by Farahad Zama
Mrs Bilqis had to admit that she felt better once she had changed and brushed her hair. She finished off her toilette by perfuming herself with attar of roses, then went into her husband’s room. She moved him on to his back, plumped his pillow and told him, “I am going out with Nadira to pray for Dilawar. I will be back in a couple of hours.”
Her husband’s eyes followed her silently and seemed to gleam with a sudden intelligence when she mentioned Dilawar. How much did her husband actually understand? It was so frustrating not to know.
She switched on the television and flipped through the channels. A fashion parade was being shown on one station and she paused on it. A tall, young woman strode down the catwalk in high heels, wearing a dress that ended at mid-thigh and swished dangerously high as her legs moved. The model reached the end of the ramp and turned smartly, coming to a stop with one hand on her jutting hip. By some unseen magic, her dress flashed open, revealing the woman’s bra and knickers.
Mrs Bilqis shook her head, telling her husband, “I’ll leave the TV on this channel. You might enjoy it.”
She left the room.
♦
When Aruna’s parents and her sister, Vani, reached the Hanuman temple, a pretty woman journalist was interviewing a priest in front of a TV camera. A brushlike microphone dangled at the end of a long pole above them, just out of the camera frame.
“Don’t you find it ironic that a good man like Rehman who has fought on behalf of poor farmers should be endangered by Naxalites?” asked the interviewer.
“That is the nature of Kaliyugam – the age of evil that we live in,” said the priest.
He wore a white dhoti around his waist, leaving his chest bare except for the sacred thread that ran over one shoulder and round his upper body. The teenage Vani gazed appreciatively at this well-built, handsome, articulate man, who defied her image of priests as spindly older men with weak bodies.
The priest was continuing his answer. “As Hindus, we believe that the world has seen nine ages already and we are now living in the tenth age. In this age, falsehoods flourish, truth gets into trouble and evil seems to have an easy ride. In this era, good intentions are perverted and Naxalites, who claim to fight on behalf of the poor and oppressed, cause much misery themselves. But evil doesn’t have it all its own way. There is a God and he is watching the earth. We believe that prayer can help and that’s why we are gathered here.”
The interviewer nodded and said, “Thank you, Dharam-gaaru.”
“My pleasure, and please call me DK.”
The interviewer said, “This is Usha Malladi, getting reactions to the kidnapping by Naxalites of Rehman, the hero of Royyapalem, and his friends.”
As soon as the TV cameras stopped rolling, the priest came forward and greeted Aruna’s parents, then led them towards the temple. Vani saw Usha following them.
“You can’t come inside,” the teenager said to her. “This is a temple.”
Usha looked surprised for a moment and then said, “I want to pray too.”
Vani peered more closely at the journalist. Lines of stress were etched around the glamorous woman’s eyes. She might almost have been crying. Vani couldn’t understand it at all.
When they walked into the courtyard of the temple, Aruna’s father looked around, baffled. “Is today an auspicious day? I’ve never seen the temple so busy at a normal time like this.”
“They are all here to pray for your daughter and son-in-law, sir. The news has spread everywhere and the people of the town are very concerned for the safety of all the captives. It is one thing for villagers to get kidnapped, but local people are a different matter,” said the priest who called himself DK.
Usha leaned towards Vani and whispered, “DK rallied them all here by phone calls and personal appeals.”
They threaded their way through the throng to the front, where a large idol of Hanuman, the monkey god, presided over the sanctum sanctorum. Mr Somayajulu made a deep obeisance to the deity and stood sideways to face the audience without turning his back to the idol. At the sight of the hundreds of people gazing expectantly at him, sudden tears sprang to his eyes.
DK said in a voice that carried, “Friends, Mr Somayajulu is deeply touched by your concern. Let us all pray to Hanuman, the god of travellers, the devotee who helped Ram and his brother in their quest to rescue Sita. Surely, the prayers of so many people will not go unanswered.”
