Bound to be Free - On India's BDSM community

Bound to be Free

Bound to be Free

Chinki Sinha

New Delhi

On the bed of stones she lay for a long time. Ants bit into her skin, but she wouldn't move, or even scratch herself. She was forbidden to. In this time and space, she had consented to give up her freedom of choice.

He had told her to not move until a butterfly came and sat on her body.

It must have been an hour. Maybe more. She can't tell. But finally a butterfly landed on her. She had completed her task. There were more orders from the man she refers to as Huzoor. Tasks given to a sub by the dom. A game of power, a way of entering the fantasyland. Sex could be part of it. Sessions could be online or offline. There could be multiple partners. The realm of desire is unbound. Fantasies could be outrageous to many. It could mean subversion, or perversion.

It was behind a cottage on top of a hill somewhere in Karnataka. They had gone for a session there. They met soon after she joined the BDSM (Bondage, Discipline, Sadism and Masochism) community, and was referred to him by a friend. She knew he would take her on many journeys.

"It was a beautiful place," Parvati (name changed) says. “He was watching me all the time. I had surrendered to him.”

She is 49. She has fought for many causes. She is a feminist, an activist, and many other things. But she won't judge herself for her fantasies. Those exist in a different realm. A place where desire is supreme. Fantasies could convert into reality. Perhaps only for a short while. Almost nothing is taboo, and pain is sought after.

But unicorns aren't so outwardly. They have a reference in reality. They have the bodies of horses. Only an imposition of a sole horn is the only fantastical element, I say.

“It is fantasy within reality,” Parvati says, and smiles.

Parvati had been eager when she first joined the underground online community. She was called a 'slut' because she was lusting for experience. It isn't about who you 'play' with. The people are mediums. The psychic space where you want to be is what matters to her, she says.

She has never bothered about personalities. The person would cease to matter in that moment. Beyond a few questions, she would not want to seek more details. Nor divulge more. For the adventurous, the journey mattered.

"Take me on a journey," she says. “Push my limits.”

When a man told her "I love you" while they were in the middle of a session, she didn't know how she would handle it. For long, love was kept out of the community's interactions. That he was playing with her mind is what she eventually figured. He vanished, but she is now thinking about love and kink reality. Why is love kept out of role play?

"Because love is love. It is up there," she says. “It is sacrosanct. There are many in the community who are in love, many more who want to be in love. But now some of us are discussing this. Perhaps love can be part of role play."

On one of the walls at her house, there is a painting by Baaraan Ijlal, a Delhi-based painter. A man, who is wearing a coat, and sports a moustache, is holding a kneeling man in a public toilet. There could be a lot of ways to tap into the layers of this painting. The man in submission is poor. His shirt sleeves are torn, and his eyes are open wide, almost in wonderment. The other man is bending with his eyes closed, holding the poor man gently. Domination and submission. The rich and the poor. A man with another man. The urinal in the background, and the tiled wall of a public toilet are part of the plot.

“Isn't that interesting,” Parvati says. “It is about us. Hence, it is here.”

One of the major issues with BDSM is its inherent lack of equality. In India, it is a stigma. Some perceive it as a psychological disorder. In such a lifestyle, there is a master or a mistress, and there is a slave. There is dominance, and there is submission. Choice, freedom, and other such things are willingly suspended. That you could get hurt is a possibility, although according to Parvati, this is extremely rare given the care taken about safety. Besides, in this ritualistic space, consent is important. There are safe words, and limits are discussed before a session.

***

Pain is real. Everything else could be fantasy. But there are contracts. Written or spoken. The problems of the 'vanilla' (a term used to denote everything non BDSM) world don't exist here. But discussions about kink exist in a small space. Its education and its articulation, a few would say, is an elitist activity in India. Because so many still aren't online. They aren't part of networks. They don't have access to the community.

Yet, Parvati, says she believes everyone is kinky.

“Love bites are an expression of kink,” she says.

***

When Parvati, one of the spokespersons for the Kinky Collective, speaks, her eyes have a faraway look to them. As if she didn't exist in the time and place. A cigarette dangling from her hands, she embarks on a journey of her experiences that she equates to junoon, a state of intensity where surrender and collapse is a spiritual experience. One that eluded her for so long.

“Intensity is when nothing else matters,” she says. “It is about timelessness. It is not the pain. It is about surrender. The intensity has been enabled by this person but they don't matter in the end.”

She says she is a late bloomer. At 35, she heard a young woman articulate about the rights of the LGBT community, and instantly fell in 'lust' (not love she clarifies) with her. She chased her. They had a relationship. At 46, she figured she was kinky, she says.

That evening, she isn't feeling well. It is getting cold in the city already. Wrapped in a shawl, she slumps in a sofa, an ashtray by her side. The photo exhibition called Bound to be Free, a first in India by the Kinky Collective, is now on its way to other cities. They dared to do it because creating awareness and dispelling myths about BDSM is important for a lot of reasons.

***

Around five years ago, Parvati was in Brighton with her girl friend and other friends, and they decided to go to a fetish ball. The party, her first such event, was in a basement club, and she was cold. They hadn't turned on the heaters to save on the costs. They were huddled together when man walked in with two women. They were gorgeous. The man sat in a couch near her. The other woman sat next to him, and the third sat on the floor, and rested her head on the man's lap. Then, on the woman's thighs. Her face didn't twitch. It bore no signs of humiliation. It was a deeply moving sight, like poetry. The power flow was interesting.

She was watching them. The expression on the woman's face as she lay her head on the man's lap as he began to pat her was peaceful. As if she was in complete surrender. She was his pet. Beer had spilled on the floor. The man took off his coat and spread it on the floor so she wouldn't get wet.

“That was surreal,” she says. “Loss of dignity. That's what so haunting about it.”

The collapse of ego, the beauty of surrender, she adds.

We are at a friend's house. There is a bottle of wine, and she is comfortable talking. That image stayed with her. She would have her first BDSM session much later.

“Everyone has a fetish,” she says.

But these are difficult conversations. She is nervous about me. I am an outsider, and I have already made my first error. I asked her about the 'paraphernalia.”

“We don't call it that. Those are tools,” she says. “You are welcome to see those. It is about the mastery of senses.”

But BDSM isn't just about tools, and costumes, and role plays. Those are just stereotypical notions. It's not about sex even.

***

At the Abadi Art Gallery in a tucked-away lane in Lado Sarai, there are 40 photographs on display. These have been taken by members of the community. Much could be tagged as BDSM stereotypes – stilettos digging into a man's throat, blindfolds, whips and bodies, melting wax, leashes, and other such representations.

The point is to shatter the notion that BDSM as anti-women and misogynist.

There are women Dominants. There are male Submissives. It is essentially about power flow, she says. Gender isn't of consequence here.

In a hazy photograph, she drinks milk from a bowl. Someone says that's the reward. There are rituals, he says.

There's more to it. She was playing the role of a dominant's puppy. She is in other photos. As a domme (a female dominant), with her stillettos digging into a man's throat. In another, she has her feet on top of a man, who has prostrated himself. A cigarette in her hand, she is laughing.

There are other photos. It is just a hall with a small terrace. These photos aren't every explicit. They aren't shocking. But for the uninitiated, it is all very strange. Almost surreal to know that those that are in the photographs are in the room. That it is not a still from a movie. That reality ad fantasy can co-exist.

Like the face of a woman wrapped in cellophane. Or the dog collar in a woman's neck in a car. This is in Delhi. Because beyond the dog collar, you could spot a CNG auto rickshaw. There is one of a man with wax being poured on his back. Pleasure in pain.

“No gain without pain,” someone says, and chuckles. 

For many, it is erotica. It is what turns them on. That it is. But it much more than that, I am told.

There is a cage, and a woman's steel heels, and a whip in a picture. There is a man inside the cage. You can't see him. But the heels are in focus, and so is the whip.

I later see the cage at her place. She has two dogs. At one of the collective's gatherings, they had played a game. It was just for fun, and a man had gone inside the cage. It hadn't been easy. It meant squeezing oneself into a cage on all fours over iron mesh.

