The Association of Small Bombs by Karan Mahajan Read Free Book Online Page A

where they could go.
    â€œChawri Bazaar is better than all those,” Shockie said.
    After wiping his mouth with a towel, he signaled to Meraj and they went out to buy materials.
    A car bomb is made by putting together a 9V battery, an LPG cylinder, a clock, a transformer, a mining detonator, and four meters of wire—red and yellow, to distinguish circuits. The cylinder is then put in the dicky while the wiring and the timer are packed in the bonnet.
    The clock was easy to buy—they got it from a shop in Chandni Chowk, the Red Fort a merciless mirage in the distance. The 9V battery they acquired from an electrician’s shop in Jangpura, where an old Punjabi man sat among sooty tables taking paternal pride in every piece of equipment. Shockie understood the fellow. He himself took a certain sensual, even feminine, pleasure in shopping for materials for a bomb; he might have been a man out to buy wedding fixtures for his beloved sister. But he had to keep his instinct for haggling and jolliness to a minimum. You had to make as little an impression as possible, and it was crucial to get material of the highest possible quality for the lowest possible price. You did not want your bomb to go
phut
when the day came—something that happened all the time, even to the best bomb makers. It had certainly happened to Shockie. One of his bombs had fizzled and let out a small burp of fire. Thiswas in a market in Jaipur. He ran away before being caught, but two of his fingers were burned and had to be chopped off at the ends. He lost some feeling in his hand too, but it was for the best. It marked him as serious. When bomb makers met each other, they inevitably looked at each other’s hands.
    Taukir came along with them on these excursions, looking alternately keen-eyed and lanky and then despondent and distracted, one arm looped behind his back and clutching the other hand in that lackadaisical, half-stand-at-ease, half-chastised posture that is the hallmark of bored people at rest.
    They shopped in a conspicuous group of three because the Indian police often prosecuted terrorists on circumstantial evidence, trying to damn them with statements like, “Why was he shopping alone with a shawl pulled over his face?” Thus, the revolutionaries reasoned, if you had three people carrying out a task meant for one, you defeated the police’s logic with your illogic.
    After two days of shopping in different parts of Delhi and arranging the materials on the floor of a room in Taukir’s house—a room that obviously belonged to the sisters and mother, who had been sent away to the village the day after Shockie and Meraj arrived—Shockie said, “Now, let’s see the car. It’s still parked outside?”
    Taukir let out a noncommittal sound.
    â€œYou’ve parked it somewhere else?” Shockie repeated, getting up from his chair and smoothing his curly hair, an unnatural motion for a man who liked the puffs and curls of his plumage.
    â€œJi, sir, that’s my car,” Taukir said, finding his voice.
    â€œAnd where’s the car for us?” Shockie said.
    â€œWell, we have to steal it.”
    â€œI see,” Shockie said. “Let me go steal it now.”
    Before Taukir could react, Shockie was up and heading outside the house. He came across Taukir’s 800, the one in which they’d been driven from the station. Like every other vehicle in Delhi, it was a dented and dirt-spattered specimen, ruined as an old tooth.
    As if conducting an examination, Shockie put his fist through the front window. The window came away, the crystalline fracture smeared with blood from his hairy arm.
    â€œNo!” Taukir screamed, coming outside. “What are you doing, sir?”
    But Shockie said nothing, simply walking away, drops of blood falling on the earth.
    ________
    The May heat was horrifying, violating the privacy of all things while also forcing you into yourself. Shockie