DK’s eyes flicked to a girl in the third row. Anu looked back at him adoringly. Her father had thrown in the towel about getting her wed to an American banker and their families had formally exchanged betel leaves and the couple were now engaged to be married. It was she who had brought DK’s attention to the kidnapping and her would-be fiancé had swung into action with his customary efficiency.
♦
On her return to the house, Mrs Bilqis put a hand on Nadira’s arm. “Thank you. I do feel better for having said the prayers and recited the ninety-nine names of Allah.”
The silver amulet on a black string was in her handbag. She wasn’t convinced enough to wear it yet.
“I have to go,” said Nadira. “I have been out since first thing in the morning.”
“Stay…just half an hour, please,” said Mrs Bilqis.
Nadira looked at her for a moment, then agreed. “All right,” she said, seating herself on the sofa.
The maid came in and Mrs Bilqis said to her, “Get tea for us.” Mrs Bilqis turned to Nadira. “Give me a moment. I will check on him and come back.”
Mrs Bilqis went into her husband’s bedroom and looked in. For once, his eyes didn’t track her. They were fixed on the television, which, she was surprised to see, was tuned to a news channel. It was normally kept on entertainment channels. Then she remembered that she had left it running the fashion show. That was probably the ‘news’ at that time.
She went to the remote to change it, when the newscaster said, “There is still no news on the four local people who have been kidnapped by Naxalites. This follows a spate of kidnappings of prominent landowners in villages and attacks on politicians. The police commissioner said that a search-and-destroy mission was in progress but that he could not give any more details. Earlier, our reporter, Usha Malladi, managed to speak to the state home minister regarding this issue. The minister said: “Our government is taking the matter seriously. We are pursuing a two-pronged approach. Strong police action on the one hand and an offer of amnesty and rehabilitation for any insurgents who give up their arms and surrender.” Usha also spoke to the leader of the opposition, who said that the offer of amnesty for insurgents was misguided and would only encourage…”
Mrs Bilqis switched off the television. The channel repeated the same news every half an hour or so. How many times had her husband seen this item? She had not told him that Dilawar had been kidnapped, because she didn’t want to worry him, even though she was never sure how much he really took in.
Putting the remote on the bedside cabinet, she looked at her husband. He was still gazing unblinkingly at the now-dark television. Something about his posture caught her attention.
A scream brought Nadira running into the room. Her friend was staring and pointing at the unmoving figure on the bed. One touch was enough to tell Nadira that her friend’s husband had been dead for at least half an hour.
“I killed him,” said Mrs Bilqis. “After years of wanting to end it all by holding a pillow over him, I finally did it.”
“What are you talking about?” said Nadira. “I saw you walk in here just a minute ago. You didn’t do it.”
Mrs Bilqis laughed manically. “I killed him, just as surely as if I physically stopped his breath. I left the TV on the news channel and they were talking about Dilawar being kidnapped.”
Nadira looked puzzled. “So?”
Mrs Bilqis said, “Don’t you see? For twenty years I wondered just how much he understood of what was going on around him. His eyes used to follow me, but there was never any other response. I di
d not tell him about Dilawar’s trouble, just in case he understood, but when I left this morning, I left the TV on the news channel by mistake. You know how these channels are – they keep repeating the same news again and again if they don’t have anything fresh to talk about. I wonder how many times he saw the news before it killed him.”
“We don’t know that…” said Nadira.
“I am sure,” said Mrs Bilqis. “I killed him.”
Nadira turned to her friend and shook her by the shoulders. “Listen to me. You will never, ever repeat that in front of anybody else. Do you understand? You are not a husband-killer. I will not have people forget about the years of dedicated service to your disabled husband because of a false rumour that you somehow caused his death.”
Mrs Bilqis looked at her friend strangely and said, “I don’t care what people think about me any more.”
“But I do,” said Nadira fiercely. “I care about my friends reputation.”
