Introduction to India at 75 »Contributors A – G: Aakar Patel • Aanchal Malhotra • Aatish Taseer • Abraham Verghese • Akhil Katyal • Akshaya Mukul • Altaf Tyrewala • Amandeep Sandhu • Amit Chaudhuri • Amitava Kumar • Angela Saini • Anirudh Kanisetti • Anita Desai • Anuradha Bhagwati • Arjun Sethi • Arshia Sattar • Arvind Krishna Mehrotra • Ashish Kothari • Ashok Vajpeyi • Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni • Damodar Mauzo • Daribha Lyndem • David Davidar • Deepa Mehta • Dev Benegal • Devyani Saltzman • Gaiutra Bahadur • Ganesh Devy • Geetanjali Shree • Ghazala Wahab • Gyan PrakashIndia is adrift today.It is detached from the moorings it had been secured to in 1950. The pluralist and progressive vision of those who led it into independence has been discredited and all but vanished.It has been replaced by a confident majoritarianism which expresses itself against other Indians, and finds pleasure and delight in the trauma it inflicts internally.It is instinctive and that is why it has been difficult to resist.This cold wind has brought us into unfamiliar and dangerous waters.We will get out eventually, of course: all humanity will.But India must first finish its adventure fully.This is the most important moment in our history and this is our pivotal generation.Aakar is Chair of Amnesty International India.His work The Anarchist Cookbook: A toolkit to protest and peaceful resistance is being published in September by HarperCollins.“My father used to say to us—Hindustan is our vatan, our land.It didn't matter that we were Musalmaan;what mattered was that we were born here and here is where we would die...Our Hindu brothers are born in Hindustan, they grow up here, live their lives here, they die here.And when they die, they are cremated and their ashes are immersed in the holy waters of the river Ganga.Within her tides they flow, even if it is eventually into foreign waters.But look at us Musalmaans—we are born in Hindustan, we grow up here, we live here and we die here.And when we die, we are buried deep into the ground [and] we become one with the land.We become Hindustan...We become Hindustan, our bodies mix into its soil.How could we ever leave this land, then?Our home, our life—how could we ever leave it?We are within the very land.”—Excerpt from a conversation with a Partition witness, Delhi, 2014.Aanchal Malhotra is an oral historian from New Delhi, India.She is the author of two books, Remnants of a Separation, published internationally as Remnants of Partition, archiving the objects carried by refugees across the newly made border in 1947, and In the Language of Remembering, on the long-lasting, intergenerational, cross - border legacy of Partition.India turns seventy-five, but I am not invited to the party.India is a Hindu country and in the eyes of those I grew up amongst I am merely a Muslim now—denatured by a place that is itself denatured.Since the 'mountaineer' on Raisina Hill—'ten thick worms his fingers, his words like measures of weight'—decreed me a Pakistani, I have not been able to go back home.I don't mind.The best of us are exiles now, some external, some internal, and I (at least) am spared the pain of returning to a place that has ceased to exist."I do not love Germany," wrote Sebastian Haffner, taking leave of a country he no longer recognized, "just as I do not 'love' myself."Love is too small a word for what one feels for one's country.True belonging is to hold one's place to a standard, as one would hold oneself.India has slipped.The primal cry for a limpieza de sangre has taken the country by the throat.We know from the fear in the faces of those propagating this dark new vision of an impure purity that it will not last.We carry away a strand of DNA from that old India and bide our time—ready for when that glamorous big-hearted country is ready to return to itself.Aatish Taseer is a British-American writer in New York.He is the author, most recently, of The Twice-Born: Life and Death on the Ganges.I was born in Africa, the son of Indian Christian parents from Kerala.When I settled in Madras for college, I had just fled a country where a military dictatorship had trampled over human rights.So I could only marvel at the unwieldy miracle of Indian national elections, the vibrant free press, and the freedom of all religious groups to worship.I never took what India had accomplished for granted.How sad and alarming then to see these very things under threat today;we must not stay silent.Abraham Verghese, author of three books, the most recent of which is Cutting for Stone.He was born in Ethiopia and lives in California.He is a physician and writer who teaches at the Stanford Medical School.In 2016, he received the National Humanities Medal from President Obama.pours wax into his own earssprays pepper into his own eyes.He stuffs his nostrils with marigoldsclogs his mouth with sand.One by one, he dams up all his senses.He claims innocence.The night of massacre climbs.Akhil Katyal was born in Bareilly and lives in Delhi.He is a poet, translator and scholar.He has published