“The prime minister has been assassinated. College is closed until further notice. Everyone needs to go home.”
The room fell silent. Even the usually ebullient Mr. Narayanan wore a solemn expression on his face as he swiftly packed his briefcase. A chorus of whispers filled the air as students hurried into the corridors.
“This can’t be true, can it?”
“What do you mean? Of course it is! Why else would they let us leave early?”
“I heard her own bodyguards killed her.”
Varsha didn’t care for all the speculation. All she wanted was to get home before the riots broke out. That is, if they hadn’t already. As soon as she set foot outside the college building, however, she knew going home was going to be a lot easier said than done. The streets of Tiruchi were buried under a deluge of grime-slicked auto rickshaws and city buses. Angry drivers hurled abuses at one another, their cars so densely packed together they could spit in each other’s faces. Swarms of pedestrians had filled any unoccupied space on the street, some clambering over the hoods of cars, much to the ire of the drivers. Varsha began to walk towards a city bus, wincing as the deafening cacophony of car horns, engines, and shouting ambushed her ears. Suddenly, she was aware of someone roughly pushing her back. Irritated, she looked up into the stern face of a policeman.
“Ma’am, you cannot take the bus. All public transportation has been stopped.”
“What?” Varsha said incredulously. “Why?”
“There have been reports of bus burnings already. The trains have also been stopped because of riots.”
Varsha spun around angrily and went back to the college building. Once there, she walked over to a small television set around which a crowd had gathered. A somber news anchor on one of the many local channels was lamenting the loss of “one of the nation’s greatest leaders”. Abruptly, the channel cut to a poorly assembled montage of the prime minister, complete with the same melancholic song that accompanied every national tragedy. Someone changed the channel, but the maddening wailing had taken over every news station.
“They’re trying to arrange for a bus to take us home,” Varsha’s friend Uma said, appearing beside her. “Apparently, even though all the buses are stopped, they’re making an exception for us.” Varsha didn’t respond. She crossed the room and stood by the window, watching the mass of vehicles in the street spew black smoke into the sky. A riot broke out at the chai stand across from the college, and three turbaned Sikhs were severely beaten by an angry mob. They were still collapsed on the ground, bloodied and broken, when Varsha’s bus arrived hours later. As she took her seat, she watched as a group of policemen rolled the bodies out of the street. Somewhere in the distance, she could hear the shrill sirens of an ambulance, and wondered, faintly, if it was for the injured Sikhs. By the time she arrived home, the sky was an inky black, and her parents were sitting anxiously on the edge of their chairs. The three of them sat in silence as the TV emitted the high pitched wailing of the song mourning the India’s fallen prime minister.