Finally, he was able to put aside his fears. Suleiman returned after offering prayers. He was opening the windows when his gaze fell on Asrar leaning against the wall.

He asked Asrar, ‘How did you get up so early? Are you fine? Is there some pain or trouble?’

‘No, no. I wasn’t feeling sleepy,’ Asrar replied.

Mohammad Ali was sleeping right next to him; he opened his eyes and asked, ‘What happened?’

‘Nothing. I’m not feeling sleepy, that’s it,’ Asrar said.

‘He has gone senile in love,’ Mohammad Ali muttered while pulling the sheet over him.

After talking to Suleiman for some time, Asrar came out of the kholi. The sun was about to rise. The pigeons on the minarets of Minara Masjid were spreading their wings in the first rays of the sun. The roads were littered. Asrar thought that it might have rained for at least two or three hours the night before, making the litter float on the surface. A piece of newspaper caught his eyes. Even though it was soaked in the rain, one could still read what was written on it. Asrar bent to read it: ‘Khwaja Yunus killed in police custody. The crops of hatred are ready to be harvested.’ After reading the heading and the subheading, he wanted to read the entire report, but it was not possible. He walked ahead. A kitten lay dead at the opening of a drain. One of its eyes was out of its socket. The blood of its body had flowed away in the rainwater. The scene was awful. Although it was a very disturbing sight, Asrar still spared a glance at the dead kitten. Its skin was a light hue of yellow and it had a black mark near the neck.

There were garbage piles on both sides of the road. People were buying bread, bun, milk and rusk from the small shops nearby. The entrances of the shops were covered with dirt and the customers stood on top of the litter. There was an open drain of excreta flowing on one side of the road till wherever his eyes could see. A thought passed his mind that if the litter turned into a storm, it could destroy the entire city. If such a huge city was engulfed by garbage, the death of the people would be so icky and dire. In the excreta and dirt, the body would decompose and become part of the grime. This thought evoked a dangerous picture of the city in his mind, where the entire city had turned into a cemetery. A cemetery which was a humungous pile of garbage—humans, cats, dogs, rats, crows, pigs, hens rotting together in it. He could feel himself rotting in one grave. One of his eyes had been pulled out. Probably his dead body would be left floating in the water for many days, resulting in his chest and stomach getting bloated. After some time his stomach would possibly burst open and the muck, made of decomposed ladies’ fingers, rice and moong dal, would flow out and mix with the soil and dirt. The eye which popped out would seem to be alive and looking at the other dead parts of his body. His heart would be dead, but a minuscule part of it would be still alive and connected to the eye. It was astonishing to imagine that his brain was dead but a part of his heart and the eye still living. Why?