Leila

by Prayaag Akbar

  ‘Do they make you work very hard?’

  ‘Sometimes, sir. City life is tough. I did not know about these walls.’ He pulled the gate open and gingerly stepped out onto the road. ‘They all look the same. I keep getting lost.’

  Repeater and peon faced each other, the latter dark and small, arms held together in silent imploration. The Repeater turned to his flock. ‘Did you hear that, men? The little fellow is confused by the walls. He doesn’t understand the city.’ At this everyone began to laugh. An uncertain smile appeared on the peon’s face. The two were now alongside, facing the crowd, less than a lathi’s length between their shoulders. Suddenly a muscled arm snaked out, the Repeater taking hold of the peon’s collar and twisting him onto his toes. As if he weighed nothing he hurled the yelping man onto the road. ‘Do you know what your Sir-Madam are doing?’ he shouted, spit flying like silver bullets in the sunlight. ‘They are traitors. Stopping the work that will make this city rich, make us strong, using foreign money. Traitors!’

  Maybe the peon expected this. No sooner had he hit the road than he bounced back around and dived at the leader’s feet. I covered Leila’s eyes and ears. He had his hands folded again and was tapping the Repeater’s shoes, saying, ‘Please sir, let me go, I’m a poor man, I don’t know anything.’ I could no longer see him. The squad had closed in. One man raised a staff to the air. It came whistling down and I heard an anguished scream. ‘Tell us where they are,’ someone screamed. ‘Are they inside? Are they inside?’ A rain of lathis. The leader had taken a few steps back and watched with a smug smile.

  I elbowed Naz. ‘This is making me sick. I’m going. You come when you want.’

  ‘You sure? It might not be safe … you can’t wait?’

  ‘I’m sure. Why do you have to watch this?’

  ‘Are they inside?’ someone called.

  ‘Where are they then?’

  ‘They must be here!’ the shouting continued.

  ‘I want to see what happens,’ Naz said. I grabbed Leila’s hand and we hurried to the other end of the park. Sapna picked up the toys and followed. As we approached the rear gate, amid the shrieks, the insults, the whistling lathis and the yelps, the peon could be heard, in a drawn-out, hiccupping sob that barely reached us, ‘Upstairs. Upstairs. They are both upstairs.’

  II

  The morning we found out about Leila’s school admission was so hot the sun powering through the windows bounced off the mirror face of a juice decanter and turned a newspaper left in the breakfast nook to kindling. Stupidity, self-involvement prevented me from seeing this for what it was. A portent. The three of us could have run to the end of the earth. Yet I thought nothing of it. We managed to get the smoke out of the curtains. But Leila had a bad stomach, the heat had got to her. I had to go that day. There was all this paperwork only I could make sense of. I insisted we couldn’t leave Leila with the ayah. Riz made a few calls and announced that he would work from home. I decided to take Sapna with me; if they needed even more photocopies, notifications for notaries, what have you, she could run down to the shop in the small market by the school.

  It wasn’t a long drive to Yellowstone. Driving up, I looked for the last time upon those famous spires, the clock tower, the four maroon pillars extending past the second floor to the portico’s triangular hat. The jhoolabaadi was empty, as was the river of sparkling Bermuda grass, sprinklers dancing everywhere. What a luxury, in this grimmest summer, to have these fripp-frippering jets of crystal water running their circuit. It couldn’t last. Yellowstone was gutted in the weeks to come, as the mobs began to hunt for difference.

  When Riz and I were students the best schools were independent, but by the time Leila had reached the right age almost every school in the city was affiliated with a particular sector. The richer communities had acquired the better schools and put them behind one set of walls or the other. Yellowstone, the oldest and best, was the final holdout, the last mixed school in the city.

  I was nervous about Leila’s admission. It’s been sixteen years but I remember so many things. Waiting at the gate with the other parents. Calling to tell Riz the news as I walked to my car, stilettos crunching into the gravel. Both of us laughing, crying, proud of our daughter, she’d impressed them all, though sweat streams ran down my back and the parking lot soil had kicked up into dust devils and the wind was like the blast behind a window AC. I hurried to the car, where Sapna fanned herself with one of my glossies. The smell of her sweat filled my car. Even Sapna was happy, when I told her, raising a hand to her mouth to hide her nervous smile, nodding with wonder at the sprawling school.

