For the Noble Cause

They had nothing.

One morning, Sara would look for work in the dhopa ghat, where she and her mother would wash clothes for the richer people in their village.

Sara was six and a half years old.

Her brother Ali would go ragpicking with his father. He was four years old.

One day Ali found a snow globe. He brought it home to show it to Sara.

They enjoyed watching the fake drops of snow sprinkling as they rotated the snow globe and Sara clapped as she saw it.

"I'll become a big businessman when I grow up," Ali used to say. "Then we'll want for nothing. We can buy as many snow globes as we want," Ali said and hugged Sara.

Sara's eyes looked wistful.

"I want trinkets to wear on my ear," Sara said to Ali, showing her empty ear which had recently been pierced.

"You can have anything you want, one day," Ali said.

As Allah would have it, Ali and Sara's mother died due to tuberculosis the next year, when Sara was just seven years old.

Both of them cried, but life went on as usual.

Their father brought them to the slums in the nearby city. Apparently, opportunity for work was better there.

Sara and Ali started singing in the buses for money.

Sara had a sweet voice.

They sang many songs - mainly Hindi Bollywood songs, as Ali played on the dilapidated harmonium.

Some days they would make a little money, some days they would make none.

Their innocent faces struck more suspicion than they would have, otherwise.

Their father began working as a daily wage labourer.

One day, while working with stones to lay on the road, a stone speck hurt Sara's father's eye. It gradually caused a corneal ulcer in that eye and sympathetic ophthalmia of the other eye, which caused him to lose vision in both eyes.

As his father could not work anymore, Ali took it upon himself to earn bread for the family.

***

Twelve years had passed. Sara was now a grown lady. She had grown to be pretty and womanly.

It fell upon Ali to arrange for her marriage.

Ali had become a big man, claiming to have become a clever businessman.

"Sara," he said one morning, "I would like you to get married to Aman. He is a good person, and he will take good care of you."

Sara agreed.

Their wedding was carried out with pomp and splendour.

On their wedding night, as Sara sat on the bed with her hands clenched, Aman came and reassured her that he would not involve her in any way she found unpleasant. He urged her to relax around him. An hour later, she did.

***

Some time since her marriage passed. Aman and Sara had a year old daughter, Rabia.

Sara began to see tiredness creep in Ali's face. She did not know what or where Ali worked, but these days, it seemed to tax him more than before.

Ali smiled for them, but when he thought people did not see him, he looked blank and worried.

One day, when Sara and he spent a day with Rabia, as Rabia played, he told Sara, "I am sorry."

He was going to say something more, but decided against it.

He gave her a parchment and said, "Open this only on my death."

Sara looked shocked.

Ali put on a smiling face, and said, "But don't worry, you might never have to open it."

One day, Ali came back home, his face scarred, he looked beaten up.

That night, she sent Aman to stay with Ali and she planned to stay alone at home with Rabia.

Ill omens everywhere, Sara felt.

So she opened the letter that Ali had told her not to open till her died.

***

It read :

"I was in the city.

Large buildings, large cars.

But we lived in the slums. With many other families.

I was hungry.

Three days I spent looking for a job.

I had nothing except for water in those three days.

I asked a chaiwala to help him run the store but he beat me up.

"Three days without food, yet look at how fast he runs!" He had laughed.

I ran with an empty belly, hurt my knuckles as I fell.

Then I met this man.

He came to me, offering food.

'God has sent me one of his angels,' I thought, and stuffed my face with bread and butter.

He offered me a place to stay, a job to do, what more could I want?

He simply said, 'Welcome to our Noble Cause. You are from now on, a part of the organisation fuelling towards an Earth that never starves.'

And then he handed me jobs.

Not odd jobs.

Specific jobs, each different from the previous ones.

At what time did the watchman leave from that building?

When did the watchman arrive at the hotel?

When did the food stockpile come to the grocery store?

Things like that.

One day, though, something struck me.

A hotel (about which I had obtained certain details about) had been robbed, and one person killed.

I realised that the plan had been such all along.

Sara, they are terrorists.

If you are reading this, their plan is to win the loyalty of destitutes like us so they'll win.

I am afraid.

But I can't expect you to live like this.

My darling sister. If it was only the two of us, I wouldn't be saying this to you. But...Rabia.

Run.

Run as far as you can.

If they're after me, they'll be after you."

***

Tears streaked across Sara's face.

They had nothing.

Not even their freedom.

The next day, the newspaper showed that a scruffle had taken place in a dingy alley.

5 persons were dead.

Sara was convicted.

She agreed to have killed the five goons who were beating up Ali. She left Rabia in Ali's care just as the police turned her in.

She would go through a trial, of course.

She would say her - their - story.

They had nothing.

But at least, she had secured their freedom in the small world they lived in.

***