Before we can say yes or no, he calls for cardamom tea from a stall nearby, and it comes in tall glasses, frothy-bubbly at the top. It tastes expensive, this tea. Puffs of pricey steam warm our cheeks as we drink.
“Bahadur isn’t here, at the basti or the bazaar,” the TV-repair chacha tells us. “If he were, he would have come to see me by now.”
I believe him because chacha is the nicest person I have ever met. He even takes our investigations seriously. He tells us that Bahadur:
never got into a fight with anyone, even the children who made fun of his stutter;
hasn’t taken anything from the shop;
had no plans to run off to Mumbai-Manali.
I ask the TV-repair chacha if Quarter was one of the people who bullied Bahadur, but the chacha doesn’t know Quarter, only the pradhan. “That man,” the chacha says, wrinkling his nose like something is stinking, “he’ll do anything for money.”
“Snatch children too?” I ask.
The chacha looks puzzled. Pari glares at me from behind the cardamom-scented steam.
“Could a djinn have taken Bahadur?” I ask.
“There are bad djinns,” the chacha says, “who will possess your soul. Very rarely do they abduct children. You can’t put it past them, certainly. Some djinns are big troublemakers.”
Then a commotion in the alley distracts him. It’s two beggars I have seen before, but they are special because one is in a wheelchair and the other is his bow-legged friend who shuffles behind, pushing the chair. The recorded voice of a woman jets out of a loudspeaker fitted to the back of the wheelchair. We’re both ill of leg, she says. Please help us by giving us money. We’re both ill of leg, she goes on. Please…She never gets tired.
“Here, here.” Chacha gestures at them to come over, and he buys them tea as well.
“It must be getting late,” Pari says when street lights turn patches of the black smog yellow.
We say goodbye to the chacha and walk home.
“My instinct tells me Bahadur ran away.” Pari speaks like a detective. “No one in our basti has any reason to snatch him. He must have made a lot of money working for the chacha, and now, he has gone off to join another TV-repair shop. One far away from here, and Drunkard Laloo.”
“In Manali?”
“Why not? People in Manali watch TV too.”
Boys and girls from our school, playing in the alley, wave at us. I don’t wave back. I don’t want to encourage them to join our detectiving team.
“Either we tell Bahadur’s ma about his Manali plans,” Pari says, “or we go to the main railway station, show his photo to people, and ask them if they have seen him.”
“We can’t tell Bahadur’s ma and Drunkard Laloo. They will get angry with Bahadur’s sister and brother, beat them up even.”
“Then we have to go to the city station,” Pari says. “Stop Bahadur before he gets on a train.”
“Arrey, but what if he’s already in Manali?”
“If we can find out for sure that he took a train to Manali, the police there will look for him. They can’t be as bad as our basti-police, can they? Right now we don’t know if Bahadur is here or where. What we need is one good clue, that’s it.”
I remember that the railway station will have CCTV cameras; Police Patrol cops often scour CCTV footage to catch criminals and runaway children. I don’t tell Pari that. Instead I say, “You have forgotten or what, first of all, you have to get to the station, which is so far away in the city. Second of all, you have to take the Purple Line till there and you can’t even get on a metro platform without a ticket. The metro is not like the Indian Railways.”
“I know that.”
“Is your father a crorepati that he can spare money for our tickets?”
“We can ask Faiz for money.”
“Never.”
“Didn’t you say, after the first forty-eight hours, it becomes more and more difficult to find a missing child?”
I don’t remember saying that, but it also sounds like the kind of thing I would say.
* * *
It’s dark when I reach my house, but I’m lucky, Ma and Papa aren’t home yet. Runu-Didi is talking to Shanti-Chachi, and stretching by standing crane-like on her right leg. Her left leg is folded at the knee.
“Shouldn’t you be making dinner?” I ask Didi.
“Listen to how he speaks to me,” she tells Shanti-Chachi. “He thinks he’s a prince and I should wait on him hand and foot.”
