Turbulence (28 page)

“Think of your powers as a weapon,” Vir says. “There will be propaganda against us, and mobs will come looking for us. Yes, some of us will be able to take it — Tia will always have another copy hiding somewhere, I am strong, Uzma is likeable. But think of the people in that house in Goa, the helpless ones, stuck in a sealed corridor while giants and monsters fought outside. They need protection, and you can protect them with your powers.”

“I’d rather help them hide, if they want to hide. Jai wanted to trick the world into believing we are benevolent gods. We’re not. There’s no point even trying to pretend to be.”

“What do you think we should do instead, then?” Uzma asks.

“I think we should go downstairs and get Tia in on this,” Aman says.

Five minutes later, Aman and Uzma are curled up on the rather scarred sofa in front of the new TV. Vir stands in front of them, arms crossed, his feet well above the ground. On hearing that important decisions are to be made, Tia has decided to call her own assembly, and so the others wait as dozens of Tias merge, each joining giving the final Tia a very slightly different shape and hairstyle. When she is done, Tia grins and perches herself on a sofa arm, her legs swinging.

“It’s simple,” she says. “They’re calling us terrorists, right? We should make a video, like terrorists do. Send it to every TV channel in the world. Tell people we’re the good guys. Is that okay with you, Aman?”

“Sure,” he says. “As long as they know it’s coming from us, and not from newspapers they trust. The moment they realise we can control the media, we lose them entirely.”

“Uzma should be in the video,” Tia says. “She’s the easiest to like.”

Uzma smiles, but shakes her head.

“My powers don’t work on video, remember?”

“That doesn’t matter, love,” Tia says. “You’re hot. I’d still listen to you.”

“Yes, but Uzma doesn’t want people to know she has powers. So displaying herself to the world as a superhero isn’t the smartest plan for her,” Aman says. “Vir should do it.”

“Not a problem,” Vir says.

“And you should write the speech, Aman,” Tia says.

“No,” Vir says. “I’ll do it myself. If I am the only one making my face known to the world, the words coming out of my mouth should be mine.”

Tia looks slightly dubious, but when she finds no sign of protest from Aman she says nothing.

“What about his costume?” she asks.

“No costumes,” Aman says. “We want people to take him seriously.”

“Oh, they’ll take me seriously all right,” Vir says. “I don’t mind a costume, actually. I’m more comfortable in uniform, and people will believe in me more easily if they see one. They’ll immediately get half the message from it.”

“I design the costume, and no argument about that,” Tia says. “I’ve been working in three costume design companies in Santacruz for a couple of weeks now, just waiting for the day when we’d all figure out what we wanted to wear while doing our hero thing. I’ve already made about fifteen costumes for myself.”

“That’s fine,” Vir says. “Just make sure it has the Indian flag on it.”

“No flags,” Aman says. “You’re a global hero, not Captain India. Your costume shouldn’t be anything definitely ethnic either — no kurtas, no turban.”

“I understand why you’re saying this, but I still want an Indian flag somewhere,” Vir says. “Your country clearly means nothing to you, but I have spent my whole life worshipping it, and I will carry its colours into battle.”

“We’ll put in a flag somewhere, darling,” Tia says. “What about your superhero name?”

“Vir is fine,” Aman says. “Short, means brave, which fits,
good strong name.”

“But he needs a superhero name. Come on,” Tia says.

“He doesn’t. Even pro wrestlers don’t use stage names any more. This is the twenty-first century, you know.”

“I wouldn’t mind a superhero name,” Vir says. “It adds to the image, like the costume.”

“Yes, but all the good ones are taken. Trust me — I’ve looked,” Aman says. Tia nods ruefully.

“All the good
English
names are taken, you mean,” Vir says. “I could have a Hindi name.”

“You already do, Vir. And I look forward to watching the world’s interviewers mangle it in the years to come. Look, your name is easy — thank the gods you’re not Chinese or Sri Lankan. People around the world will be able to say ‘Vir’ without much trouble. We’re changing their world as it is — expecting them to learn new words is too much.”

“What about Paramvir?” Vir asks. “It’s Indian. It’s got my name in it. It stands for something I believe in. And people will know what it is — like Nobel.”

“What is it?” Uzma asks.

“There you go,” Aman says. “There’s an Indian military award for bravery called the Paramvir Chakra.”

