The Slogans on My Skin

 

They had killed her by the time I reached.

She always had a hard-boiled kind of blood. She never understood that to speak sharply, one must first learn to listen. But she always chose to talk, even when no one was listening. With me, though, she was different. Unlike the version of her the world knew, she would stare at my lips in the middle of conversations, unknowingly, unblinking. At first, I thought it was romantic. Then, sometimes, it unnerved me. How could someone so unyielding, so jagged with the world, be so tender with me?

"What are you looking at?" I had asked her once.

"Words."

"What words?"

"The unspoken ones."

She must have had a magnifying glass glued to her eye because no one else could see unspoken words that easily.

We met at a soft rock concert. She was on the management team; I was there with a musician friend. It wasn’t her but her friend who approached me first, asking if I was a musician. I was nursing a heartbreak at the time, and using temporary medicine seemed like a good idea, so I entertained her friend, spent the evening with her. Until I saw her.

A saree, urban embroidery. Breasts pushing out of the blouse like a reflection of her own sharp eyes. And on the fabric, hand-printed in bold: KRANTI.

I abandoned the temporary medicine and walked straight to the surgeon I didn’t know I needed.

We got together. And she was nothing like I had assumed. An avid political activist in a Delhi college, double master’s in cultural studies, a woman with ironclad opinions. I was nothing like her. I barely knew the names of politicians. I was aware of the country’s situation, but it never gnawed at me, maybe because of my privilege, maybe because of my religion, maybe because of my detachment, or maybe because I just didn’t care.

Until she arrived.

After making love, she would write slogans on my bare back with her fingers. I felt every revolution rise and fade on my skin.

I never judged her. Maybe if my opinions had been the opposite of hers, I would have. Or maybe, in that case, we wouldn’t have been together at all.

One evening, I was coming back from the office. The Okhla traffic was its usual nightmare, but there was something else in the air, something heavier. Outside my cab window, I saw a line of policemen marching, herding students like cattle. Some were being beaten with sticks. She wasn’t among them, but they all looked like her, their eyes, their fire, their defiance. I called her.

No answer.

I called her friends.

Nothing.

The, social media erupted with videos. Police storming the hostel. Students running, shouting slogans, getting dragged away. A war zone within campus walls.

I reached home and called her again. And again. And again.

No answer.

Public transport had shut down; the streets were tense. I had no choice but to walk to her college. I stayed out of sight, slipped through alleys, past patrolling cops. I was nearly there when my phone rang.

Her name flashed on the screen.

"Hello?"

"Hello, where are you? I’m scared, are you—"

"She’s dead."

. 

.

.

"What?"

"We’re at the university hospital."

Click.

They had killed her by the time I arrived. She was wearing the same saree from the night we met. Her breasts, those sharp, unflinching eyes in another form, lay still, the embroidered "KRANTI" smeared with black. Her forehead, the place I kissed most, bore a wound, an angry red patch.

All around her, students lay, some dead, some barely alive. And among them, their guardians, their friends, their family, breathing, but dead.

My back began to itch. I could feel her fingers tracing slogans into my skin again. But this time, I couldn't make out the words.

Her eyes were closed.

And yet, I could see them.

Staring at my lips. Still listening to the unspoken words.

And today, I had too many of them.