Black River, page 24
Bhim Sain passes them back, fumbles, and the photos fall on the charpai, scattered like a pack of cards.
Ombir says, ‘This is from another set.’
Only one of the photographs is in colour. A close-up of Munia’s dress, coloured purple by jamuns. Her face is not visible. Chand touches the photograph, his fingers brushing it gently.
‘You’ve decided what to do with your land?’
‘Balle Ram helped me to make my decision,’ Chand says. ‘He will take care of my home and this field, and with his blessings, I will sell the rest of the land. Teetarpur will see a lot of change. Maybe it’ll become more like Delhi in the next ten years, you never know.’
‘Saluja says there’ll be malls soon,’ Dilshad says, brightening. ‘It’ll be good for me and my friends. We can start businesses, set up shops for the city people. Saluja’s in a bad mood today, though, I heard on my way over. Bhadana says he’s upset after what happened to Dharam Bir last night.’
Bhim Sain and Ombir glance at one another, then at Dilshad.
‘I guess he’s not eager for the news to get out so soon, he must have told the hospital staff to keep it quiet. Dharam Bir was making a strong recovery, but some mix-up happened with the oxygen supply last night. The line was blocked, the power went out, something like that. I heard from two of his friends this morning. They said the hospital staff fixed it quickly, but by then he’d spent an hour off oxygen, and his brain had gone phut, kaput. He’s alive, barely, on the ventilator. That man was like a bull, he could survive anything, even the thrashing you two gave him, but this has finished him off. He’ll never recover his mind, even if he emerges from this coma.’
Chand closes his eyes. He says, ‘It is done, then. It is over.’
Ombir says, ‘Chand, I must take your leave. Have a safe journey.’
Bhim Sain walks him to the road. ‘I am at peace,’ he says. ‘Dharam Bir … I am at peace. It makes no difference who did it. But are you at peace, sir?’
Ombir says, ‘I will be. Soon.’
‘It’s you again,’ the woman says, sounding bored. ‘I knew she was in serious trouble. She’s packing, mister, but she’s cleared my rent for the month, what do I care? She’s on her way out, so you’d better hurry if you want to catch her before she leaves for the railway station.’
The tiny rooms have been cleared. Four trunks stand like a tower in the corridor. The bangles and bottles, the costumes and film magazines have all been packed away.
‘I could hardly let you leave without saying goodbye,’ he says.
Chunchun’s eyes harden. ‘You have a warrant? I won’t say anything unless you have a warrant.’
He steps inside. On one wall, a torn poster of Priyanka Chopra sags to the ground. A clutter of old lipsticks and discarded scrunchies litters the floor.
‘I won’t—’ she begins, and his fingers dig into her wrist. He drags her into the room, shuts and latches the door.
‘I’m only here for a social visit,’ he says. ‘And to clear some minor questions. I won’t bother you after this, I promise. Be civil, Chunchun. Where’s your aunt?’
‘I made her daughter take her back,’ she says. ‘I won’t have time to look after her the way I used to.’
He says, ‘That’s a fine satchel you’re carrying. Roomy. Much larger than your usual handbag.’
She glares at him, and her hate warms him suddenly, makes him feel better, like a proper policeman.
He opens the satchel and brings out thick wads of money, letting them fall back into its leather depths.
‘You’re taking over Bachni’s trade?’ he says. ‘You’ll do well at it, but mind you don’t make the same enemies she did.’
‘I wouldn’t do that work for twice this amount!’ she says, stung. ‘I’m setting up my own business, okay? That’s not illegal, is it?’
‘What kind of business, Chunchun?’
She says, ‘Men like you will never understand our lives. Women like me, we get into the dance trade because it opens some doors, you know? We’re not whores, we’re respectable women.’
‘For a while,’ he says softly. ‘Until you make a few compromises. Not much. You look away when someone makes children the target of his evil, you take his cash because you don’t have to witness their pain, and because you’re already losing dance gigs, aren’t you? New girls, younger dancers, they elbow you out. The first wrinkles appear and the first grey hairs show up, and then you’ll do anything you can to keep making money, won’t you?’