three volumes of poetry, one anthology, and translated a volume of verse.He writes in Hindi, Urdu and English.Each passing moment I feel like the chronicler of Zbigniew Herbert's Report from a Besieged City.The only difference is my country is besieged.I have no right on my food, dress, belief system, and sexuality.Dissent has been banished and the bravest have been packed into jails where an inmate with Parkinson's had to fight for straw and sipper.Another inmate is denied PG Wodehouse.Paranoia rules us, bulldozers dominate the streets, courts are on a long vacation, and universities no longer question.Cheering masses—unemployed and angry—blame the minorities for their tattered lives since the leader can do no wrong.Every morning newspapers are full of tales and an example is made of those who verify facts.As the nation dies out, our middle class has taken the coward's route, justifying the state of the nation and its descent into abyss.'It is a chaos before our ascent to the summit of nations' they tell you.Is everything lost?Not yet.Maybe never.Defenders of rights and the Constitution, small in numbers, will outlive those full of violence, hate and fury.And even if one defender is left, she will stand at the gate.Akshaya Mukul is a journalist and writer in Delhi.He is the author of two works of non-fiction, including the award-winning Gita Press and the Making of Hindu India.His biography of Agyeya was published recently..I NEED A GOD TODAYI needed to confess that I was back to needing A father in heaven Back to needing Being afraid of sin Of hellfire and demons And a belief in the invisibleI needed a god today But he's closed for business The prayer house is padlocked The priests have disappeared A sign on the door says Seek Me in your heart's shrineYou mean that shrine I razed?That altar I burned?That sanctuary I demolished?That pedestal I smashed?What resides in those ruins Is belief's ghost And the echo of a prayer To never need a god againI needed a god today I needed to tell him That heart's shrine Is now a mausoleum To disbelief and to liveAltaf Tyrewala is the author of three fiction books and has edited a crime fiction anthology.His works have been published around the world and he was awarded the DAAD Artist-in-Berlin literature grant.He has also curated a literature festival.He hails from Mumbai and now lives in Dallas.Births are bloody.At the dawn of India and Pakistan's birth as nations in 1947, the Urdu-language poet Faiz Ahmed Faiz said: “ye daag daag ujala, ye sab-gazida seher, wo intezaar tha jiska, ye wo seher to nahin”—”This stained tainted light, this night bitten dawn, that we were waiting for, this is not that dawn.”While the Indian mainland celebrated the nation's birth, the poet looked at the birth pangs, the bleeding, the result of extreme identity politics, the laceration of Panjab and Bengal due to Partition.About 1 million people died, and 15 million were displaced in the largest, inadequately documented, migration in the history of the world.At birth India was a poor, populous nation.Over the decades, India progressed on various development indices but its mass was so large, its complexity so dense, that it also bumbled along the way.Discontent grew in society.In the last decade, the wounds of identity politics festered when India's majority mostly abnegated their secular ethos in favor of a right-wing dispensation that has used every sectarian trope, even institutions of state, to attack the minorities and erode democracy.Those who support the powers in this new India now seemingly find direction, but it is a downward spiral on all indices and its economy.Faiz's dawn has turned to noon, and I tremble, stating: now another darkness beckons.Amandeep Sandhu is the author of Panjab: Journeys Through Fault Lines and a Homi Bhabha Fellow 2022-24.He lives in Bangalore.An excerpt and a translation — Amit Chaudhuri 1. The Deer and the Ewe (short excerpt from an essay published in Social Research)What does religion use reason against?Post-Enlightenment convention, which we have internalized, states that religion's enemy is, in fact, science and reason, and vice versa.A more careful examination reveals that rationality, in India, is religious thought's means of refuting hegemony, and hegemony, until 300 years ago, in India as elsewhere, was religion (although the narrative of Christianity and its wars with the state and science have to be distinguished from the argumentation I'm referring to).So religion uses reason to refute religion, or, more precisely, bogus religion—from which (in case we need reminding) xenophobia mainly emanates.Here, in Arvind Krishna Mehrotra's translation, is an example from the fifteenth-century Bhakti poet Kabir, the son of Muslim weavers, deploying logic against the habit of equating religiosity with signs of religiosity:If going naked brought liberation, the deer of the forest would attain it first.If a shaven head was a sign of piety, Ewes would be pious too.If holding back the semen Brought you closer to heaven, A steer would lead the way.There is no salvation without Rama, says Kabir.Not to know it is really dumb.