  It struck noon just as we made it to the traffic light at the end of the road. The dashboard display read highfifties. Along the road, about halfway up the wall, a digital hoarding showed CGI images of a new residential complex inside the sector for Kamrupi Brahmins, completion date undetermined. Couples walking with prams along glittering emerald lawns. Indoor and outdoor pools. Private temple, fully modernised. Driving range simulators for golfers. Twenty-four-hour power backup, twenty-four-hour water. My eye was drawn to a movement underneath the hoarding, a glint of yellow blurred by the heat shimmers in the air. A man in a lemon kurta-pyjama was getting to his feet. Strange, because the beggars knew better than to walk around at this time of the day. He was staring at me. As soon as I met his gaze I knew it was a mistake. Without waiting even for a change in the lights he walked calmly through the lanes of barrelling traffic, directly towards our car. Both sides of the road tyres began to squeal. One driver got out of his car – a chain of screeching brakes – and produced a thick ribbon of abuse before hurtling away. The old man was far from calm, this was clear as he got closer, his shoulders jerking up and around, his head shaking like a paint mixer.

  ‘What a strange man,’ I said to Sapna. ‘I wonder what he’s doing.’

  ‘He’s looking right at us, didi.’

  He’d crossed the last lane. He was nearing the traffic light. We couldn’t move – cars, two-wheelers hemmed us in from every angle. I checked the central locking. This man negotiated the stream of cyclists and then took position, arms by his side, underneath the digital display reporting in red numerals how many seconds you have until the light changes. No one around us seemed aware of his presence. When he reached us he planted himself on the bonnet, knees on the bumper, staring into my eyes. A monk’s fringe of white hair above his ears. Sapna screamed and grabbed the door handle uselessly. The car keened forward with his weight. I couldn’t move. He was chanting to himself, praying perhaps. Sweat around his undershirt had left a thick horseshoe. Sapna was pulling at my left sleeve. I made to clamp down on the horn, but as soon as he saw me move he threw himself back and scurried away. My hand hit the horn anyway, producing a bitty little beep. The forlorn honk – or perhaps relief – made us both laugh.

  In a minute he was in front of us again, down on his haunches, his back against the rear door of the white car in front of me. The car had a woman and a driver. The woman stared at her phone, oblivious. The old man jumped upright with surprising speed, jerked back his head and stared directly at the sky, as if drawing strength from it. He flung open the door and pulled the woman out by her wrist in one smooth motion. She came out dangling like a child’s stuffed toy, her face flashing by us – cheeks sucked in, eyebrows wide apart, the casual safety of the previous moment now unbearably distant. I hit my horn, she screamed, the driver leapt from the car all at the same time. The old man paid none of this any attention. He dragged her to the front. Flung her to one side with a roll of his arm so she slumped onto the bonnet of the car. As quickly, he jumped into the back seat and locked all the doors.

  The woman sobbed by the side of the road. People shouted at the driver for leaving the key in the ignition, the engine running. The old man was going nowhere. He had his neck up so his throat was directly in front of the air-conditioning vents. He yanked at his kurta collar and let air down his front. He began swaying his head back and forth in excit
ement until he was landing with such force onto the back seat that the car began to rock. This went on. Then a driver from another car figured out a way to open the lock on the driver-side door. Each time he got it open the old man flicked it shut with a cheeky grin. The woman was still sobbing. The car horns did not ease up once in these minutes, merging into one, a tilting groan. Eventually a bunch of drivers distracted the old man by pretending to open both front doors at once. He dug in with all his strength, his buttocks as anchors and arms as struts, pushing against the roof. It took four men. They pulled him out by his legs. One man slapped him half-heartedly. We all saw the old man was not quite a beggar, that he’d been driven mad by this violet heat. We left him sitting on the concrete divider of the road, his yellow kurta spread around him, head rocking, fingers gripping the back of his neck.

  When we were moving again it was hard to grip the wheel. My fingers were trembling. ‘That was too much, Sapna. Too much.’