Outside on the terrace of the art gallery, Parvati sits dressed in a black skirt, and black stockings. This is the first time in the country that a kinky photo exhibition is being held. The photographs have been taken by the members of the community. It is a traveling exhibition and will be shown at Bangalore, and Kolkata among other cities.

Over 150 people came for the exhibition, she says, but not hardly any from the community. In fact other than the organizers, only six have come from the community.

“They are afraid,” she says.

For three days, the photos hang in this space. It is not easy to be seen in this space. Associations of a wrong kind in a society that doesn't understand such fantasies can belong to those that live routine lives, go to work, have families, and do everything else.

***

The fact that Parvati can speak about the collective, and their photo exhibit is a liberating feeling for her. There is a certain relief in coming out. Like when she figured she wanted a woman.

“I would think about her, and it was like my bed was on fire,” she says. “I had to come out to my mother. This had to be the bravest thing I had done, and I moved out of the house. People are very paranoid about the media. There is a history of fear in the BDSM community,” she says.

But perhaps now is the time for Kink (even if not kinksters) to come out of the closet, she says.

Fifty Shades of Grey, with all its pathologization, broke the silence about kink. But she and other members of the community in Delhi had burnt the book at a fund raiser party for the exhibition. A photo with the shreds of the book and rose petals hang at the exhibition.

“BDSM is about consent. Consent is sacred. We have rules,” she says.

At workshops which can be held only in people's homes, the members meet to discuss issues, and to do skill sessions – training in wax play, whipping, or tying with rope. You can't whip in the stomach. That could hurt someone, she says. Certain things are off limits. Like paedophilia.

“But isn't that desire?” someone says.

“Where is the consent there?” she responds.

It is not only about dispelling myths, she clarifies.

“Those outside the community can learn from us about consent. As someone who has been part of the women's movement for 30 years and fought against violence against women, I have learnt a lot about consent after joining the BDSM community in which consent is not assumed, it is proactively sought and given, negotiated. Even more importantly, what makes it powerful and real, is that it can be withdrawn instantly and unconditionally. Limits are spoken about, and they are pushed.”

Parvati doesn't like the term 'lifestyle' because she has never been comfortable with labels. BDSM community, she says, is an often misunderstood sexuality. Much like the LGBT community.

“I feel differently about identity. Everyone has experienced power in sex, the wrist being held if even for a moment, or rough sex.... I believe this is a sexual orientation,” she says.

Whether the time is approaching when kinksters can come out, not be branded as perverts, and not be forced to lead double lives, is hard to say. This is their first photo exhibit. The collective has only 21 members. There is an online underground community, but not many see it belonging to a realm or even needing activism.

***

After joining the online BDSM community, Parvati went out into the garden at her mother's house. She had stayed the night over, and there was a tall iron grill, and a creeper wrapped itself around the grills. She went out in the morning, placed her hand on the arrow-shaped grill, and stood there. Thereafter, she took a photo, and that was her profile photo on the networking site for a long time. She says she felt like the vine – dependent.

That she is a feminist, and an activist is incidental. She is that and this. It is not as if that is reality and this is fantasy, she says.

“This too is real, but it's my erotic reality...” she says.

And in that spectrum, she lives. Shuttling between this and that.

For her, the magic happens when she plays with intensity. She says it is much like Hindustani classical singing which she is learning. It has discipline, and that allows for creativity.

“When I first came into this, I was a sub in a hurry,” she says. My friends in the community told me to slow down so I did. But after I met the first dominant who I knew I could trust and within 12 days, I was on my way to Rishikesh for a session. It is about trust and faith. That we have in abundance.”

While there are safe words and defined limits, Parvati says she usually doesn't play with too many limits. One that is not negotiable is that she wouldn't eat meat.

As she stubs yet another cigarette, she speaks about one her most intense journeys of pain. Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan's dhamal played in the background.

“It was all very hypnotic. My dom (short for Dominant) in that session was a sadist and very experienced. In my journey of pain, I went into a kind of space that was trance like. In the community, we call it the sub space,” she explains.

She defines this space as consisting of nothingness.

“It is still and calm. I didn't want him there then. In my state of collapse, I wanted to be alone,” she says.

But she insists that aftercare is very important in the community. That's one of the things they speak about in their meetings.

Is there pleasure after all?

“For me, its difficult to call it pleasure. It is just the pain, and the intensity of the moment. It is not that I don't dread these sessions. Yet if the whipping stops, I am disappointed,” she says. “I am definitely turned on.”

Parvati has a reason beyond the terminology and articulation of BDSM.

“I want to cease to exist,” she says. “That is the only thing in life,” she says. “It is a spiritual journey to me. It didn't happen with meditation. We are just mediums for power flow. It is like singing. How to best let the notes flow. It is the trance.”

Some of her sessions were very ritualistic. Some pushed her own boundaries in a way that she felt liberated in the end.

Like after one of the sessions, a dom asked her to send him her photos everyday. She felt the fear. She was never comfortable taking her own photos, but she did.

“That's how a dom understands you. They release you, empower you,” she says.

With another dominant, it was about dancing. He asked her to do a striptease in front of him. She rehearsed, wore a pink sari, and danced to the beats of a song from Bollywood.

“It is wonderful to not have a choice,” she says. “If I am a good sub, I will let you take me on any journey.”

***

Much of reality is fantasy, she says. She is reserved, and speaks softly. It is like she has measured her words, and then doles them out one by one.

“BDSM helps me to distill out parts of fantasy within reality,” she says. “I long for a daddy figure. But it isn't incest. It is not about debunking my feminism. The fantasy here is about unconditional love. That daddy doesn't exist. Even if he did, he couldn't rule me in that way. In my BDSM, I want it. I can even get it.”

But kink isn't a new deal.

“You only have to look at the kamasutra. The articulation of it could be. But speaking about such issues requires courage of a different kind,” she says.

Even in her own work in rural areas, she knows she can't speak about it.

She can talk about instances where she knows of people in lower middle-class settings who are kinky. But for now, those are off limits. Maybe there will be a time when there would be open conversations. For now, it is best to tread slowly. It is not elitism, she intervenes.

In one of the sessions, her ear drum was injured. She was told to tell the doctor it happened because she fell down. But she had wanted to tell the truth. But it could have been misconstrued.

“We want to speak to mental health professionals. Why should we make up stories. Awareness needs to be there,” she says. “This isn't perversion. We have a meeting coming up soon with some doctors to discuss this.”

***


As a child, he would pull out the ties of the bolsters at his grandfather's house and tie himself to the french windows in the old house. It was a child's play. His parents were only concerned he should not hurt himself.
 He would pretend he had been captured, and he loved the feeling of being in bondage.
 

“Maybe I didn't know the terminology. I have been into it from a very young age,” Aditya (name changed on request) says over the phone.
 

He is a lawyer based out of Kolkata, and is one of the founder members of the Kinky Collective that was set up in 2011 though he has been closely associated with the community for more than ten years now. As an experienced member of the community, he says he supports new members who joins the BDSM lifestyle, a term that is widely used by the community, but certain members feel it is not representative of something that isn't an acquired taste, but is at the core of who we are. Much like homosexuality, and its articulation in terms of many saying it is just an acquired lifestyle, and a choice.
 For many years, Aditya thought something was wrong with him or he was diseased because he was kinky. Those were pre-internet days. He couldn't discuss it with others. He was worried about perceptions, and stigmatization. 
 

“I used to think I was the only one in India with this disease. I wasn't sure if it had anything to do with sexuality. I though the rest of them were in America. I was almost in my late 20s then. In 1998, I had my first computer and internet through a dial-up connection. The point is that there was no exposure to media. At the time there was no pornography to tell me about it. So accept from my example this is natural in human beings,” he says.
 

The first time he was inducted into the network was when he received an email from someone asking him whether he was into BDSM, and he first thought it was a spam. However, he did reply to it, and was pleasantly surprised to see a response the next day from a woman in Bombay who was compiling a list of those that were into BDSM, and establishing a community of sorts so they could discuss issues and network to find willing partners.
 

