Pretty Vile Girl

by Rickie Khosla

  5

  A Bitch’s Old Tricks

  Seven years earlier

  It had been several days since that afternoon when Deepika and Jolly had sat on a wooden bench in the verdant quietude of Hauz Khas Lake and agreed on a punishment for Jasmine. The question of how to execute it remained unclear. The loss of Sumi was fresh, the wound too raw, the pain severe, the anger uncontrolled. Taking down a mammoth like Jasmine Bhatia required rage and fury, but not that of a madman—unfocused and oblivious of consequences. While it was agony for Deepika, she resolved to wait till she could see straight.

  A month after Sumi’s death, Deepika was having a quiet night with the kind of thoughts that she used to once only share with her dead friend.

  ‘A lesbian, huh?’ Deepika wondered as she lay wide awake on her bed. She had been repeatedly mulling over what Jolly had said about his wife a few days ago. ‘How does that work? I mean, what do “they”, you know—what do they “use”? Each other’s fingers, I guess? Other things? But what?’ She thought of a cucumber and smiled.

  She’d talked about homosexuality with friends sometimes, in whispers, giggling, usually trying to figure out what certain gaalis meant. There was a movie called Fire that some girls had mentioned once, but Deepika had been too young to watch it. She wished she had easy access to the internet. She knew one could watch millions of ways to ‘do sex’ on it.

  Over the past several days, Deepika had tried to recall if Jasmine had ever indulged in inappropriate behaviour with any of the girls in the orphanage. The answer was ‘Yes’ to inappropriate behaviour (constantly, in fact), but a resounding ‘No’ to sexually inappropriate behaviour. If anything, Jasmine had always maintained a physical distance from the children.

  So, Jasmine had not been attracted to anyone at the orphanage. ‘Not even to me,’ Deepika thought as she lay in her bed. ‘Does she not find me desirable?’

  Deepika touched her bosom from above her cotton nightie. She was aware that all the boys in the locality and the ones who constantly loitered around her school were attracted to her—their desire could be seen on their faces.

  And it strangely bothered her that Jasmine had never looked at her that way.

  ‘What kind of a useless lesbian is she?’ she thought, before drifting off to sleep.

  There were police at the orphanage when the children returned from school the next afternoon. Subconsciously, Deepika reached out for Ujjwal’s hand and held it tight. She was not sure what had made her do that.

  No matter what their intention, the police in India always bear the same, standard demeanour—the image of a lazy, entitled lion, mostly idling in the shade with no pressing task at hand, yet ready to pounce and grab anything it pleases, whenever it wishes. Just like it is with a lion, the presence of the police also induces the desire to flee in everyone in their proximity. The only way to prevent the beasts from attacking you or to make them modestly amenable to your wishes, is by flinging a large, juicy bone at them. Their moustaches are always a tad too large, their bellies always hang just a bit too loose. Even the colour of the fabric the police adorn matches with the limited palette of the wildcat.

  Yes, the lion and the police in India are much similar—except that only the former inspires awe.

  The animal at the door of Innocent Dreams that afternoon was Sub-Inspector Puran Kumar, as his little black badge with white lettering displayed. He was about 5’8, a mere inch taller than Deepika, though the two were no match when it came to girth. The steel buckle of his belt was not even visible under the canopy of his mighty stomach. Deepika sensed he was in his mid-thirties. He was flanked by a minion who most likely behaved like a lion himself in the absence of the bigger Boss-Cat.

  There was hushed silence as the children assembled inside the main hall on the ground floor. Deepika wondered where Jasmine was. It was strange that the children had been left by themselves to face the policemen.

  ‘So, are these all of you… or are there some more?’ barked the SI at the tallest person in the group. Shadab was already an impressive 5’11, but mentally, the 14-year-old was at least four years younger than his chronological age, as a consequence of years of thrashings he had received as a child. Nervously, he looked at the floor, saying nothing.

  ‘Oye, did you not hear me?’

  ‘Sir, please address your questions to me,’ Deepika volunteered. ‘I am the oldest. And yes, this is the whole group.’

  Puran Kumar chose to ignore Deepika’s offer, but did pull his gaze away from Shadab to another boy in the assembly.

