by Farahad Zama
Mr Reddy retorted, “You are a girl. You don’t understand these things. You cannot be too careful when there are riffraff around; they will rob you blind if you give them half a chance. The poor are a big problem in this country and, unfortunately, our government is too weak to control them because the poor people have votes. We need more police to keep a strict lid on their activities.”
Aruna stared at him, open-mouthed. Finally, she said, “Not all poor people are thieves. If they were, no number of police could save this country.”
Rehman said, “I agree with Aruna. The problem we have is that our poor people are too easily controlled in the name of tradition, religion and caste. They don’t demand their rights. They don’t even know that they have rights to demand. But, sir, you must have always had money and gold in your safe. Why did they attack you now?”
“That Sivudu took a loan from me. Rather than repay it, he called in the Naxalites.”
Something in the landlord’s reply triggered a memory in Rehman. What had the poor man said when Rehman had asked him why he didn’t leave the village to earn more money if that’s what he wanted to do? Oh yes. Some of us have chains that bind us here and won’t let us leave.
Rehman mentally kicked himself. The man had been making a plea, and he had completely ignored him. He should have dug deeper and found out more.
He glared at Mr Reddy in anger. “You were holding him in bonded labour, weren’t you? And you were paying him too little for him to pay off his loan and you prevented him from working elsewhere. He could not have freed himself even if he had struggled all his life.”
Mr Reddy gazed back at them all coolly and said, “Don’t stare at me like that. It was a purely commercial transaction. He knew what he was getting into from the beginning. I didn’t force him to take the loan from me. He was happy enough to agree to all my conditions when he needed the money.”
“Can’t you even see what you are doing wrong?” said Rehman, banging his fist on the ground and dislodging two ants from a nearby twig. “India has been held back for centuries, no, millennia, because of people like you and what you’ve been practising for generations. For your information, bonded labour is illegal. It was banned years ago. You are the president of the village council. You want to become a member of the legislature. If you don’t follow the rules the government has made, what hope is there for the country? That’s why people feel that they have to take the law into their hands and why you, and all of us, are stuck here in this dangerous situation.”
He turned away, shaking his head and closing his eyes.
♦
Pari stirred the ridged-gourd and lentil curry with a wooden spatula and tasted it. She mixed in a quarter-teaspoon of salt and gave the curry another swirl.
“What homework did the teacher give you?” she said over her shoulder. She was back in her room with Vasu, making dinner for them both.
The rice on the other hob started boiling over just at that moment and she hurriedly reduced the gas. She wasn’t quite in time, however, and a little starchy water spilled over the side. The blue flame flashed red. She took an old cotton cloth that she used to hold hot dishes and wiped the pan. The bottom of the cloth swung lower than she intended and it caught fire.
“Oww!” she cried. Her hand had been singed and she urgently beat the cloth against the table to stop it burning.
“Get the plates, Vasu,” she said. “Dinner will be ready in a few minutes and we can eat.”
She turned off the gas to both burners and patted her forehead with the edge of her sari.
“Why don’t you answer me, Vasu?” she said, raising her voice slightly, when she realised that the boy hadn’t responded to anything she’d said. She turned to find the room empty.
“Vasu?” she said.
The living quarters were so small that from where she stood the whole could be taken in in one glance.
“Vasu?” she said again.
He must have sneaked out on to the terrace. She couldn’t really blame him – it would be cooler outside than in the stuffy room. She went up the stairs, to find her landlady sitting on a cot on the roof.
“Did Vasu come here?”
“No,” said the old woman.
Where could he have gone? Paris heart lurched. The streets could be dangerous, especially in the dark.
She ran down the two flights of stairs to the ground floor and on to the footpath. The washerman who pressed the clothes on the cart by the roadside had finished for the day and was just emptying the coals from his iron into the gutter. He looked at her and said, “The boy went that way, madam. I shouted out to him but when he did not reply, I thought you must have sent him to get something from the market.”
