IN SAFFRON SANDS CHAPTER TWO - PART ONE
You forgot to forget something the other day. Not like doing so made you remember. You forgot to do that too.
It's easy enough to figure out that something's gone when you think about it. Problem is, that chance doesn't come in the hustle and bustle of Jalandhar's Depths. Horns blaring from the tempus and autos. Sellers haggling over prices. Rakshasas on every street corner. All too loud. All too easy to lose yourself in. The only thing that woke you, briefly, was having to quickly duck before the front bumper of a flying auto took one of your heads off. They never can drive all that well. That you know, at least. Hard to forget that!
You know where you are too. E-Block. Rakshasa central. It's a bit hard to look at, really. So, so much dirtier. Litter by the roadsides, graffiti on ramshackle huts made of tin and wood scraps, the beggars. A lot of people would have said they earned their lot, the more zealous amongst them saying they deserved it. Maybe not you. You might have felt more generous in a before-time, when you had more to give. But you still try to carry yourself with an ounce of the dignity you had then, and it's given a bit of a false perception. You have to push off a few many-handed children who offer you cheap, terrible crap made in… Gods, made here. In those new fucking factories everywhere that belch black smoke into the air, the last thing that's clean here. Not that the other blocks care, they never have, you think as you heave out a sigh. It's the same here and it's the same in Jalandhar proper, Nexus or not.
Still, even though your domain is more… outside the Nexus, being here doesn't feel hostile. The dust and dirt beneath you is familiar, even if it's kicked up hundreds, if not thousands of times per day by countless residents coming to and from their work, their worship, their… leisure. All of it is home, to you. Every little pebble was a place for you, once. They worshipped the ground they walked on. Your ground. Then they started to pave it over, and all of a sudden, everyone forgot about poor old you. Old, old you.
But. Agh. You need a second. You put a hand up to the wall, feel the paper of a ripped and stained poster for whatever mindless action flick was running in the cinemas down here for the fiftieth time. They never got the nice stuff here. Would have changed it, if you could have, but you're not sure you ever had that kind of charm.
The concrete beneath you is so, so dusty. Without the small divots and cracks revealing a somewhat smooth surface below, you'd never be able to tell that anyone had ever come through and paved it. The wires above you, as you look up to try to ignore what was also on the concrete, also seem new. They're not, really, but it's easier to focus on other things right now that aren't yourself. The blood on the concrete is easier to forget about then.
Some other things don't leave you that easy too, though, like the fact that you've been shot. The bullet sure isn't hopping out of its cozy home in your shoulder anytime soon. You wince again, welcoming that sharp and biting and warm sensation back into your hearts. Ah. Hello again, Pain. It's been a while since you've been here. Make yourself comfortable. You'll be staying a while.
At least, unless you get yourself to a hospital as soon as possible. But you forget where you are again. And you forget what a hospital is too. And you forget to remember any of it. Hope someone remembers you, as you rip the poster off the wall, falling to meet the sweet dirt with your face. Sholay, Amitabh Bachhan and Dharmendra. You smile. Always liked that one. Maybe they'll play reruns for you, wherever you're going.
This member of the BSS is on the run. The Samaaj has always operated in secrecy (though, really, "always" has been perhaps a few passing wisps of smoke in the grand scheme of things), but the target came first. A damned important one too. They cursed their trigger fingers, cursed weak eardrums that went quiet as soon as the blast left your barrel, cursed crappy lungs for urging them to cheer after they made the hit.
But, as their lungs set themselves on fire with panicked breaths, they didn't curse the cheer itself. It was right. This was a fact deep within their bones, even if they weren't able to translate that into words. That it… they have to be proper now that they're back. No, no, not just them, everyone. Because every living thing both in and out of the Depths knows that more and more places outside Pakistan and India and Bengal and Nepal are going to start to reach back out for more than cheap clothes and mangoes and spices. They will start to send their movies, their books, their people, and… it was embarrassing. So, so embarrassing, as the gunman felt them laughing, felt their pointed stares, their haughty pride all over again. Like this was them showing Asia up. Here, people could barely afford food and begged for scraps and sips of water. There, Coke might as well have been on tap.
And there were more of people like this runaway! More of them to make more change, more of them to have mobilized and been something more after the British had left! But no. Not at all. They could take their people, they think, as their running steps itched to drown out the Depths' noises. United in origin, in culture, in location, and they all may as well have been Neanderthals. Technology speeding ahead and still asking Maruts for advice on the weather rather than consulting books or meteorologists. Which they had, mind you, and still they would carry reverence for these entities. These beasts and demons that they all could have done so well without.
So, a bright-eyed, hazy-eyed child signed up, to both the ideology and the organization. It was easy enough to do. Just needed a gun (and you had plenty of shops for that) and to talk to the right person. That took a little more work, but they had stumbled upon them eventually by asking enough questionable folks. They could remember having felt particularly bad for the Apsaras that needed to be threatened. Pretty things they were.
Don't get caught in it now, they think, scrabbling hands grabbing onto the smallest ledge of the rooftops. As they heaved themselves up, they knew that Apsaras, Devas, Rakshasas, anything, weren't going to be around much longer anyways, so it was much better, cleaner, simpler, not to get attached. If the people refused to get proper and civilized by themselves, refused to do it when forced by someone outside, then the only option was for them to be proactive. Be forceful, but from within. Show those motherfuckers, uppity as they were, that India could be like them. Because they could be smug, they could be assholes, but they were also right in spite of that. And to be right like them — that meant pretending like all these things had no names or lives or purpose. Because it was embarrassing to think that there was a dependency holding India back that a billion and more refused to let go of.