  ‘OK, boy, you tell me, what’s your name?’ The question had been tossed at Ujjwal who was absent-mindedly gazing at a spot in the wall ten feet behind the policeman. Blood began to drain from Deepika’s face and her hold on her brother’s hand tightened. Ujjwal made no attempt to pull it away.

  ‘Sir, he can’t…’

  ‘I asked you a question, boy!’ the policeman said loudly.

  ‘My brother doesn’t speak, Sir,’ said Deepika, quickly grasping the pause in the policeman’s one-sided conversation. This time, she successfully managed to divert his attention towards her. ‘Thank God!’ her mind exclaimed.

  ‘So this is the goonga boy then? Your brother?’

  ‘He is not goonga!’ complained Deepika sharply, but as soon as those words escaped her lips, she felt a sense of foreboding. She was suddenly cognizant of the inopportune timing of her rising anger against a person whose feathers were best left unruffled.

  ‘Yaar, Satpal, we had been told that the boy we’re looking for was goonga. Now this girl is saying that he is not goonga. So, who to believe?’ the policeman mocked, while his flunky nodded his head in bogus bewilderment.

  ‘Sir, he is not a mute. He just hasn’t been… talking for some time, that’s all,’ Deepika tried to sound as reasonable with her explanation as possible.

  The policeman stared at her.

  ‘So, he could talk earlier but is unable to talk right now?’

  Deepika heaved a sigh of relief—the man had finally understood her point.

  ‘Yes, Sir, when Ujjwal was younger, he could…’

  ‘…talk, but these days he has stopped using his tongue. Because he has developed other, more interesting parts of his body that he can now use, right?’ The policeman’s tone dropped a couple of notes to highlight his intent.

  ‘How long has your haraamzaada brother had physical relations with the girl who died?’

  Deepika was stunned. It was like someone had slapped her. She recoiled reflexively and let go of the hand she had been clutching. Had she heard the policeman properly? How could he be saying what he was saying?

  ‘Sumi…’ she mumbled.

  ‘Instead of putting their brains in studies and cricket, all that these no-good bastards do is put their dicks in places where they have no business being in,’ the policeman continued. ‘Yaar, Satpal, do you think the boy will talk to us at the thana?’ he asked his ally.

  The lackey responded with a shrug.

  ‘What if we gave him toffees at the station? Children like toffees! He will speak up then, won’t he?’

  It was more of a statement than a question. It met with a snigger from Satpal, who knew by now precisely how he was meant to respond to his superior.

  The obnoxious routine continued for a few more minutes. It became clear that the police had come to take Ujjwal away.

  ‘Haul this rapist into the jeep,’ Puran Kumar said, which made his junior jump forward towards the boy.

  ‘Stop it!’ Deepika said, her eyes large and flashing at Puran Kumar. ‘How can you take away a young child from an orphanage like this? Without any proof? Without even an adult guardian present? This is illegal!’

  Sub-Inspector Puran Kumar was hardly used to being censured by teenage girls, least of all by the likes of Deepika, an orphan of zero significance. The man was immediately livid at the impertinence. He stepped forward and slapped Deepika so hard that its impact literally flung her four feet to
the side and onto the ground. Deepika was stunned by the power and suddenness of the policeman’s action. As she lay shapeless on the floor, her head started to spin. Her ears were ringing noisily, drowning out all other ambient sounds. There was no pain in her left cheek where the man’s hand had come crashing down like a hammer. It was as if that part of her body had simply died and fallen off. Her hand nudged up to her lips because she could taste blood in her mouth. Sure enough, her fingers came back soiled with streaks of crimson.

  Deepika looked up at the pot-bellied man from her position on the floor. The man was standing tall and glaring back. She looked at the rest of the audience gathered towards her side. She saw their ashen faces. For just a second, the siblings’ eyes connected—and then the boy’s gaze wandered off again. But, in that second, Deepika was sure she had seen… her brother the way he used to be before the accident.

  There was a booming sound in the room that seemed to be finally cutting through the ringing in her ears. The angry wildcat was roaring about something. She tried to make out what it was. The first word she understood was ‘Haraamzaadi’.

  ‘… happens to ill-mannered fools who try to interfere with police business!’ the man was yelling.