“In 2003, I travelled to Bombay and at that point of time. I met others like me. It was real. It was fun,” he says.
 He hadn't been practicing it in his personal relationships because he was afraid of the reaction. But he did mention it to his partner that if she was tired of him teasing & disturbing her, she should tie his hands. That did the trick. The other felt the surge of power, and they would make out. But it was introduced carefully. He would never say he was into self-bondage.
 Aditya identifies as a polyamorous, gender fluid and a switch, who can be both dom and sub. But he has a primary partner while he also plays with others, and he says he keeps all his relationships transparent with all his partners. 
 In college, a friend of his had once confided in him that she was turned on by a scene in a film that had Jaya Prada being dragged by the villain to get raped while her husband was tied up.
 

“She wasn't enjoying sex, she told me. I said something was wrong with her and said she should go and see a psychiatrist. I thought both of us had this disease. I want to apologize to her now and tell her that it was alright to fantasize. We never met after college. This was in 1992-1993. Over the next 10 years, I kept things within myself and I suffered. In 2002-03, I had my first session. Pain was an amazing experience. This lady used to say she could take a needle through her nipples. When I was very ill and was hospitalised and the nurse would come to administer injections. I had this fear of injections but that conversation helped me gather courage. When you are in pain, the mind shuts down and you tend to run away from it. Here, pain can be pleasureable too. I felt I could be brave,” he says. 

“Just like bungee jumping is not for everyone. Or like the game of chess is not for everyone. It is just a choice that people make. That's why there are a variety of choices. The problem is we are comfortable laughing at anyone different. It is a misogynist culture.”
 

Over the years, Aditya has become an experienced member of the community but feels there is still a lot to learn. He feels there is a need to disseminate information even within the community about safety in a session, respecting the limits and use of safe word. 
 

“For the first timers, it is important that it is done right. Someone who wanted to have a session with me. She started with a list of 50 hard limits. Over a span of six months, we had negotiations and long discussions. When she met me recently, she only had four hard limits. If one has to push the limit with a newbie, it should be in the conversation, not directly in the session. It might leave a scar if things go wrong. Let them take the conscious call beforehand by understanding the pros and cons,” he says.
 

In a BDSM context, which the members say is based solely on consent, sex is not presumed. In marriage sex is presumed, he says.
 

“In India a man can't be charged for raping his wife. In the kink community, consent is important. If you don't abide by the rules, you can earn a bad name. The community will denounce you,” Aditya says.
 

For instance, he says one of the rules is to have a safe word. That is agreed upon by the people prior to a session.
 

“The sub goes into a state of mind when they feel devotion and complete submission. You want to feel overpowered. Until you use the safe word, you can't be released. Otherwise, it may just imply that you are enjoying the helplessness,” he says. Just like any other relationships in the society, “Abuses could be there too.”
 

Aditya is a switch. He can be a dominant or a submissive partner. He says he enjoys both equally.
 

“As a submissive there is this sensation of giving up control. I don't want to sound religious but if you take up Bhagwad Gita, Krishna shows the Vishwaroopam avatar to Arjun and says give up all religion, give up all thoughts, and surrender yourself at my feet. This is ultimate surrender. I am for my domme's pleasure,” he says “and will enjoy my sub doing the same for me”.



There is the need for clear understanding articulation between the play partners. The fear is good. It is a way of looking at things. It releases chemicals in the brain, which is a high in itself, he says.
 

“The fear is not of being exploited, or of being abused. It is not a negative fear. The fear converts into a sense of surrender. I am ready to take what you give me. That is the high. Even an ordinary person can do it. When you take a fight you give your consent to hand over your life at the hands of the pilot! Similarly we are constantly surrendering in daily life, in many things,” Aditya says.
 

There are ways to look at it. There could be love, or there could be only sex or a session in isolation. Surrender is also being vulnerable. There is trust, and there are conversations.
 “It is an extremely volatile situation. The chances of falling in love with the dominant are quite high. Because you stand naked in mind and physical. The dominant takes you on a journey. You survive the fall, and when you are done, you are empowered. You overcome fears. There have been marriages within the community. For me, I have a problem with love. Trust and faith are more important. Love is merely a collection of feelings. You make it sound holier than thou,” he explains.
 Someone fell in love with him once after a few sessions. When he declined he advances, she became violent. She started saying things about him, he says.
 “Being a male is also very vulnerable. If I tie up a woman, and she has rope marks and we have sex, and she says rape, then I am done for,” he says.


In this underground community, there is a fear of being recognized, and then of being outed to others that might perceive of kinks that could include flogging, whipping, and other things, as perversion, a mental disorder. International researches have shown that a person practicing BDSM is in no way different from anyone else. They are not perverts. According to Aditya, the only form of perversion is when something is done to someone without their consent. What is apparently violent is not always violence. He gives the example of boxing. 


“Thereafter, we formed this group. Kinky collective was formed in 2011. Even papers were presented on BDSM in academic conferences in 2010 . There were some of us that thought we should take the cause forward. You are bringing someone out of the cocoon so they can have clear meaningful lives.
 “It is willing suspension of disbelief, Samuel Taylor Coleridge has said. It is not real,” he says. “If in the mind of the protagonist it becomes real, how do you distinguish between consensual and abusive relationship. This is not real.”
 

But in this world where there is a need to be invisible, and yet find willing partners, the community helps. 
 Some are monogamous, and others are polyamorous.
 

“The question comes from the perspective that we think everyone is monogamous. The dynamics could be fluidity. One could do multiple sessions but there needs to be clarity and transparency. The most dangerous emotion is jealousy,” he says.
 In this articulation of BDSM, there are justifications to self. To simply say it is erotic is not enough. Aditya says he had a session with a woman who came from a conservative background, and he wanted to push her limits, to liberate her, and to set her free.
 He inserted Ben Wa balls in her vagina, and together they went to a mall.
 

“She could have had an orgasm right there,” he says. “Only we knew she had these in her vagina, and she felt free that she could be out in the open and be so naughty without anyone knowing of it. I was controlling her. It had been done by me. It is about knowing a person,” he says.
 

In another instance, he had an exhibitionist as his sub, who was comfortable wearing a dog collar to a queer party.
 “I was holding her collar, and dragging her. There were interesting reactions. This was an act of dominance in public space,” he says.
 

***


 Parvati says she would rather not show her face in the photos. These are reasonable fears.
 But she has dared to speak out. That's enough. 

She has withdrawn her name from the piece. As an afterthought, she says.

"Now you know why there is paranoia," she says. 

Nonlinear Narratives - notes from Muzaffarnagar

Sometimes, editing makes a story better. But sometimes, it also takes away the soul of the story. It is a constant conflict between what you think is important and what they feel can be done away with. But you were there, and you saw. And at the end of it, objectivity also means trying to highlight both sides. We spent time in both the villages, and got their versions of how things happened. Here's the story in its draft form. And of both the sides.


Nonlinear Narratives




Chinki Sinha

Muzzaffarnagar, November 5, 2013




That they want gun licenses isn't such a misplaced demand, a man says. After all, the state has failed to protect them. The fields with the sugarcane crop rising tall, and hiding so much, have become the killing fields. Nobody is cutting the crop anymore. It turns brown, and ripe. Unclaimed, uncared for. Not until the state concedes.

Shahnawaz Khan, a Samajwadi Party worker, gets into a white Scorpio with the Samajwadi Party flag. It starts to move. He raises his hand, and the vehicle stops.

“Our battle isn't with the Hindus. It is with Jat terrorism. If they can call their panchayats, so can we,” he says. “We have waited for too long.”

A panchayat of the Jats was called in for October 6. That has been postponed. The muslims have formed a Bhartiya Kisan Majdoor Manch on Sunday to negotiate for their rights. This is to fight Jat terrorism.

“We will fight the battle of the disenfranchised. We have been under the shadows of the Jats. Now, we will claim our space, and our dignity,” he says.

Night has descended. In Hussainpur, men are collected outside the pradhan's house. Section 144 is imposed. But they have disregarded it. Beyond this, the village is submerged in darkness. Except for when a woman wails out loud.

***



A young man sits in a corner, brooding, and a young woman wails.


“Amroz mera bhai. Kahan se dhoondh ke laoon tumhe,” Shabnam cries.