“It’s the greatest prize of all,” Vir says. “To fight in its name would be an honour.”

“Just Vir sounds better, I think,” Uzma says. “Come on, go write your speech. We’ll get your costume done.”

Vir floats towards the stairs. He pauses before beginning his ascent.

“A thought I want to share. You showed me the path I must follow, Aman,” he says. “But somewhere I think you have lost
your own. Try and find it before we face the world.”

Aman’s face is grave as Vir floats up and away.

Tia sends word to her Bollywood designer avatar, and half an hour later Costume Tia arrives with a suitcase full of potential Bollywood superhero costumes — mostly bodysuits that are clear rip-offs of the costumes of better-known Marvel/DC superheroes with added glitter and inexplicable shiny plastic bits. A few are more forward-looking: themes from
Star Wars
,
The Matrix
and many other sci-fi films emerge. All the costumes are scrapped within minutes, and Costume Tia stalks off in a huff, leaving the clothes scattered on the floor.

Aman goes online for inspiration, and is astounded to find that there are several stores in the world that already make costumes for superheroes — capes, masks, bodysuits, even fake armour. He is even further amazed to learn of the existence of organisations such as RLSH — Real Life Superheroes — consisting mainly of ordinary people who voluntarily wear bright costumes and roam the streets, looking for crimes to prevent. Most of these stores also make costumes for wrestlers, some for fetish parties, but there is actually a market for superhero costumes, which Aman finds, in some strange way, immensely reassuring — a validation of his belief that the world, while undoubtedly crazy, is essentially full of well-intentioned people. Some of whom are well-intentioned people in spandex battlesuits (child or adult, metallic spandex extra) from Hero Gear which, alas, take at least a week to create. None of the designs are in any way superior to the ones Tia brought, but Aman concedes defeat and orders a few dozen in various
degrees of ludicrousness just in case.

The problems with finding the right superhero costume are many, they find. Not only must the costume not look utterly laughable, it must also mean something, both in theme and colour. It must be made of suitably stretchy and light materials. It must enhance the superpowers of the hero wearing it in some way. But even with these admirable guidelines and Aman’s dedicated scan of seventy years of comics and science-fiction movies, they are unable to find a costume that is exciting, inspiring and above all, new.

At some point late in the evening, Tia growls in anger and picks up, without looking, a costume from the pile her designer avatar had left behind. It turns out to be a dark-blue and black scuba diving outfit.

“The blue stands for the night sky and the blue bit in the middle of the Indian flag and the skin of Krishna,” she declares. “The black is for coolness and the evil he will spend his life fighting. We’ll cover the brand logo with a little India-flag badge. He can change it later if he likes. But I think he’ll love it. Thankfully he’s got the body for it. I mean, imagine Aman in this.”

Uzma and Tia laugh until they cry, while Aman glares.

“Belt, boots, gloves. Leather,” Uzma says after while, wiping her eyes.

Tia gleams with excitement.

“I’ll go get them from Chor Bazaar. And a chest logo, I think. I’ll sew one on. Silver. Sun? Lightning? Moon? Star?”

“Put it on top of the brand logo and make it a wheel,” Uzma says. “Then we can get rid of the flag. We’ll tell him it stands for the wheel in the Indian flag, the wheel of time, justice, speed,
the Earth, anything. He’ll like it. Do we need a cape? A mask? Leather underwear over the trousers?”

“No,” Aman says, firmly. “I don’t know why people are so stuck with this underwear-on-top thing even now. It went out ages ago, even in comics.”

“Shut it, geek boy,” Tia says. “We’re working. Uzma, you want to come see my costumes? I know you don’t want to be a superhero, but just in case, I got some for you as well.”

“Really?” Uzma’s eyes light up.

“Want to try them?”

“Are you barking mad? Of course I do!” And Uzma and Tia practically fly off to Tia’s room, leaving Aman feeling vaguely resentful.

Alone in Bob’s room, Vir is faring no better. He has spent hours waiting for words to flow, wanting to produce something Martin Luther King or Nehru would have been proud of, but several cancelled drafts and bitten pens later, he is nowhere near a solution. The primary issue is clear — how is a superpowered being supposed to convince people to love him, not run around squawking in fear? “We are here to protect you” sounds right, but from his experiences in Kashmir and the North-Eastern states Vir knows civilians do not like being protected by men in uniform. “We are here to save you” sounds like a televangelist lie. “We are very cool and can do bizarre things” is not inspiring enough, though TV channels would definitely be interested.

