“Why does this Guru refer to himself as we?” I ask Pari. “Does he think he’s a king?”
“You’re just angry he didn’t offer to carry your school bag,” Pari says.
The constable Guru is speaking to twists around to look at us. He’s young, maybe only a year or two older than Guru. After he lets the Muslim woman go, he says something to another policeman, gesturing with his hands that he’ll be back in five minutes.
“Look, I can’t check a week’s worth of CCTV images just because your friends are missing,” he tells us straight away. “File a complaint with your police station. They’ll ask us for the footage, and we’ll share it with them. That’s how it’s done.”
“Our basti-police refuse to help us,” Pari says.
“They threaten us with bulldozers,” I say.
“Rules are rules,” the constable says.
“Bhaiyya, there must be something that you can do to help these children who have traveled from afar,” Guru says.
The policeman looks at Guru sadly. Then he says, “Well, the truth is”—he lowers his eyes and voice—“the CCTV cameras at the station haven’t been working for a month. We have put in a request to the maintenance department, but well, you know how it goes.”
I don’t know how it goes but I don’t dare ask the policeman to explain.
“Can’t be helped,” Guru says. “It’s not your fault.”
“It’s top secret,” the policeman says. “If you tell anyone else, if one of those people on the nine o’clock news hears of it, I’ll lose my job.”
“We won’t tell,” Guru says.
“We won’t tell either,” Pari says.
After the policeman leaves, I say, “We should go home now.”
“Be careful while moving around your basti,” Guru tells Pari. His thick eyebrows knit together, and his eyes shimmer grey, shimmer green. “There could be a kidnapper in your midst. You have parents to take care of you, so you have no idea about the bad things people can do. We know because we live on the street.”
“Haan, to do everything on your own, it must be very tough,” Pari says. This is what she does in the classroom too; she listens to teachers goggle-eyed, agrees with everything they say, and answers their questions just as they finish asking them so that she’ll be their favorite.
“Do you want to know how we survive?” Guru asks. “It’s a secret we don’t share with anyone, but we can see you’re good people going through a bad time, and we want to help.”
“Bahadur’s ma is going through a bad time,” I say. “Omvir’s papa too. Not us.”
“Guru tells good stories,” Lackey No. 1 says.
“Very good stories,” Lackey No. 2 says.
“Jai, we don’t have to leave right now,” Pari says. “The last Purple Line train is at 11:30 p.m. It’s only afternoon now. We’ve plenty of time.”
It’s just like Pari to know everything, even the metro timetable.
“We can’t get home that late,” I say.
“This won’t take long,” Guru says. “And how can we let you leave without having chai in our house?”
“There’s no chai,” Lackey No. 1 says, looking worried.
“We have Parle-G though,” Lackey No. 2 says.
I don’t think we should trust them, but Pari is already walking with Guru and telling him about Bhoot Bazaar and inviting him to visit. He’s her best friend now. Guru’s lackeys hook their thumbs in their pockets and hop behind him like the kangaroos I have seen on TV, switching their guard positions from the right to the left or the left to the right. I should be happy I’m seeing new places but there’s something niggling at my chest, a worm crawling through my insides. Maybe I’m worried about spending Ma’s money. Maybe I’m worried the orange-sweets woman is following me. I turn around and confirm that she isn’t.
We raise our hands so that the vehicles on the road won’t run us over as we cross. Angry honks bash into my ears. Autorickshaws slow down near white people wearing mesh masks, with backpacks as tall as them looming over their shoulders. The auto-drivers shout at the tourists, “You going where? I take you. I, I.” Some men run behind the foreigners shouting, “Taj, madam? We have a good deal for you. Very good deal.”
The other side of the road is full of hotels with neon signs flashing HOTEL ROYAL PINK and INCREDIBLE !NDIA in the smog. Guru and his chelas flit through a tangled lane dark as night. Shops push their wares into our path: ribbons of paan packets and potato chips, nankhatai, kebabs and pink teddy bears with I Love You and Just for You embroidered on their chests.