She has no make-up on except for thick lines of kohl rimming her eyes. The light streaming in through the stained window is strong enough to illuminate the tiny crow’s feet, the lines on her neck.
‘Easy for you to judge. I never meant to spend so many years dancing. I wanted much more from life. Men are scum. Dharam Bir, there are so many Dharam Birs, their sins are allotted to their account books, not mine. Why shouldn’t I take his money, or any other bastard’s? I’m setting up a store for dance girls like me and Bachni, even Reshma Bhabhi. It’ll turn a big profit. You need costumes and wigs, make-up and good shoes. You need jewellery on rent, or the solid fakes, the ones that look like the real thing. You need different outfits for different occasions, what you wear for a public performance won’t do for a private mujra. Even the bindis and bangles, the hairpins, the flowers. All of that costs a lot. That’s my new dhanda.’
‘I wish you luck,’ Ombir says. ‘You don’t believe me, but I do. Give me your phone for a moment, please.’
She hesitates, eyes the closed door, and reluctantly hands over her mobile.
‘Password.’
‘4321,’ she says.
He shakes his head, marvelling at the idiocy of someone who would use such an obvious password, keys it in, goes straight to the videos.
‘What are you looking at?’ she says. ‘Give it back!’
When she snatches at the phone, he bends her wrist back until she cries out, and continues scrolling.
‘Chunchun, I don’t care who you sleep with or if you record all of your encounters with all of the men you fuck, all right? I’m looking for—here it is.’
‘I only recorded it because he liked to watch himself later,’ she says sulkily.
He holds the screen out to her, and they both watch a jerky video of her and Dharam Bir. He lets it run through, the volume turned up.
‘Any fool would know that you were faking those moans,’ Ombir says. ‘He couldn’t do it unless he watched child porn, am I right?’
‘What does it matter?’ Chunchun says, her sulky face scorched with anger. ‘What difference does it make? He’s finished anyway, his number has been called.’
He says, ‘I don’t care about what you two were doing. But the time at which you took the video, that interests me. There are three more videos. You were telling the truth. He was with you that day, all through that morning, and he left after 3 p.m., that’s correct?’
She says dully, ‘Yes. I told you this before.’
Ombir says, ‘I should have checked your phone earlier.’
He makes a quick note of the times in his notebook, transfers copies of the videos to his own phone. Dharam Bir was indisputably with Chunchun the day that Munia died. There are gaps between the videos, but none of them long enough to allow the man to drive to the other side of Teetarpur, commit a murder and return.
‘Why do you care?’ she asks him suddenly.
He gives her an inquiring look.
‘About the children,’ she says. ‘That kind of dhanda, it happens all the time, everywhere. Why do you care? They’re nothing to you.’
Ombir says, ‘Because no one else seems to. Not the men who run Teetarpur, not their parents. Someone has to. Why not me, and Bhim Sain?’
Chunchun shrugs, bored by this sentimentality. ‘Can I go now?’ she says. ‘I’ll miss the train.’
‘One last thing. Just for my own curiosity. Who gave you that money?’
Her eyes slide away from his. She says, ‘It’s Bachni’s stash.’
He says in the same calm, easy tone, ‘No, it isn’t. These are new notes. The newspapers they are wrapped in are dated the day before yesterday, Chunchun. Let me make it easier for you. And I promise you won’t be arrested. Who paid you to cut off Dharam Bir’s oxygen supply at the hospital?’
‘You have no proof,’ she says. She watches him closely, her broad hands curled into fists.
‘I spoke to Sister Sumanbala on my way here. She sent me the CCTV footage from the camera in the corridor outside Dharam Bir’s ward. It is poor quality, but you can see a woman, with a swept-up hairdo like the one you have, wearing the same kind of clothes you have on, walking in. I’m sure that there’ll be more footage from other cameras.’
Ombir prays that she can’t tell it’s a bluff, that she hadn’t the sense to notice what he had on his visit. The hospital’s CCTV cameras are either broken or stolen. He’d bet his life that there isn’t a working camera on the premises.
