From The Diary Of a Terrorist.

Saturday 12:45

Its a bitterly cold night, one of the coldest that I have ever witnessed! Perhaps my last one too...

dear diary,

I don't know exactly what to say tonight. Nobody in this world knows me but in the days to come I will make headlines, my pictures will cover the front pages of newspapers! I always wanted to do so but not exactly this way....

I was born under the shadow of hatred, living on its whims and fancies and in the end I will vanish in its dark galores! Yes hatred it is, but I know people will conclude it as terror!

19 years down the line, all I ever witnessed have been cursing and torture, I had been stated time and again to answer the very reason of my being alive and perhaps tomorrow I will for the first time give an answer to that, which will also be the last time too!

I was the third one amongst the five siblings, born from the womb of the second of the three wives of my father! He was a chain drunker when I was born and ages by the time I was 8 years old, his liver was damaged and he quit his addictions of alcohol, Now all he demanded was a bed and a beedi!

My mother died while giving birth to my sister which was second most younger child of the home, about 5 years younger to me! Her name was Saba, the only one in home with whom I had a great chemistry at home. My father never worked since the time I gained consciousness. I use to fetch a rickshaw from the age of 9 and was the only one in the home who managed to clear the high school! Not just clear it, I stood the first amongst my village, a feat that my half dead father and step mother full of hatred might still not even know of. From then on I got a scholarship to pursue 2 years of diploma in mechanics and instrumentation which completed by the time I was 17. when I went back to home, I was informed that our eldest brother had been murdered by a group of people when trapped in between a hustle of shia and Sunni tribes! He was stabbed and later submitted to death from his injuries when younger step mother slapped my father on demanding some saved money from the saved allowance of home! The brother who died had fetched my rickshaw for 3 years while I was studying hard! Light and water hardly use to visit the areas where we lived, behind the suburb docks of Ahmadabad. The elder step mother died of AIDS later that month which she was alleged to have acquired from an unknown man that use to visit us while my father use to sleep for days when occasionally trying to drink again. The younger step mother was too cruel and harsh for me and Saba. She spent days cursing both of us for all the poverty that we had. Saba was a bright painter and her work was all that brought me comfort those days while I was searching for some Job helplessly. When the second most elder brother left the home to work in Dubai without even letting us know, I knew that now the entire household depended on me. Saba was too young to work and Rashid, born to my young step Mom was still in the pram!

Every passing the day started with the curses of her on me and Saba, My father too never liked this attitude of her but he was in no state to condemn! Saba was forced to quit her painting and studies and was made to sit on the Tobacco thela that My step mom ran, which supported our household. I was given an offer to work as a helper in the butcher shop adjacent to my home which I denied as I considered myself over qualified for it, this decision of mine brought a storm in house. I was not given food for 4 days and Saba was beaten endlessly for no fault of her. We desperately needed money! Wherever I went with my resume, There were 100 applicants running for 1 job, most of them had equivalent degree like me with lesser percentage of marks but had some backward support of source as they call it to be, I discovered that without this Source, its impossible to get a job here. Local news showed that some one had thrown cow dung on the statue of Hanuman temple, leading to which some religious tension had out broken in the town! I was sitting in the hall of an interview room when I saw some very disturbing visuals on television! I went inside the room and was greeted with a gentle smile of the manager there who chuckled to me and said “This job can be yours or can never be yours”, I failed to make out what he wanted to say! It was later that he stated it clear to me, He wanted 1 lakh rupees in return. I later was told that bribe is equally important as source! He told me to meet him In a week's time. I went to meet parvati, a girl whom I had been loving for past 7 years! She was there in school with me when I topped class 10^th . She gave me some bracelets and jewelery from her home to sell and get that job, I never wanted to take it from her but was hardly left with any option, I was too helpless and tired to try for a new job. She gave it to me and kissed me, which was the best feeling I ever came across apart from reciting the name of god. Love surely is the best feeling one can have, that I know for sure! Its selfless and pure.

I sold those jewelery right away and gave the money to the manager which ensured my joining from Monday onwards, as a deputy engineer in national steel plant. I ran as fat as I could to give this news to my step mom but all I discovered was some ashes of my home and silence. Our locality was burnt by some people who were fighting from the sides of Hindu in a war, which I had no knowledge of. My step mom slapped me tightly and accused me of being late and of being no use to their home! I was broken and shattered, no matter who my father was, I loved him deeply.