(Kabir 2011, 23)Some premises are being examined here and being tested against another premise at the end.The propositions in question have to do with whether the markers of renunciation, asceticism, and piety (an unclothed body, a shaved head, holding in semen) are a guarantee of spiritual attainment.If they were, “Ewes would be / Pious too.”The benchmark is not the observance of a form of practice, but direct experience: “no salvation / Without Rama.”“Rama,” here, is proof (pramana);the accessories presented as evidence of spirituality are accouterments that are easily acquired—in the case of the deer and the ewe, acquired without any effort at all.Hum dekhenge by Faiz Ahmed Faiz Translated by Amit ChaudhuriWe shall see— It's certain we too shall see The day that was promised to us And set indelibly in ironWhen the boulder-weight of tyranny Will scatter like wisps of cotton And under the feet of the reigned-over The earth will pound like a heart beating And over the heads of those who govern Lightning will burn and crackleWhen all idols will be vacated From the holy places And we, the dispossessed and displaced, Will be returned to our inheritance, Each crown will be flung away, Each seat of power brought downAllah's name will remain: nothing more— He, who is present and absent too, He, who is both scene and spectator;The cry “I am truth” will be heard, The cry that is me as it is you, And everywhere will reign God's progeny Which is what I am, as you are.Amit Chaudhuri is a singer, musician, and the author of eight novels, including Sojourn, published in August 2022, besides one collection of short stories, three books of poems, and five volumes of non-fiction.He lives in Calcutta.On February 23, 2020, riots erupted in Delhi.The homes and shops owned by Muslims in northeast Delhi went up in flames after a ruling party politician, irked by those protesting discriminatory citizenship laws, whipped fanatical fury among his followers.There is a story that I wrote down in my notebook from one of the news-reports I had read: 'A Muslim resident of Shiv Vihar kept pet pigeons.The mob burnt down his home and then killed the pigeons by wringing their necks.'Were they Muslim pigeons?There is another brief, heartbreaking detail that I recorded in my notebook: 'A man returned to a street corner to sift with his hands through a pile of black and gray ash searching for his brother's bones.He had seen his brother on fire as he tried to flee the mob.He found charred bits that he was going to bury in a cemetery when peace returned.'I believe we should remember what was done by our fellow human beings.We ought to fight for justice on behalf of those so grievously wronged.What is the central concept of art?That someone reading you will be moved, that your work will leave someone altered or changed.I cannot say I have bought into that worldview completely.But I do want to remember, and my words or art to keep alive a memory.Many lovers of Urdu poetry remember Bashir Badr's lines: 'Log toot jaate hain ek ghar banane mein / Tum taras nahin khaate bastiyan jalaane mein.'(People go broke in building a home / And you remain unmoved as you burn down entire neighborhoods.) The poet was speaking from experience.His own home in Meerut was gutted and reduced to rubble in the Hindu-Muslim riots in 1987. Like Bashir Badr, I am saying that I remember, I remember.Amitava Kumar is a writer and journalist.He is the author of several works of fiction and non-fiction, and, most recently, a book of drawings.Kumar was born in Ara, Bihar, and teaches at Vassar College in the United States.My father rarely speaks about the past.Just the occasional anecdote, dropped like a bomb and never mentioned again.He recalls his parents in Punjab urging their Muslim neighbors not to leave during Partition.Entering one empty home after it was all over, some villagers found a kitchen knife.My father pauses to consider how quickly the Muslim family must have packed up and ran to have left behind an object that they were too poor to lose.What happened to that knife afterwards, I wonder.Did those who used it remember the friendships that once existed between neighbors?Or was having the knife more important?Angela Saini is a British writer born to Indian parents.She lives in New York.She writes on science and is the author of three works of non-fiction, most recently Superior: The Return of Race Science.Her next book is on the origins of patriarchy.We choose what history means, and what we learn from it.Today, the past has been appropriated to only make us yearn for imagined, bygone splendor, to provoke shame or anger.But India's history is something grander.For thousands of years, people like us lived in a harsher world, where power ran untrammeled.Yet, somehow, 75 years ago, our ancestors said "no more."And they tried, at least, to correct the injustices of the past, with an ambition and optimism unparalleled in human history.It may seem, in 2022, that all this is irrevocably in jeopardy;that we are