So, one down. A lot more to go. The gunman just needed to escape whoever they had sent after them and make it back to base to brag. It's so nice to dream for a little about it as they navigated alleyways and crowded streets to run from the House of the Naga. Because, fuck, they had just put a round clean through the Naga himself.
It's very easy to pretend that whatever one is doing isn't as important as it truly is. House of the Naga Baazighar (not for long!) Mardana Khan does this often, because Baazighar Mardana Khan is not one that likes serious things. Baazighar Khan is someone who tells shitty jokes and laughs off the strange feelings in him and has the "cutest puzzled look on his face" according to Sardarni Kainth's comments when they talk between filings and does not do much else. This is why responsibility stuck to him like rubber to glue. Or glue to rubber? Whichever way the analogy went.
Unfortunately, his hands are shaking far more than Baazighar Khan was used to. If he were able to focus, he'd be able to stop them from doing so, like he usually can when he was in the "bad space," but he can't do that while he tries to keep his eyes on the person evading him. Slippery as shit, especially since this is still his first week in the Depths. He and the other folks at Branch 514 (or 541? The numbers were new. Baazighar Khan wasn't good at memorizing small details like that. Of course, they weren't small details at all, according to Jadhughar Singh, cranky old fart) had worked out a nice little schedule, now that he had been "officially assigned" to a little carved-out corner of the Depths. To most, that would mean a day off. To Baazighar Khan, that was just being tossed around different "patrol" spots without a morning's rest, even.
It had its perks, sure. People looked at him nicely, smiled, offered him a mithai or two at times. The uniform (which was whatever he had clean, plus a badge) meant something to them, because it always had. Millennia of background and legacy did its work for him. Who cares if the person behind the uniform was an irresponsible slob? When the going got tough, presumably some toughness in Baazighar Khan would get going.
Yet, it was blood from a stone, he knows. There was no way he'd be anywhere but the "bad space" whenever something spawned so much as a little bit of fear in him. So, until today, he was thankful that his corner of the depths, the metallurgy district of E-Block, was relatively quiet. Not quiet quiet, because the banging and clanging of tools of the laborers and low-caste workers made sure that there was always some degree of cacophony, but there wasn't much actually going on until today. He'd heard stories, sure. The humans and Rakshasas and Yakshas and anyone else in between who was here were bloodthirsty and violent criminals, a seedy underworld of the already 'under'world Depths. Not in truth. Not at all.
It's not every day that someone gets shot here. The adrenaline is pumping in his body, helped along by a few whispered bits of sehr that let his muscles get a bit more force out of the push and pull of their sinew. Eyes like a hawk as he watches the bobbing hooded head duck in and out of tight corners and into crowds in hopes they would lose him. He would not let them. Nor can he sink into the "bad space" for now.
So he quickly forgives himself for slacking a bit and getting caught up in the festivities today. It was supposed to be a fun time of things. A relaxing day, even if he was on the clock. It was Vaisakhi, and there was fireworks to set off and gatka to see. Sugarcane juice to be drank and fried foods to be had. Still, he had managed to pick out the loud crack of the weapon as they tried to synchronize it with the pop of a firecracker. Definitely a gun, if his experience before joining the Naga tells him anything. He wasn't all that sure of who exactly got shot, but his partner is dealing with that question while he runs after his assailant. Something to catch up with later once he nails this criminal. Not an if. Because while Baazighar Khan may be stupid, out of shape he is not.
All the more reason he thinks to jump across this rooftop, concrete under his feet as he silently mutters an incantation to give him a bit of lift — though he overshoots quite a bit, flinging himself above to see the colors of the ground below that few would see. Up here, the Depths don't really look all that different from Jalandhar proper. It's kind of a nice thing, though he thinks the name may carry some negative connotations. Perhaps they could swap it to "Jalandhar's Sister?" "Jalandhar Two?" As he rattles off a few more ideas mentally, Baazighar Khan realizes that he doesn't have the time to be poetic as the ground rapidly rises to meet him (a fact he is thankful for. Maybe this tongue-tiedness is why Sardarni Kainth likes to tease him).
Another few words are spoken, a quick flick of the wrist, and the velocity carries him forward too. If the assailant had not been looking forward, they may have noticed a rapidly growing shadow overhead. They did not. Though they certainly noticed the Baazighar flying into them with his full weight, as he traps them under both heft and quickly-cast incantation. The target struggles for a bit, writhes under him, before quickly giving up. He can feel them breathing, so he decides to adjust his posture to make it a bit more comfortable for the both of them. They weren't going to go anywhere, and he had earned it. It was nice to actually do something for once, to have earned proof he was worth his position, at least today. But that was going to be all for now, his body screams at him. Any more, and it would give out.
Thankfully, if Baazighar Khan could do one thing right, it was relaxing. And he could relax here on top of his target as long as he needed.
You thought you weren't going to be thinking anymore.
Here you are again.
You don't quite feel everything yet.
Weren't you just in E-Block?
You still are, the person who's currently operating on you tells you.
They're just the people who have to check on things from time to time.
A calming warmth flows through you. Not anesthetic. There's still pain.
But it's a little better. Manageable.
They show you the bullet they've pulled out of you.
Is it normal for them to put it into a little bag?
You don't know much about bullets to be fair.
But, hey. One nice thing at least;
They're familiar. Kind of familiar. Something about them is.
They tell you they have to take you home.
Home.
You haven't been there in a while, have you?
And the little you on their badges — that is you, you realize — tells you that you'll be okay.
For now, at least, they remind you.
It's still up to fate. Chance. Luck. Doctors' steady hands.
That's a lot of things to try to remember. To worry about.
It's easy to forget about that for now, instead.
Things are a little more manageable this way.
And at least you'll be home, if worse comes to worst.