I cried for hours on the railway station from where I was picked up by a police van and beaten to hell asking for a question that why I burned a railway boogie and what connection I had with that entire event that took place some days back. I had no clue of what he was talking about, I was here at the station to find a place where people dint knew me so that I can cry alone, But I forgot that I was a Muslim and people know me everywhere from this identity.

I was hanged on wires and tortured with a bat for 8 nights when my sister came and bailed me, she was upset by my state as well as by the comments that policemen passed on her! On our way home, she asked me “whats the real cause of fight between Hindus and Muslims”, I didn't had an answer to that! I actually don't know that answer. I went to parvati's home the other day and she slapped me as soon as she opened the door, she asked me what crime her brother had done for which he was cut into million pieces by my people. I had no clue who my people were! She told me that she would not like to see my face ever again and warned me to call police if I ever tried to saw her again. I was sad to imagine the state of her elder brother Ghanshyam cut into thousand pieces and depressed and shattered by the sudden loss of her! I considered her next to god. I lost her forever that day.

Two days later I went to factory to start my job when the manager asked me who I was. He told me that this country is not mine and its enough that my life has been spared, I should stop bothering about the job and leave the land as soon as possible! I punched him hard, that was the first time I committed a sin, If it was a sin that is. Police was called and I was dripped inside a water taker with ice for 5 nights and asked to sign a paper on which It was written that I take responsibility of my involvement in crime and local MLA murder that took place yesterday in a communal mob up down. I was thrown half dead on the outer skirts of the town by a big blue police van which carried 18 others like me. I managed to reach home and where we had no food to eat and were trying to sleep when suddenly a mob with several people wearing a saffron flag on their forehead came and took out home by storm, they burnt my step mom tying her to her thela! Stabbed me thrice and raped and killed Saba chanting some hindu verses. I saw her shouting with pain and my half conscious eyes finally closed. The last thing I remembered was one of them shouting to me, Just like my step mother, manager and policemen the other day asked me “why exactly I was born”.

I opened my eyes in a place full of weapons, I was given medical Aid and support and also food to survive! I was asked to work as a militant which I refused, the same people who claimed to be my brothers beaten the hell out of me and throw me out of their camp like a piece of dirt. My tongue was cut so that I can never speak to my fellow Muslims about what they did to me. I slept in streets for 2 weeks, election campaign was on and one day I saw the local Minister rallying with the same people who raped my sister. I was too numb to be sad or angry at anything till that time.

I had worked hard as a vendor of eggs outside a local Gym for past 6 months and now I have sold everything that I collected in last 6 months to purchase A bag of explosives from a place very close to that camp where I was once brutally punished for refusing terror.

I am signing off my diary for the final time now. I am yet to decide from where to start... A temple, A mosque , A police station or a home! Tomorrow onwards I will be on news, some terror organization across the border will claim me as their prodigy and for weeks I will cursed on television by angry Mob and people of this system! Do they actually have the right to do that? I wonder...

Imran Kasmaal

---------------------------------------------------------

( PS - Thats a try on fiction in terms of sadness and darkness! call me a pessimist or whatever but Fiction is nothing much a truth wrapped with fake names for me... I believe in everything that I have penned down here! and nothing can shake this mind set, every terrorist and diverted soul is a result of a system failure, we all at some point and place are responsible for each of the evil in our society !! The fucccccccked up place called modern India Society is a place too too difficult for many too honest and straight human beings and some of them do get a little more diverted and choose path of crime and terror.)

( PPS - Yeh kaisa darr hai,Yeh kaisa asar hai,Yeh kaisi bechaini,Kaisa Khauf chhaya hai..Kisne luta, kyu luta,Sukun mulk ka mitaya hai ?Kya unka koi imaan nahi ?Kya unka koi naam nahi ?... EACH OF US DO ASK THIS !! but have you ever thought about the kind of system that we live in? I am not justifying there actions or terror... I condemn it! ALL I pray is that some people some day realize the difference between terror pshychology and a terrorist! When there is a "Z" in front of us, Its very clear that "A,B,C...Etc" Must also have existed and lets get into the causes of their existence! Did our system also behaves unjust to some people due to which they pick up arms, the maoists, The Naxalites, The mujahiddin... if any of these have a boy born and brought up in India Now fighting for them against us, what was his life when he was a child, Just trying to learn how to speak and how to walk, have u ever thought about it? he was not a terrorist then... then at that time who was he?)