doomed, inevitably, to return to the horrors of our iniquitous past.But the lessons of history are not so bleak.They cannot be allowed to be.The progress that our ancestors fought so hard for will not be forgotten so easily.Through the dark and difficult years ahead, there will always be some who speak truth to power.There will be those who fight for what is right.And I hope that they will look back to 2022, and hear voices like theirs, and know that they will never be alone in what they stand for—just as we are not.Anirudh Kanisetti is a researcher, historian, and columnist who writes and hosts podcasts on South Asia's past and present.He is the author of a book about the medieval history of Southern India.Our Old Delhi garden was once a pleasant place to sleep on summer nights, but the summer I was ten years old was different: we could see the smoke and flames of fires burning in the Old City;our parents and neighbors awake and watchful.When the school reopened, the classrooms were half empty, so many students had "crossed the borders," we were told.Refugee camps teemed everywhere.Yet out of that nightmare, the flag of an independent India was raised, a new constitution written that was fair and free of the sectarianism that had caused the agitation and its violence, a testament to the survival of the people's hopes and idealism.Briefly, we held our heads high.Seventy five years on, what do we see?All the riches of the many cultures we had inherited coldly and deliberately destroyed, so many vibrant and valuable voices silenced, even the natural world of forests, rivers and wildlife desecrated, leaving us with the dust and ashes of hate and falsehoods.Anita Desai is the author of 18 works of fiction including In Custody and Clear Light of Day.She is a professor emerita at MIT, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and the American Academy of Arts and Letters.Among her honors are a Padma Bhushan.Where are you from?he asks.We are both in bathing suits in the local pool, breathing hard, cellulite and body scars bare.He is as British and pale as I am Brown and assimilated.New York City, I say, defiantly.He looks at me without speaking, assessing the rights and wrongs of his next question.I spare him the struggle.I just want to swim another lap.India, I add, each detail revealing more to confuse him, my family is from Gujarat.Where Gandhi was from.Where Modi is from.Oh, he replies.And we both know my explanation on origins is not enough, because he is scrutinizing my right upper arm, where Arabic wraps itself around bicep and tricep.But then why the tattoo?he continues.It's a long story, I say, prepared.Too long for a break at the wall of the pool.Dad is a secular Hindu.Mom is a convert to Christianity.I am a student of Buddhism.Istiqlal, I explain.It means “independence.”It's a word I adopted from Palestine, and I apply it to all of today's moments: the struggle for Black lives in Trump's America, for Dalit and Muslim dignity in Modi's India.It will never get old.On the next break between intervals, he says suddenly, I hope I didn't offend you.No, I responded, smiling extra hard.I push off the wall, and swim.Anuradha Bhagwati (she/her) is the author of Unbecoming: A Memoir of Disobedience.A former Marine Corps captain and award-winning activist, she founded the Service Women's Action Network, which brought national attention to sexual violence in the US military and helped repeal the ban on women in combat.She lives in San Francisco with her service dog, Duke.India was at the center of the global struggle for decolonization and liberation not long ago.Its legacy was the power of collective action, nonviolent resistance, and the promise of a democracy, albeit an imperfect one, rooted in inclusivity and pluralism.An authoritarian regime inspired by Hindutva nationalism has extinguished that flame.The BJP and RSS wage war on the press, erase minority rights, blockade Kashmir from the world, and employ a propaganda and disinformation machine unrivaled today.India often escapes global scrutiny because of its vivacious culture, massive economy, and geopolitical alliances.In the interim, those who paved the way for modern India mourn in the ethereal and those who dare speak out risk arrest, death, or languish in dark cells hoping the world remembers their names.Only the most dystopian could have imagined that there would come a day when India would bear a closer resemblance to the colonial power it dethroned than the democratic republic it aspired to be.Arjun Singh Sethi was born in Virginia and teaches law at Georgetown University Law Center.He is the author of a book about racism & hate in America.When you live in a nightmare, when you wake up each day with a sense of dread, you recall things that gave you hope, you imagine things as they could be, you look for reasons to engage with your increasingly horrifying reality.I often return, at those times, to a past that promised a world of peace and love and harmony, of equality and freedom for everyone.Joni Mitchell comes to mind, telling me that we are better