No God in Sight

by Altaf Tyrewala

  I walk up and down the veranda. I descend the stairs and look up, against the midday sun, at the two-storied building. Every window and door is hopelessly bolted.

  Roop suhana lagta hai, chand purana… That disgusting film song. I look around. To my right, in the shade of a sprawling tree, I spot a lone havaldar slumped in a white plastic chair. Tere aagey o jaanam… It’s coming from the red transistor pressed to his right ear.

  ‘Excuse me!’ I shout. The havaldar opens his eyes, blinks lazily (once, twice), and closes them. What cheek!

  With my scalp marinating like chicken and my legs quivering like seaweed, I walk toward the world’s most enthusiastic policeman. ‘I said, excuse me! Hello!’

  Shenior Conishtable Shegde

  Yes, hello-hello. What hello-hello? What should I hello?

  Chi-aayeela! Cannot the fatty bambola see the station is closed? The lock on the door means CAL-O-SDA, closed. No one is here. Our dear PM is visiting this dangerous city so all policemen have gone for roadside duty. Except me. I am here because today is my last day. I am going to be dismissed from duty this evening.

  Before leaving for bandobast, Inspector Chavan showed me the red file. ‘Your dismissal orders are finally here,’ he said. ‘Stay back, relax, when I come back in the evening I will give you the discharge letter.’ Chavan would not meet my eyes. Poor boy, I feel sad for him for feeling bad for me when there is nothing anyone can do.

  Two weeks ago, three officers from Anti-Corruption Bureau caught me taking five hundred rupees from the owner of a Chinese food stall on Jamnadas Marg. They swooped in as Bittu was putting money in my shirt pocket. Bittu was more alarmed than me. ‘I did not tell them, I did not tell them!’ he kept shouting as the ACB snakes took me away for questioning.

  I know Bittu did not tell them. The next morning I asked the cobbler, the popcorn seller, the batata-vada vendor, the paani-puri man—I did not threaten them; I just wanted to know who told ACB that I took money from everyone every month. ‘We did not do anything,’ they all said. Yes, but who reported my name? ‘We did not do anything,’ they kept saying like stupids.

  It’s okay; after Chavan returns this evening, I will hand over my cap, my belt, and my ID. In a few days I will join my brother’s family in our village near Lonavala and apply for a guard’s job in one of the factories there. But I am worried for Gorya and Rajesh and Bittu. Junior Constable Dhodpode, the one who is going to replace me, is not like me. He is young and strict and too much of a policeman to tolerate sob stories from people doing business on the street illegally. He will tell them to pay the official monthly fine of two thousand rupees or get out and go do business elsewhere. I am most worried for Mohan, that legless, myopic, nearly mad newspaper seller; where will he go?

  In the jeep, as the ACB men drove me to their office, I tried to talk to them, tried to tell them about the lives of people hawking on the streets. They have nowhere else to go. But no, I do not support what they do, so every month I try to break their backs a little, not by fining them the official two thousand rupees, but by taking what I know they can afford to give: five hundred from Bittu, three hundred from the two Rajeshes, hundred from Tukku Mama, and fifty from Kaliya, the mute coal seller. This way they remain where they are; they don’t become bigger than their roadside selves, and they don’t become dangerous city scum.

  ‘Sit shut!’ one of the ACB men shouted at me. ‘Shameless, corrupt man. Save these stories for the tribunal!’

  I looked at the three ACB faces. They looked so grave and stern, more machine than human. Sometimes my replacement Dhodpode has a similar look on his face, upright and no-nonsense. I want to know: Who are these new-generation officials? What country do they come from? Arrey, don’t they know that these petty criminals and roadside businessmen are our people only, we are just like them, how can we be so strict with everyone, how can we go about enforcing laws and ravaging lives like dictators? Policemen. We are policemen.

  ‘My, my,’ said the magistrate at the tribunal, ‘now tell me, Senior Constable Shegde, if you feel so sorry for the illegal denizens of Jamnadas Marg, why do you take cuts from their meager livelihoods every month?’ I looked around the room in disbelief. Chi-aayeela, where was I? I felt like asking the magistrate, this is India only, no? ‘Everyone does it,’ I said. ‘Really?’ the magistrate said. ‘Can you name your colleagues who take bribes?’ Bastard. ‘Everyone does it,’ I repeated softly. The magistrate huffed: ‘Yes, and until we can afford to dismiss the entire police force and risk anarchy, I am dismissing you.’ Two newspapermen in the room jumped to their feet shouting, ‘Bravo! Bravo!’ The magistrate nodded humbly.