“When he grows up,” chachi says, “with some luck, he’ll get a wife like me who’ll teach him that he can either cook himself or starve, it’s his choice.”
Maybe that’s why Shanti-Chachi’s first husband said okay-tata-bye to her, and why her three grown-up children never visit her. But I know better than to point that out.
“I’m never getting married,” I tell Runu-Didi when we are in our house.
“Don’t worry, any girl will smell you from a mile away and run off.”
I sniff my armpits. I don’t smell that bad.
Ma and Papa get back late, but together. They stand in the alley, talking to our neighbors. Their faces are too full of worry and crossness for me to ask them where they bumped into each other. Runu-Didi finishes making rice and dal, and calls Ma and Papa, but they tell her not now, Runu.
“Arrey, a man is dying of hunger here,” I say, pressing my belly.
Runu-Didi troops outside. I march behind her, singing “Why Am I Like This?” Smoke crawls out of houses, heavy with the smell of dal and baingan-bharta.
Papa points at me and says, “If we don’t watch this little shaitan, he’ll be the next one to vanish.”
“What?” I ask.
“The press-wallah’s son has disappeared,” Ma says. “We saw him just two days back, haan, Jai, you remember?” Then Ma turns to the others and says: “We asked that boy, do you know where Bahadur is? He said he didn’t. How he could lie with a straight face, I’ll never understand.”
“Omvir is missing?” I ask.
“He and Bahadur must have planned it all along,” Ma says.
“Such selfish children,” a chachi says. “Didn’t even stop to think how worried their parents would be. Now the police will get involved. They’ll come here with their machines. All of us will lose our homes.”
“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” Shanti-Chachi says.
“Yes, true,” Ma agrees as if she hasn’t packed our house into a bundle and left it by the door.
“Our people are looking for the children,” Shanti-Chachi says. “They’ll bring the boys home tonight, I’m sure.”
“They might have gone to Mumbai,” I say in a hushed voice. “Manali maybe.”
I’m giving up my secret, but not all of it.
“What did you say?” Papa asks, hands on his hips.
“Can I go to Pari’s?” I ask Ma. It’s the wrong question for right-now, I realize as soon as I say it.
“Whatever work you have with her, it can wait till tomorrow,” Ma says.
“You should buy me a mobile,” I say, and turn to go back into the house.
“Not so fast,” Papa says, his hand on my shoulder. “Did Bahadur tell you he was going to Manali?”
“I have never talked to him,” I say. This is the truth. I should ask Pari to teach me how to lie.
Papa’s fingers dig into my bones. “Omvir isn’t even in my class,” I say.
“How will we find these children if they have gone that far?” a chachi says, eyes squeezed small, fingers pressing her forehead as if it’s throbbing with pain.
“My son wants to see Dubai. Doesn’t mean he’s getting there any time soon,” another chachi says.
“The boys must be hiding in a park near a hi-fi building,” a chacha says. “Even the grass t
here is softer than our charpais.”
“Homework,” I mouth to Papa so that he’ll stop interrogating me. He lets me go.
Inside our house, I stand in front of the kitchen shelf where Ma has put the Parachute tub. I can reach it easily now that Ma has changed its position. On its lid is a bindi shaped like a black teardrop that Ma must have stuck there, meaning to wear it again and forgetting. Before going to sleep or washing their faces, Ma and Runu-Didi take their bindis off their foreheads and stick them on whatever their hands can reach, the sides of the bed, the water barrel, the TV remote, my textbooks even.
I twist the lid open and fish out all the notes. There’s 450 rupees, the most money I have ever seen. I put fifty rupees back, screw the lid tight, and stand the tub back on the mango-powder tin. I hide the rest of the money in the pockets of my cargo pants.
My hands have gone clammy and my tongue is scalding-hot in my mouth. Stealing money makes you feel terrible. But having 400 rupees in your pocket feels excellent. I can eat anda-bhurji and bread-butter for a whole year with this money. Maybe not a whole year. Maybe a month.