  ‘Very scary, didi.’

  ‘It looked so easy. He pulled her out of the car in just a second.’

  She didn’t say anything. After a few moments I muttered, ‘We don’t mind, you know …’

  ‘Yes, didi?’

  ‘If someone comes to me for money, you know I always give. You’ve seen. I always give.’

  I felt deflated. My head ached. The sun bouncing off the roads and windshields. We drove in silence. In the past months the unrelenting heat had widened the cracks, all over the city the roads coming apart like the gaps in an old person’s mouth. We turned onto the long arterial avenue that leads to the East End.

  Immediately we were surrounded by cars. More traffic. The pressure at my temples had been climbing. Now I felt fit to blow. We were so close to home that my toes curled with frustration, I wanted to slam on the accelerator and plough my way through. On my left a bus had come in at an angle, attempting to sneak into my lane. Tired, dirty faces peered down greedily. The divider was to my right, its black stripes like mirrors in the sun, with a long trough of earth so dry it was cracked into bolts of lightning. An optimistic soul had jammed dozens of mesh cylinders into the soil. Nothing grew.

  ‘What is this now?’ I asked.

  ‘I know,’ Sapna said, staring at the massive red cloth hovering in the air in the distance. It rested on bamboo poles. Silver horns were lashed down where one pole met the other. The batik awning waved prettily in a breeze, though around us the air seemed perfectly still. ‘It’s a political rally,’ Sapna continued, smiling. ‘Look, didi, Ashish should also be here. Even the people from my basti are here. They’ve come about the water problem.’ She shrugged towards a stream of women and men who sat in the dirt beyond the footpath. The line of people travelled to the awning, stopping at a bamboo barrier. Each had a metal pot beside them. The women shaded their faces with their saris. Some men had tied handkerchiefs around their heads. There were children too, lying flat on their backs, ministered by their mothers. The aluminium pots glinted like diamonds.

  ‘Ashish? Who is Ashish?’

  ‘Ashish is my man, didi. So many times I’ve told you.’

  Ludicrous that they’re allowed to block the road like this, the main road leading to the East End. I exchanged an exasperated smile with the woman in the car that the bus had tried to overtake. Soon enough, liveried drivers emerged from the Mercs and Beemers, gathering into a group and moving towards the tent, shining metal on their peaked caps.

  ‘Yes, yes, of course.’ I did remember. He waited outside the East End gates for Sapna most evenings. Dark fellow with a mullet of sorts, always running his fingers through a crimped, throat-length beard. ‘But why is he here?’

  ‘He works with Joshijee. Three years he has worked with him, since the water went. Joshijee has promised to get water to our basti again.’

  ‘Three years? You haven’t had water for three years?’ I tried to keep scepticism from my voice. They tend to magnify their woes, hoping for sympathy, some kind of payout.

  ‘Yes, didi. We used to have four handpumps for the basti. One handpump stopped working, then another. It’s become really bad. For three years, nothing.’

  ‘How do you live?’

  ‘We survive. I’m one of the lucky ones. By your kindness I use the servant bathroom.’

  A low murmur filtering into my awareness. A chant coming from the people queued up along the side of the road. It had started from the front of the line, like current moving down a circuit. The men and women next to us joined in. A song, with verses of kinetic call-and-response. I braved the slap of heat, sliding down the window.

  ‘Yeh azaadi jhooti hain,’ the front of the line screamed.

  ‘Jhooti hain, jhooti hain,’ shouted the rest.

  ‘Yeh azaadi jhooti hain,’ they screamed.

  ‘Jhooti hain, jhooti hain.’

  ‘What a strange song,’ I said, rolling up the window. ‘What do they mean, freedom is a lie?’ ‘It’s water, didi.

  It’s driven everyone mad. These are the people from my basti only. Joshijee told Ashish to bring them.’

  ‘This Joshi, he is the one on TV all the time?’

  ‘Yes, didi. He comes on the news, no?’ she said. Doubt crept into her voice. ‘Their leader? I’m not sure. Ashish works for him. He helps him with everything he needs.’

  ‘Your boyfriend works with the Council?’

