I am a failed citizen of this republic where lynching has become white noise

[dropcap]R[/dropcap]eaching Pune even by the latest of night flights has never been a worry. As a single woman living nearly 50 km away from the airport, I rely on the services of a large union of taxi drivers whose blue taxis are available round the clock. I have engaged the drivers taking me home on several midnight trips in conversation on many topics — from the appropriate education and handling of adolescent offspring to rising prices, or the elections in their union ushering in a new, dynamic committee that would guard their interests better than the old, defunct committee just routed. It helps to have these normal sounding interactions when speeding through a sleeping city. As you race on flyovers poised above homes where fellow Puneites are safely ensconced, you can stave off any fear with the momentary camaraderie you have achieved with the taxi driver.

Which is why my latest ride from the airport, in broad daylight, when I had arrived from Bengaluru accompanied by my son, was so disturbing. I am still recovering from the implications.

I was getting into the blue taxi whose driver was a tilak wearing youth when I noticed the stout lathi tucked into the side, long enough to cover both driver and passenger seats.

"What is this lathi for?" I asked the driver as we drove off. "For meting out instant justice on the roads of Pune?"

The driver muttered something about not knowing what kinds of "prasang" (context or predicament) one could find oneself in these days. When I expressed scepticism, saying that surely there were enough means to defend oneself without resorting to lathi blows, he began a long and garbled story about how a fellow driver from the union had had his taxi damaged by bike-borne thugs and been unable to defend himself. I resigned myself to a ride where the driver would be out of conversational bounds and my son and I would confine ourselves to speaking softly among ourselves. I felt completely unsettled by the sight of the tilak and the lathi – a combination that spelt the doom of what I had once upheld about my country.

Today's headlines (and yesterday's or the day before) confirm the awful presence of the lathi, or the chappal, or belt, and its unrestrained expression in the land of my birth. Five tribal men, who had arrived at a weekly market near Dhule, Maharashtra to beg for a few rupees, were lynched by a mob and their bodies laid out in the gram panchayat office at Rainpada on just one such day. With many such incidents reported in the papers in the last month alone, it is obvious that lynching has become just one of the many features of #NewIndia.