I should put the money back. I feel a note in my pocket, crisp and smooth and full of hi-fi power. It sends a flash of current through my fingertips, makes me sway like Drunkard Laloo.
“When will this end?” Ma asks as she enters the house. “As if we don’t have enough problems.”
She looks at me. I’m her No. 1 problem.
“Come now, let’s eat, beta,” she says, smiling at me. “You must be hungry.”
She tickles the back of my neck. I push her hand off.
I’m a detective and I have just committed a crime.
It’s for a good cause though. If Pari and I bring Bahadur and Omvir back, we won’t lose our homes. Our home is worth loads more than 400 rupees.
* * *
The next morning, we talk about Omvir as we make our way to school through the smog. He is still nowhere to be found. I tell Pari I borrowed money from Runu-Didi. “She won a race and got a cash prize,” I lie.
“How much?” Pari asks.
“Enough for one Purple Line ticket,” I say. I don’t know what the fare is, but it can’t be more than 400 rupees. I’m not sharing my money with anybody, not even Pari.
“Runu-Didi is so good,” Pari says. “I wish I had a sister.” Then she looks at Faiz. “You’re lucky you have brothers and also a sister.”
“They’re okay,” Faiz says, trying to get the hair standing up on his head to sit down. He hasn’t washed today. He must have worked till late and turned around and kept sleeping in the morning after his ammi or his sister Farzana-Baji tried to shake him awake.
Pari believed my lie too easily. Maybe I’m a good liar. I just didn’t know it. The part about Runu-Didi winning a race wasn’t a lie though. Only, instead of money, she got the certificate that Ma has now put in the bundle by the door, and a gold-plated medal that Ma traded for a two-liter bottle of sunflower oil. Runu-Didi cried for many nights afterward about the medal, and that’s why Ma got her certificate framed.
“Jai, listen,” Pari says, “we should cut class today and take the Purple Line.”
“What?” I say. “You want to cut class?” I don’t think Pari has ever missed a day of school.
“A djinn has got into her, looks like,” Faiz says.
“Shut up,” Pari says, pinching Faiz’s arm.
“What about your ticket-money?” I ask Pari. I wonder if she has guessed the exact amount I stole.
“We have no time to lose,” she says. “Maybe this was their plan all along—Bahadur goes to the city station first, then Omvir. By now Omvir must have got there too.” She speaks hurriedly, swallowing a few letters so that her words can come out faster. “Maybe Drunkard Laloo beat Bahadur too much this time and Bahadur decided he couldn’t stay in our basti for a day more.”
“But the ticket—”
“Faiz is helping us investigate,” Pari says.
Faiz frowns a big frown. “I’m not,” he says.
“I saw Faiz at the toilet complex this morning,” Pari says. “He said he’ll give us the money for the metro tickets. You said that, didn’t you, Faiz?”
“Maybe.”
“What maybe, idiot?” She looks at me. “He came to the chole-bhature alley with 120 rupees in his pocket. That should be enough, no, for one person to get to the city railway station and back.”
“That’s a lot of money,” I say.
“It’s pricey because we live too far from the city. Also, we don’t get a discount on the metro.”
I know that already. Papa told me a long time ago that only those under three feet can travel free on the metro.
“I was thinking I’ll go alone to the city station, but your didi has given you money, so we can both go,” Pari says.
“Assistants can’t do detective work on their own,” I say.
“Stop fighting,” Faiz says, leaping over a dog’s No. 2 on the ground.
“Why are you giving away your money?” I ask him. “How will you buy your fancy shampoo and soap now?”
“I don’t need it,” Faiz says. “I have got a natural good smell, not like you. Want to check?”
“Never.”
“I’ll return the money to you,” Pari tells Faiz.
“How?” I ask.
Pari has no answer.
