In the pit of darkness on a March night, Roopinder Singh sat sipping santri - local liquor - with his brother. The night air was still cold, remnants of winter would remain for only a few more days. They were both perched on a concrete bench below a huge banyan tree, at few yards from their home in Kundli in Haryana. 

“Today, I will drink till I die,” Roopinder sounded determined.
Rajinder Singh, three years his junior, grew tense and tried to pluck the bottle out of his brother’s hands. “Don’t be silly. Stop exaggerating.”
Roopinder looked his brother in the eye and said, “how can you live with failure staring at your face every single day, you asshole?”
Rajinder mumbled inaudibly and quietened.
“Do you know we owned 50 acres of these lands?” Roopinder was sweeping his hands in the air. “You do know, right? The one we are sitting on right now? Why did we have to sell these lands in bits and pieces?” He waited for an answer. “Because of those chamars!” (Pejorative term used for Dalits or oppressed castes in India.)
“But, Shiv’s family has no land, bhaiyya.” 

Roopinder was too drunk to listen. “But, he is a chamar, no? Also he is the one with books all the time.” It was his habit to tweak the edges of his moustache so they face upwards, he did so now without thought. 
“Why does he show off those books all the fucking time? What is he trying to rub in?" He continued. “His father still tills our lands, you know” he said. 
Every time he saw Shiv Kumar with books in his hands, Roopinder brows tightened and a sense of rage that filled his chest. He looked away.
“He will walk free tomorrow morning, Raju,” Roopinder said, staring at a distance. 
Rajinder seemed unsure of how to react. “So….?”
“I thought he would die in jail,” Roopinder said slowly.
Rajinder knew that his brother and Shiv Kumar studied in school together. Every year, when their father saw examination results displayed on the school notice board, he would grit his teeth but keep mum until they reached home. Once home, Roopinder would be thrashed black and blue. “Even chamars score better than you, useless little bastard!” he used to say referring to Shiv Kumar and other Dalit boys. “No wonder they talk back to us these days!”
In January, Shiv was taken away by the Kundli police from Singhu, a town bordering Delhi. Singhu has been what the media termed a ‘protest site’. Thousands of farmers from across Haryana and Punjab camped in Singhu for about a hundred days to oppose a set of farm laws that the government passed without consultation. 

Shiv was singing a protest song along with some farmers, when he was harshly ushered into a police jeep. Rajinder had heard that the police had beaten up Shiv. “I heard they broke his bones in the prison,” said Rajinder.
“I also heard he had caught his mother’s madness,” Roopinder let out a part-smile. “Or perhaps his brother’s.”

Both Shiv Kumar’s mother and younger brother suffered from psychiatric disorders. While some in the village were pitiful, others just ignored them. Shiv was now diagnosed with post traumatic stress disorder too.