‘I can’t tell you,’ she says. Her voice is high and strained. ‘He’s ruthless. He’ll kill me if he comes to know you were here, that we spoke about this. He’ll finish me like that, if he ever gets to know. I can’t tell you anything except that I didn’t know what it would do to Dharam Bir. He said, just switch it off from the main supply and unplug the machine so that it doesn’t beep, then switch it back on later.’
‘You’re a liar and a coward, Chunchun,’ Ombir says. ‘You did know. You knew exactly what it would do, and you knew why that satchel was given to you, why this job was worth so many Gandhis.’
‘Take it,’ she says. ‘Take it all.’ She is trembling.
He unlatches the door, holds it open. ‘No need. I would not touch that bloodstained money. You’ve been helpful, Chunchun. Everything you said is recorded. I’ll find you if I have any more questions, and I’ll find you if you dabble in murder ever again, wherever you are.’
‘You’re going to let me go, just like that?’ she asks in bewilderment.
Ombir smiles. He says, ‘Yes, I am. Goodbye, Chunchun. Don’t ever come back to Teetarpur. Let’s hope we never meet again.’
Black River
These days, Rabia waits at the bus stand to meet Sanam every evening. She is uneasy, senses danger in the air.
Bright Dairy has changed with the influx of the young men. The women used to retire to their homes by nine every night, leaving the streets to the men by tacit agreement, stepping out in groups for necessary trips to shops, or the toilet block. Now they retreat by seven and stay indoors, bearing with the inconveniences, the lack of toilet access through the night hours, as best as they can.
She feels the prickle of the men’s eyes on her this evening. And on Sanam, when her daughter-in-law alights from the bus. They walk back, exchanging small details about Sanam’s job, a new colleague, Rabia’s day at the warehouse where she did the morning shift, six hours of bubble-wrapping cellphones and other goods that rich strangers had ordered over the Internet.
Rabia sees them before Sanam does. Two lanes before Azizbhai’s home, hemming them in, a group of lounging boys who look up at their approach.
Since the trouble began, she has taken to carrying a small kitchen knife in the pocket of her kurta. She touches it for reassurance, but it is talismanic. Neither of them will stand a chance if the men choose to close in.
For the first time, she notices how many of their neighbours keep their doors and windows closed. Some have run up plastic curtains across their balconies. All that can be seen are their dim shapes moving behind those makeshift screens. This hour, the bridging hour between day and night, used to be the time when people used to come out, perch a rickety wooden chair on the edge of the road, or sit on the steps or on their charpais, when chatter would light up their lives. No more; people come home and seal themselves away.
‘Don’t let them see that we’re nervous,’ she says to Sanam.
The men slowly move out of their path, waiting till the last moment. One of them holds out his cellphone. He’s smiling. Then another, then the rest. They hold the screens towards the women, so near that Rabia accidentally brushes one man’s hand with her elbow. She flinches away.
Lynching videos. Rape videos. Each man playing a different one. To walk past the men, they have to walk through this wall of screams, through the sound of the pleas and lamentations, through the last dying cries of those who’ve been hunted down by vigilantes far more viciously in the last few years than Rabia can remember ever happening before. The men are silent, though she feels the hands of one or two of them lightly flick against her thighs, her breasts, as she passes, as a reminder of what they can do if they wish.
Rabia holds Sanam close, her arm around the young woman’s waist. ‘Keep your head down,’ she whispers. ‘Try not to look.’ But she can tell that Sanam has already seen too much. Her daughter-in-law is crying soundlessly, her tears damp on Rabia’s wrist.
Up ahead, she can see a streetlight. The entrance to Azizbhai’s lane, and to safety, at last.
She almost screams when the last man reaches out, grabs her by the shoulder, turns her around to face him.
‘We know you,’ he says. ‘Tell Azizbhai from us that he should take better care of his family. These are evil times. Anything can happen, at any time.’
Arshad and Azizbhai work swiftly towards their date of departure. Rabia examines the passports, those all-important booklets, while the men talk. Passports signal their importance: every other form of identification that matters to them, ration cards, identity cards, are small rectangles of plastic, pieces of cardboard. The passport has its own cover. It is meant to be carried around with the same care as a miniature sacred book. Arshad’s passport and Sanam’s passport, carefully placed in ziplock bags, have the sheen of newness and hope.
