Buddha's Orphans, page 14
Raja bought Nilu small gifts: trinkets, a packet of beautiful Nepali writing paper, cassettes he’d recorded himself with his favorite love songs—by Boney M., Leo Sayer, Paul Anka—and love poems in both English and Nepali. At school all she had to do was step into the courtyard and he’d abandon his friends and come over. On Saturdays he rejected invitations from his male friends and waited for her at home. When she exhorted him to spend more time with his friends, who’d now begun to refer to him as Romeo and Majnu, he only smiled.
One day Raja was walking Nilu back to Nilu Nikunj from Lainchour. Darkness had already descended upon the city, and she slipped her hand into his as they passed the tree-lined avenue alongside the royal palace. Bats fluttered overhead, and at the palace gate a few soldiers stood around, chatting amiably.
Nilu had a premonition—even before Raja did what he did. His eyes became fixed on those soldiers, his expression changed, and she had to slow down because he had. Concerned, she was about to suggest that they cross the street, but it was too late. At the palace gate, Raja stopped. Then he started saluting, making guttural sounds. One of the guards, in a smart uniform and a hat with straps so tight that they squeezed the flesh under his chin, shouted, “Hey, who is that? Scat!”
But, ignoring Nilu’s pleas to move on, Raja kept repeating the gesture, at times bursting into the national anthem, “Sriman Gambhir Nepali Prachanda Pratapi Bhupati,” but making it sound like a cry for help rather than an ode to the crown. The soldier briskly walked toward them, grabbed Raja by the ear, and dragged him to the guard station by the iron gate, which opened onto the long driveway to the palace. Panicked, Nilu followed, unable to speak. The thought quickly crossed her mind that Raja was touched in the head like his adoptive mother. At the guard station, the soldier slapped Raja a few times, asking him who he was, asking Nilu who she was, asking her who he was, demanding to know whether they knew what they were doing, asking them whether they were college agitators from Ascol College, asking Nilu whether she was a whore and what she was doing with a boy this late at night, then laughing along with another guard who never left the guard station but watched the commotion with a smirk. Raja stood there, massaging his cheek where the soldier had slapped him. Finally, when the soldier stopped speaking, Raja asked him casually, “Dai, what is it like inside? Are the walls made of gold? Are the dishes studded with diamonds?”
“Shoot him!” the soldier commanded his buddy in the station, and the man lifted his gun and pointed it at Raja, a smile cracking his lips. Raja put his hands up in surrender, a comical gesture, as if he were obeying a “Hands up!” command in a movie. Then, grabbing Nilu’s arm, he stepped away from the gate.
Nilu, her body hot and cold with fear, couldn’t utter a word until they’d passed out of the range of the guards. She still didn’t speak as they crossed the street in front of Keshar Mahal and walked past the Fohora Durbar. She didn’t look at Raja’s face, afraid of what she’d find there. He still had his hand on her arm, and she jerked it away. When he finally spoke, he seemed to want to apologize, but she said, “Crazy! You’re crazy! He could have killed both of us.”
He shook his head, then said, “I wouldn’t have done it if I knew you’d get so angry.”
“I don’t want to speak to you.” Nilu’s heart was hammering in her chest and in her throat, and all she wanted to do was get away from him, so she walked even faster, almost sprinting. But he kept pace, offering apologies. “Please, please, Nilu, I had no idea you’d get so scared.”
“Do you know what they are capable of?” she asked, suddenly stopping. “Haven’t you heard enough stories?”
His mouth moved to speak, but nothing came out, and in disgust Nilu resumed walking. He grabbed her arm. “I’m sorry. I won’t do it again.”
“Let go of me!”
“Nilu, please.”
Then she cried, walking more slowly. They were passing the Rum Doodle Ice Cream place near the British Council, and Raja took her arm and guided her inside. “I don’t want any ice cream,” she said.
“Let’s just sit for a moment, okay?”
