House of Discord

A discordant family in a hate-driven city…will they find the ties that bind? A tough matriarch; an effete father who escapes reality; a rebellious son who marries a Muslim girl; a depressed spinster daughter; a resident ghost and the discovery of some strange family secrets….The Deshmukhs of Barrot House are barely surviving in a rambling house in the middle of Bombay when violence knocks on the door.

The post-Babri Masjid Bombay of 1992 is a city wallowing in hate. The Deshmukhs find themselves in the vortex of the raging storm. Will the famed Spirit of Bombay eventually rediscover the healing magic of communal tolerance? Will the family rediscover the love that will help them survive?

Lily and Radha, frightened out of their minds, clutched each other’s hands as unruly masses shuffled them every way. Women were calling out and children crying and a dull roar of people in the grip of fear drowned the train announcements. There was no train in sight. Radha found a place behind a pillar and pulled Lily to sit on the ground. All around them people eddied and swirled directionlessly. The stench of fear was palpable in the air. A lone woman sat on the ground whimpering in fear waiting for her husband to come home.

One train came by chock-a-block with commuters hanging four deep from the doors. In the scramble to get out and get in, people were blocking each other. The train streamed out leaving the girls far behind amidst a jostling crowd in which scuffles broke out. Fists flew and angry gaalis were exchanged. Radha’s handbag was snatched away and Lily lost one slipper. They settled down to wait for yet another train. 

‘Let’s see if we can get a taxi outside,’ suggested Lily wondering what it would cost and whether between them they could scrabble up the money. But then Radha’s handbag was gone.

A taxi driver parked outside started up his car and breezed away before they could approach him. Another one who drove up to dislodge eight people shook his head. ‘Nai jayega. Roads closed. Nakabandi. No gaadi can go into town. They have burned two buses and are stoning all cars near Mahim Naka.’

In the distance they could hear the muted roar of a mob like the sea in high tide. Lily was shaking from fear and tiredness. Her hairdo had unravelled and now stiff chunks of hair were falling about her over-painted face. ‘Go home, Bibi,’ said a bearded man in white kurta pyjama elbowing his way into the station. ‘This is no time for ladies to be out of their homes. Bombay is burning.’ Lily and Radha now had tears streaking down their faces. They started walking out of the station. ‘I have a cousin who lives in Bandra. Let’s try and walk there,’ suggested Radha.

Lily seemed to have lost all power of thought. She followed Radha like a lost sheep. Halfway down the road there was the sound of running footsteps and cries of ‘Maar dalo Kafiron ko.’ Answered by cries of ‘Har har Mahadev’ and ‘Shakti Sevakon ki jai’. They ducked into the lobby of what looked like a deserted building and crawled under the staircase shrinking into fearful little bundles amidst stacked crates of hay. There was a strong stench of old urine. A scurry of rats made Lily stifle a shriek. Lily was shaking with fear and was too scared to cry. ‘What shall we do now? How will we get home?’ Radha pretended to a bravado she did not feel. ‘If we can reach a phone, I will call my brother and ask him to fetch us. Let us just wait this mob out.’ They were whispering to each other fearful of being heard and evicted by the people in the building behind the firmly closed doors. Rats ran over Lily’s feet but she closed her eyes and bit back her screech.

The shouting and the cries showed no signs of abating. Every time stampeding footsteps approached the building, the girls shrunk further into the space under the stairs till there was no more room to go. They crept behind wooden crates and barricaded themselves. The long shadows of dusk were slanting on the stairs through the open doorway. No one turned on the lobby light. There were some faint sounds from behind the closed doors of the four flats on the ground floor but no one came out. Or went in. ‘Let me try and knock on the door. Maybe they will let us come in and use the phone,’ said Radha. ‘Be careful Rads,’ whispered Lily shakily. Radha crawled out from their hiding place and knocked on the first door. The peep hole got covered by an eye looking outside. Nobody opened the door. She tried another flat. The bell pealed inside the flat but no one came to open the door. From the third flat a quavering old voice said, ‘Who is there?’ Radha, her voice riddled with sobs, said, ‘Please please, Aunty, open the door. We are two girls who cannot go home. We just want to make a call.’

Silence followed. In desperation they banged on the door. ‘Go away,’ said the old woman’s voice. ‘Or I will ring for the police to come and take you two call girls away.’ In dejection, thirsty, frightened and desperate, they crawled back under the stairs as the sound of a mob gone crazy came closer. Then there was a lathi-charge. Dull thuds of falling bodies. Tear gas made their eyes sting.

There were feral cries like that of animals in pain. Pounding footsteps, police sirens and above all the unmistakeable smell of human fear, burning human flesh, rusty smell of blood and thick smoke that seemed to enter their whole being making them smother their coughing on each other’s shoulders. In the distance, flames leaped and danced andconsumed an abandoned bus.

It was almost two o’clock in the morning when the mob sounds seemed to thin and the tide of people running about abated. Then the police sirens took over with a loudspeaker announcing incomprehensible instructions in Marathi and Hindi. Then they slept wearily nestled against each other with the hay from the boxes poking through their clothes, cockroaches and rats traversing their bodies. 

The grim dawn broke over deserted streets cluttered with the debris of violence. The girls decided to venture out and find a way to get home. They trudged for twenty minutes in a fearful silence with their hands over their noses to keep the stench of blood from making their stomachs heave, before they spotted a white police jeep with two tired policemen dozing inside.