It is taken for granted among the three of them, Azizbhai, Arshad and Sanam, that she will join them in Oman later. Rabia does not contradict them. She does not want to hurt them, and she is touched that they had thought to include her. So she says nothing, only listens as Arshad and Sanam warm to the subject of Oman, and the wonders and relief of living in a country where they cannot so easily be singled out because of their religion.
Outside, the boys roar by on their motorbikes. She hears them chant:
‘Madan Chaubey, Bright Dairy’s star
Vote for him, wherever you are!
Madan Chaubey, Bright’s brightest name
Join us and spread his fame.’
Chaubey is standing for the municipal elections and is likely to win, her neighbours say. Bright Dairy will be transformed even further. She turns back to Sanam, tries to concentrate on her daughter-in-law’s excited chatter about their future in a new country.
Another notice, another offer for the houses on Rabia’s street. This time, it is hand-delivered. Sixteen boys, knocking at the door. When she lifts the hook, they push the door open with such force that she is almost knocked off her feet. ‘It’s a good offer, sister,’ they say. ‘We’ll be back tomorrow night with your letter of acceptance. Everyone is signing.’
They say the same thing to all her neighbours. Salma tells her that she and her husband have packed already and will leave soon. Bright Dairy is no longer the right place for people like them, and you cannot spend your life fighting the tide. Because, she says, that is what it is, Rabia. It is coming at us like the tide, and it will sweep us away if we are not careful.
The boys saunter through her home. One taps his lathi on the cardboard cartons that Azizbhai has left in her keeping. He delivers two taps of approval. ‘Good, good,’ he says. ‘We aren’t looking for trouble. It’s better if you’re leaving on your own.’
The neighbour across the road shouts, ‘She’s going to live with her son and his family in Oman, the lucky woman. Not all of us are so blessed.’
‘Oman, it’s in the Gulf?’ he says. He is younger than Arshad, and already adopting the postures and tone of one of their leaders—dark glasses, gold medallions around his neck, a studded wristband letting the neighbourhood know that he has made his bones on the street, can handle himself in a fight.
She nods.
‘A Muslim country,’ the neighbour yells, coming up to the doorway. ‘She can say her prayers in peace, without any kind of disturbance.’
He is unruffled. ‘It’s a good thing, to be with your own kind. You can eat your non-veg if you want, any time you like. Pray five times a day to your God without feeling out of step with us. Be with others like you. Why be a minority here, when you can be part of the majority there? That’s what I cannot understand. Why would anyone not want to live alongside their own people?’
Her patience snaps. She says, keeping her voice steady, ‘I am among my own people.’
He eyes her, lazily twirling the lathi in a long, slow circle, letting the tip come down softly on her shoulder.
‘No,’ he says. ‘You are not. But you will be soon.’
The shabby, makeshift huts that fringed the banks of the Yamuna are gone, though the wallowing buffaloes and the hyacinth pools remain. The Tinsel King has been forgotten; a ring of carts stands by the pond where he once ruled, and vegetable-sellers wash bunches of carrots and spinach in its waters. Boys play cricket where the ground has been cleared.
The skeleton poles for an open-air stadium are planted in the earth like a row of sentinels, and a large billboard proclaims, ‘For Three Days, Let God In. With Baba Muktisagar, The Truth Shall Be Revealed. Entry Free.’ A towering cut-out presents Baba Muktisagar, a clean-cut man with impressive abs and pectorals striking an advanced yoga pose, wearing a tight gold leotard. Rabia turns her back on the bulging Baba and finds the track that leads down to the river.
There are no wading birds, though convocations of black kites have gathered on the power lines overhead. The waters have lost the shimmer she remembers. The river flows like tar, sluggish and heavy, and the deep clay of the banks is almost lost to sight, covered in plastic, in trash, from edge to edge. The air stinks from foulness further down where the drains discharge into the Yamuna everything the city has no use for.
