A short story I wrote last
month for the MOOC I just completed. Not so much a story as an extrapolation of
reality...based on one of the conversations I had about the current situation
in North India. The setting and characters are fictional, the clampdown is not!
Longer than my usual post at 1300+ words (5 mins).
Please read and share if you agree that citizenship should not be based on religion and India should remain open to refugees, regardless of their faith.
~~~~
Clampdown!
Deepak slams the curved receiver down
on its cradle. He does not aim quite right, it sits at an awkward angle, his
annoyance goes up a notch at having to correct it. This froglike thing is no
longer familiar, nearly all calls come in on his cell now. When did he lose the
ability to function without a mobile phone? He tries to cast his mind back but
he is too frazzled to think too long on it, his mind jumps from one jumble of
thoughts to another. The internet has been cut off for ten days. The mayhem
this is causing is in itself quite enough, without the smart-Alecky HR guys at
the HQ breathing down his neck about the deadlines. Don’t they get the
newspapers? Deepak had asked Anish sarcastically, but the latter said
nonchalantly there was no news of the shutdown in the ones over there.
