Storywallah

by Neelesh Misra

  She looked under the bed at the mouse, happily eating a biscuit in a mouse trap. The mouse was sort of a pet. It would come into the trap every night and she would let it out every morning. And then she would pretend to be surprised at the audacity of the mouse!

  As soon as Nandini had woken up that morning, Ammaji had taken the trap to her, ‘We finally caught the rascal!’

  ‘Thank God, Ammaji!’ Nandini breathed deeply.

  The mouse was disposed of far away from the house. Ammaji returned downstairs and Nandini went back behind closed doors. Ammaji was restless the whole day. She wanted to chat with Nandini like she had done the previous week. She remembered how Nandini would put ointment on her knees before bedtime and how she had come to Ammaji for advice on her ethnic ware collection project, how she argued with her and how she showed her affection.

  It was evening, almost five o’clock, and Nandini’s door was closed. She grimaced and went and sat down on her chair in the veranda. Nandini appeared just before five, a tea tray in her hands.

  ‘Sorry, Ammaji. Tomorrow is the last day to submit my project so I couldn’t sit with you today,’ she said as she put the tray down on the table. Ammaji smiled.

  ‘Can I ask you something, Ammaji? If I were to have evening tea with you every day from now on, Babuji won’t mind, will he?’ Nandini asked with a cheeky smile. Ammaji felt Babuji smiling as he sat beside her on his chair. She had got her home, her position and her special evening tea back again.

  AYESHA

  Shabnam Gupta

  It was a cold Dalhousie evening. It was only five o’clock but I could see the sun setting in the valley that lay below the cafe I was sitting in. A thin veil of mist draped over it—almost like a mother gently covers a sleeping child. I warmed my hands on my mug of coffee. The tourist season was over. All the families that had come to spend their summer holidays had returned to their homes. Only the local people remained now. They knew me well, and I knew them.

  I had been coming to the Sunrise Cafe for six years now. And I always sat in this chair. If someone else was sitting on it, I would wait for them to leave. Sipping my coffee, I opened the file in front of me and looked at the first sketch.

  This had been my daily routine for six years now. I sat here, drank my coffee and looked at my sketches.

  My sketches of Ayesha, my daughter.

  Six years ago we lived in Mumbai. I’m an artist and my wife, Madhu, a lawyer. She is very hard-working, her work never ends, so it was my responsibility to look after our daughter Ayesha. From making her tiffin and getting her ready for school, to tuition and hobby classes, I did everything. And I could make a better plait for her than Madhu. Really! When she felt extra affectionate, Ayesha would call me Dadda, and sometimes to tease me they would both call me Mom. I liked it when they did that. I liked it a lot.

  Ayesha was eight when we had come up to Dalhousie for our summer vacation. We loved the mist-covered mountains and the cool breeze laden with the perfume of the deodar trees. I remember it being very crowded but we spent the whole day wandering around the town.

  Madhu’s work had followed her here too, but Ayesha and I enjoyed everything Dalhousie had to offer. That day she had insisted on ice cream. I had sat her down on this chair, in this Sunrise Cafe, and gone to the counter to get her ice cream. When I came back she wasn’t there. I put both the ice cream cones down on the table and called out, ‘Ayesha! Ayesha!’ She wasn’t anywhere.

  No one in that crowded cafe had seen Ayesha leave from there. I looked for her, for hours, for days.

  But I didn’t find her.

  For three months we stayed there, looking for her. Madhu had cried herself into a frenzy. She went to every temple and tied a thread at every pir’s tomb. She had never believed in any of this before.

  Despite the best efforts of the police we found no trace of Ayesha. The roads were deserted. The tourists had left. Madhu had finally managed to convince me to return to Mumbai.

  But I couldn’t breathe in Mumbai. I wanted to go back to Dalhousie. The town, this cafe and this chair owed me. And I wasn’t going to let that debt go unpaid.

  Deep inside I blamed myself.

