So live. It was then that Anima bought her first notebook. Her entry on the first page was a description of Siddharth's death as told to her by Arif that evening, and every other evening, with growing helplessness, when she repeated her questions. ‘They came down the road. They would have let us pass if we had moved aside. But we continued to walk as before. They didn’t like that. They stopped us. They grabbed Siddharth's beard. “What are you, hanh? Hindu or Mussalman?” Siddharth said, “A human being.” They went mad. They threw him down. I flung myself on him. They picked me up and threw me aside. “We’ll attend to you later,” they said. I hit my head on something and became unconscious. When I came to, they had gone. And Siddharth . . .’ At this point Arif's wounded gaze would slide to the floor. His story would always end here. And once again the hope in Anima's eyes would die.

She wrote all this in her diary. And added: as a child, if I didn’t like the way a story ended, Anna would change it for me. He would narrate the new end with such conviction that I would believe it. It was not in Arif's hands to change the end of this story.

Cut them down they said

The Allah-hu-Akbar men

Surve's Shigwala and my Siddharth. Murderers of different religions but linked by inhumanity. Would she ever have dreamt that a poem she had read, with exclamations of aesthetic delight, would come so terrifyingly true in her own life? How could you have stood before those animals and called yourself a human being with such stupid courage, Siddharth?

Six months later Arif and Anisa packed their bags. They had found themselves a place in Jogeshwari. Anima had pleaded with them not to leave. ‘We’re all here for you.’ But Arif had shaken his head sadly. ‘There's a monster let loose amongst us. He's never going to go away. Like Bakasur, he will keep returning to devour innocents. I should have been their target, but they got my noble friend. Nobody is safe now. Not even those who have let the monster loose.’

Arif and Anisa left. The city had been torn apart. The gash of that partition now ran between Anima and Anisa's homes that had once faced each other.