  Bastards. We are not police for the rich and salaried only.

  We are also police for Nimmi the whore and Manilal the guttercleaner. Once Nimmi joked with me, ‘Shegde, the day I get a license, you dare not ask me for money.’ A customer told her that the government is thinking of giving licenses to sluts. Good, let them; and let them also give a permit to Umar-bhai for his barbecue-beef stand and an ID card to Bhanu-ben for her hooch shop. When all these people are respected by the government, so-called corrupt officials like me can run after real criminals who loot and murder. Question is, will there be any such criminals left?

  ‘Excuse me, havaldar! I am talking to you!’

  Deva rey, and now this woman. Educated people are always talking to you. I switch off my transistor. ‘Station closed, madam. You go, come back in evening. Okay?’

  The fatty acts shocked. ‘What? How can a police station be closed?’

  I look her over from top to bottom. Looks Indian, all right. Then why is she asking such mad-type questions? These people, these people are the problem. The police station must always remain open, the streets must always be clean, the neighborhood must always be quiet. They pay a little tax and they think they can demand their own tiny country within the country. If it was an emergency, she would have dialed 100. Since she has decided to grace Sanpada Police Chowki with her bulk, I am sure she can wait till evening for the station to open. What can I do anyway? Tomorrow I will also be like her: a nobody, a civilian. Besides, did she not call me havaldar?

  I get up from the chair under her shocked gaze and start walking to the barracks in the back. She follows me for a few steps, gurgling nonsensically, ‘Havaldar… excuse me… I want to…I mean…havaldar…’ Then she gives up.

  Ah, finally some peace. These barracks were built the year before I joined the service. See that fan hanging from the ceiling? The white one in the middle? A few years ago Pawar hanged himself from there. Fortunately, the fan survived. Pawar had joined the service with me. Overly honest. He was strict with civilians—that, one could tolerate. But he was also lippy with the higher-ups, the inspectors, and superintendents, asking them uncomfortable questions all the time. They kept Pawar Junior Constable; made me Senior after five years. But that’s not why Pawar hanged himself. His wife ran away. What a fool, no? Is that something to kill yourself over? They say sometimes that fan starts on its own. I am sure Pawar is still around. ‘Pawar?’ I look up at the ceiling, ‘Pawar, you are there?’

  ‘Excuse me? Havaldar?’

  Chi-aayeela! This lady has followed me here even! Look at her, filling up the entire entrance to the barracks. Good thing I did not strip to my underwear. ‘Oh madam, I tell you no, station closed. Why you doing much-much? Go, come back in evening.’ I start to close the door to the barracks.

  ‘Please, please!’ she says, and starts to cry.

  Deva rey! Pinglé-madam should have been here. Junior Constabless Pinglé. Women can handle women well. What can a man do with a woman in tears? He is helpless.

  ‘Tch, tch, what is this madam, why you are crying? Come, come in.’ I lead her into the barracks and ask her to sit on a bench. I sit opposite her. ‘Now tell me. What happened? House burgled, chain snatched, underworld called, what?’

  She tells me.

  My jaw drops. What? All this hassle for a runaway husband? Has she not se
en herself in the mirror? ‘You have his photo?’

  She stops crying; smiles a little. She removes the photo from her purse and shows me.

  Aaho, now I understand how the two got together. ‘Good,’ I say, ‘what’s his name?’

  ‘Tambawala,’ she says.

  Yes, but that’s a surname. What’s her husband’s name?

  ‘S,’ she says.

  Is this any time to be coy? S? What S? Suraj, Sumit, Sudanshu, what?

  ‘Sohail…’

  What? ‘Sohail? Like Sohail Khan, the actor?’

  She nods, and then she says, ‘But my name is Avantika.’

  ‘You have some ID card or something?’

  She looks more scared now. She tries to take back her husband’s photo. No, no, I shake my head, ID card first. ‘Show whatever you have. Bank card, ration card, anything.’

  She brings out something from her handbag. ‘My railway ID.’ She gives it to me.

  It’s true. Name: Avantika Joshi.

  ‘Why still Joshi?’ I ask.

