A Game of Fire by Nanak Singh

Author:Nanak Singh
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: null
Publisher: Harper Perennial India
Published: 2023-06-15T00:00:00+00:00

26

THERE WAS A narrow alley that linked Atta Mandi with Loon Mandi. A smart three-and-a-half storey house with a beige exterior stood near the head of the alleyway. The layers of pigeon poop on its parapets indicated that the house had been devoid of any human habitation for a considerable period.

At a time when there was a severe shortage of housing in our city, it was astonishing to see that a large house like this was uninhabited. But why should we be astonished? The house is symbolic of the divisions in our society. On the one hand, you have thousands of homeless and helpless refugees out on the streets, many spreading themselves out under the shade of trees as they try to come to grips with a life where there is no present and no future, whose only possessions are the memories of the past and the endless flow of tears from those memories; while on the other hand, you have the city’s prosperous elite who have resorted to black marketing and amassed so much wealth that they are now investing in new buildings. But their gambit hasn’t really worked because of opposition from both the society and the government. It has been declared that vacant properties can be seized to provide housing for the refugees.

Affluent Sikh and Hindu businessmen, each owning half a dozen or even more properties in the city have tried to come up with a new subterfuge. They create fake lease agreements showing that the properties have been rented to their brothers-in-law or to their nephews and nieces. In some cases, the lessee has maybe a room and a kitchen in the house, while the rest of the place remains locked to make sure that some desperately needy person does not take refuge there.

These rich landlords are also trying to come to terms with a second phenomenon. Gone are the days when they could charge fancy rentals for scarce properties. The recently passed urban rent restriction laws have provided a degree of succour to long-suffering tenants. Under these laws, the landlord cannot demand anything more than a fair rent for his property. And he has also been divested of his Nadirshahi authority to bring the courts, the police or even some hired goons to evict a tenant who doesn’t comply with his diktats. As a result, the landlords have become wary about renting out their properties.

And so you have this phenomenon of large and relatively new houses lying vacant.

It was one such house that Satnam’s compatriots had occupied and were using for their purposes.

It was early in the evening when two young Sikhs entered the house. Both were fashionably attired and as they made their way to the second floor, one of them pulled out a bunch of keys and unlocked the padlock on the door. Entering the room, they sat at a large square table that had about ten chairs around it.

One of them, well-dressed and slender in built, looked at his wristwatch before turning to his compatriot, ‘It’s only 5.

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