He calmly ordered some pistachio ice cream, and as she watched him eat it, with a serene expression on his face, incredibly she couldn’t help but admire his nonchalance. What made him so disdainful of the power of those guards? She couldn’t fathom such daring, especially in the imposing setting of the royal palace. “You are crazy,” she finally said to Raja, hating the awe that had crept into her voice.
“I have really wondered,” he said, licking his wooden spoon, “whether the walls inside the palace are made of gold.”
“I worry about you,” she said, placing her hand on his.
He scooped up some ice cream with his spoon and offered it to her, and her heart became filled with longing for him, even though he was right there in front of her. She opened her mouth and slurped the ice cream. “Nothing will happen to me,” he said. “I can feel it. Nothing.”
When Bhutto was hanged by the military junta and students flocked to the Pakistani embassy in protest, Raja was there, jostling with the others, his face contorted with reserved fury, acting like the college students around him even though he had yet to enter college. When the police, wielding batons, charged at the students of Ascol College, Raja, who stood out in his blue school uniform, hurled stones at them. He’d joined the college students despite Nilu’s pleadings. At first she’d been hurt that he hadn’t listened to her, but soon, as she watched the skirmish from the roof of the Jagadamba School, her worries for his safety pushed her hurt aside, for there was Raja, scampering and dashing and darting in and out of the Ascol College building and the dormitory, in and out of the surrounding lanes, as policemen pursued him. The police had cornered a handful of students and brought their batons down on their heads repeatedly. One officer was still chasing Raja, his baton rapidly whipping the air in front of him as though he was swatting at a gnat. Then Raja abruptly turned and stood his ground, halting the policeman. The officer raised his baton to strike Raja; then he paused and merely stared at the boy. Someone else might have thought that Raja had uttered a magic word to freeze the man in place, but Nilu knew that all he did was stand there. The policeman said something to Raja and walked away. Only after the officer was a couple of hundred yards away did Raja turn and hurry into the alley.
Later, when Raja didn’t return to school, Nilu went to Ganga Da’s house. “That stupid boy will get himself killed,” Ganga Da said. He’d just arrived home from work and hadn’t changed out of his daura suruwal. Jamuna Mummy emerged from somewhere in the house, stood in front of Nilu, and began genuflecting, muttering under her breath. Ganga Da lost patience and, shouting at her, pushed his wife into the kitchen, where he forced her to sit on the mat on the floor. “Don’t get up until I come to fetch you,” he warned her.
“Yes, sarkar,” she replied. “Whatever you wish, your highness.”
Ganga Da and Nilu went searching for Raja, she in her school uniform and he in his daura suruwal. At dusk, they combed the Ascol and Thamel area. The police had already left, and so had most of the students. The only signs of the earlier turmoil were some broken glasses at the entrance to the college and a pair of slippers someone had left behind. The two moved into the alleys of Thamel, hoping to find Raja in a tea shop with what Ganga Da constantly referred to as rabble-rousers. But for two hours they searched with no result, and as they were heading home, a boy wearing a school uniform came hurtling toward them. Nilu recognized him as one of the boys in Raja’s circle. “Someone saw Raja being shoved into a police van, near Thamel chowk,” the boy said breathlessly.
“Do you know where they’ve taken him?”
“I heard some of them have been taken to the Hanuman Dhoka police station.”
As they conversed, darkness began to enclose them.
“I’m going to Hanuman Dhoka,” Ganga Da said.
When Nilu said that she would accompany him, he told her she needed to go home, as Muwa would be worried about her. For a while now Ganga Da had been aware, through Raja, of Muwa’s drinking, but he chose to pretend that he didn’t know.
“I’m going with you,” she insisted, and stepped toward the curb to hail a taxi.
But at the Hanuman Dhoka station, the police wouldn’t let them in to see whether Raja had been brought there. “It’s too late,” the inspector in charge said. “Come tomorrow.”
“But at least tell us whether he’s in here,” Ganga Da said, “so that we won’t go looking for him anywhere else.”