The mother Khurshida Begum, a frail old woman, breaks down.


“Mere kaleje ka tukda,” she says. “They killed him. They killed my innocent son.”


Men and women from the village sit in the house discussing the killings that happened on Oct. 29.


Suddenly, the sister shouts, and collapses. She is propped up.


"We want justice. Khoon ka badla khoon,” she says, and a village elder chides her.


“No, not that way,” he says. “That will mean many more killings.”


That evening, Amroz, 20, had gone to the fields with his cousins. His mother was at home when someone asked her where her son was, and told her to look for him. She ran to the fields but on the way, she was held, and brought back in. That's when they told her that her son had been killed. For the mother, who brought up five children after their father died 12 years ago, it was a loss she still can't express in words. Because when you lose a son, it is like losing your eyes, hands, heart, she says.

They had butchered the bodies. Eyes, hands, and other parts were dismembered. If killing them was not enough, she says.

She didn't see the body. She couldn't have.

The family is poor. The elder brother Pervez worked as a tailor. None of the siblings could finish school. They dropped out one by one. Amroz used to work in Delhi in one of the many sweat shops. He would come once in five or six months. He had been in the village for about a few days to take care of his mother who has been unwell.

The youngest brother Adam pushes forward the cellphone with his brother's photo. He had attended the village primary school until Class 5, and then gave up. The sisters had to be married off, and the house needed to be taken care of.

“He was responsible. He would send more than half of what he earned to us. He made only Rs. 7000 per month,” the mother says. “They took him away. What had he done. He was just a son and a brother. A poor man. Nothing more. There was no time to be anything more.”

***

After three Muslim youth were killed in Hussainpur in Budhana on October 29, there is an uneasy calm in the two villages. It is an imposed calm.

“Like before a storm,” a man says. “It won't last.”

A woman and an infant were killed the same day in Lisarh. On Sunday, a young woman was raped. Killings have been reported in the district elsewhere too. It is not not going to stop, Shahnawaz says.

***


Near where the graves are, the sugarcane plants rise from the ground. They almost block the view except where the ground rises and tumbles into the other village – Mohammadpur Raisingh. That's the village where the bodies were allegedly taken. One of the young men was still alive. He died on the way.

The three were returned to their village Husseinpur dead. The blood dripped from the polythene that wrapped their bodies. Because the head was almost severed. If you tapped it, it would fall to the other side, a man says. Fingers were chopped off, eyes had been pulled out, legs had been cut off, they say. The father couldn't bear to look at his own son's remains. There were just remains, he says. They couldn't have made up the whole.

“I had seen him as a human. Not as minced meat,” Anees Khan, father of Ajmal, says.

They couldn't do the rituals. Not even the Gusal, and then the hurry to quickly bury them lest the tensions flare up again. But it did. Despite the fact the graves were dug in a section of a farm next to the graveyard because an actual grave would have taken sometime to dig.

Thousands had congregated that morning at the madrasa in the village. On three cots, they bodies were lain. The blood stains are still there on the canvas of the cot. Thick and stubborn. Maroon in colour. Stale blood.

Even on the ground, the blood marks emerge. There was a lot of blood. Despite the polythene wrapping. They were young, healthy men, Umar Daraz Khan, Ajmal's elder brother says.

He was around when the postmortem was going on. In fact, he had suggested wrapping the bodies in polythene bags.

“Even the police had tears in their eyes. It was strange looking at the bodies,” he says. “I returned in the morning.”

Amroz, 20, Meharban, 21, and Ajmal, 22, were beaten to death in the fields. Parallel narratives emerge from both the villages that have lived side by side for decades about the killings. The truth lies somewhere in between.

In September, riots broke out in Muzzaffarnagar district in UP after a Muslim youth was killed for allegedly staking a Jat girl. Then, two Jat men were lynched in retaliation. As per the official figures, the death count stands under 70. But the communities say it is more than 500. Bodies, they say, were dumped in streams, and families are missing. More than 30 relief camps have been set up to house those that have fled from their villages. Members of the minority community in Mohammadpur Rai Singh village had fled to Hussainpur on the night of September 7 when mob came for them. The next morning, arson was reported from their quarters.

Around 900 remain in Hussainpur. They have refused to go back. Now, the return is impossible, they have said.

In Hussainpur, the Hindus were scared but they were promised 'no harm' and security. The Jats are responsible. There are 36 biradaris here including Dalits and Thakurs.

“Our fight is with the Jats,” Shahnawaz says.

They have demanded Rs. 25 lakhs compensation, a government job, the arrest of all accused, and gun licenses among other things. At a panchayat called in soon after the killings, they decided they would ask the government, which has been tagged as that of the minority, and for the minority, for these. Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav had turned up wearing a skull cap. Then came a horde of other politicians. There was a war of words between the various political parties – all of them blaming the others for not controlling the riots. When they decided to deploy the PAC, Akhilesh had his reservations. The PAC has been accused of killing Muslims in the Hashimpura riots that broke out in Meerut in 1987. It remains a case pending in the Tis Hazari court in Delhi.

Now, the Jats in Mohammadpur say PAC killed the miscreants. An enquiry has been ordered. But in encounters, the police doesn’t cut up bodies. They shoot, Gul Mohammad says.

That the PAC didn’t take action is another story. What led to which killing is still a matter of perspective here.

When the mob came, they shouted “Pakistan ya Kabristan” and they came with weapons.

Mohammadpur Raisingh fares better than Hussainpur in terms of land ownership. More houses are pucca here. The muslims mostly work as agricultural labourers or migrate to other cities to earn a living. The private school is in Lusana, about a kilometer from Hussainpur.

***

In the courtyard, the women have congregated. They read the holy verses. In heavy voices that often trail off, and then they cry. Collectively, and helplessly.

The father Abad Khan stands and watches his other son Farmaan fill water. The four sisters sit around their mother as they mourn the death of their brother Meharban. Meharban used to drive trucks, and would come home twice a year. His wife and three children lived with his parents.

He doesn't speak much. He is short, and his wrinkled face is calm. It had to be this way, he says.

Sometimes he goes and sits at the pradhan's house where others smoke hookahs, and discuss the riots. He seldom speaks there. He sits in a corner, and hears what they have to say about the killings.

Meharban was born in a poor family. His father didn't have any land and worked as a day labourer. The sons used to help out and then Meharban found a job as a truck driver in the state, and the younger son remained in the village. The father is old and shriveled. He doesn't know what to do, he says

***

On the door of the mosque in Mohammadpur Raisingh, someone had scrawled abusive words. You push open the door and there's a courtyard. The wall beyond is covered in soot. But the green of the mosque established in 1965 is intact. On a sunny afternoon, the green and the pink stands out. It is only when you enter the sanctum, you see that it was desecrated. The walls are sooty. Nothing remains here except the ashes, and discarded Sprite bottle, and such other garbage.

The two rooms are bare. Except for the curtains that billow in the wind. Then the children come in, and the adults follow. They had been watching.

“They took the stuff away,” a young boy says. “We didn't burn anything.”

A young girl motions to him to keep quiet. Silence works best here. They keep looking.

There is this row of burned houses. Arson had happened, according to the police. Not a raging fire, but enough to turn the colour of the walls black.

***

On both sides there are sugarcane fields. The road is narrow, and there's a school on the way. A lock hangs on the door. This is Lusana, and beyond this is Hussainpur. Policemen sit outside the village. Section 144 is imposed in the area after the killings but Haji Sagur Querishi is sitting with a group of 20 men at the village chaupal.

“They haven't arrested all of them yet,” he says. “The panchayat will happen. It will decide the future course of action. If the state grants our six demands, we shall thank them in the panchayat. Else, we shall contemplate on our strategy. For these past few days, we have been composed. But we can't hold the anger for too long.”

The road passes through Hussainpur. From the other village, they have stopped sending their children to school. There's fear, and dread. There's an eerie silence here. Except for when the children come out of the madrasa. Their banter breaks the monotony of silence. Then it returns.

“We said don't fight. We can't not fight forever,” he says. “We had said let the children go to school in Lusana. We won't do anything. We won't touch them. We want peace.”

