Kasganj in Uttar Pradesh is not Macondo, the magic-realism Latin American town of Gabriel Garcia Marquez — where all doors are painted blue, where the rain comes in torrents for months; where Ursula, the blind mother, could see many more objects, shadows and hidden corners now that she was blind, and Aureliano Buendia prepares for a guerrilla war. Almost 220 km from Delhi, close to Aligarh, Kasganj is small, cheek-by-jowl, laid-back and lazy — a typical UP town with its intrinsic, mofussil manners and methods, and therefore unable to understand why it is in trauma, disconnected from the world except for rabble-rousing TV channels, almost unmapped in the demographic map of ‘super power’ India; in surprise, shock and disbelief: Why us?

Why Kasganj?

Across the Kali Nadi bridge, literally ‘Black River’, it is a paradise for still pictures in timeless solitude. In stunning soliloquy flows the little, clean, black river, flanked by yellow mustard flowers and little thatched ‘fodder huts’, balanced by their inherited geometry and measured sequence. Van Gogh would have loved to draw his horizontally, vertical landscapes here, in constant aesthetic movement, so still is the sudden but static and sublime geography.

However, despite not being magical like Macondo, Kasganj is not quiet. There is restlessness, helplessness, angst and despair in its bustling market, which has reopened about three days after communal clashes erupted on Republic Day, across Bilram Gate and Ghanthaghar (clocktower) to the sprawling Kotwali Kasganj, the police station, where young cops riding bikes inside the courtyard seem untouched by the emotions the town is grappling with. Cops are like this only, you may say, perhaps more so in this kind of Dabangg territory.

It is unstated and stated as the swagger with which the SHO of the police station, Ripudaman Singh, made a fact-finding team from Delhi and Lucknow wait for almost an hour. If he cared, he did not show it; because, there was a former UP Inspector General in the team, so too a senior advocate, journalists and social activists. This is perhaps the first time that some of Kasganj’s Muslim residents — mostly those whose shops were torched during the violence — had stepped inside the police station.

So what do the Hindus of Kasganj feel about the said faultlines? And about the community that they have lived, worked and bonded with?

Don’t ask me,” said a mithaiwalla, making gujias and balushahis in his grandfather’s shop. “Our relationship was always sweet. This is the first such instance in Kasganj. We are so unhappy. Here, try a gujia .”

Owner of a shoe stall — khokha in colloquial Hindi — almost choked when asked about what the town just suffered. Gazing at the charred remains of Sherwani Boot House, owned by Mansoor Sherwani, he said “Sherwani sahab is a gentleman. How can they do it to him? I feel sad.”

Kasganj hasn’t seen communal polarisation, violence or hate politics since Independence, except for a brief rupture after the Babri Masjid demolition in December 1992. Traders and daily wage-earners don’t want disruptions; this is the town’s sweet, static, stagnant symphony, like so many small towns in the State. Their children are getting educated, they share dreams and education spaces, as much as physical proximity in their everyday life, and they want to study in Delhi, Lucknow and Aligarh. This is no place for hate.

Across the market, three shopkeepers, one young Haji, and two of his Hindu friends, sit together, almost in an embrace. “I cook mutton, and they love to eat my tiffin,” the Haji says, and they laugh in agreement. They laugh easily, again and again, back-slapping, as if wanting to break an emotional barrier which has suddenly emerged, from nowhere, and for no rhyme or reason.

Across the town, 27 shops belonging to Muslims and two mosques were damaged. Not a single Hindu shop or property was burnt. When violence erupted on Republic Day and the day after, Hindus protected Muslim shops, and the Muslims protected Hindu property and homes. Including the famous Chamunda Temple, which stands dangerously close to a gas cylinder agency in a Muslim-dominated area.

Hence, Kasganj, in times such as this, is nothing less than a magic-realism story. It hides in its deepest and sweetest layers, the aroma of the ghee-laden mithai its shops sell. Let’s hope it doesn’t become a Muzaffarnagar or Saharanpur.

Amit Sengupta is a freelance journalist based in Delhi

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