Faiz is right, she’s behaving strangely. She never breaks rules and always does whatever grown-ups ask her to do, even when it’s something silly; like she pinches her nose for a minute at night because her ma wants her to. Her ma says Pari’s nose is too big, and pinching will make it small and narrow. Pari says it’s nonsense but does it anyway.
We reach the queues at the school gate. A man wearing a crumpled white cotton shirt and an equally creased pair of khaki trousers stumbles up and down the lines, clutching a photo that he holds in front of each one of our faces. “Have you seen my son? Have you?” he asks, urgently, his voice hoarse as if he has been screaming for hours. “Omvir, you know him?”
It’s the press-wallah.
I try to look at Omvir’s photo but the press-wallah’s hands are shaking, and I see only a splotch of blue and brown. Before I can ask him to hold it steady, he drifts away to speak to someone else.
“He’s a goner,” Faiz whispers. The press-wallah does seem to be shrinking with every step he takes.
“We have to do something to end this,” Pari says. “Haan, Jai?”
“Let’s talk to Omvir’s classmates first,” I say, mostly because I’m afraid to spend Ma’s money. “Maybe he told them where he was going. That’s the right way to do detective work.”
I look at the press-wallah, I think about Ma’s what-if rupees that I have rolled into my geometry box. There’s a lump in my throat I can’t shift by coughing.
* * *
Omvir’s classmates don’t see much of him because he’s hardly ever at school. Pari brings out a notebook and writes down what they tell us. I steal a look at her case notes, which are full of question marks:
dancer?
Hrithik?
Juhu? Mumbai?
Boogie-Woogie Kids?
Boogie-Woogie Kids is a dance contest on TV, but Omvir doesn’t have to go to Mumbai to audition for it. They hold auditions everywhere, even in the one-mall towns near Nana-Nani’s village.
Omvir’s classmates say his disappearance is the best thing ever.
“The next time we see him, he’ll be on TV. Eight-thirty, Saturday night,” a boy says breathlessly.
“He’ll be wearing a silver shirt,” another boy cuts in, “and gold-colored trousers.”
They are older than us and also sillier. Faiz doesn’t help us. He plays cricket in the corridor outside the classroom, bowling a make-believe cricket ball toward an invisible batsman.
At assembly, the headmaster warns us against running away. “An epidemic is spreading through our school,” he thunders. “Children think they can enjoy a celebrity lifestyle if they take the train to Mumbai. It must seem like a holiday to you, a life with no studies, no exams, no teachers”—someone whoop-whoops and heads turn to pinpoint the source of the sound—“but you have no idea about the horrors that await you outside these walls.”
I think about Pari’s notebook. Maybe I should keep one too, but I hate writing and I get spellings wrong.
“The government has ordered the closure of all schools from today until Tuesday on account of the smog,” the headmaster says. “This smog is killing us.”
The students cheer. “Quiet,” the headmaster says to even-louder cheers. This is why he didn’t start his speech with the most important announcement.
When assembly is over, we walk to our classrooms in jumbly queues to collect our bags.
“Jai, we have to go to the city today,” Pari says. “We’ll get back before our parents are home. We won’t get a chance like this again.”
“Your ma will cry and scream if she finds you gone,” I tell Pari. It’s true. Pari’s ma cries for everything: when someone is sad in a serial on TV; when Pari gets excellent marks; when Pari’s papa has a cold; and when a chachi or chacha in our basti dies of TB or dengue or typhoid. Loads of diseases prowl around our basti, waiting to catch people and kill them.
“Ma won’t find out,” Pari says.
“Why don’t you come with us?” I ask Faiz, though I don’t want to pay for his tickets.
“I told you it’s a djinn,” Faiz says. “You won’t catch it on the Purple Line.”
“What will a djinn do with Bahadur and Omvir?” Pari asks.
“Djinns like dark places, so they’ll drag children into an empty underground cave, bring out their long teeth and go chomp-chomp-chomp,” Faiz says.
Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line Page 8