Guru hares into a narrow lane between two multistoreyed buildings, where someone has stuck tiles with godly photos on both sides to stop people from peeing on the walls. There’s a brown Jesus, a Sikh guru, a Muslim pir, Durga-Mata sitting on a tiger, and Lord Shiva. At the end of the lane is a clearing.
“This is where we live,” Guru says. “Our house. Welcome.”
I look around. There’s no house, no roofs or brick walls, only flattened cardboard boxes piled next to punctured car tires under a banyan tree with upside-down roots. A clothesline has been strung between two of the roots, and on it hang five cream shirts, their collars rust-colored with stains. The banyan tree’s leaves shudder in the smog. Guru’s lackeys spread out cardboard sheets on the ground and ask us to sit. Lackey No. 1 climbs up the tree and, from a hollow, retrieves a sack that he brings down.
Pari points to a barber standing under the sprawling banyan tree, shaving a customer’s soapy-foamy chin. Behind him is a tall table on which he has arranged a mirror and tubes and bottles and brushes and combs. The customer is holding the arms of his chair tight as if he’s frightened the barber will slice his neck.
Lackey No. 2 takes out an open packet of Parle-G biscuits from the sack that No. 1 holds. “Have one,” he says as if it’s a dare.
“I’m not hungry,” Pari says, which must be the biggest lie she has ever told. I say no too, but not because I think the biscuits are made with sleep-pills. They are speckled black with mold.
“We tell stories here at night,” Guru says. “Children come from all over to listen to us.”
“There’s no place where they can watch TV?” I ask.
Pari elbows me in the ribs.
“Guru loves telling stories,” Lackey No. 1 says. “He talks to himself sometimes, or crows and cats and trees, if there isn’t anyone around to listen to him. The children always give him something though, when he finishes a story.”
Lackey No. 2 squints at us as if to check we have understood what he’s saying. Then he rubs his thumb against his index finger to clear any doubt we may have. I can’t believe it. He’s asking us to pay for a story we don’t even want to hear. He’s worse than the corrupt senior constable who came to our basti. Everyone’s mad after money.
“Just give us however much you think is right,” Guru says.
I wonder what will happen if we don’t pay. We could run to the railway station by ourselves; it took us less than ten minutes to get here. Guru can’t do anything to us now, when the barber and his customer are around.
“We only have enough cash to get home,” Pari says in a small voice. I guess he isn’t her best friend anymore.
“Five rupees you can’t spare?” Lackey No. 1 asks.
“Never mind,” Guru says. He sniffs the gauze around his wrist as if it’s a string of jasmine. “We brought you here so you could learn about Mental. There’ll be someone like him in your basti too. You need to find that spirit and ask him to help you.”
Guru sits cross-legged in front of us on a cardboard sheet, hands on his knees, palms facing down as if he’s doing one of Runu-Didi’s yoga poses.
“Even a few years ago, you could have visited the place where Mental used to live, but now it’s been turned into a hair salon,” Lackey No. 1 says.
&nb
sp; “What sort of name is Mental?” I ask. Faiz would have wanted to know the answer too.
“When Mental was alive,” Guru says, “he was a boss-man with eighteen or twenty children working for him, and—”
TWO
THIS STORY WILL SAVE YOUR LIFE
We call her Junction-ki-Rani but when she was a mother—
What do you mean when she was a mother? You don’t stop being a mother just because your children are dead.
Now look at what you have done. You have given away the ending of the story.
How is that the ending? Don’t get mad at me, baba. Just start from the beginning.
Where else will I begin? Maybe you should tell the story. You seem to have become an expert on all these things.
Arrey, meri jaan, don’t be angry. I won’t interrupt you again. We’re waiting. We want to hear you speak. Only you.
We call her Junction-ki-Rani but when she was a mother—that doesn’t sound right.
