Heads or Tails

Who decides the size of or need for a sacrifice?

- Zeyad Masroor Khan

It was cold and smoggy the day Delhi was nuked. For Dilip Kumar, though, January 1, 2035 began like any other weekday. He woke up in his one-room apartment in the urban ghetto of Sangam Vihar, the seepage from the pink wall spilling onto the bunk beds in the room he shared with three other men. All had left their villages with eyes full of big dreams, swiftly snuffed by the neon-lit gas chamber Delhi had become.

Like his flatmates, Dilip worked as a delivery partner, the modern version of a cart-puller. The transportation company that hired him gave no medical insurance, notice period, or increments. But Dilip wasn't brave enough to protest. Since the arrival of self-driving delivery cars, the need for delivery partners like him has declined. If he lost this job, he'd have just one option: return to Madhurapur, his village in Begusarai, and become a construction worker. College dropouts like him had few choices at a time when even people with degrees worked as laborers.

His mother had named him Dilip Kumar as his smile reminded her of the Bollywood superstar. When she gave birth in 2005, Maa was obsessed with the colored version of Mughal-e-Azam, which she saw over 50 times with his father. "My son will become a superstar like Dilip Kumar," she'd tell him. "There is no chance of that happening now," Dilip thought as he got ready for his day's delivery—a 30kg sack of roasted cashews destined for a trader in Old Delhi's Khari Baoli.

In the orange solar rickshaw, the driver was listening to the news. "The war has intensified. Nine Indian jawans were martyred in yesterday's drone attack. It's high time India launches an all-out offensive on Islamabad, and destroys this vile nation," Sakshat, the famous journalist, clad in military fatigues, shouted from a VFX studio. Dilip had followed the war for a few months, but then life's endless sorrows stole his attention.