  Within the next minute, Ujjwal was being yanked by his collar and dragged to the white Gypsy parked outside the orphanage boundary wall. He still had his school bag hanging from his right shoulder. Junior Cat suddenly noticed the bag as he was about to shove the boy into the jeep’s rear. He angrily pulled it off Ujjwal’s shoulders and flung it back inside the orphanage compound, where the heavy knapsack fell and broke a flowerpot. Then, once their criminal had been secured, the two cops got into the front seats of the vehicle and sped off.

  Deepika watched the whole drama lying on the floor of the orphanage hall. She felt nothing, except the tickle of a tear rolling off her right eye and down the cheek. The left cheek was still dead.

  It was only when the Khaki Monsters were gone for a full five minutes that Shadab felt confident enough to bend down and help his sister.

  Jasmine Bhatia didn’t seem too perturbed that one of her wards had been hauled away by the police on trumped up charges.

  ‘How can you be so sure that he is innocent?’ she said to Deepika later that evening when the desperate girl accosted her the moment she entered the orphanage. ‘It’s not as if that goonga could have spoken to you about his feelings. Remember, all young boys have such filthy tendencies!’

  ‘But not him! He is my brother! And wouldn’t Sumi have told me if she was interested in Ujjwal that way?’

  ‘Oh, maybe she wanted to hide her big secret from everyone… especially you.’

  Deepika bit her tongue to not tell Jasmine that she knew the truth about Sumi’s relationship.

  ‘This is Jolly’s mess and he needs to bloody fix it!’ she decided instead, realising there was no point in wasting time with Jasmine. Deepika decided to bunk school the next day to make an important trip to Green Park.

  As usual, Jolly had been completely unaware of his wife’s well-planned scheme with the police.

  Sumi’s death at the abortion clinic was caused because neither had the practitioners there done enough to know of her past medical history nor were they prepared to deal with the medical emergency their negligence had caused. A few days after her death, a disgruntled employee of the clinic had quietly alerted the authorities about it via an anonymous phone call. The Haryana Police had smelled an opportunity and had knocked on the doors of everyone who could be coerced into paying for the inevitable cover-up. One of those doors was Jasmine Bhatia’s.

  ‘Yes,’ she admitted that one of her orphanage’s residents had got pregnant.

  ‘Yes,’ she implied that it could be a case of rape.

  ‘Yes,’ she said, one of her wards was responsible for that pregnancy.

  Plenty of money changed hands. In the end, a voiceless scapegoat had to be found to pin all the blame on. And that was why Ujjwal had been shackled to the rear door of a police Gypsy and hauled away like a criminal.

  Jasmine had never imagined that her husband would suss any of this out so she was shocked when Jolly confronted her about Ujjwal’s arrest.

  ‘How could you pin your crime on a handicapped, innocent boy, Jasmine?’ a livid Jolly screamed at his wife.

  ‘You are talking as if he is your child!’ Jasmine replied, quickly recovering from the surprise caused by Jolly’s discovery.

  ‘He is not my child, but aren’t you supposed to be like his mother?’

  Jasmine laughed at the comment. ‘You should be thanking me for the favour I have done to you. I made the police look the other way! Remember, Sumi had no birth certificate. How do you even know she was of legal age when you fucked her? Because she told you she was almost nineteen? Hah, I could just as easily say that she was still a minor.’

  Jolly looked angrily at his wife.

  ‘Look,’ Jasmine continued, ‘Ujjwal is a minor. At best, the judge will give him a rap on his wrist or kick his butt and let him go. No harm done!’

  ‘I am going to get the best lawyer I can to make sure that the kid does not pay for a crime he did not commit,’ Jolly said.

  ‘Well, you had better think this through carefully, my dear husband. If they let the boy go, they just might come after you!’ Jasmine warned.

  ‘Oh, really? And who will give me away? You?’

  The woman had no answer. In a marriage where love was lost, quid pro quo was a dirty game.

  True to his word, Jolly engaged the best criminal lawyers in the city.