Jaan, you have never told the story this way before. But then you have never told it without a glass of something strong and dark to slicken your throat first.
Let me try once more.
They say her real name was Mamta, but we only knew her as Junction-ki-Rani. She stood at highway junctions like a scarecrow someone had uprooted from a paddy field and planted under a traffic signal for a laugh. Her thin arms stretched wide like Jatayu’s wings, and curses funnelled out of her mouth like cyclones to shatter windshields.
Cyclones! I was there, right behind your wheelchair, and I didn’t see any cyclones, but you tell it so well, I want to believe you.
Shut up.
The first time we saw Junction-ki-Rani, we thought she had discovered a new way of begging, and we were envious. People pressed buttons to open the windows of their cars, took her photo on their phones, and laughed and ducked when she sent arcs of spit hailing toward them as if their faces were gutters. But they looked at her.
It was a miracle.
You see, no one has the time anymore to glance at us beggars, to feel pity for our faces mangled by time and hunger, for our bandaged legs that end at our knees, for the snot-nosed babies we hold in our hands like bouquets of flowers. The two of us, we plead with people for money through a loudspeaker, no less—here, see, it’s attached to my wheelchair—but no matter how loudly we ask, sometimes it can seem as if the whole world has gone deaf.
We do desperate things to catch people’s eyes. We sneak through traffic to thump on bonnets; we push our faces into the cool windows of cars as if they’re made of water, our tears streaking the glass, hoping a child watching a cartoon on a gadget will look up and exclaim, “Mummy, see that man. Let’s buy him ice cream.”
We told you, we’re desperate.
In the olden days beggars went from door to door, rattled a bolt on the gate, and said, “Ma, is there anything you can spare today?” and people gave them dry rotis left over from the previous night’s dinner or an old kurta they were about to use as a rag to wipe the kitchen counter, or coins if their son had scored high marks in exams or if a wealthy groom had been found for their daughter. But now, those with enough money to feed us live in gated communities, behind walls twice our height, with signs that say BEWARE OF BIG DOGS or DON’T EVEN THINK OF PARKING HERE or NO PARKING ELSE TIRES WILL BE DEFLATED. Their mansions are guarded by sentries who sit on plastic chairs outside the gates in winter afternoons so that the sun will thread its warmth through their bones.
Is this a lesson about beggars? What about Junction-ki-Rani?
You’re interrupting. Again.
A thousand apologies.
We thought Junction-ki-Rani was a beggar like us until someone told us otherwise. She stood tall in a green sari with white stripes, and we watched its edges unravel over time, and its colors darken from lashings of exhaust fumes. Her hair was in part as white as the light of gods, and in part as black as shadow. She spoke clearly and loudly, drawing out each of her swear words so that there was an eerie pause between sister and fucker or son and dog—the truth is that the terms she used were much more salty, but it would be inappropriate to repeat them here, and indeed unnecessary.
But they’re funny.
Not now.
Please, continue. Ignore this idiot’s ramblings.
Junction-ki-Rani didn’t care about etiquette, and sometimes lifted up her sari and underskirt and pulled down her underwear and did her business right on the road, and those offended called the police. She was arrested and released, who knows how often? Perhaps the moon or the stars or the kites in the sky kept count.
Each time she came out of prison, she occupied a different junction. Coins collected at her feet, tossed toward her by those who mistook her curses for blessings, or understood them for what they were and pitied her, having recognized her from the time they had seen her on the TV news. But she didn’t touch the money. She never bought food or a glass of tea. People claimed she ate stray dogs and cats and goats that wandered too far from their homes; they said she stuck out her tongue and lapped water from rainbow-colored, petrol-scented puddles. None of that worried us. We were like egrets picking off ticks from the backs of cows. We took her coins and argued about how to apportion them between us. We didn’t care about her.
Not until she died.
Now you have given away the ending, fool.
But jaan, that’s not the ending either.
Someone told us—
—was it the rickshaw-puller or the peanut vendor?
