Hot and humid, even in the early morning sun, Varun waited patiently like the others in the queue for the bus. The red bus rolled in, the queue collapsed into the bus. Varun stepped in, waving his S-card at the machine at the door. It was crowded: he stood near the door, waiting to get out. One stop and two traffic lights later, the bus had reached the MeTRo station. Emerging from the bus, he stopped at the vendor, inserted his S-card into the slot, and picked up his copy of the Silicapur Straight Times.
He meandered into the MeTRo, found himself a seat and started reading the news. The front-page headlines screamed at him: "PM inspects toilets", "SM Click says greed must be reduced". Silicapur's theme for the year was toilets: a clean toilet is a sign of social improvement. There were still some subversives and the fight - "the clean fight, the good fight" - was on in dead earnest. The PM had mentioned how important cleanliness was, how everyone could contribute, and how surprise checks needed to be done frequently to ensure compliance. On page three, he saw a major item "Caught in the act" - the cops had arrested a drunk urinating on the road; he had left an obvious trail and the cops had followed it up with their usual perseverance.
Since he was more senior than the PM, Click One Two usually spoke about the even more serious issues. His current themes were the decline of the next generation and the need to remain closer to the structure and values that had enabled Silicapur's rapid growth. He had even promised to return from the grave should his countrymen depart from the righteous path he had laid out. Click One Two had been PM for a long time and had led Silicapur through the torrid years of its childhood with his strong convictions. During his rule, the subversive thinkers had been almost stamped out; it had been helped by the collapse of the anti-people newspapers, the emergence of the strong judiciary which shared the same values as the government, and the rigorous enforcement of the shared values. Now Click was the father figure, officially his title was SuperMan. The people respected and feared and loved him; Clickliness lay between cleanliness and godliness.
But Silicapur could not afford to relax; as he always reminded his listeners, the war to defend all that had been gained was permanent. Enemies lurked in the foreign media, some had found their way into an opposition, even the university. The foreign media continually attacked Silicapur with their strange and inapplicable ideas of foreign freedom and their subtle insinuations of collaboration between the judiciary and the government against the fledgling opposition. New threats surfaced each day, some from technology like the world-wide-web and some from the influence of the foreign media like the greed of the younger generation. Each had to be dealt with properly, the laws and fines clearly spelt out to ensure nothing - absolutely nothing - was left to chance. The rules for influencing masses from the web had to be enforceable; the rules for banning access to chewing gum and pornography on the net, in magazines and books left no room for jaws and morals to be corrupted. Check all videos brought into Silicapur; ensure the internet service providers drop all sites with bad words in the name or content; allow a website only after government approval; bankrupt those who insinuate, especially those dangerous foreigners; and always destroy the opposition like weeds before they have grown. The People's Only Party ( POP ) should be the one everyone votes for in a free election; after all, as the minister-without-portfolio explained with great clarity in today's newspaper, the benefit programs will flow faster to the areas where there is more support for the programs, that is, more support for the government.
An hour and a half earlier, Varun had stirred out of bed and stretched lazily to see the big wall clock. He couldn't tell the time from the sun here: there was no lingering dawn, the change from darkness to bright sunlight was sudden, almost abrupt. It was seven-ish, time to wake up and start the daily rush.
Forty-odd minutes later, he had waited at the bus stop for any bus to come by. It was just a couple of stops to the MeTRo, the stops were irritatingly close but it was too hot to walk. From the clear blue skies with no hint of cloud, the sun shone down on the green grass: it was a perfect day, like every other day. The grass looked like it had been mown this morning, not a blade was out of place. Somehow, the trees were of varying heights; that didn't fit in with the background of buildings, uniform in colour, size, shape, interior design. As he looked out of the MeTRo, he couldn't help notice how equally uniform the buildings were all over the city.