She stared at him wildly for a moment before nodding and running in the direction he had pointed. Vizag has a population of one million and it seemed to Pari that almost every resident was out on the streets that evening. How was she going to find one small boy in this crowd?
A sob caught at her throat and she slowed down. Panic wasn’t going to help. She walked slowly down the street, searching this way and that. A sharp stone pricked her foot and she winced. Looking down, she realised that she was barefoot. Vehicles rushed past, honking their horns and polluting the air with their smoke, almost brushing against the throng of pedestrians. She passed a dark patch of road where the fronts of the houses had not been converted to shops. When it became light again at the next stretch of shops, she thought her eyes were deceiving her. Vasu was sitting on a wooden stool, in front of a shop across the road, calmly eating an ice lolly.
She hesitated for just a moment before shouting out, “Vaasoo!” and launching herself into the traffic.
An old man riding a bicycle, whose eyesight was failing and who was planning to give up cycling for ever, swore at the sudden apparition that jumped in front of him, swerving into the path of a teenage girl on a scooter. The girl had started driving only a couple of months earlier and was still unsure on a vehicle that weighed half as much as herself. She braked hard and wobbled into the path of a white Ambassador car, whose driver had been involved in two accidents in the previous month and who had been told by his master that he would lose his job if he was involved in any more crashes. The car driver honked and jabbed at the brake pedal, but wasn’t quick enough to stop going gently into the back of the scooter. His reflexes were, however, too quick for the bus behind him. The bus driver had been thinking about the argument he had had with his wife that morning over her decision to invite his mother-in-law to stay with them for three months. Only now, when it was too late, did he see exactly how to demolish his wife’s arguments, point for point. As his mind was busy revelling in his imaginary triumph, the red brake lights of the car in front of him flashed angrily and despite his desperate attempt, he crunched into the back of the car.
Behind the driver, in the bus, a teenage boy had been holding forth to a beautiful classmate for the last fifteen minutes about how to solve polynomial equations using the Newton-Raphson method. The cute girl had been smiling at him all the time and the boy had fallen deeply in love with her. When the bus stopped suddenly, the boy went barrelling into a skinny old woman and ended up in her bony lap. The ugly harridan called him names and twisted his ear until the tears came.
One look at the pretty girl’s face as she tried to cover up her laughter caused the scales of love to drop from the intelligent boy’s eyes. Spurred by that humiliation, the boy would give up trying to work out the inner workings of the opposite sex, and go on to win the Nobel Prize for Physics for decoding the inner structure of black holes. The girl, meanwhile, would marry her cousin, get divorced soon after and become a lecturer, ending up as the principal of the college she was now attending and a terror to any of her students who showed the slightest romantic inclination on campus. But all that lay in the future.
Vasu looked up from his lolly at the noise of the traffic snarling up and did not, at first, notice the madwoman running straight at him
. When he finally saw his mother, it was too late to escape. Pari enveloped him in her arms, crying and laughing at the same time.
“Where did you go, Vasu? Why did you leave the house?” She mussed his hair and kissed him on the cheeks, embarrassing him terribly.
“I saw him walking down the street, madam. I called him over and gave him the ice lolly,” said the shopkeeper, smiling at her.
Pari looked at him in surprise and said, “You’ve saved my life today. I don’t know what I would have done if I hadn’t found him. But how did you know he wasn’t just a boy like any other, walking down the street?”
“He comes here with the old gentleman who buys rubber bands and paper clips,” the shopkeeper said. “I knew he shouldn’t have been out on the street on his own at this time.”
The shopkeeper must be referring to Mr Ali. “Oh, that’s my uncle,” she said, “Thank you! Thank you very much. What does the ice lolly cost?”
The man waved his hand. “No, no, madam. Don’t worry about it. I just did my duty as any man should.”
Pari brought her hands together in front of her in a salutation. “You are – ”
“Hey!” shouted the man, flinging his hand up.
She turned and saw Vasu jump across the gutter and run down the street. “Stop!” she shouted. “Stop the boy.”
