‘But weren’t there four performances?’
‘Yes, the last performance was on 15 August. But they could not finish it.’
‘Why?’
‘The theatre group performed at the college grounds on the afternoon of Independence Day. They had made me a part of their team. Every performance attracted a bigger crowd than the previous one. There was a sizeable crowd that day too. I liked how they thought that if they publicized the instances when people saved the lives of others, people would then stop playing with others’ lives, or if needed, would even save them. But the actors were attacked before the performance could finish. The assault took place despite the presence of the police.’
‘Then?’
‘When I saw people from the Morcha among the attackers, I was sure they were the same people who wanted to kill me. It would have been a blood-soaked 15 August had there not been an audience. When others stepped forward to mediate, the attackers left the scene. But before leaving, they announced on the mike that they would not allow the play to be performed in this town again.’
Even if Niyaz had not told me this last bit, things were becoming crystal clear. Niyaz was connecting the threads with his memory. It must have been terrifying for him just to recount all of this.
‘I remember the look on Amit’s face as he hit me. There was a look of calm, rather than one of fury. Amandeep Sahib was sent by Allah to save me. Nobody would have even found my corpse had he not been there. But Amit had already attacked twice with an iron rod before he arrived.’ He lifted his shirt. The skin around his right shoulder was peeled off.
After he showed us the wound, Niyaz set his shirt back in place with great discomfort. Conscious of his pain, I said, ‘The other wound must be similar, I imagine. Or is it worse?’
A strange smile appeared on his face. ‘No, you cannot imagine.’
‘Sorry, I didn’t mean to say I don’t want to see your wounds. You looked uncomfortable, that’s why I said you didn’t have to show it.’
‘Exactly – that’s why I said you cannot imagine. Before Amit could hit me a second time, Anuradha came between us and shielded me, the way a roof protects a house. She didn’t even get the chance to cry out in pain. If I had taken that blow, I wouldn’t have been able to cry out either. The attackers backed off when they saw what had happened. That’s when Amandeep Sahib was able to save me.
‘You had asked about that girl. Sir, Anuradha’s life is hanging by a thread at a hospital in Mumbai.’
We stayed silent for a long time. Before leaving, I asked Niyaz if he would testify in case the matter ever went to court.
He couldn’t answer. Not because he didn’t want to, but because his mother loudly asked me to leave as soon as she heard the word ‘court’.
The elderly man put his hands together in a namaste and saw us off with an expressionless face as we walked out of the shop.
NIGHT HAD FALLEN. SEVERAL LIGHTS were being installed along the street as decorations for the festival. There were ladders, people, the market. The Dol Mela was two days away. That’s why the streets were jammed.
Shalabh called several times, but I didn’t answer. To tell the truth, my mind was blank. The darkness behind all the light did not let me think. A couplet by the last Mughal king Bahadur Shah Zafar kept coming back to me over and over again: ‘Main sisakta reh gaya aur mar gaye Farhad-o-Qais.’ All I could do was weep, but Farhad and Qais gave up their lives … If civilization has indeed progressed, it should have progressed in a direction where no one needed to see their beloved killed in front of them or made to disappear. But we hadn’t been able to do so in all these years. What could I have told Anasuya? That we would be able to find Rafique as well as clear the web of lies that had been spun around his life? His diary, his notes, his script – all of them were telling the truth, but what was available to everyone was the newspapers, the police, the Morcha, and their homicidal ambitions.
Somewhere among the papers stuffed in my bag and the ones scattered all over my room was the script of this entire play. If I could sleep, I wanted to dream about Rafique and his companions performing the play during the Dol Mela. Then, a moment would come where I would find it difficult to tell whether the person playing Niyaz was Rafique, or whether it was someone like me who had entered Rafique’s being to play Niyaz.
24/8/15
The Dol Mela is on 5 September. It is also our test. Looking at the circumstances, each of us will have to rehearse the roles of all the characters from today onwards. This will ensure that the performance can go on even if, god forbid, only one person is left. How I wish seven or eight of us could play all the characters by ourselves, so that we could perform the play in seven or eight different places at once.