A few other parents who were looking for their sons made similar pleas, but Inspector Sharma shook his head. “When it comes to controlling your offspring, you folks allow them to run rampant on the streets, and then, when they are inhaling the air of our jail, you begin shedding your tears. Isn’t it dangerous for our police brothers to go out on the streets, being hit by stones and everything? Go home, and come tomorrow morning.”
Ganga Da studied another inspector who was in the room, recognized him as someone he’d met a long time ago, and went to talk to him. The second inspector finally persuaded Inspector Sharma to send a constable in to verify the names of those who’d been arrested. The constable returned and said that a schoolboy named Raja was indeed there.
“Your son is a Jagadamba School student?” the second inspector asked Ganga Da.
“Yes.”
Inspector Sharma laughed. “What has happened to this country? Now even school students are going to start rioting?”
The next morning Nilu went to Hanuman Dhoka by herself, and Inspector Sharma recognized her and said, “Bahini, why are you getting into politics so early? Shouldn’t you be focusing on your studies now?”
“I’ve come here to see Raja.”
“Yes, Raja. Raja—the name evokes a king, but in deeds he’s like a common crook.”
“Can I see him?”
“Are you his sister?”
“No. Just a friend.”
“Oh, I understand,” Inspector Sharma said. “A girlfriend.” He seemed to slobber at the word.
“Can I go in now?”
Inspector Sharma briefly met her gaze, then jerked his head to indicate she could go in. A constable accompanied her. Raja was holed up in a room with at least a dozen other students, all of whom were older than him. When he saw Nilu, he came to the bars. “You shouldn’t have come,” he said gently “I’d have phoned you as soon as I got out.”
The others in the cell were listening to their conversation, but Nilu and Raja had no choice but to let them. “I was worried,” she said. “Have you eaten anything?”
“Someone passed around a loaf of Krishnapauroti. Uncut. And we all shared.”
She dug into her bag and brought out a packet of arrowroot biscuits, which she handed to him through the bars. He opened it and, after stuffing a couple of biscuits into his mouth, passed the packet to the others. The college students behind him were whispering “girlfriend” and “chawnk” as they cast furtive glances at Raja and Nilu, so Raja turned to them again and said loudly, “Eh, why don’t you all keep it down for a while? Can’t two people talk?” And incredibly, even though Raja was a mere high school student, the college students stopped whispering. Raja turned to her. “And how is my mitini?”
A snippet of a whisper—“He called her mitini”—was stifled by the others in the cell.
“I didn’t sleep a wink last night,” she said.
“Neither did I.”
“That’s because you were in jail!”
“I kept remembering you on the roof of Jagadamba, watching me. But I couldn’t come to you.”
“Raja, you rushed down despite my pleading.”
“I couldn’t control myself,” he said.
“What difference does it make to you,” she asked, “what they do in Pakistan?”
He searched her eyes. “Don’t say that. You have to fight against injustices in this world.”
“Why? Where is it written that we must, especially if some of these things don’t concern us?”
“It’s not written anywhere.”
“Raja, seriously,” she pleaded, not liking the stridency of her voice. “Please don’t do this.”
He looked down and shook his head, kept shaking it for a while, then said, “This thing is getting bigger. People are in an uproar about what happened at Ascol yesterday.”
“How long are they going to keep you here, Raja?”
Instead of answering her, he moved his mouth closer through the bars. Thinking that he was about to whisper something important, she leaned forward, but instead he brushed his lips against hers. Right then, Ganga Da appeared.
For the longest moment Ganga Da stood and shook his head at Raja. He was in his daura suruwal, just like last evening, but now on his way to the Nepal Rashtra Bank. Finally he spoke. “Happy? This must be a glorious day for you? It’s indeed a proud moment for a father to visit his son who is in jail for breaking and shattering property belonging to the government and to other people, for acting like a vagrant raised on the streets.”
He didn’t mean it, of course, the street reference; and Nilu saw that he wanted to take it back even as the words escaped his mouth, but it was too late. Raja said, “Everyone knows I was raised on the streets.”
“Don’t twist my words!” Ganga Da said. “I didn’t raise you to be a goonda and a lafanga, like the rest of these people here.”