Some pedestrians, seeing a dark-skinned boy running away from a fair-complexioned woman, jumped to the obvious conclusion, caught Vasu and started raining blows on his head and shoulders.
“Stop, stop,” shouted Pari as she ran up to them. Her chest heaving, she asked, “What are you doing? Don’t hit him.”
“That’s the only punishment these street urchins understand, madam,” said one man and gave Vasu another smack on the side of his head. “Give back what you stole from the madam.”
“Don’t you dare hit my son,” said Pari angrily, eyes flashing, and snatched Vasu away.
“Your son?” said the man, looking confused. “But…” He looked at the snub-nosed, dark-eyed boy and the fair-skinned widow before him and shook his head.
Pari held on to Vasu’s wrist like an udumu, the Bengal monitor lizard that has a grip so tight that enemy soldiers are said to have used it to scale the walls of fortresses.
“You are hurting me,” cried Vasu, trying to extract himself with his other hand.
She ignored his cries and dragged him all the way back to their room. Pushing him inside, she latched the doors behind her. She stood with her back against the door, panting.
“You hurt me. I hate you,” cried Vasu and flung himself face down on the cot.
When she recovered her breath, she slowly walked over and sat down next to him. Placing a hand on his head, she said, “What happened, my son? Why did you run away?”
“I am not your son,” shouted the boy. “My mother is dead.”
Pari didn’t speak, just stroked his hair for several minutes. Finally, she said, “Let’s eat dinner.”
“Not hungry,” he said. At least he was not shouting any more.
“I’ll feed you.”
“No, go away. I don’t want you.”
What had gotten into him? Why was he behaving like this? She was already upset about Rehman and the others getting kidnapped and she didn’t need this additional worry at this time. A thought struck her.
“Is this about Rehman Uncle?” she asked.
Vasu turned and burrowed his face into her stomach, his arms around her waist. He was sobbing.
“It will be all right, Vasu. You know Rehman Uncle – he will be fine.”
“No, no,” cried Vasu. “He will die just like all the others and then you will die too, if you don’t leave me.”
In his short life, Vasu had lost his father to an accident, his mother and then his grandfather to suicide. Rehman had brought him from the village to Vizag and Pari had adopted him.
“None of it is your fault, Vasu. Rehman will come back and I am definitely not leaving you for a long time. You cannot escape from me that easily.”
Vasu looked up from her lap. “Promise?” he said.
“God promise,” she said. She could not stop herself thinking, Insha’ Allah, God willing.
He gazed into her eyes for a long moment and then jumped up.
“What’s for dinner?” he said. “I’m starving.”
Nineteen
The shadows of the trees lengthened and a deep stillness took hold in the forest as the birds retired to their roosts for the night. Dilawar felt the silence as a physical weight. He had only ever known urban India, where there is never true quietness. And Mumbai, where he had been living for the past several years, really was a city that never slept.
Adi and a group of his men came over to them and before Dilawar and his friends realised what was happening, their hands were pulled behind their backs and tied up tight with rough coconut-fibre rope.
“Hey,” said Dilawar. “Why are you tying us up now? Do we have to march again tonight?”
“Shut up,” said the man behind him, driving a fist into Dilawar’s side.
Dilawar groaned and tried to wriggle his hands free, but they didn’t move.
The man behind him squatted on the ground and put a rope round his legs. As the rope tightened round his ankles, Dilawar lost his balance and, unable to break his fall with his hands, landed heavily on his face. Blood spurted into his eyes and he moaned. An old cotton cloth was tied as a gag round his mouth.
“Why are you doing this?” cried Srinu, who had been tied hand and foot but not yet gagged. His wife, Gita, had already been tied and gagged, as was Aruna. The edge of Aruna’s sari had slipped and the shape of her chest was clearly visible under her blouse.
Dilawar watched, his eyes moving frantically, as Adi slowly drew even closer to them.
“I don’t have to tell you this, but I will anyway. We are going on a mission and will be a bit short-handed here. We will release you tomorrow morning, so don’t make any trouble. Goodnight.”
