SHALINI LANGER: Why 8-year-old Sageer Ahmad’s death should make us rethink our fractured world order
What do eight zeroes
in a cheque mean to an eight-year-old? Perhaps this: That, if and when that
200-km track to make life in the Capital “easier” gets built, people standing
on it might, if only for a moment, recall Iffan, Sageer and Topi Shukla, and
the other children pedalling uphill, in forsaken corners of the country. If
they closed their eyes, they might just spot a red bicycle on it, with two
boys, racing against the wind, their heads thrown back, laughing.
They say Sageer Ahmad loved his red bicycle. They say he either pedalled it on the terrace of his one-room house shared by 15 or, like that day, when no one was looking, slipped out into the street. They say the streets were very narrow but, in his Bajardiha locality of Varanasi, children had few places to play. They say it were the narrow streets that killed him, when a mob returning from Friday prayers and protesting against the Citizenship Amendment Act, ran amok, and over him, following a police lathicharge. They say he remained unidentified for eight hours, covered in mud, his slippers missing. They say that of 20-odd to die in the CAA protests, he was the youngest. He was eight.
They say Sageer Ahmad loved his red bicycle. They say he either pedalled it on the terrace of his one-room house shared by 15 or, like that day, when no one was looking, slipped out into the street. They say the streets were very narrow but, in his Bajardiha locality of Varanasi, children had few places to play. They say it were the narrow streets that killed him, when a mob returning from Friday prayers and protesting against the Citizenship Amendment Act, ran amok, and over him, following a police lathicharge. They say he remained unidentified for eight hours, covered in mud, his slippers missing. They say that of 20-odd to die in the CAA protests, he was the youngest. He was eight.
Half-a-century ago, in
lanes not far away from where Sageer lived and died, Rahi Masoom Raza wrote
about a boy like him who grew there, Iffan, and his friend called “Topi
Shukla”. Their names, as Raza wrote, suggested one part of their story. He
wrote about the other part, of ties that survived post-Partition bitterness, an
Urdu vs Khadiboli divide, Hindu norms against eating at Muslim homes, and a
society that couldn’t understand what they shared.
Topi Shukla got love that he
couldn’t find at his own home with Iffan, Iffan’s grandmother who felt as
lonely in her ultra-religious sasural, and later Iffan’s wife, who loved him
like a brother (a relationship as little understood), and Iffan’s daughter.
There was another thing that tied them together: Iffan’s cycle. Unable to get
his family to give him one, Topi Shukla, once asked whether he wants a sister
or brother from his pregnant mother, shoots back: “Why, can’t she deliver a
cycle?”
Surely, even as
seemingly yawning divides and hopelessness surround us, it’s this that we must
hold onto: That, a Sageer could have a Topi Shukla. That, when a mob, holding
colour of whatever flag, comes down a street, a door would open to take them
in. That, those who shelter would always outnumber those who attack. That, it’s
hard to imagine a single day without simple acts of kindness, even a smile.
That, a Rahi Masoom Raza could give us two friends like Topi Shukla and Iffan,
as well as render for a generation the epic battle of Mahabharata. That, our
cities of narrow lanes continue to not be defined by children dying in
stampedes within them but kids sailing down and over them. So that, when the
storm passes, as storms must, Sageer and Topi Shukla would emerge holding hands
to look for their bicycle. They would dust it back as new, and take turns
pedalling it....
https://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/caa-protest-death-youngest-sageer-ahmad-two-bicycles-a-broken-dream-6236865/