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her hand. Abhik, the intrepid lawyer, chasing ambulances before anyone died. The streets looked as normal as any other day. The computer screen blinked brightly. There was a new message from Professor Jay Ghosh of Haversham University in Boston.
    By twelve in the afternoon it was eerily silent.
    Agni rested her head on the cool metal of her table, thinking about the email exchange with Professor Jay Ghosh. He had unnerved her. She couldn’t believe the things she had told him in her first email, a drama-queen attitude she didn’t even know she harboured. It was as if a powerful magician from her childhood memory, a jadugor , had picked at hidden wounds. Jay had been her mother’s closest friend but, even then, it was no excuse to have actually sent off that drivel.
    Jay would be here tomorrow.
    Agni got up. Besides her awkwardness about the Professor, something else did not feel right. She pulled up the blinds, and was astonished to see no cars on the road. Instead there were people, thousands of them. A lone police car had pulled up onto the pavement, as if to make room for the swelling crowds. She was too far up to hear the sounds clearly.
    More people were coming from around Masjid Jamek and the lrt station, and she could see the Federal Reserve Unit and police cars amassed in that area. A group of men were coming down the road with a sky-blue banner, which had the Queen of England’s face prominently displayed besides the words Hope to Respect Our Humble Request and Rights . The smaller Tamil words below the English were indistinguishable as the men marched past. The banner shivered in the wind.
    Agni sat down heavily. Abhik had been talking about the Hindsight 2020 rally for months now. A Hindu group would petition for equal rights for all Malaysian races by the year 2020, as well as petition Britain to get involved in fighting for the rights of descendants of Indian labourers brought over to Malaya by a colonial government.
    Politics bored Agni and, with the asean ministerial meeting at the airport this week, the problems at work had kept her busy. What was happening below seemed like a bad dream; she couldn’t believe that Hindsight 2020 would actually mobilise the Indians and challenge the growing Malay supremacy with this much courage.
    How many would be killed? She felt her heart tighten; the crowd below looked like a sea of her relatives. Where was Abhik? Agni could see hundreds of them, men and women, like little ants being drowned in the sea of white fumes issuing from government vehicles, all of them struggling to keep afloat.
    The phone rang incessantly after she speed dialled, but no one picked up at the other end. On the road, she could see three men jump up on a makeshift podium and wave Mahatma Gandhi’s picture. A man with a megaphone started a speech in rapid Tamil, but was interrupted by passing protesters who waved a banner, How is Our Future Going to be? ,chanting in loud voices. From her vantage point on the twenty-eighth floor, Agni could see the red fire trucks rumbling in from a distance, the bOMba lettering on the side clear in white. Red berets, black uniforms, red boots. Agni chewed nervously on her lip and tasted blood.
    When the helicopters started to circle, it was as if the faces all turned towards the sky in the hope of a divine deliverance. Instead, more chemical-laced water rained down, forcing protestors to their knees.
    She had seen enough. Agni turned to her mobile phone and called Abhik again. No reply. She felt embarrassed by the silence of her colleagues, and squirmed at the prospect of walking out of her office and facing them, as if the shame of the protesting Indians was hers alone.
    Even Rohani had not stopped by. Rohani, who would drop in to share every new twist of an office romance, or some fresh libellous gossip, had stayed in her room.
    Agni absentmindedly turned on the FM radio. The home minister’s voice was ferocious: “ Hindsight 2020 has said ‘Our enemies are