  I had come back to Dalhousie. It had been six years. Madhu called every day to say, ‘Come back, Rakesh. I can’t live without both of you.’

  And I always said, ‘We’ll come, Madhu—Ayesha and I—we’ll both come back to you.’

  I made a painting of her on her birthday every year. On a large canvas I would try to imagine how she would look with each passing year. She always wore the red velvet dress she had worn that day. She would be fourteen now. Her face mustn’t be as round, her hair must be longer, and the impish gleam in her eyes? Maybe? Maybe?

  I would make hundreds of pamphlets with those sketches and distribute them or stick them on walls. I went to the police station every day to ask the inspector where the investigation had reached.

  And then I would sit here every evening.

  The owner of the cafe, Niranjan, would invariably come to talk to me, ‘Is the coffee okay?’

  ‘Hmm,’ I nodded when he asked me the same question that day.

  He came and sat in the chair opposite me. His eyes fell on Ayesha’s sketch and he said, ‘It’s never happened before or after your daughter.’ I didn’t say anything. The sun had sunk a little lower. The mist now covered the shoulders of the sleeping child.

  I looked outside over Niranjan’s shoulder. A rag picker was combing through the garbage. She had a big basket on her shoulder to put her collections in, and on her chest in a sling hung a little baby. Behind her was a little five, or six-year-old girl. She said something to the little girl and picked her up.

  A shock ran through my body. The coffee cup fell from my hands on the table. Niranjan looked at me amazed, ‘What’s happened, sir?’

  But my eyes were fixed on the ragpicker’s little girl. She was wearing Ayesha’s dress—the red velvet dress her Nani had made for her. The dress she had been wearing that day!

  ‘Hey! Hey! Listen!’

  I ran towards the door of the cafe. Niranjan didn’t know what was happening but seeing my state he ran out behind me.

  The girl saw us running towards her and panicked. She must have been seventeen or eighteen at the most. She had blue eyes and a mole on her chin. She threw the stick she was holding and fled.

  ‘Hey! Listen!’ I shouted. ‘Don’t be afraid. I only want to ask you something.’

  She ran even faster when she heard that. I ran after her and Niranjan ran behind me. She turned around as she ran and when she saw us following her she ran off the road and down a small path. She leapt like a deer down the mountain road into the valley below.

  Niranjan and I chased her for quite a distance, till we couldn’t see her any longer. We stopped.

  It was dark, lights were twinkling in the valley that spread below us. For the first time in six years my eyes had seen a glimmer of hope.

  Niranjan and I stood there for a while catching our breath. He asked me, ‘Sir, this girl, is she your daughter?’

  I shook my head, ‘No. But her daughter is wearing the dress my daughter was wearing that day. It’s torn now but I recognize it clearly.’

  Niranjan looked in the direction the girl had disappeared. ‘That’s a gypsy settlement there, sir. We might be able to find something.’

  ‘Let’s take the inspector with us. They may not tell us but they’re scared of the police. We’ll go early in the morning,’ he said.

  I nodded again.

  I couldn’t sleep that night. At dawn I picked up the file with Ayesha’s sketches in it and went with the inspector and Niranjan towards the gypsy settlement.

  It wasn’t a permanent settlement. There were fifty or sixty tents there. Torn sheets hung as curtains and some scraps of torn shamianas hung here and there. A few wood fires burned and some children roamed around. When they saw us a man came up to us. He must have been around forty and some sort of headman. Behind him came s
even or eight men.

  When the inspector told him about the dress, he answered angrily, ‘We are gypsies, not thieves.’

  The other men joined in too. The inspector banged his lathi hard on the floor and shouted at them. Out of fear they let us search their tents.

  The inspector talked to the headman while Niranjan and I along with some constables began to search the tents.

  We scoured each tent. I showed them all Ayesha’s sketches. I told them about the dress. None of them knew anything.

  I was going to give up hope when we found the girl in the last tent.

  I stood outside the tent trying to gauge the girl’s expressions. She was scared and tried to hide from us. Her daughter still wore Ayesha’s dress.