Other men nod. There are men who are angry. They speak about the morning when the bodies were brought to the madrasa. They had said they wouldn't bury them until the state fulfilled their demands. But blood isn't an easy sight. It disturbs. It makes you angry, he says.

There was a lot of blood. So much that the ground bears the stains, he says.

Hussainpur is within 12 km radius of the other village that were ravaged by the riots that broke out in Muzzaffarnagar district in September. Rumours abound. They say the girls were made to dance after they had been stripped of their clothing in Fugana. Rapes had happened. Families had been killed, made to leave their villages, and live in horrid conditions in camps set up by the state.

“Exile is a tough choice. But when death stares you in the face, you leave,” Querishi, a village elder, says. “We had given shelter to 900 muslims that were fleeing from neighboring villages, including Muhammadpur Raisingh. We even brokered a peace deal with them.”

The past has not passed. They want to forget the riots, begin their return to whatever they tag as normalcy. In forgetfulness, and omissions lie their future, he says.

“But it is not easy to forget. Not when they keep killing,” he says.

Just as they were beginning to send families back to their villages, three young men were killed. Now, nobody wants to go back. They are everywhere in this village.

They are the ones with sad eyes, and ghost-like faces.

“Yeh Mohammadpur wale hain” they point out. It is not necessary. They are in this nonlinear space. Suspended for now. The past has not passed for them.

***


There's a blue poster. It has a convertible, red in colour, and a house, and a garden, and a table and four chairs outside. Sweet Home, it says.

There are other things, too. Like trees and flowers. Grass and fence. An ideal home.

But it is torn on the edges. It hangs above the door. Inside, there are remnants of what made up a sweet home. This is Munni's home. Or used to be. An old woman on the roof of another house looks down, and shouts.

“We weren't here. We had run away in fear. They are all gone now,” she says. “If they hadn't, the house would have been maintained.”

“Was it burned?”

“No, the soot that you see is from the kitchen. They used to cook here,” a man says. “Nobody burned anything.”

The walls are broken. The doors hang loose on the hinges. These were ravaged.

***

When they show the postmortem reports of the three men, Anees Khan bends forward, and moves his fingers over the figure they have drawn. Nothing is clear. But there is the outline, and it is of his son.

So he thinks. But it is of Meharban. Doesn't matter to those that are congregated here. They were all cousins. As per the police, there were more than 10 injuries on each body.

“I couldn't even look at my own son's body. Even butchers don't indulge in such barbarism,” he says.

He hands over the copy, and looks the other way.

At his house next to the fields, his wife Bano holds the prayer beads in silence.

“I am praying for the son I lost,” she says.

She cries, and averts her eyes. There's the story to be told. It is important for them that they tell that their son was not a killer on the prowl. He was a 20-year-old man, who worked as a truck driver. He would come home once in a couple of months, and stay for sometime and return. It was a difficult job but it was better than working in the others' fields.

That morning, he had come from Kolkata. Bano had cooked a simple meal – kichri. Everyone was complaining of fever. It had begun to get cold here.

Since then, they haven't cooked another meal. They are in mourning. If he were sick, it would not have hurt so much. It is anger, it is frustration, and it is loss. It was undeserved, she says.

“Our son had never fought with anyone. He wasn't brought up like that,” she says.

In the other village across the fields, they say the men had attacked one of their community members. In the ensuing fight, they were shot by the PAC.

“How can we turn killers? We were the refuge of those that had to leave their homes in that village,” she says, and goes back to praying.

There's nothing more to be said. There are other narratives, other truths. Depending on where you were, one truth collapsed to give rise to another.

***

In the dark chambers of the pradhan, a Dalit on the reserved seat, there are a few men listening in to the conversation.

The pradhan Omkar Singh speaks in measured sentences. It is a rehearsed speech.

“Kab tak jalega Muzzaffarnagar?” he asks.

It is evening. He begins with his narrative.

“There was the Kawal panchayat, and people from this village had also gone. There was stone pelting, and other such things, and in the chaos, 1200 unknown people came to this village and set the houses that belonged to the muslims on fire,” he says.

He says he wasn't there. He was sitting in his house when he saw the smoke rise in the air. It was a dangerous time to be out in the village, he says.

***

Raeesu was killed on September 8. He had insisted he would stay behind. His neighbors wouldn't kill him. He was old. Perhaps 70, his daughter-in-law says.

They had all escaped. The women jumped off the windows, and the roofs, and ran into the fields.

But Raaesu stayed on. They say they even cut the legs on his horses, and cut him in three parts.

Omkar Singh says Raaesu was old and sick.

“We can't say how he died but we carry the blame,” he says.

Now, they fail to recognise us if they see us, he says.

“We lived together once,” he adds.

Raaesu's grave is an unmarked one. In these parts, they don't name the graves. They know who lies where.

Raaesu doesn't lie far from where the other three have been put to rest. Next to his grave, they are digging another one. A woman died that morning. She was from the other village. A refugee.

Even in death, they were not returned to where they came from. She would be buried here, next to Raaesu. In Hussainpur. In exile.

***

Rajinder Fauji was at his fields in the evening to water his crop when he was ambushed, and three masked men put a gun to his forehead. He was able to escape. There were three other farmers with Rajinder, the pradhan says.

His feet were injured, but once he was back in Mohammadpur Raisingh, he collected a group of men and told them about the masked men in the fields. They gathered the PAC men and went to confront the men. The three men, he says, were killed but the police took Rajinder away and kept him in custody.

Eight people were arrested. The Muslims from Hussainpur say 15 others are at large. They roam the fields in the militia style. They are armed and they are ruthless, they say.

Omkar Singh says the bodies were not brought to his village. They were taken away by the police but the Muslims feel they were killed in his village, which has around 10,000 people.

“We have tried to call the Muslims back. We constituted a Shanti Samiti of around 26 people and they would speak to the Muslims who left this village to come back. But they haven't come back,” he says.

The villagers say the state has turned its back on them. It is the government of the minority, and the police have been picking up their men at mere allegations. They have nowhere to go, he says.

In this part of UP, the politics is complicated. Who stands to gain by the riots is still unclear. The Muslims have traditionally followed the diktat from Deoband-based Darul Uloom with regards to voting, and they say they have always been with Mulayam Singh, who pushed for policies that would benefit the minority. But in case the recent riots that are taking an ugly turn with yet another rape incident of a Muslim refugee in Jogiya Khera on Sunday, and a shootout the following day that killed a Hindu named Mukul Singh and gravely injured two of his friends who are in the hospital, the government has been unable to protect them. It is them that had to flee their villages, suffer the loss of property, and dignity. But rash decisions are not the best way out, Mohd. Aslam says. He is the younger brother of Ajmal.

“We don't disrespect the fatwa. Loss is personal. They have done a lot for us,” he says.

***

There is only a primary school in the village. By way of education, the village has very low literacy. In the bid to survive starvation and dire poverty, education is the first casualty. Most men and women dropped out of school to work in the fields, or daily wage labourers to support their families. There is a small madrasa attached to the mosque where children can learn their basic.

For now the primary school in Hussainpur has been converted into a shelter for the families that have refused to return to their villages. Most of those who have stayed behind are from the neighboring village. They had seen the anger in the eyes of the men who had come for them. This won't end so soon, a woman says.

“Not now. Not in the near future,” Hamida says, as she makes rotis for her family.

***

They left in the middle of everything that they were doing – eating, cooking, sleeping. Because the men hadn't returned, and the mob was coming for them. They jumped from the roofs, and hid in the fields. Then, when dawn broke, they walked to Hussainpur, and asked for shelter.

Ishrana, 22, ran with her four children. It was chaos, she says. Nobody knew which way to go.

It is a narrow lane where Muslim houses jostle for space with the ones that belong to the Jats. Their doors open to one another. It wasn't easy to run. So, they got out into the fields.

“Those who couldn't run were caught,” she says.