By the time the MeTRo had finished its slow ride to his stop, Varun had finished with the newspaper. He had read the book section containing the new book on the metaphors used by the SM and PM in the last twenty years, and searched the three local television channel listings for something less dreary than the usual fare. He had also read the ads inside the train: join the navy, buy a padded bra, and go to Samosa for just five dollars, they chirped.
Varun flowed out with the crowd; as always, the noise of the hundreds of well-shod feet reminded him of horses. He reached the pavement, trying to be in the shade for the few minutes while the cars rolled by. The traffic slowed and stopped, no one moved till the magic light to which they looked for guidance gave them the green signal, and then they were off, across the road. He reached the office in time to get into the queue for the second lift, and watched someone press both the up and down buttons repeatedly to make the lift arrive faster.
The day drifted by, as most of his days did, with the usual range of frantic calls. Life in Support, he often thought, was like working in Life Support: one murmured healthy hopes without giving any commitments of cure. Before he realised it, it was time for lunch; the morning had vanished while he was busy with the many little things. Today, he was to meet one of his friends from college at the nearby "festival market" - it was more of a food court, more hygienic than most of the others, at least to his untutored eye. He had learnt since the days at college that one lesson about eating outside home: never look inside the kitchen.
They met at the usual stall, Vishky and he, and chatted about the usual things - the rise and fall of the LAH , the disappearance of their old friends - where are they ? must use the net to search and find them over the weekend - and they cribbed about their jobs and bosses.
But today was special : the food court was packed beyond belief. The queue of people lining up at McDumbo's stretched round and round the shops until it got tangled with itself. What was going on, wondered Varun. He couldn't go anywhere near the McDumbo's counters to find out; the crush of humanity was far too much.
As he tried to seek Vishky out in the immense crowd, his question was answered. A young girl ran out of the crowd, shouting "I got my Hello Silly", holding aloft her triumphant prize : a mouthless, eyeless, flat-nosed doll that was the rage in Silicapur. Now he remembered. McDumbo's had - in a brilliant strategic move - decided to give away one Hello Silly doll to all those who had twenty consecutive McDumbo's meals. Much to Varun's surprise, half the office was having only McDumbo's meals everyday; rumour had it that the dolls was being sold on the black-market too, for those who did not have the stomach for the queues and the food. There were a few who could tolerate the queue but not the food; a small pile of McDumbo's meal-boxes lay unopened in a nearby dustbin.
Varun had made the unpardonable mistake of asking his colleagues what Hello Silly dolls were, and had been rewarded by four pairs of eyes staring at him as if he were a fresh alien. After that, he had kept quiet and ignored the fuss, ignoring animated conversations of whose grand-parents were standing in queue on which day.
Work in the afternoon, thankfully, had less frantic calls; he could concentrate on doing a few things he had postponed for weeks. He filled in the plans and activities over the last 3 weeks. The month was ending; someone would check whether the forms were filled and whether he had kept to his plans. After all, the company was ISO9099 certified. They would be pleased at how closely I follow the plans.
As he stood in the MeTRo on his way back, he could not help noticing the people around him reading the evening paper with great interest. The headlines in the Yellow Paper always covered half a page. Today's was really dramatic: Murder, Torture, Cruelty : Serial Killings. Blood dripped in a corner of the page. Tears streamed from anguished faces. Oh! the torture that the cruel killer had inflicted on the poor defenceless victims : six of them lay dead. The defence argued that the man was in a suicidal mood when he had killed the kittens. The judge had been merciful and sentenced the kitten-killer to three months of hard labour.
He reached home early, and checked out his mail-box. The usual trash, a couple of bills, and a letter from Internal Security. He had been warned by his friends to be careful; he suspected that this was the formal warning. It advised him that there was a story on his web-site that did not seem appropriate for public consumption. He had five days to withdraw it, failing which there could be severe charges of trying to manipulate the masses. Or he could reply: an e-mail address was provided.
So, Varun thought, I have come to the cross-roads. I have to make the choice, here and now. He switched his computer on and dialled in.