  ‘My husband did not insist on a name change. He is very open-minded, very liberal. He even lets me wear sindoor and mangalsutra.’

  I look closely at her head and neck. ‘And he lets you go for puja also? To the temple?’

  ‘Yes, yes, of course.’

  She again tries to take back the card and her husband’s photo. I pull them away and place them beside me on the bench. ‘Which temple?’ I ask.

  Beads of sweat welt on her cheeks. What can I do? The effect of the khaki uniform is beyond my control. ‘Haanh, madam? Which temple you go to?’

  ‘… Siddhi Vinayak.’

  Really? ‘Which god you pray to?’

  ‘… Krishna bhagwan.’

  Krishna? What nonsense, there is no Krishna idol in Siddhi Vinayak. Every devout Hindu knows that.

  I hand back her ID card and husband’s photo. I stand up. ‘Okay, madam, go. I will file the report.’

  She looks up at me; she looks confused. ‘Just like that? Don’t you need more infor…’

  ‘Yes, madam, this is Hindustan, not Arabastan. Everything happens like this only. You go now, okay?’

  She gets up hesitantly. ‘But…’

  I join my raised hands with a loud clap. ‘Arrey-aye, madam, enough! If you do not like it here, take your miya-ji husband and go to Pakistan.’

  She leaves.

  On That Very Same Afternoon

  GK lay on his bed, arms and legs entangled with his lover’s, their bodies so thoroughly enmeshed it was hard to tell them apart. The phone rang.

  GK awoke, freeing himself from the snarl of limbs as his right arm reached for the receiver.

  The caller was Balbir Pasha, the Assistant Commissioner of Police himself.

  GK sat up. This had better be good. And it was. Balbir Pasha sounded nonchalant and to the point, like someone downplaying his own success, as he ‘suggested’ that GK get to Sanjay Gandhi Park ‘if’ he wanted to, because, well, the bodies wouldn’t be around for too long, and the ambulances were already on their way, and GK could stay where he was if he didn’t ‘wish’ to report how barely an hour ago Balbir Pasha and his unit had carried out one of the biggest ambushes on terrorists in months.

  Rina, GK’s lover, placed a hand on his bare back; GK shrugged it off.

  Like all bastards with authority, Balbir Pasha was now revealing his inability to draw the line: he wanted GK to be at the park in fifteen minutes, cameraman and all; sorry, that was all the time he would allow before inviting rival news channels to cover the event.

  GK wasn’t intimidated. He only feared those whose price he didn’t know. Balbir Pasha’s was three lakhs—the amount he had taken from Breaking News, GK’s employer, in exchange for a promise to notify them first of any newsworthy event.

  ‘I’ll be there in an hour,’ GK informed the Assistant Commissioner of Police.

  And what were he and his men to do until then, Balbir Pasha asked. The bodies had begun to bloat, flies were descending in droves and, if he wasn’t mistaken, he had even seen the MCBC News van prowling past the park looking for something to…

  ‘Ballu, I said I’ll be there in an hour,’ GK reiterated. He wasn’t afraid of sounding testy. GK had been there when Sir-ji, the sordid mogul who condescended to own Breaking News, had patted Balbir Pasha’s cheek at a party and said, ‘Ballu, look after us, yes?’ and the Assistant Commissioner of Police had let loose a torrent of deferential ji-sirs.

  GK smirked as Balbir Pasha hung up with the meekness befitting a Ballu.

  Rina touched GK’s bare back once again. GK leapt to his feet to flee this woman attempting to turn a straightforward one-night stand into something icky. Sex, like food, could be had any way, any time, appetite notwithstanding. But intimacy, like flavor, was an indulgence—and unfortunately for GK there were some faces he just couldn’t see himself slobbering over.

  ‘I got to go. You’ll fax me the stuff, right?’ GK asked directly and brazenly.

  Rina thumped her head back on the pillow. ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah.’ Rina was a newspaper journalist working hard on the first big story of her year-old career—a story that she hoped would help rocket her standing, find her a well-placed husband and maybe, just maybe, bring down the state government. The day Rina’s story broke, a few hours after copies of India Informer had been home-delivered to thousands of subscribers, Breaking News would air a detailed TV report on the story, anchored by GK, of course, while other newspapers and news channels looked about stupidly to make sense of this double whammy. Last night, while coordinating their joint efforts, it wasn’t clear who had buckled under whose advances—or whether any advance had even been made. It was assumed that everyone would screw everyone, because that’s how the news world was run—by a hyperintelligent, manic, sensualist population of bedfellows. Failing decency, the only way one could call upon others was by having fucked them—or at least their brains.