As Adi turned away, Dilawar saw the leader’s eyes lingering on Aruna. His disquiet increased when the men were taken to one hut and the women to another.
♦
Tired after the day’s tensions, and their rollercoaster emotions after getting the text message – first optimism, boosted by the police confidence, then despair, feeling crushed by the news that the kidnappers had moved on and could not be found – Mr and Mrs Ali had retired to bed early.
Mr Ali was soon snoring lightly – his wife had always been envious of his ability to fall asleep in any position, anywhere, and at any time. In contrast, she tossed and turned. She must have fallen asleep at some point, because she suddenly screamed and sat up. She looked around in confusion and it took her befuddled mind some time to realise that she was in her own bed and not in a forest.
“What is it?” mumbled Mr Ali, also woken by the scream. Appearing irritated, rather than concerned, he glanced at the clock and said, “It’s only been a couple of hours since we went to bed. Go back to sleep.”
“Nightmare,” gasped Mrs Ali. “I saw them bound and gagged. A man with big eyes was coming to cut their throats.”
“Nonsense,” said Mr Ali briskly. “We need to keep our strength up and we can’t do that if you keep waking up with your fanciful stories. It’s probably just something you ate that’s disagreed with you. Go, drink a glass of water and come back to bed.”
“What do you mean, something I ate?” said Mrs Ali. “We only ate what I cooked. Are you saying that there is something wrong with my cooking?”
“No, that’s not what I – ”
“In the forty years that we’ve been married, when did you fall sick after eating my food?”
“I just – ”
“The only times that you’ve ever had an upset stomach were when you ate out in restaurants. You get taken in by their shiny tables and well-dressed waiters but have you ever seen a restaurant kitchen? And the cooks? How do you know whether they wash their hands properly?”<
br />
“But – ”
“Don’t talk to me about food from outside. You eat from the same plate that has been used twenty-five times before by unknown people. They probably reuse the same dirty water to wash it each time.”
“I didn’t – ”
“I scrub each vegetable and peel it before cooking it. You sit at the table scoffing piping-hot food straight from the cooker and you have the nerve to tell me that there is something wrong with my cooking. Have you seen chhote bhaabhi’s kitchen? I shouldn’t say this but your sister-in-law doesn’t know how to handle meat. She moves it from one place on the worktop to another and who knows what germs she is spreading? You don’t say anything to her. You sit down quietly and eat whatever she serves. Why do you point the finger at my kitchen?”
“Listen – ”
“And how can you sleep while your son has been kidnapped and Aruna, the girl you say is like your daughter, is at the mercy of ruthless ruffians and Pari is in danger of becoming a widow all over again even before she remarries? What kind of heart do you have in that chest of yours?”
Mr Ali stopped trying to remonstrate with his wife, got up and went out.
“Yes, disturb the peace and then leave the room. I will stay awake on my own,” shouted Mrs Ali after him.
He came back with a glass of cool water and silently handed it to his wife. She took it from him, almost snatching it, and emptied it in two gulps, then handed the tumbler back to him. By the time he had put it on the dining table and returned to the bedroom, Mrs Ali’s eyes were closed.
He got into bed cautiously and was relieved to find that his wife was fast asleep. He stared at the revolving blades of the fan above him and listened to the tick-tock of the alarm clock on the dressing table for a long time before sleep claimed him.
♦
Aruna found it difficult to sleep too. She was lying on her side and her left shoulder was cramped. The rough ropes chafed her wrists and, worst of all, an itch had developed on her chin just below where her gag ended and she could do nothing to relieve it. Over the past hour, the itch had got worse and it now dominated her thinking. She had tried to rub her head against the floor but that part of her chin remained out of reach. She squirmed once again, trying to think of something else, anything else, but her mind refused to budge from the pesky itch. In addition, a smell of roasting meat wafted over the air. As she was a Brahmin, and a vegetarian, the smell nauseated her.