♦
Aruna lay on the hard earth with tears in her eyes. She had asked Ramanujam to go on alone, but he had refused to leave her. She felt that she was letting everybody down, but her bleeding feet would not let her stand up on the hard ground.
After almost an hour in which they had gone less than a hundred yards, a tribe of monkeys moved into the trees around them, talking in squeaks and obviously on their daily feeding round. A hundred pairs of eyes stared in surprise at the unexpected sight of the human couple. An old monkey, its grey fur coming off in clumps, leaving patches of bare skin, held a leaf in one of its paws. It calmly tore the leaf in two, stuffed one half into its mouth and dropped the other half. Before the falling leaf fluttered to the ground, the monkeys moved away – their chattering silenced.
Aruna closed her eyes, until she heard a smack. She opened them to see her husband striking his forehead.
“I am supposed to be a doctor,” he said. “I am actually an imbecile.”
He stood up and started plucking leaves from nearby trees, high off the ground. When he had collected a whole bunch, he took out the small knife and approached her with an intent look.
“What…” she said faintly.
Soon, they were up and moving again. Ramanujam had cut off part of her sari, slit it into strips and used them as bandages to bind the clean leaves to make bootees for her feet. They made much better progress with Ramanujam supporting her, until abruptly they walked straight into a tented camp. Aruna felt a cold chill of shock at the sight of men armed with rifles and machine-guns.
“You are police, aren’t you?” said Ramanujam, addressing a senior man who came out of one of the tents to stand before them.
“No,” he said.
Aruna and Ramanujam exchanged glances and Arum’s grip tightened on his fingers.
“We are the Greyhounds.”
Ramanujam’s body sagged in relief. It was only then that Aruna realised how tense he had been – how tense they both had been.
“My name is Ramanujam and this is my wife, Aruna. I am a doctor at the Vizag district hospital. We’ve just escaped from Naxalites.”
The man’s eyes widened momentarily and he quickly ushered them into the commander’s tent.
“Aruna! Are you the lady who sent the message with the location?”
“Yes. But somehow the Naxalites found out about it and they moved us.”
The officer nodded grimly. “We were in the Nallamalai forests at the time, so the police got there as soon as they could and they found your phone. Both we and the police have been combing the area since then, trying to locate you. But shouldn’t there be more of you? Where are the others?”
“We’re the only ones who’ve managed to escape. The others are still captive.”
“We had better go after them quickly. Do you know where they are being held?”
Aruna shook her head. “I have no idea,” she said. “We walked for hours going this way and that last night. They could be anywhere in this forest.”
Ramanujam smiled and said, “I know almost exactly where the camp is.”
Aruna and the Greyhound officer looked at him in astonishment. “Where?”
“If you go upstream about three miles, you will see that the river has a kink, going round a big rock. Just on the other side of the rock, there is a tree that seems to stand almost by itself. You can’t miss it. It has great aerial roots that straddle the stream. On that banyan tree, I’ve carved an arrow towards the spot where we made a camp last night.”
Aruna blushed but neither man noticed. The officer was now writing down Ramanujam’s words. Having caught up, he nodded to Ramanujam to continue.
“From there, go straight south for about six miles until you can see two hills on either side of you. The camp is by the base of the left-hand peak.”
Surprised, Aruna asked, “How do you know that? It was dark and we were pretty blind.” Not to mention terrified, she thought.
“I was scared that we would make a big circle and end up in the guerrillas’ hands again. So, I followed the Pole Star and I know we were walking for almost three hours by how much the Ursa Major, the Great Bear, moved in the sky.”
“Oh!” said Aruna, at a loss for what to say. “How do you know these things?”
Ramanujam grinned. “Only some of the times I left the hostel at night were to meet girls, remember,” he said.
The officer clapped Ramanujam on the shoulder. “Shabhash!” he said. “This is fantastic information.” He poked his head out of the tent. “Break camp, boys. We are leaving in ten minutes.”