  ‘Look, I don’t want to scare you, I just want to talk to you,’ I said.

  She looked at me with scared and helpless eyes, she looked like an animal caught in a trap.

  ‘I’m not a policeman,’ I said. She didn’t reply. I pointed towards her daughter and asked, ‘Just tell me where you got that dress from?’

  She looked at me in surprise, then she looked at the dress, and then back at me. Now her face didn’t have fear on it, only questions.

  The people outside the tent could hear us speak.

  I said again, ‘My daughter was wearing that frock when she got lost. And I have been looking for her since then. When I saw that dress I thought maybe you knew something.’

  I opened the file and showed her sketches of Ayesha, ‘This is my daughter.’

  Her eyes widened with disbelief when she saw the sketches, as if she knew Ayesha.

  But then she shook her head in denial.

  From behind us the headman spoke, ‘Why are you frightening the girl? She’s told you she doesn’t know anything. Now please leave.’

  The inspector indicated that it was best that we leave. I turned my back to them and whispered to the girl, ‘I’m in that cafe every evening.’

  We left. Niranjan told the inspector, ‘The girl looks Kashmiri. Maybe they have kidnapped her too. You should check the missing persons register.’

  That day I told Madhu everything that had happened. She didn’t say anything but her sobs told me that she had allowed herself to hope again. I had never lost hope.

  After that day I spent more and more time in the cafe. I was sure the girl would come. She was frightened to speak in front of the others, but I knew she knew something, from the way she had looked at Ayesha’s sketch. I had found the first link to Ayesha.

  I waited for her for several days. Niranjan came to sit with me one day. ‘Sir, should we go to the settlement again?’

  I didn’t answer because my gaze was arrested by what I saw outside the cafe.

  It was the girl. Her daughter was not with her. She came inside the cafe and up to my table. She gestured towards the file and asked, ‘Sahab, are you really Asha’s Dadda?’

  Her words made me feel as if the universe had opened its best treasure box in front of me. I had not taken Ayesha’s name in front of her. And I hadn’t told her that Ayesha called me Dadda. I nodded, I couldn’t speak, the words stuck in my throat.

  She sat down beside me and said, ‘Asha had told me about you.’

  ‘Ayesha,’ I corrected her softly. ‘Ayesha, not Asha.’

  She didn’t hear me. She was lost in thought. Today she didn’t look so scared.

  I asked her name.

  She said her name was Bijli and that she had been wandering from place to place with this gypsy caravan. She had come here a few months ago. These people weren’t gypsies, she told us, they just joined them from time to time. When Ayesha had been kidnapped, a different set of gypsies had been here. They had kept her here in Dalhousie for some days and then sent her off with the gypsies. She had been wearing the dress then, and the two of them had been kept in the same room for some days.

  My mind was in turmoil. Had the room been clean? Did they give her anything to eat? Did they mistreat her? But I didn’t ask Bijli anything. I knew those questions would take me down a dark empty road from where there was no return. In the beginning I had lost my way on that dark road, and I had lost my mind. I knew that road would not lead me to Ayesha. I had started to tell myself, ‘Ayesha is fine. Ayesha is absolutely fine.’

  The girl told me that after that day she had met Ayesha last year. That’s when she had given her the dress.

  I picked up a sketch of Ayesha. ‘Does she look like this?’

  ‘A little,’ she said and looked away.

  I was silent.

  After a while I asked, ‘And you? Do you remember where you are from?’

  She nodded. ‘I am from a village near Udhampur. I was eight. They picked me up from the fields. This group was there then. They sent me with them. They divide up so the police don’t get suspicious and they never stay in one place for long.’

  ‘I should go now, Sahab. If anyone sees it could be the end. These people are very evil.’

  Evil! My mind began to wander down that dark road again. I pulled myself back and asked Bijli, ‘Don’t you want to go home?’