  On a Sunday morning, more than a week after the arrest drama had taken place at Innocent Dreams, a white police Gypsy drove up to the gates of the orphanage, kicked Ujjwal out of the vehicle, and drove off. No official bothered to get out of the jeep, let alone have a word with anyone in the house. Not that it mattered, though. The residents of the orphanage were simply delighted to have Ujjwal back. If Ujjwal was thrilled to be back home, he didn’t show it. In fact, he didn’t show any emotion of any kind.

  ‘What did they do to you?!’ cried Deepika as she clutched her brother’s head in her arms. ‘Did they hurt you a lot?’ she asked, searching for signs of injury.

  Ujjwal was soon tired of being the cynosure of all eyes and hands during the impromptu celebration in the hall. Deepika had to pull him away from the other children and take him to her own corner in the dorm so he could rest. There, lying quietly on her bed, Ujjwal looked more gaunt than usual. His under-eyes were dark and his left cheek was bruised. Deepika’s hand subconsciously went up to touch the left side of her own face.

  Ujjwal didn’t respond to any of his sister’s ministrations. He stared intently at a hole in the floor where some of the cement had come off. The hole had turned black, filled with months and years of accumulated dirt. Black. Much like the imagery of the past few days in Ujjwal’s already colourless life. No one was ever going to learn about the torture the poor boy had suffered at the Police Station during the days and the Juvenile Remand Home during the nights. The cycle of savagery had continued for almost a week—until Jolly’s lawyers had been able to secure the boy’s release.

  Deepika raised her hand towards his bare forehead and dabbed it. Despite the trauma on her brother’s face, she looked pacified. ‘Thank God you are back. I am never going to let them take you away from me again. Never. Even if I have to kill someone for it!’

  ‘Do you want me to make you a sandwich? Jam and butter wali? Just like Mummy used to make for us?’

  The boy said nothing, but his eyelids fluttered a few times. Acknowledgement? Deepika took it as a ‘Yes’ and jumped off the bed. She was ready to plead and cajole the neighbourhood kirana store bhaiya for some supplies.

  The relief of Ujjwal’s return was short-lived though. In spite of Jolly’s lawyers, the prosecutors representing the State of Haryana appealed to the court for the re-arrest of Ujjwal Ahluwalia, beseeching the judge to be mindful of the safety of the other wards at the orphan
age. The application added that ‘one bad fish’ had already poisoned the pond of Innocent Dreams and had caused the pregnancy leading to the death of an innocent girl. Sending the rapist back to the orphanage was certain to cause more destruction.

  This time, the judge sided with the prosecutors. Ujjwal was remanded to custody at the same Juvenile Remand Home where he had recently spent the most torturous week of his life.

  Had Jasmine Bhatia been around when the ruling was being read out, she would have smiled at the outcome. Conversely, had Deepika been present, she may have lynched a few people. Of course, neither of them were in court. Only Ujjwal was—and he displayed no emotion.

  Deepika got the news in the afternoon, after school, when Jolly came to see her at the orphanage. She collapsed in a puddle of tears despite Jolly’s repeated assurances that he was going to do all he could to get the boy home soon.

  None of his hollow words mattered anymore.

  In the wee hours of the morning, the police was summoned to the Juvenile Remand Home in Manesar, Haryana, by a panicked night-duty sentry. When they arrived an hour later, they encountered a grisly crime scene. There were three bodies lying in the building’s basement, secluded from the cell-like dormitories of the facility. The dead were identified as two 16-year-old inmates and the warden of the Remand Home. The police also discovered an iron rod lying next to the bodies. It had been used to bash the faces and smash the throats of each of the victims. The warden’s neck was mangled so badly that it was almost severed from his body. All the men also had savagely mutilated genitals. There was blood everywhere, sprayed on the walls and in rivulets on the floor—but most of it seemed to have drained from the three bodies and collected into a single puddle on the far side of the cell, like three bloody rivers flowing into a crimson ocean. It appeared that the men might have still been alive after the barbaric beating, with their lives slowly oozing into unconsciousness, and eventually, death.

  Interestingly, the hair on the head of the warden had been charred clear, making him look like some grotesque bald-headed monster from a horror film. The top and sides of his head were smeared with the soot of his own burnt hair. A cigarette lighter, presumably used for the purpose, was found tossed in the big puddle of blood. There was an acrid smell that hung in the air, even hours after the bodies had been cleared.