He’s got some stuff, but it’s mostly generic, words of wholesome goodwill that pad the speech out nicely, talking about hope, justice, power used with responsibility and all
that, but Vir knows it lacks something. He’s promised the world a better tomorrow, peace, prosperity and freedom from poverty, corruption, crime and illiteracy — but then, so has every politician since the dawn of time. He’s promised to clear up Jai’s mess — but does not know if he can. He’s promised that superheroes will help humanity, not seek to rule it — that they will be the Earth’s finest children, its defenders, the ones who ensure that all promises are kept, that all people can live like decent human beings. It’s all good stuff, mostly from half-remembered fragments of inspiring books he read in his youth, but none of the writers of those speeches kept their promises. Vir is not convinced.

He calls for backup, and the superheroes assemble, Tia blinking back tears as she looks at Bob’s books stacked neatly in a corner. Vir’s new costume, now complete, is shown to him. Just as Tia predicted, he loves it and puts it on to help him with his speech.

The night wears on as they debate endlessly about Vir’s first message to the world, and it is almost dawn when they reach a weary consensus. The only way, they decide, to make mankind as a whole see them as a potential boon is to offer them something: a world where the existence of superhumans will not make normal humans obsolete. The only real solution is to offer to give everyone superpowers; to work with human scientists to understand the nature of their powers, and then to distribute these powers. For free. Not to the chosen, not to the rich, not to the clever — but to everyone who wants them. A planet of evolved post-humans, super-smart, super-healthy, super-strong, super-fast, super-skilled, and damn the consequences. A new world, a heaven/hell of gods and demons
with no humans caught in between.

Vir knows this world can never exist, that even an attempt to create it would prove disastrous, that the new world would be just like the old one, but on super-steroids — but it does sound like a good reason for humans not to want to put all powered people on a remote island and nuke it.

Once that is decided, the speech comes through smoothly enough, with Tia providing enthusiastic, inspiring bits of rhetoric and Uzma tempering Aman’s tendency to branch off into uninteresting historical anecdotes. Aman insists on some bits about superheroes using their powers to help in other forms of research and technological development: civic administration, healthcare, infrastructure, energy and water management and climate control. Tia and Vir both think these bits are boring, but Aman shows them YouTube clips of Obama thrilling crowds with the same subjects and they are reluctantly persuaded.

Aman, who has mailed the finished speech to himself, goes downstairs to print it out. When he returns, he bears a video camera and startling news.

“I just got an email from Namrata,” he says. “She says she’s going to London. She’s had another vision.”

“What of?”

“Jai destroying the city. Big Ben, Tower Bridge — the whole riverfront. Fighting lots of other powers. And losing in the end. We’re there. She said she saw herself in this vision, with Uzma and me — she thinks we have to be there to bring him down.”

“Did she see me?” Vir asks.

“It was an email, Vir. That’s all she said. Fighting lots of other powers.”

“Call her, then. There’s no time to lose.”

“Phone’s off. I’ve mailed her, asking her to call — but in her mail she said she wouldn’t, she’s very scared.”

“Can’t blame her, poor thing,” Uzma says. “So are we going to London to meet her?”

“No,” Aman says. “We’d be putting ourselves in danger for no good reason at all. If there’s anything I can do to help Vir, I can do it from here.”

“But what if Jai has to be defeated the way Namrata saw it?” Uzma asks. “Maybe if we don’t act things out the way she saw them, he’ll win.”

“That makes no sense, Uzma. The situation is insane enough without bringing some vague prophecy into it. Time travel, crystal balls — talking animals are next. We’re staying here. You know, this is just what I was most afraid of.”

“What?”

“This. When we got our powers, the one thing I didn’t want was this. We could have made everything all right — or at least better. We could have got everyone to trust us, believe in us, let us work for them. Instead, the first time the world really sees us in action, what do we have to show? A fight. A super-battle, a big
Transformers-style
mega-romp over London, hero and villain, the flying man versus the ultimate warrior. It doesn’t really matter who wins the fight, you know — we all lose. Nothing changes. We become freakshows, threats, weekend entertainment. It didn’t have to be like this.”