  ‘No bye-bye kiss?’ Rina called out.

  GK froze at the door, horrified by this new request. ‘Oh, okay,’ he said and jerkily approached Rina, who cracked up laughing and began pointing at GK as if there were other witnesses to the scene.

  ‘Pussy,’ GK smirked, and turned around and left.

  The Breaking News van picked GK up from the highway. The van was splattered with hundreds of inch-sized stickers of the Breaking News logo—a bluish-white egg with a jagged crack running down its shell.

  The channel had been around for over three years: people had ceased to find the not-quite-cracked-egg logo funny.

  ‘You haven’t shaved,’ was the first thing Punita, the producer, noticed as GK boarded the back of the air-conditioned van. And in a few seconds more she had logged criticisms on GK’s hair, his sweaty shirt, and the dark circles under his eyes. ‘It’s all going in my report,’ Punita informed him. She handed GK a tube of foundation and a hairbrush. ‘What’s the lead?’

  ‘Just a few hours ago, in a brave encounter, the Mumbai Police shot down X alleged militants holed up in Sanjay Gandhi Park. Assistant Commissioner of Police Balbir Pasha claims…’

  ‘Enough,’ Punita croaked. She was sick of this, all of this: driving around this shitty city for hours from riots to accidents, from one political briefing to another, one murder to the next, scampering around for news, breaking her head over link-up failures and studio screwups and asshole news presenters like GK who thought they were stars.

  The van had entered the park spread over hundreds of acres of prime suburban land. The driver stopped to ask several people, who looked like they lived in the park, the location of the police–terrorist encounter. No one had heard a shootout, or anything about it.

  Eventually, two policemen riding past on a motorcycle directed the Breaking News team to the scene of the encounter. ‘See that forest?’ the officer on the pillion seat pointed to a profusion of trees in the distance. ‘Go in, drive toward your…your right, and you’ll come across a small pond. Drive around it, and right behind
a hillock you’ll find… the, you know…’

  Punita glanced at GK making last-ditch efforts to improve his appearance in the handheld mirror. The two would have about ten minutes to gather information on the encounter, jot down a script, and broadcast the breaking news for the nation’s indifferent viewing. She ordered Girish, the cameraman-cum-technician seated beside the driver, to activate the satellite linkup.

  GK looked to his producer. ‘Fine?’

  ‘Gorgeous,’ Punita said without looking up from her laptop.

  *

  Fifteen. When GK learned how many terrorists Balbir Pasha’s unit had cornered and shot in the ambush, he smiled in spite of himself. Fifteen was a good number—not low enough to be ignored, not high enough to shock.

  The Breaking News team, after walking past the barricade of police vans, arrived at the scene of the encounter.

  Balbir Pasha was sitting on a stool, like a shikari, some yards from the corpses, all fifteen of which were laid out in a tight, neat row.

  ‘Finally!’ he cried out on seeing Girish, Punita, and GK. He stood up and began pacing about. ‘Come on, let’s do this quickly. We have to take the bodies to the morgue.’

  A gang of policemen converged behind Pasha, all of them staring goggle-eyed at the Breaking News team. ‘These are the heroes of the day!’ Balbir Pasha pointed to the policemen. ‘My fearless team. Are we going live?’

  ‘Uh… ya…’ GK managed to answer. He, Punita, and the cameraman were transfixed by the row of bodies.

  ‘We were tipped off by an anonymous caller this morning. I gathered my unit and we combed the entire park for two hours before we came upon this clearing where this bunch was sitting in a circle planning their attack on the prime minister. You know he’s in the city for a week. My unit surrounded these jehadis from all sides. We wanted to capture them but they reached for their guns so we fired and finished the whole lot. It’s a proud day for the Mumbai police force and a proud day for the country.’

  Punita visualized the angle. Long shot? Overhead? Something zany or something still? She glanced at the bodies. Fly-infested. Mud-spattered. They were all dressed in shirts and trousers. Some had beards, some didn’t. There were no pools of blood drooling from the carcasses. No remnants of gore. For men who had been shot just a few hours ago, these fifteen looked rather comfortable in their deadness.