This is how we burn...

Growing up in Uttar Pradesh, especially after the demolition of Babri Masjid in 1992, I recall that communal tensions were the accepted reality. The same was true for Aligarh as well; the only time we saw its name in the newspaper sitting in Allahabad was when a riot-like situation had been averted or violence had broken out. In City On Fire, writer and journalist Zeyad Masroor Khan takes us back to his childhood growing up in a tense Aligarh and poignantly narrates his story about coming to terms with a distorted reality waiting to be ruptured at any given point. The book is divided into three specific parts, two of which are about his time in his hometown Aligarh and the last being his experience in Delhi.

Zeyad spent his childhood at his ancestral home called Farsh Manzil built by his grandfather in 1906, which existed along with other houses as a border between the Hindu and the Muslim neighbourhoods — Kanwari Ganj and Upar Kot respectively, playfully termed as ‘UK’. This location gave his house a certain kind of importance but also gave the author a unique perspective on the socio-political environment that surrounded him.

Rude awakening

An incident mentioned in the chapter ‘The Button’ comes as a rude awakening for the reader and reveals how delicate the situation was in the author’s neighbourhood. A curious four-year-old Zeyad discovers a random button dangling in his living room attached to black-red wires. One day, he switches it on, only to be initially disappointed with nothing occurring, but soon, loud screeches from Upar Kot surround the area. Worried people swarm the streets and it is then at such a young age, that the author realizes the complexity of his location as the switch was actually of a bulb facing the Muslim neighbourhood and was supposed to be turned on to warn them if a mob was approaching their area. The abrupt introduction of conflict and violence into his life stays in the background as he narrates several incidents across the book with experiences of not just himself but others as well.

Gradually, the reader is introduced to the simmering hatred that lies underneath our society; the facade of civility is dropped at the exact moment when one gets an opportunity to express their detestation for the ‘other’.

Even so-called acquaintances, such as a neighbour or a friend or the shopkeeper just near the house won’t hesitate even for a moment to point towards someone they know and send the murderous mob after them. The book describes exactly such an incident where a girl narrates how even her close friends were part of a mob which killed her father.

Stories like these reveal a deeper problem within our society, a sore which has existed for a very long time. While it is only recently that we are getting to witness it on such a large scale, this book points towards the lived realities of many like the ones whose houses served as a border between the so-called UK and Kanwari Ganj; people who have been living a life under constant fear of what might come next , and dealing with the trauma of having to warn others.

Living memory

The book serves as a living memory of a young Muslim man trying to live his life while dealing with the fact that he will always be suspected of committing a crime. If not, he is expected to bow his head and walk on if he comes across atrocities being committed against his community. It is a heavy burden to carry and the author brings this inevitable fact across sharply.

What is obvious though is that this isn’t really an outcome of just a decade of propaganda and hatred against the Muslim community as many liberals like to believe.  This kind of divide has always been a part of our society, existing latently and festering underneath while waiting for the correct time to burst open.

The lethal combo of marginalisation and demonisation has forced the community into ghettos and limited their opportunities; this was made quite clear in the Sachar Committee report submitted way back in 2006 and this historical wrong has kept our country from healing and moving ahead from the wounds caused by communal hatred.

While what has been happening in today’s India might come as a rude awakening for many who believed our society to have been built on the principles of the famed ‘Ganga-Jamuni Tehzeeb’ (syncretic fusion of Hindu and Muslim ethos and a peaceful amalgamation of cultures) books like these shake us from our slumber, force us to confront inconvenient truths and rapidly work towards rebuilding our country before it’s too late.