than what we are living through, that we have been sold for blood money, that we must bring ourselves back to the beauty, the compassion and the solidarity that we are all capable of.We are stardust, we are golden We are part of the devil's bargain And we've got to get ourselves Back to the garden.Arshia Sattar is a writer in Bangalore.She translates from Sanskrit.Her work includes translations of the Ramayana, and three critical studies.Laugh Club of Gandhi ParkIn lanes too narrow for three to walk abreast, that only peddlerswith goods to sell from upright bicycles enter, are modest houses,modest only in name, behind whose barred windows, ornamental gates,the spikes along the top painted black and gold, live family men who canwiggle their fiery bellies at will.You see themin Gandhi Park, on opposite benches, practicing their skills,a smokescreen of laughter hiding their faces.They move in a pack and eat sprouts on the way out.Mistimed badminton shots exploding around him,A metal soldier with assault rifle stands guardand a musical fountain plays fountain music in the background.Arvind Krishna Mehrotra was born in Lahore in 1947 and lives in Dehradun.He is the author, most recently, of Collected Poems (Shearsman Books) and Ghalib, A Diary: Delhi 1857-58 (New Walk Editions).India@75: Behaving like an Elder?As India celebrates 75 years of Independence, does it embody the wisdom such an age should bring?At least from one point of view, the answer is a resounding NO—the sustainability of its natural environment, on which all our lives depend.It is astonishing how we still 'externalize' nature in our single-minded pursuit of economic growth.After decades of high growth, 480 million people in northern India face the most extreme levels of air pollution in the world.According to the NITI Aayog, “600 million people1Study by HM Mathur in India: Social Development Report 2008. in India face high to extreme water stress … with nearly 70% of water being contaminated.”The Indian Space Research Organization says that 30% of our land is at various stages of degradation, some getting desertified.In the markets of most cities, food has levels of pesticides well above human safety levels.The climate crisis is threatening the livelihoods and lives of several hundred million—mostly the poorest.Yet, the government is busy dismantling environmental and social security policies to favor corporate access to land and natural resources.60 million people have already been displaced by 'development' projects;how many more?It doesn't have to be like this.Thousands of initiatives are demonstrating how basic needs including food, water, energy, housing can be met, dignified livelihoods generated, and learning and health access enhanced, while working with and within the natural environment, respecting not only human rights but also the rights of fellow species to thrive (www.vikalpsangam.org).But this requires spaces for everyone's voice in decision-making (a radical democracy), community control over the commons, struggles against various inequalities including gender and caste, sustaining diverse cultures and knowledges, and replacing GDP with meaningful indicators of well-being... a genuine swaraj.In the last quarter of its century of Independence, this is India's biggest challenge.If we fail, we will be mourning, not celebrating, in 2047.Ashish Kothari is with Kalpavriksh, an environmental organization in India.He has taught at Indian Institute of Public Administration, served on boards of Greenpeace International & India, is a judge on International Tribunal on Rights of Nature, and helps coordinate Vikalp Sangam and the Global Tapestry of Alternatives.He is co-author/co-editor of Churning the Earth, Alternative Futures, and Pluriverse: A Post-Development Dictionary.Freedom as reality is forever in jeopardy.But as we complete the 75th year of freedom as a nation, freedom is ironically suffering a huge deficit and assault in India today.Intellectually, creatively, and imaginatively we were free before political freedom came to us.Literature, the arts, and science of pre-independent India were created by free-minded writers, artists, and scientists.After independence we enjoyed, by and large, freedom to express our dissent, our criticism of the establishment, our vision of alternatives.This freedom today is being seriously and grievously curtailed by both legal and extra-legal ways.Unfortunately, not only freedom, but also equality and justice, the founding values ​​of our constitution, are under assault.Today to be a writer in India, in its many languages, is to be a victim of surveillance by many ideological watchdogs whose feelings are hurt at the slightest deviation from the given social-religious norms.A genuine artist or writer today has to be a person of courage, conscience and creativity.She has to struggle against forces of amnesia, hatred, violence, and bulldozing, lie-spreading technologies.Truth is in minority, courage and imagination, conscience and solidarity, are in minority.Speaking truth is unpardonable blasphemy.And