  She looked at her clothes and her rough hands, ‘What home, Sahab? Who is waiting for me?’

  What answer could I give her? I was her answer.

  She looked at me after she asked me the question. She saw the hope shining in my eyes, she looked at Ayesha’s sketch and asked softly, ‘Ammi and Abba—do you think they are waiting for me still?’

  Parents never stop waiting. They pray for a miracle every day. And their love doesn’t diminish till they die. As she watched me I think she understood.

  ‘I can help you,’ I told her. ‘The police and the women’s cell will take you home. No one will even know.’

  The colour of her eyes changed, first fear and then worry. She shook her head. She felt it was better to be in a known jail than believe a stranger.

  I didn’t want to force her. I asked her if she would come again the next day.

  I went straight to the police station from there. I told the inspector everything. We checked the missing reports from the Udhampur area for the last ten or twelve years. We found a description that matched the girl, her name was Rehana.

  We spoke to the relevant police station in Udhampur. We spoke to the girl’s mother to get her description. She told us about the mole on her chin. There was no doubt that the girl was Rehana.

  But we needed her to agree to go home. She came the next day. I addressed her as Rehana. She looked at me and wept. The old days had beckoned her. Bijli was ready to become Rehana again.

  Over the next few days the police and the women’s cell worked secretly to send her home.

  And then the day came when with tear-filled eyes I watched Rehana sit in the police jeep, ready to be driven away.

  My heart was flooded with relief; one daughter was going home today. Her parents’ wait was over, their prayers had been answered.

  But I wasn’t without hope. There was no way that I would let the hope that I had kept alive all these years die now.

  Rehana sat her two children down in her lap in the jeep. She lifted her hand to say bye to me, then beckoned me. I wiped my eyes and came up to jeep window. She handed me a piece of paper. ‘Sahab, I’ve written the names of as many of the gypsies from the group that had Asha that I could remember. They were near a place called Manali. There is a river there and a big school. Their settlement was somewhere there. Your Asha might be there.’

  I put the paper safely away. The smile on my face grew. I felt another step closer to Ayesha.

  I’m coming, Ayesha, my heart said, I’m coming.

  THE WAIT

  Manjit Thakur

  It was nearing the end of September but the city was in the middle of a game of hide-and-seek being played by dark rainclouds and lightening. He stepped out into the lingering hangover of freshly fallen rain.

  He, Jinny, one of the most important people in one of the most famous software companies in America. Jinny, aka Gi
rindranath.

  It had been twelve years since he had left this city and Diya. Outwardly it seemed that he had come on a nostalgic visit to his home town, and maybe to fulfil his wish to see Diya once again, but deep inside somewhere all he really wanted to do was present himself to the man who had taken Diya away from him: her father, Dr Arindam Chakravarty.

  Bright neon lights outside the station spelled Madhupur Junction. Madhupur had changed so much.

  Girindra was reminded of his childhood when he had slept clinging to his mother, he could hear the announcements from the station. The crackling voice on the loudspeaker announcing the arrival of a train. And then the bell that rang as the train drew into the station. Three times for Up and four times for Down.

  A rickshaw bell from behind him pulled him out of the ocean of his thoughts.

  He had come three days ago from America. America, where he had earned money and fame. Now, his life had two ends. On one corner was Dr Chakravarty’s abuse, ‘You beggar, saala bhikhari!’ and on the other, the words of the brilliant, world-famous owner of his software company, ‘Guys like you can change the world!’

  But during all the time that he had spent earning that money and fame, two eyes had bored holes into his back. He thought of Madhupur all the time. From where he had left, humiliated.

  There was always something that pricked in his heart like a splinter. He had sworn he would only return to Madhupur when he became something, when he had enough money to buy all of Madhupur. He would become such a big man that Diya would be proud of him. Diya, whose memory had prevented him from ever getting married. Diya who was the light of Girindra’s eyes. In the midst of all his success he would always think, I wish that old man could see me now, and hear my boss’s words, ‘Guys like you . . .’