Shahnawaz has said at least five women from Mohammadpur Raisingh village have complained to the Mahila Aayog team that came visiting that they were sexually assaulted. They have also alleged rape. But FIRs have not been filed, and the women won't come out and speak about it. There's the fear of being ostracised. Rapes are used as fear tactics in such situations, Shahnawaz says. In earlier reports from the riot-affected villages like Lisarh and Kandhla, women have said they were gang-raped. But the police has only registered five such complaints so far from those areas. In such situations, there are all kinds of stories. Some true, a few manufactured.

***

That evening, there is some commotion from the fields that lie closer to Mohammadpur Raisingh village. They watch from the graveyard. They are alert now. Anything can happen here. The tube well that waters the fields belonging to the Jat community lies in their zone. They have kept their word so far. They let them come and switch on the pump.

“We can't even go to the graves,” Arshad Khan, who lives in Hussainpur, says. “It is dangerous.”

Three trucks carrying RAF personnel go past. Nobody would accompany them to the graveyard.

Kotwal RK Sharma is doing the patrolling.

“Will you please come with us,” I ask him.

“Why do you want to go?” he asks. “Go ahead, I will come there.”

But he isn't around. Arshad Khan is not surprised.

“Now you can see,” he says.

The villagers have formed a group and together we walk through the narrow mud road past the Idgah, to the graves.

“These were dug in hurry. It could have triggered riots,” he says.

These fields belong to Anees Khan. It is a small holding. Barren, and adjoining the graveyard. From a little distance, men are carrying a coffin covered with a shawl. A woman died this morning. She was a refugee, Arshad Khan says.

They stop, and bow. Sohrab, another refugee from Mohammadpur Raisingh, is chipping away at the wood. He sits next to where they have dug up the earth. That's where she would be buried.

“It is for her grave,” he says. “It is a sad thing to be buried in someone else's land.”

The villagers have formed groups of 8-10 men to guard the village in the night. They roam the streets, and circle the village, and spend the night stationed in various spots ever since the riots broke out in early September.

On the way back, the kotwal meets us.

“You should not be here,” he says.

In the other village, they ask us if we know of a death on the way. Rumours abound. There was no killing. Fear and suspicion rule the behaviour. The farms are mixed. Their plots overlap. Now, there is no Muslim left in Mohammadpur Raisingh. Their abandoned, charred houses are the only reminders of the 'others' who lived here.

***

In Mohammadpur Raisingh, there is a little lane that leads into the muslim quarters. These are abandoned homes. They say they miss their neighbors.

“Manga is 80 years old. He was picked up by the police,” the pradhan says. “The police is against us. They blame us.”

On Sunday, they sit in little groups, and speak softly about the killings. It is Diwali but there is a diktat from the khap that no villages should celebrate the festival of lights, of riddance of evil, of the victory of good over bad. Dispel the darkness, pradhan says.

But in the streets, there is talk about a possible attack.

“They will come for us,” a young boy says. “Ichi Manga, the pradhan of Hussainpur, has said he will take revenge. We can't go outside. We are confined.”

No candles are being sold here. In villages, the panchayats are the final word. Nobody dares to defy what they have decided. Soemthing dark and unforseen plagues us, Omkar Singh says.

***

Gul Mohammad, who is Shahnawaz's younger brother, is sitting outside the house. It is night, and tea is served in small white cups.

“Kawal is far. You can't have 1200 unknown men come to your village and set fire to the houses and not know about it,” he says. “The pradhan is lying. It is a village. It is not a city that is vast.”

One of the accused, he says, has committed many murders.

“We had a peace treaty with them. In this guerilla sort of war, there is no safety. So we invited them here, and agreed that business would resume as usual. You cut grass in the morning, and we will go to the fields in the evening,” he says.

Shahnawaz, who is the pradhan's husband, is the man in charge. He comes and sits. He says the night of the killings, he made at least 20 calls to the OP Chaudhary, the inspector in charge of the Bhoran Kalan police chowki, but they went unanswered.

When they left the village to claim the bodies, the police met them on the way.

“We had hope. I said maybe they are just injured. We can take them to the hospital,” he says.

There is a history to their end of their patience with the other village. Around three years ago, a jammat had come from Delhi. The Tablighis, he says, and they went to Mohammadpur Raisingh. Some fight followed, and he had intervened, kept the political leaders out of the situation, and brokered a deal.

“It was our matter. We resolved it,” he says. “But they are crossing their limits. This time, we tried. But everything has spilled over.”

The pradhan had got death threats after he provided shelter to the fleeing families of Mohammadpur Raisingh village. They told us to send them back, he says.

***

At the Budhana police station, a woman refuses to give out the copies of the FIR registered with regards to the violence in Hussainpur.

When the inspector comes, he shows the copy of the FIR that is registered in the name of Md. Qais, who was with the three victims in the fields on that day. He and another young man had managed to escape, and that's how the word got around.

The FIR was filed on Oct. 30. On the previous night, the villagers had paraded to the police station. The post mortem was done in the wee hours of the morning, and the bodies reached the village at around 7:30 am the next day.

In the FIR, Md. Qais has said he was with the other four and they had gone to cut grass in the fields. Rajendra Fauji with another 14 men had ambushed them. There were 10 other men with this group and they wielded lathis and other such weapons.

“Rajendra has said he was injured, but he hasn't given us any written complaints. Maybe he inflicted the injuries upon himself to make his case more genuine,” Dhananjoy Mishra, the inspector, who came from his posting in Allahabad to Budhan on September 14.

It has been a challenging time. He spends most of his time roaming the villages, and speaking to people, telling them to keep the faith.

“We recovered the bodies from near the fields in between the two villages. There were a lot of injuries but when a mob kills, it is no surprise,” he says. “Those who died have no police record of criminal behaviour. We will normalize the situation.”

But that's a tall claim. With 30 odd policemen in each village, and the touring RAF personnel, it won't be an easy task. Already, the police have been attacked in incidents elsewhere.

“Section 144 is imposed. There will be no panchayats,” he says.

The Akhilesh Yadav government has come under fire for reacting late to the riots, and Azam Khan, a maverick political leader of the SPA, is alleged to have asked the police to let the rioting go on. UP has a history of riots, and Muzzaffarnagar and Meerut have been sensitive and volatile regions in the state. There are many allegations. The BJP is blaming the ruling party for inaction. Elections are due next year. Political affiliations switch, and vote bank politics is already under way.

***

“This was Soumin's house,” Deepak, a 13-year-old boy says.

I may have got the name wrong. But he repeats.

The door is unhinged. In the little yard inside, the stove has been broken, and the soot stains the brick walls.

There is a bag in one of the two rooms that served as living quarters for his family. They had four children. They were poor. But the children were fun, they say.

Clothes are strewn. There's a broken pitcher, a dismembered hookah, and a sandal that may have belonged to the little girl that lived here once upon a time.

Outside, the children are giggling.

Yet another house. Here, there is a half-door. How does one describe a door that has a lock on it but its sides have been chopped off. There is a curtain too. Inside, there is a bottle of medicine among other leftovers.

We unhinge the doors where they have let these remain, or just walk into a time warp. It is difficult to reconstruct. Riots don't afford that luxury of time.

Doors lead into empty, barren chambers. That's where we see it. Sweet Home poster. Munni's house, Deepak says.

A few days later, a few people had returned with the police to take away their things. They walked into their charred houses, and reclaimed whatever was left. Then they left. No greetings had been exchanged.

Rampalli says the compensation works as temptation. Some burned their own houses.

“Will you send us to jail for saying this?” she asks.

“We helped them load their things on to the cars. We told them to come back,” she says. “But their pradhan has said shoot anyone that you see. So children don't go to school anymore. We are being targeted.”

Santosh, an old woman, walks in.

“They have refused to acknowledge us. We had attended their weddings. We ate together, lived together, and now we pretend as if we never knew each other,” she says. “It is so sad. 25 bighas of our land is gone. We can't cut the crop. There's a lot of loss.”

Ankit, a young man who says he was shot in the back and spent days at the hospital in Muzzaffarnagar battling for his life, says Ikram, Iqbal and Manga hit him.

“They hit me without cause. I was in the fields working. One other man was shot in his legs,” he says. “But who is going to listen to our stories?”

He filed an FIR at the Bhoran Kalan police chowki but says nothing was done about it.