If there comes a time to perform this play all by yourself, then know that it should be executed like a street performer’s show. One prop for each character, for easy identification. A police hat for Amandeep. For Mangal, his scarf. A weapon for Amangal. For Niyaz, his books. Remember, he is a student of science. An intelligent student. Keep two flowers for Anuradha. One to adorn herself with and the other for…
I found out today that the drum used by street performers costs 400 rupees. We will get it. We will buy it beforehand, because it needs to be tightened for a good sound, and we will have to learn to pull its strings to tune it.
We will have to start with the drum and there is no harm in this.
But we will have to come up with catchy lines to go along with the beat.
And lastly, which means right before starting the performance, you must ask the spectators to sit down. The stage is your home. Explain to the audience the story you are going to tell them. It’s not going to be easy to convince them that the one who saves is god.
This novel is dedicated to the brave Uttarakhand police officer, Gagandeep Singh, who saved a young man from a lynch mob.
About the Book
Legal fiction: A rule assuming as true something that is clearly false. Often used to get around the provisions of constitutions and legal codes.
A late-night phone call from his ex-girlfriend Anasuya forces writer Arjun Kumar to leave his wife and home in Delhi and travel to the mofussil town of Noma on the UP–Bihar border. The reason – Anasuya’s husband, Rafique Neel, a college professor and theatre director, has mysteriously disappeared.
Soon after he arrives, Arjun realizes that things are not as they seem: the police are refusing to register a missing-persons case, Rafique’s student Janaki has also disappeared, and the locals are determined to turn it into a case of ‘love jihad’. And when Arjun begins to dig deeper, what he finds endangers him and everyone around him.
Inspired by true events from today’s India, Legal Fiction is a brilliant existential thriller and a chilling parable of our times.
About the Author
Chandan Pandey is the author of three shortstory collections and one novel in Hindi. He has won the Bharatiya Jnanpith’s Navlekhan Award, the Shailesh Matiani Katha Puraskar, and is a recipient of the Krishna Baldev Vaid Fellowship.
Bharatbhooshan Tiwari is a writer and translator in Hindi and English.
Praise for Legal Fiction
This is like Kafka in Deoria. Or Camus in the cow belt. But more accurate to say that Legal Fiction is an urgent, literary report about how truth goes missing in our land. I read it with a racing heart.
– AMITAVA KUMAR, author of The Lovers
Chandan Pandey goes looking for the story that lurks just out of sight, getting under the skin of news headlines and extracting a story that is as compelling as it is devastating.
– ANNIE ZAIDI, author of Prelude to a Riot
Chandan Pandey has written a brilliant, gripping political novel. Legal Fiction is a nuanced, absorbing snapshot of our times – it captures the minefield of hate politics, the intricate, almost invisible fault lines in relationships, and the power of art in imagining a better society.
– MEENA KANDASAMY, author of When I Hit You
The Hindi novel was already destined to be a marker for this era. Now this translation fills a big gap, for no work originally written in English in India has scratched the surface of what Legal Fiction approaches the cold, dark centre of. Here, in the form of a thriller and the tone of an elegy, is a sharp look at a terrifying Indian -ism and the currents against it. Be ready for a heart of darkness.
– TANUJ SOLANKI, author of Diwali in Muzaffarnagar
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First published in English in India in 2021 by Harper Perennial
An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers
A-75, Sector 57, Noida, Uttar Pradesh 201301, India
www.harpercollins.co.in
2 4 6 8 10 9 7 5 3 1
Originally published in Hindi as
Vaidhanik Galp © Chandan Pandey 2020
English translation © Bharatbhooshan Tiwari 2021
P-ISBN: 978-93-5422-750-9
Epub Edition © June 2021 ISBN: 978-93-5422-446-1
This is a work of fiction and all characters and incidents described in this book are the product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Chandan Pandey asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
All rights reserved under The Copyright Act, 1957. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins Publishers India.
Cover design: Nitesh Mohanty
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