He lay flat on his back, phone held above his face, the blue light carving shadows into the ceiling.
Arun scrolled slowly, the screen reflecting in his tired eyes. His arm trembled slightly, but he didn’t lower it, just not yet. Around him, the room was silent except for the soft breathing of his wife and daughters. The little one clung to her mother’s night gown like it was her last support. The other lay curled against Arun’s side, a thumb inside her mouth.
The fan above sounded in an off-beat rhythm. The corner bulb flickered but hadn’t died yet, a survivor, like the family in this room.
His mind floated back to an hour earlier, when he’d entered their building’s cracked main gate. The alley outside was darker than usual. Some bulbs had gone out days ago, others had been stolen. He knew it wasn’t safe for his wife to come home from the late shift and not safe for his daughters when they would start going to school alone.
But the rent was “manageable,” which in Mumbai meant “bad but livable.”
He had unlocked the door with quiet hands, slipped past the creaking wooden floor, and entered the only sanctuary they could afford: a small flat that fit four people and their unfinished dreams. He had seen his daughters sleeping on the floor mattress, schoolbooks scattered like fallen cards. His wife had dozed off with her head on the table, half-finished grocery list open, pen still in hand.
So he entered, woke them up gently, and carried each one from where they had fallen asleep waiting for him. He tucked them into bed and lay down beside them.
That image of dim light, quiet breath, unfinished lists, stayed with him as he lay on the bed, doomscrolling under a blanket patched with holes.
He saw the tweet:
“One genius said: Let’s attack India!
Why? If we lose – India gets our provinces, gives us food, jobs, roads, IPL, Bollywood, passports…
we become a booming economy overnight!”
He read it once. Then again.
And then, he laughed.
The sound started with a short, sharp one, more like a cough, but bitter. Then a fuller one. A chuckle stained with something sour. His chest trembled. He slapped the phone on his chest, covering his face with his other hand. The laugh kept coming. Quiet, half-insane.
Because it was funny.
And because it was not.
Because in that single tweet, Harsh Goenka had captured the madness of it all, the strange economy of war, the surreal exchange of blood for branding and borders for Bollywood.
What if Pakistan lost and “won” a better life?
What if India won after a prolonged war and men like him still lost? lost jobs, stability, peace of mind, children to fear?
And what if, somehow, he was part of the war, not in uniform, but in the price of onions, in the stability of the rupee, in the taxes sliced off before he even saw his salary?
This was not a war of missiles. This was a war of daily markets.
A war where a businessman’s tweet hit harder than most press conferences.
He sat up carefully not to wake anyone, and took a sip from the bottle of water by his bedside. It tasted metallic.
His daughter stirred in her sleep and curled into him again. He stroked her hair absentmindedly.
“Will she grow up in a safer place?” he wondered. “Or just a louder violent one?”
The war was far away. And yet, right here.
In the flat, In the fridge that broke last week, In the rising fees at her school, In the empty space where a second income should’ve been and in every WhatsApp forward that painted enemies as a devil’s worst creation and heroes as god’s greatest gift.
He looked at the tweet one more time, smiled, this time slower, softer. Not out of amusement, but recognition.
Yes, he was part of this. So were they all. His lovely family.
They were not soldiers, just sleepers in the shadow of it all..
He locked the phone, placed it face down, and lay back. The fan ticked on. His wife murmured something in her sleep. The city outside waited for tomorrow’s headlines.
And Arun, now a little more awake than before, closed his eyes.
Somewhere between fear and fatigue, a new thought crept in:
“If we win, maybe, just maybe, the price of tomatoes will go down.
That can bring a better, fulfilled smile in me.”
The events that led me to write this : https://ajayan.substack.com/p/satire-the-clever-weapon-of-the-people