku upto the brink of his throat.
“You hang his picture on your walls?”
Jhumku asked Imli looking at Prabal Prasad’s photo.
And thus began a series of panegyrics by her on how he was the best ever Supreme Commander the country had ever had.
She had even vowed to vote for Prabal Prasad for her lifetime, in her next birth too. Even if she were born as a porcupine.
“But porcupines can’t vote. Wait, they can’t think either. Anyway,” Jhumku tried to hide his remorse with another jalebi.
She was recounting how Munia had to be vaccinated when she had stepped out in the sun without her sunscreen on. The poor girl was seen shouting, “We want cheap healthcare, affordable education and not your tall statues or towering monuments.”
Imli hugged Jhumku once again, telling him how they never received guests from outside their country.
Jhumku decided to spend some days with Imli, to detox her brain, to bring to her mind, sense. Sense, that had long ago left the inhabitants of Vikaspur.
Imli’s town was teeming with all kinds of night time revelries. It’s only after the dusk settled in that life thrived there in a real sense. The youth embarked on their consumption of daily data; making reels and shots. Families huddled together in their living rooms, watching the news reporters blaring how Prabal Prasad was conferred upon another misspelt award by yet another tiny winy nation that was hard to be located on the world map. And they all would have a collective dopamine rush resulting in an emotional orgasm.
Imli shared with him how they all dreamt of becoming the next Melon Husk. Becoming a trillionaire by selling noodles in the tourists-infested hills was one of their future aspirations.
Jhumku witnessed an exemplary feature in the inhabitants there. They all gave two cents to either civics sense or traffic sense, even to common sense. They had all risen up from these petty senses and relied solely on one sense now – the sixth sense.
It’s their intuition that made them navigate the pot-holes strewn roads, especially when they were flooded after rains.
“That hole seems small enough to let my car pass over it, NO, not that deceptive looking one! I’m in no mood to take a mud bath today.”
“Don’t get in squabbles with that fellow passenger, let him litter in the rail-coach. You don’t want to get your throat slit when the house rent is due.”
“That brown stray dog has his tail curled weirdly, just squeeze your way past him. You don’t want to catch rabies.”
“ Just drive past that cow, she doesn’t seem to be moving from the middle of the road even if offered a million dollars.”
Imli was telling him how the future of their kids was safe in this government’s hands, so what if some exam papers got leaked or some mushy kids couldn’t handle the exam pressure and committed suicides.
Jhumku looked at Imli with a painful stare. What had become of his lovely, promising sister!
The sun brought reasoning, cognition and logical thinking along with it.
No wonder the government had contaminated their foods and water supply with drugs that would deprive them of their intellect. Intellectual bankruptcy in the people. That’s what suited the rulers to roam scot free even after looting them in the name of religion, turning the green patches into the jungles of concrete to appease chrony capitalism.
With almost five days in, Jhumku sat with a newspaper one day.
“Hmm, they decided to drape this ancient statue.. that makes sense. The young generation must be saved from all sorts of obscenity, even if it’s in their books..”
And, Jhumku froze. His eyes widened, his heart raced fast, he dropped the newspaper. He quickly grabbed his phone. Made the first flight booking to his country back. Packed his belongings and prayed to God, most earnestly, for the well being of his sister.
She would need his prayers once he left.