***

“Khuda is on our side,” Hamida says as she serves food to a little girl.

The children cry for their home. They tell her to return.

“How does one tell them home is no more,” she says.

Three families that fled from the other village are living in Shahnawaz's house. The other families are scattered throughout the village.

“Everything is gone,” she says. “But I will never go back.”

Around 10 families are living in the primary school. The school runs in a small room for now.

Hina is Raeesu's daughter-in-law. She says they lost their animals, and their land.

“They cut the feet of the horses. They were so brutal,” she says.

In the fields, horses with bruises run amuck. They are without their harness, and they, it seems, are also looking for shelter.

At around 1:22, the muezzing calls for prayers. Men are sitting inside the primary school. They are waiting. They have been waiting ever since to return, or to start afresh. But in times like these, it is like being suspended in time. There are promises, and there are assurances.

Inside one of the rooms, there is a bed, and a few almirahs. A set of cups, and some utensils. There are boxes and some furniture that was reclaimed.

“We went back. Some of us to retrieve whatever was left. We got it,” Afroz says.

Mohsina, 16, is stoic. She was studying in intermediate and her exams are due in March. But her books are gone, and so are her certificates. Her father Afroz says he would try and buy her books, and enroll her in a distant education program.

Mohsina averts her face. She doesn't want to talk about the loss of her future.

“She secured 63 percentnin Class 10. She is bright. But now she is always sad,” Afroz says.

Mohsina walks outside.

“I am determined. I will study,” she says. “I want to be a reporter. I want to tell my story.”

On one of the walls, it says “Vipatti mein dhairya rakho”.

“Keep faith in times of trouble.”

Two women stare at the wall. They probably can't read. But Mohsina can.

She keeps the faith. For now.

Etched in Blood - love in Patna

 An edited version of the story is in the Open Magazine's issue this week.

Chinki Sinha

That one afternoon he left his wallet behind and pretended he was attending a call and went outside the restaurant. The girl, by way of curiosity, checked the contents and found a sheet of paper, neatly folded. It had her name, and 'I love you' written in blood. They had been sipping cola in a dimly lit restaurant. It had been a couple of years since they started talking and meeting.

When he entered, she asked him about it, and he said he never had the courage to tell her how he had loved her all these months. But he was so choked with love that he couldn't deal with the emotions welling up inside him. There had to be this little bloodshed.

The girl began to cry. She said if he loved her so much he should have just written to her in ink. Why this blood? Oh, this blood? She had kept saying this.

“I never wasted any blood,” the 30-year-old lawyer tells me on the phone. “If I cut myself while shaving by mistake, I'd be prudent enough to scribble 'I love you' and always kept two or three letters like this for an opportune moment. I even gave one to a friend who wanted. You can give a thousand gifts but unless you write in blood, a trend established many, many years ago, you can't really be called the intense lover.”

For the faint-hearted, the cutting of wrists for the blood to flow as ink was a bit too much. Not that people didn't use to do this. He says his cousin really cut his wrists to write these long letters to a girl. But one needs to be innovative, and not stupid, he adds.

There were all these tricks they had devised for success in matters of heart. In small towns, and Patna he says is indeed small as mostly people know you, and it is conservative, the girls have set high standards.

"In Patna it isn't easy to meet girls, or go on dates. We have places like Soda Fountain and Bollywood treats but someone can spot you and it can become an issue. But it is better now. Earlier, it was difficult navigating the levels of hurdles. The neighborhood boys who were like street dogs protective of their territory, and then this whole layer of family and friends, and other lovers. Sometimes, you got into fist fights, etc," he says.

But they have devised their own ways of overcoming the tests of love. For instance, if the girl threatens to leave, one should always carry powdered alum that one can use to bring instant tears in the eyes so it would seem they are really heartbroken. Token love but there is no underestimating the surge of emotions. It was about the manifestations of the same, he says.

Tanweer Kamal is a lawyer, and is a great storyteller. This, he says, is because of the fact that he has been helping many of his clients convert their love stories into matrimony. That he is sharp is an understatement. He is the love guru, and offers wise counsel in the matters of heart.

At 30, he says he has already helped 16 of his clients get married. And these were tough cases where the girl belonged to a different religion, or to a very orthodox family. Such love, he sighs, and tells me is class apart. It either happens in films, or in Patna, he says.

The facilitator says he also mistook crush for love. But then he says he doesn't even know. The intensity was the same, he says. On the conference call, his cousin intervenes.

“Oh, he is the master,” he says. “He knows better. But let me tell you this story anyways.”

So there was this girl. Pretty, and petite and that's not the only thing. Our man fell for her, and would walk two kilometers every evening to get a glimpse of her. He lived in Patna Market, and the girl lived in a different neighborhood.

“Phir bhi kabhi unki yaad bhi aa jati hi. Now I am like an uncle to her child. She is married,” he says.

This was not so many years ago. But he says this is what small town love is made of – perserverence, and no ego hassles.

The girl would come in the balcony for a few seconds, and he would look up, put his hand across his chest, and let out a sigh.

Now, in retrospect, he turns poetic.

“Humne unki gali ka itna chakkar kata ki kutte bhi hamare yaar ho gaye. Woh toh hamari ho na saki par hum kutte ke sardar ho gaye,” he says. “I should have listened to my cousin but what's a man without a few setbacks in love.”

She would come like Akbar Badshah and give darshan for one minute, he says. This was in 2003, and then he heard from a mutual friend she was getting married so I asked her if I can bid her a tearful farewell at this restaurant. She came but not after her friend made her swear on her propective groom.

“Such insult I tell you. But I was stupid. I am the small town lover. I wanted to say goodbye,” he says. “I said tum ja rahi ho. You could have married me. She said this is not possible. She said she hadn't ever considered me her lover and I was like what about those promises, and those meetings. She said let's be friends. I became quiet and handed her this sheet where I had poured my heart out in the style of Ghalib.”

I ask him if he remembers what he had written, and he recites.

“Agar izazat ho toh ek baat kahoon, dil mein chupi hai jo kabse woh raaz kahoon. Beh rahi thi narm hawa, phool khil rahe the, banane ko thi ek dastaan, do dil mil rahe the, kitni hasin woh rut thi, har taraf bahar tha, raat ki tanhaayion pe chaya naya sa khumaar tha ...,” he says. “Khumar means first love. Pehla nasha, pehla khumar. Remember that song.”

The girl read the two-page dedication, and nodded.

“She said 'bahut accha hai',” he says. “But I returted saying I am writing what my heart is going through. I am not looking for your appreciation. I am only expressing grief. This isn't come poetry class.”

He won't take her name. But says she calls him and complains about her husband. Once he had seen her at the Delhi railway station where she was with her prospective groom. They had just been engaged.

“He wore his pants on his chest, and looked like an idiot. Here I was – handsome, and intelligent – and she was grinning as if he was some Bollywood hero.”

In 2006, he met another girl. It so happened that he had borrowed her book 'You can Win' by Shiv Khera, which she had loaned him to convince him to join sales. But he wanted to be a lawyer. They were attending the same coaching then.

Six months later the girl called him to say she wanted her book back. They met near Bengal Law house near the university campus, and then they started talking to each other. What he liked about her was her devotion to him. Once he lost his mobile phone, and he was worried that someone will see her pictures. But she was worried that he was worried, and that was most endearing about her, he says.

“We will get married next year. She is studying to be a lawyer,” he says. “It has been a decade almost. We invest in our love. We are the grand lovers.”

For the longest time, he didn't tell her anything. There is this propsoal ritual. Of course there are teddy bears, and the chocolates, and the song dedications. That's ritual, but one needs to match the standards.

“I had this letter in my pocket. From an earlier shave. I left the wallet in the hotel and went out. I knew she would fiddle through the contents. She saw it and she was crying,” he says. “Mission accomplished. On one or two ocassions I have given such blood letters from my stock to my friends.”

There was this friend who was very creative with his gifts. He would gift the girl small packets of cashew nuts and almonds. He also sent glass bangles for the mother. But I would tell him the girl would become sharp if she eats too many almonds and would leave you. Eventually that happened, he says.