yet literature and the arts survive with dignity, invincible courage and moral resistance.Politics, power, economy, and the media may not listen and care, but truth is being spoken and protected by writers and artists.Freedom finds residence in creativity, even if it is shrinking in reality.Ashok Vajpeyi is a poet and critic.He writes in Hindi and lives in Delhi.I grew up on heroic tales of women Sarojini Naidu Matangini Hazra Who underwent torture to buy us freedom willingly and sometimes with their lives.Travel backwards with me to Hazrat Mahal Rani Laxmibai, back, back to Draupadi Arundhati Radha the ever-misunderstood Sita With her quiet epic resistance.The chiaroscuro silhouettes of my lifetime too Indira Mahasweta Ismat and should I include Kiran?Time blurs closeup, hard to tell protagonist from antagonist.#MeToo and #NoMoreCompromise butt heads against memories of Nirbhaya.But today I think of the nameless ones who broke the love-laws who stepped out at night sometimes their homes were their most dangerous place whose stories wash up if at all like bodies far downstream bloated and unrecognizable.Beloved India I hold close this 75th birthday With joy and trepidation and precious hope of change.Droupadi I am waiting to see what you will do.Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni is the Betty and Gene McDavid Professor of Writing at the University of Houston.She is the author of thirteen works of fiction, including, most recently, The Last Queen and the award-winning collection Arranged Marriage, five books for young adults, four collections of poetry, and has edited three anthologies.Translated from Konkani by Riya KirtaniWhile reading a book, I came across a thought.Quite a profound one.That nudging thing would not let me sleep.No matter how hard I tried, it didn't give up, so I simply decided to sleep with it.When I woke up in the morning, I found that the thought had sprouted, so I rushed with it to my front yard, in order to plant it.However, I knew that the soil in my own yard was not quite productive while my neighbor's land was very fertile.Besides, he liked gardening.So, I crossed over the fence and carefully planted the tiny sprout there.Even before it rained, the little sprout drew nutrients and bloomed to become a plant.Soon it was a tree that bore flowers and fruits.The neighbor was delighted.I was then surprised to learn that the fruits had therapeutic value that provided an instant cure for many ailments.People flocked at the neighbor's door asking him to give them some.The generous neighbor never sent away anyone empty handed.Whenever he was at private get-togethers or at public meetings, the neighbor tended to share his fruits with the people.News started popping up about this healing fruit.The stories were afloat, day in and day out.Someone who could not see well had a clear and effective vision.A confused soul claimed to have gained a new-found understanding.Someone who had been faltering to see the path clearly, now got the foresight to visualize what was coming.A person whose intelligence had gathered dust found the wheels turning again.Even someone with severe brain fever was cured.What surprised me the most was when I saw Mr.X, a person known for his crooked ways, was now most well-natured, as good as Mr.A1.Even the abusive Mr.Y and Mr.Z, who always mouthed profanities, were unrecognizable with their newfound persona of piousness.Before long, the fruit had become popular on Facebook, the number of its followers increasing with every passing day.Nevertheless, all good things always face an alternate viewpoint.The disapproving frowns gradually started rising.Someone had severe stomach ache from just the smell of the fruit.Some were hit by indigestion.Some others' migraines had worsened.Some started throwing up at the smell of the fruit.While some were hit by insomnia.When things became worrisome, the affected people held a meeting and decided to give my neighbor a piece of their mind."Don't go around distributing those fruits, don't even let people take them away," they said.When the angry men found the neighbor not paying any heed to their plea, they saw to it that the fruits were legally banned.They spread rumors that the seed was smuggled from the enemy country, giving people a reason to troll the neighbor for it.“Such anti-national activities will not be tolerated by our Bharat-Premi Sena,” the patriots vowed.The perpetrators then realized to their chagrin that the neighbor was named Bharat!So they decided to look for a new name for their outfit.One day, I overheard their conspiracy to teach my neighbor a lesson.When I called on him and cautioned him about it, he simply laughed.Soon afterwards, in the dread of a dark night, I heard frightening sounds in my neighborhood.I felt a chill in my spine when I could sense truckloads of people gathered there.I plugged my ears and tried to sleep.I envisioned putting my neighbor to sleep for good.In no time, I could feel the sparks flying, hear the embers ticking and feel the heat on my skin.Did they set the house on fire?