Now

The sun bore down harshly on the dilapidated city. The sky was foggy. The wind was howling. The ground was torn asunder. Used bullets lay burned up and gleaming, everywhere, if one only had the eyes to see. The smell of cigarette smoke, of gunpowder, of blood and death, and poverty populated the air. Some places were not so bad. Some places were even good. Places like Defence were cities in their own. Magnificent mansions, spread out over huge pieces of land. Even the coastline, the sea attached to it seemed different there. Sparkling, free of garbage. Clean. Smelling of natural sea. But most of the rest of the city, just as the rest of country, most of it anyways, had fallen into decay and further into poverty. Huge plots of land filled with colorful pieces of plastic, and wrappers and garbage. Greenery growing out sparsely, but reclaiming land that had been turned into makeshift garbage dumps. Goats let loose in these places, chewing at the greens, bleating as they spoke to one another. Sorting through the garbage. Roads so crowded that thirteen miles would take you thirty minutes. Camels, rickshaws, pickups, big fancy cars. All stuck at the same lights. Under the hot sun and the unflinching wind. The inhabitants of those metal beasts always hyper aware. Anyone could come by at any time on a motorcycle, the only vehicles that moved at any decent pace in this city, could point a gun at you and take from you all your belongings. The best thing to do in this situation was to give them what you owned.

Then there was empress market, named so because when the British Raj was well, raj-ing, royalty would come to the market to shop. The market had been grand once. Now, the dirty cloths barely covered stalls. Crowded, overcrowded. Smelly. People talking in harsh voices, and in language that would have made the royalty this market was named after faint. It was a nice experience still. But only if you went with an open mind and did not expect it to be as its history suggested. Outside the building that housed these simple stalls, there was land on both sides. It might have been grand once. Now it was dusty, littered everywhere with garbage. Broken down cars parked erratically in the spaces.

The sea was muddy and brown by the coast. Farther away, even a few dozen miles away, garbage was floating up and down on the waves. Up and down. The smell was of defecation and urination. People did not care. At some part in the city, at any given time, guns would be spitting out bullets. At other parts, people would be getting robbed at gunpoint or knife point. Sometimes these latter would pull the trigger or slash their victims with their knives anyways. This city had lost its way. All because of a few corrupt people. And because of a few simple, purposeful mistakes. Snatch pens from the hands of children, and thrust guns into the outstretched hands. And this is what happens.