Will you be quiet, please?
We never met Junction-ki-Rani in the places we hid when the Anti-Begging Task Force tried to catch us, or at the shelters where we queued on nights the winter-cold snapped our bones, or in the long lines for the free food rich people distributed on Ram Navami or Janmashtami. But we heard all these stories about her: she once worked as a cook in eight or ten houses; she lost her husband to alcohol; her son shipped himself as cargo to Dubai from a port in Mumbai on the day he turned eighteen and ended up in Nigeria as a corpse. They say Junction-ki-Rani safety-pinned all her hopes on her daughter who studied engineering in the day and gave tuition in the evening, but four men snatched the girl one night as she walked back home. The men returned her to the exact spot from where they grabbed her, but only after tearing her apart such that she couldn’t be mended.
Junction-ki-Rani lit her daughter’s funeral pyre because there was no one else—certainly no man—to pick up a burning log and free the daughter’s soul. Afterward she rummaged through hot embers with her bare hands to gather ashes and shards of her dead daughter’s warm bones. She carried them in a pot to Varanasi to scatter in the holy Ganga.
For a long time, she believed the police would find the men who attacked her daughter. Newspapers interviewed her, and she appeared on TV to talk about her daughter the engineer-to-be-who-would-now-never-be, but the newspapers were discarded, eaten by cows or swept away by brooms. A bomb blast that killed and maimed a hundred displaced her daughter’s face from the screen. When she spoke to them, the police wondered if her daughter had loose morals; everyone knew only a certain kind of woman was found alone in the street after a certain hour.
Junction-ki-Rani returned to her cooking job in the eight or ten houses where she had always worked, and the madams said how unfortunate such things keep happening to you in their different languages, Bengali or Punjabi or Hindi or Marathi, and then they asked her to deseed chillies because baba or nana had developed acidity in the brief while she had been absent. Acidity so bad we thought he was having a heart attack. But everything Junction-ki-Rani cooked tasted of her daughter’s ashes. No matter how much she scrubbed, her fingers smelled of smoke and fire and burnt flesh. The madams let her go.
That was when she started standing at junctions, swearing at passersby. In every man’s face she saw the face of her daughter’s killer.
No one got rich. We were beggars then and we are beggars now.
Junction-ki-Rani lived for a year after her daughter’s death, or maybe it was two years. When you live like us without a house, with nothing to mark the passage of time except the weather, and the weather is mostly the same year after year, maybe a little too hot or too cold, it’s hard for us to tell. We don’t even know when we were born.
The police sent a van to collect Junction-ki-Rani’s corpse. We heard that they cut her up like her daughter at a mortuary and burnt her at a crematorium by the river. They did that much for her; watched the wood crackle and pop as flames licked that poor woman clean. We thought she had finally found peace.
We can see, this is hard for you to hear. This is not the kind of story parents tell their children as they fall asleep. But it’s good that you’re hearing it. You should know what our world is really like.
If you have finished with that lecture—
—of course, my apologies again.
For a few months after her death, we didn’t hear much about Junction-ki-Rani, and then we were always hearing about her.
By the traffic junction she frequented the most was a tomb with a dome made scaly by rain and fumes and pigeon shit; its grounds thrived with thorny shrubs whose names no one knew. People say when she was alive, Junction-ki-Rani used to go to the tomb in between cursing the men on the highway, to rest when her buckling legs couldn’t hold her up anymore.
After her death, lovers from other parts of the city who used to disappear into this tomb for whole afternoons didn’t stay half as long. Something gritty in the air, the men said. Voices called out to them. Smells brought to mind the times they had sinned, perfume bottles broken in anger, the asafoetida in overturned dishes of masoor dal, the turmeric in the warm milk their wives gave them on nights they felt the beginnings of a cold or a fever—and here they were, with women who weren’t their wives. The air had a strange energy to it as in the second before a closed-up fist makes contact with a cheek.
Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line Page 11