  ‘No, no, Ashish is like me, he’s also from the Slum, not educated like you all. He works for Joshijee. His helper. As Joshijee has become more important, Ashish’s responsibilities have grown.’ She smiled proudly. ‘Now he takes care of many things.’

  ‘You’re going to marry him?’

  ‘Ashish says this is not the time, didi. Joshijee has a few things planned for the summer. Once those are over we can get married.’

  In a red hatchback a few feet away a young couple was rolling a joint. The boy was arranging the constituents on his palm as she rooted around in the back seat. A purple spaghetti strap travelled over a circular tattoo on her left shoulder.

  ‘What do you do for water?’

  ‘Tankers come.’

  ‘Every day? How can you afford it? Even I can’t afford it every day.’

  ‘We share the tanker between all of us, didi. Each person gets two buckets. It’s never enough. People are late to work because the lines are so long. They lose their jobs. Some women, the old ones, they get into fights.’ A patch of sweat that grew like a brinjal at her armpit had been dried by the AC, though the discoloration remained. ‘Ashish was the first one to take on the tanker mafia. I told him not to. He didn’t listen.’

  ‘What did he do?’ I asked.

  ‘Actually, didi,’ she looked at the cars surrounding us, ‘do you mind if I go there for five minutes? I don’t think anyone will be able to move for some time. I would love to see Ashish on stage. With such big people. Joshijee, the Council. All the important sector people.’

  In the years since our wedding I’d felt a rising irritation in myself when there was any talk of the Council, purity, the segmentation they were determined upon. Usually I wanted to shut it out. But today I wanted to see this Joshi who sent out his gangs of toughs, producing these surgical vibrations of violence.

  ‘Okay, we’ll go. But wait.’ The sky was hospital blue, a clear border at one edge. The sun leered down. ‘See if there’s a dupatta in that tailor’s bag.’

  I wrapped the dupatta around my head and we stepped outside. The contrast with the AC was too much; within steps my head started to spin. I leaned against a vehicle. The heated metal singed my back. Sapna took my keys and ran to my car, returning with a thermos of water. The young couple in the hatchback stared at us blankly through a chamber of blue smoke. When I felt better, we walked across the nickering cars to the footpath, searching for shade. Some of the Slummers’ metal pots had animal and plant motifs. The women shielded their faces from the glare and prying eyes. I drove on this road every day, but only now I noticed how these trees too were suffering. Insects had bored
into the bark; branches were wilting or had fallen to the ground; the leaves scorched brown. The singing started up again, ‘Yeh azaadi jhooti hain,’ like a backbeat to our steps. ‘Jhooti hain, jhooti hain.’ Denim clung slimily to my legs. The last few steps I could feel my head turning light again, and I had to stop at a giant floor fan, its thick draught flailing my curls, the sweat off my body.

  The stage had a fluttering, shiny-white backdrop. There was a solitary microphone at the front, behind it seated rows of older men, some in formal suits, a couple of priests, imams, bishops in clashing vestments. Elders from the high sectors, representing the important communities.

  Under the awning the audience was divided into numerous zones, a rope running between them at waist height. Chairs had been placed for the people from the highest sectors. Olive army-surplus mattresses laid out for the middle communities. The section we had reached, for the Slummers, wasn’t actually under the awning. We sat in the sun, floor fans turned in our direction.

  There must’ve been three thousand around me. As Sapna led me through the rows of squatting people my eyes began to drip from the ammoniac stench of stale clothes, collective sweat. Grumbles as we bumped against knees and shoulders. A group of older women said something about my jeans. My bracelet, my earrings. I could feel their eyes.

  Finally, Sapna found an unoccupied spot. ‘Look,’ she whispered, as we sat down. She was gleaming now, leaning forward, her fingers undoing and redoing the top button of her kurta. Her boyfriend was bent at the waist, walking amid the seated men on stage, his beard flickering as the currents from the huge fans clashed. Whenever anyone whispered something he nodded vigorously and did a small salute. A shiny green suit in the first row wiggled his fingers at him. Ashish took the microphone, adjusted its height, tapped on it a few times. ‘Chyek’, he said, and disappeared backstage.