He turned back to the couple. “We’ll move faster without you. Also, it will be dangerous once we find them. The Naxalites are armed and we have to be careful because of the hostages, while they can fire indiscriminately. A couple of my men will remain here to protect you. And if we need to, we can get in touch with you on our radio.”
“One other thing,” said Ramanujam. “Please don’t make this news public yet. The Naxalites seem to have informants among the police. I think that’s how they found out about Aruna’s text message.”
The officer nodded. “That’s what my senior officers and I were thinking. You’ve given us very detailed information, so we’ll rely on speed and surprise. But it means that you cannot call your families to let them know either.”
The couple nodded. While they were anxious to assure their parents that they were safe, it was the least they could do for their friends who had all helped them to escape and then remained behind to provide cover.
“Let’s go, men.”
Aruna dropped to her knees and prayed for the success of the mission.
♦
The phone rang in the old bungalow, making both the women jump in surprise. They went quickly into the living room. Mrs Bilqis picked up the receiver, listened for a moment and fainted on to the sofa, still clutching the phone.
“What – ” said Nadira. She removed the phone from her friend’s hand and put it to her ear.
“Hello, hello…” said a male voice.
“Dilawar?” shouted Nadira. “Is that you?”
“Who? Nadira Aunty. What happened to ammi-jaan? Why isn’t she answering?”
“What…Ya, Allah!”
“We’ve been freed by commandos. We are all fine. I can’t talk for long. The others are waiting for their turn to speak. We’ll be in town in a few hours.”
Nadira put the phone down. This was not the time to tell him about his father. She called the maid and together they splashed cool water on Mrs Bilqis’s face, reviving her.
“I had a dream,” she said. “I dreamed that my son was coming home.”
“It was not a dream, silly. You almost gave me a heart attack, collapsing like that. Dilawar and the others have been freed. Your son will be back home in hours.”
Mrs Bilqis jumped up. “Come on, let’s prepare a feast for Dilawar.”
Their eyes met and Mrs Bilqis slowly sat down again. This was now a house in mourning and no food could be cooked in it fo
r several days. The household would have to rely on the community around to feed them.
Mrs Bilqis took off her black bead necklace, the traditional sign of marriage among Muslim women. Hers had finally ended. She then started to remove the gold bangle from her right hand, which was more difficult as it would not pass easily over her wrist. As a widow, she could no longer wear jewellery. The maid looked at her in astonishment and exclaimed, “Madam, what are you doing?” Realisation must have struck her, because she said, “Oh!” and rushed to the master’s room.
Mrs Bilqis laid the bangle on the coffee table in front of her and turned to Nadira, surprised to see tears in her friend’s eyes.
“Don’t be sad, Nadira,” she said. “My marriage finished years ago. Today was just another step on the way. Your Baba’s prayers were effective, after all. I got my son back.”
Nadira shook her head. “Yes, but at what cost?”
♦
The ringing of the doorbell broke the silence in the Ali household. Mr Ali went to the verandah and opened the gate to a middle-aged man in a branded T-shirt that was too tight around his paunch, trousers and white sneakers. “I want to join the marriage bureau for my son.”
“Sorry, sir,” said Mr Ali. “The office is closed now.”
“When I called you last week, I was told that it was open from nine till twelve in the morning.”
“Yes, sir. That is normally the case. I apologise for any inconvenience, but we have some personal problems at the moment. We are closed until further notice.”
The man clicked his tongue. “That is the problem with India,” he said. “Everything is personal; there is no professionalism. I have just come back from America. My son works there, you know. It is not like this in those advanced countries. If a shop says that it opens at nine, it opens at nine. No excuses. If you invite somebody over for six o’clock, they come at six – not an hour and a half later. In fact, the only people in America who are not punctual are those who have moved there from here. It seems that they can leave India, but India cannot leave them.”