This young man used to live in Sitamarhi, a district in Bihar, and according to Kamal, it is one of those 'backward' places with sporadic power. He was truly, madly, deeply in love with this girl, and so that his love would be consummated in marriage, on the night of Shabe Kadr, he would go the mosque and work the handpump and help the faithful in their abulition. All night he would do this, he says.

But the girl got married somewhere else. He is now a jilted lover. Even God didn't help, he says.

But he did the wrong thing. Like a spurned lover, he wrote a letter to the girl's prospective in-laws alleging that he had an affair with her, and they were committed. But the letter was ignored. He was left heartbroken, he says.

In Patna, there are spaces where couples can get a little private time. Like Daffodils restaurant that has been raided by cops many times over, but continues to survive because love is used to such disturbances.

There is this restaurant in this strange sort of a mall type structure, which was culled out of an old haveli in Patna. Here, the curtains are drawn so couples can have their privacy. There is an hourly rate, in the dim lights of the restaurant, there are many lovers, undiscovered and isolated behind the screen, and when their time is up, they walk out quietly. For those hours that they were behind the curtains, they are not disturbed.

It is a similar concept to those cyber cafes that had these flimsy wooden cabins that were raided many times by the police. Mostly these were used to either watch porn, or spend some alone time with the lover. These were tiny holes but enough to squeeze in two people.

“At first, they had proper cabins. Then raid happened and they had these thick curtains. More raids happened, and the curtains became shorter, and so the curtains eveolved to lovers' woes. But it is there,” he says.

“ See, if it is real love, there is no difference between big cities and small towns. It is all in the intensity. But yes, small town lovers are innovative, and don't give up,” he says. l

There is also this whole thing about unrequited love. That has its own charms. You are respected for being this grand lover who has suffered the pangs of a lost love, he says.

“If the girl smiles, then love boys would escort her to her house albeit in a clandestine way. Then they would work for days to figure out her father's name, the post office, and the pin code. You see, I am saying to assert the fact that there is this dedication,” he says. “In Delhi, you'd be lost on the ring road, or in Bombay, in the unending traffic.”

Tight geography of the city matters. You can follow the beloved, he says.

“Patna is just the right size,” he says.

There used to be this man who works in his office, and he accompanied a friend to an institute to get the admission form. He saw a girl there. It was love at first sight, he says.

So the man waited for an hour in the sun at Bailey Road corner for the girl to emerge. Eventually she did and he asked her if she was applying to the institute. She said yes, and he said he was also filling out the forms. He had lied, and so they exchanged numbers and spoke about the exams. He borrowed money and took her out to restaurants, and so the love progressed. Finally, he told her he wasn't an applicant, and she was all emotional about his dedicated efforts to woo her, he says.

“No, Patna isn't so backward now. A few years ago, lovers would sit for hours at shops where they would record songs for their beloveds, and decorate cassettes and CDs, and give such gifts. Now, we send links of the songs on What's App,” Kamal says over the phone.

We are speaking about love late night. An hour goes by, and he has more stories to tell.

***

We will call him Ishaqzaade for annonymity's sake.

This is the story of a man who spent seven years drinking numerous cups of tea at a chai stall for hours every day so he could get a glimpse of the girl who would come out in the balcony to either hang clothes, or take them back into the house. Now, this played out in this small space between a huge garbage bin, and the tea stall. Next to the Patna University, Kamal says.

This client had earlier been dumped by the girl's elder sister, who started seeing someone else. Now, this client looks much younger but is at least 38. He can easily pass off for a 22-year-old. In any case, he didn't have much education by way of credentials. He had somehow managed to pass Class 10 but he was a compulsive lover. He was heartbroken, and then he fell in love with the girl's younger sister. She wasn't pretty at all.

“Par dil lage diwar se toh pari kya cheez hai,” Kamal says.

The girl belonged to the Jain community, and Ishaqzaade is Muslim. To add to the woes, the girl didn't have a mobile phone.

Ishaqzaade would leave his house in the morning at 8 am. He would take a rickshaw, and sit at the tea stall for an hour until 9 am, and then go and open his shop, spend a couple of hours working, and return to the tea stall in the afternoon. Again, he would come in the evening, and then late at night. This went on for seven years, Kamal says.

“We would tell him he is wasting time but he was committed to the idea of love,” he says. “Finally the girl said she was ready to marry him. One other thing is we love to marry. Or at least try to get married. Not like these open relationships or whatever the trend is these days.”

Ishaqzaade's friends had started calling him 'Kure baba'.

“We were surprised the girl said yes to him. She was educated, and used to treat our friend badly,” Kamal says. “He would do these strange shifts at the chai stall. It was a model love.”

Once the girl had gone to Ranchi for a wedding. Ishaqzaade followed her there. He stayed in a hotel for two days, borrowed money to cover his expenses, and the second evening the girl came outside the venue dressed in her finery, and he saw her from across the road, and boarded the train. True love, he says.

“Now they are married, and the girl is pregnant. I always used to apply this Himesh Reshammiya song to the situation 'jhalak dikhla ja' because it all started with the gilr in the balcony,” Kamal says.

The couple hardly met except for a couple of times. But for years, the love was sustained through this chai stall shifts, he says.

“But it ended well. I got them married in court, and then they went back to their homes, and spent six months, which is the window for the family to object. After that, they can't do a thing. So, he eloped to Delhi, and returned to Patna and now they have rented this small place and are trying to make the best out of love. He paid me Rs. 5,000 but more than the money, it is the satisfaction that I united the lovers. They got married two years ago.”

***

This one, we shall call Diljale.

Kamal tells me this client of his was an unemployed young man, who spent countless hours at his father's little workshop in Alamganj, a muslim neighborhood in Patna, which is very conservative.

At the end of this workshop, there was window, and in the window, a beautiful girl would sometimes stand. Diljale fell in love. He sat there for hours, eyes set on the window. He wrote letters, and slided them in through the window. It was an old rusty window, but it meant everything to him. The girl smiled sometimes, and it had felt heavenly, Kamal says.

All this the client told him when he sought his help.

“All this happened four years ago. He was around 22. The girl had seven brothers. And they were all villains in this love story. Besides we had to deal with his father, who was a problem,” he says.

For months, he sat in the vision range of the window, and one night he decided to go to the window and speak with her. But there were all these street dogs, and they started barking.

“I told him it is fine if you have to get 14 injections. For love, one must be prepared for such things,” Kamal says. “He would follow her to college. She studied in Magadh Mahila and then when brothers found out, she was made to quit college. She was Malik and he was Ansari, which was lower caste. She couldn't go to beauty parlour even. Her father would sit at the gate to guard her.”

But again Kamal quotes a love song from the film Sadak to add effect to what he was trying to say.

“Jab jab pyar pe pehra hua hai, pyar aur bhi gehra hua hai ...” he sings.

She couldn't come to the window anymore. A friend of the girl would take the letters. One day, they planned on going to the court to solemnise the marriage. A plan was hatched, and the girl's friend sought permission to take the gilr to her house for wedding celebrations. She came out, and she wore a burqa. Kamal had told her to change her sandals so nobody would recognise them as they proceeded to the court. But some minister died, and a state holiday was declared. So, she cried, and cried, Kamal says, and returned home. Next time, she could come out was seven months later.

Meanwhile, Diljale had cleared the state examinations and became a sub inspector. The girl's family relented a bit but his father played a spoilsport, and threw him out of the house. They got married eventually, and returned to their respective homes, and as per his mehtod, six months later, they eloped.

“You know he had slipped in a mobile phone so they could talk and she used to hide it in her salwar pocket but she was caught, the phone was consficated, and the love became stronger in the absence of intimacy or contact. Pure love. Untarnished love,” Kamal says. “I feel happy I got them married. Now, he has a small child, and they are living in perfect bliss.”

Kamal is happy he has had to deal with only one divorce case. In small towns, and Patna, he says, has the mentality of a small town, love is forever. Only a few of them part. And love marriages are rare, but when they are celebrated, they prove that real love exists despite all the hurdles.

“We have patience. We have the guts,” he says. “We are lovers of the highest order. We can overcome all issues.”