Fiction: A college lecturer is caught in the machinery of state repression during the Emergency
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June 20, 1976
It is night, around 2 am I just can’t sleep. I could hear the sound of a drizzle outside, but it was sultry inside the house. I tossed about in bed. Suseela, and my younger boy, Sudheer were fast asleep. The other two children were peacefully asleep in another cot.
I wondered a couple of times whether I should wake Suseela up. She seemed to be in a deep sleep. Why wake her? I lit a cigarette and lay back thinking.
On 25th June last year, the country was enveloped in the darkness of an eclipse. Anticipation of something to come… tension…disquiet…fear…disturbance.
I learnt later that on 26th, Venu and several revolutionary writers had been arrested in Warangal. They also searched for Rammohan the same day. But Rammohan had gone underground by then. Around that time, colleagues from my staff room, informed me, “There is an enquiry being conducted on you. Be careful.” Those words made my heart sink.
“Why me? What did I do?” I asked.
“You didn’t do anything. What did the people who are being arrested do?” they replied.
The police had started tracking me on that day. Countless special branch inspectors came to see me. They harassed me with unending...