“Yar, I’m telling you guys. This is all India’s doing,” Saad said as he took a deep drag on his cigarette. Everyone’s head turned to him, anticipating what he would say.
Rain dance and ramblings
“Yar, I’m telling you guys. This is all India’s doing,” Saad said as he took a deep drag on his cigarette. Everyone’s head turned to him, anticipating what he would say. “They lit too many firecrackers this Diwali; the police shelled Amritsar and Delhi; the updraft carried all that smoke and fume to Pakistan and it so happened that the air humidified, coincidentally causing the smoke and the fumes to float in the thick air. That’s what happened.”
That was it. That got everyone sitting around the cafeteria table suggesting their own theories, each one being more extravagantly outrageous than the previous one. The cafeteria courtyard where ten students sat in a circle around one of those Boss plastic tables was thickly veiled by the smog. Half of them were smoking cigarettes, the other half were watching them enviously. They too wanted to smoke - or perhaps they didn’t - but that was not what they were envying the smokers for.
“Sootay baaz! Their lungs have grown battle-hardened from all the cigarettes they’ve smoked. Look at them sitting here, puffing like they don’t give a crap about anything. They probably don’t even feel the slightest bit of suffocation!” Hassan said whilst sipping his doodh patti. He was the class representative and everyone called him Big Brother. He was neither big physically nor was his attitude towards the class brotherly in the least, but the name stuck.
“Yar! I’ve got it.” Naseer interjected. “This year they used mechanized harvesters for the crops. All the bhoosa which was normally disposed of is suspended in the air. That’s what’s causing this smog.”
“Have you guys seen that movie?” Subhan asked cheekily.
“What movie?”
“The Desolation of Smog!”
Laughter ensued.
“My friends, I know you all are kidding and laughing with your jokes and your carefree attitudes, but did any of you consider the possibility that this is perhaps God’s wrath? That perhaps He is angry at us for being the defiant infidels that we are? Because our women dress in those lewd western clothes? Because we listen to music, don’t pray when the Azaan is said? Hear me when I say that God is displeased with all of us.” Zeeshan the class’s cleric said this in a brooding, monotonous tone.
“Do you really think that if God wanted to inflict His wrath on us, He would have been so uncreative as to simply send smog our way?” Hamza asked. “You wanna hear what I have to say?”
“Not really.”
Laughter ensued again. He carried on nonetheless, “This is all a result of the pollution that we’re causing. The fumes from the factories, the exhaust from our vehicles, our refrigerators, our generators and such. God doesn’t have anything to do with it. Humans are their own worst enemies, chopping down the very bridges they’re walking upon.”
Silence prevailed. Nobody had any recourse to that because all of them knew that on some level, he was telling the truth. But telling the truth was not the point of this baithak between periods. Having fun was. Mostly, this fun was at the expense of another person.
“You must be fun at parties,” Subhan said. Everyone gave Hamza cold stares. His self-righteous sermon and the silence that followed it had made their teas go cold and their cigarettes burn out to their stubs.
“When will it end? I can’t keep wearing those masks forever. Just last night my sister said, ‘you look like you’ve a diaper on your face!’” Nawazish cackled.
“Rain. Rain will make it go away. If you’re all such fervent and firm believers in God that you make yourselves out to be, pray to Him to send rain our way. Or do a rain dance,” Hamza said and rose up from his chair and picked his bag. It was time for the next period. They all followed suit.