“Ganga Da.” Nilu’s voice cautioned him.
The college students gathered around Raja and challenged Ganga Da to repeat what he said. One of them said loudly, “Raja, is your father a mandalay? A government stooge?”
Before Ganga Da could respond, Inspector Sharma appeared. “What’s all the ruckus about?” he said. “It isn’t enough for you guys to be in jail? Do I have to throw piss-water on you to shut you up?”
The thought of being doused in piss elicited laughter from the students, and momentarily, the tension was diffused. Ganga Da accompanied Inspector Sharma to the office. Nilu and Raja once again huddled together, in a corner, the bars of the cell between them. He asked her if she was going to school, and she said that she really didn’t want to, but the police probably wouldn’t allow her to stay much longer. “I’m worried about your meals,” she said. “I thought Ganga Da was going to bring you dal-bhat from home, but he’s dressed for work. Maybe I’ll go home and bring you something to eat.”
“Someone’s family will be bringing food to one of us here, and we’ll all share. That’s how it is in here.”
“Oh, now you’ve become an expert on the etiquette of jail?”
With his index finger, he stroked the top of her hand. “Do you want to go see a movie after I get out of here?”
“Raja, you’re thinking about a movie now?”
“That video parlor in Makhan is playing Love Story.”
“Ryan O’Neal?”
“‘Love means never having to say you’re sorry.’”
“It’s a sappy story,” Nilu said. “I’ve read the book. Besides, I’ve begun to hate those video parlors. They’re so crowded and uncomfortable.”
Over the past year, every alley in inner Kathmandu seemed to boast a video parlor, where bootlegged, grainy copies of Hindi- and English-language movies, some pornographic, were shown for a fee. Nilu and Raja had been to a couple of them, where old men with dentures sat shoulder to shoulder with boisterous boys, and young brides with gold jewelry sparkling and tinkling on their wrists jostled for space with grandmothers suffering from arthritis. Their second time at a video parlor, for a showing of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, the room was so crammed that Nilu felt she was being smothered and had to leave, just as Paul Newman and Robert Redford entered the bordello.
“You don’t want to go?” Raja asked.
“I’ll go if you want to.”
“I don’t want to go if you don’t want to.”
As they were going back and forth like this, Inspector Sharma returned, opened the door to the cell, and beckoned to Raja. “You! Come with me.”
All the chatter in the cell stopped.
“Why?” Raja asked.
“Just come.”
“Where are you taking him?” the others asked.
“Do I have to explain my every move to you?” Inspector Sharma asked. “I have something special for you,” he told Raja.
Immediately Nilu wondered whether they were taking Raja to an isolation cell. She’d read that the police often tortured political prisoners to extract information from them. And Raja was a political prisoner now, wasn’t he? She looked toward the hallway for Ganga Da, but there was no sign of him.
When Raja didn’t move, Inspector Sharma said, “Are you going to come quietly, or do I have to drag you out of there?”
“Don’t go, Raja,” the college students advised. “What can he do if you don’t go?”
“Mujiharu,” Inspector Sharma snarled. “You want to incite him more? Are you playing games with me?”
Inspector Sharma was a short, pudgy man but had a menacing voice, and his threat worked: the room went silent. Raja left the cell and accompanied Inspector Sharma. Nilu followed.
The inspector said nothing as they entered his office, where Ganga Da was seated.
“I should have him sign a confession,” Inspector Sharma said.
“He’ll sign whatever is necessary,” Ganga Da said.
“What confession?” Raja said.
Inspector Sharma touched Raja’s chin with his baton. “He’s still a bachcha, a kid. Look. He doesn’t yet know how to wash his arshhole properly, and yet he’s out on the streets, shouting obscenities against the king.” Before Raja could respond, Inspector Sharma said, “Forget it. You can take him home now.”
Outside the police station, Ganga Da said to Raja and Nilu, “Go straight to school now, you two. Who knows what else could happen today? There are agitators everywhere. Okay, Raja? Can you promise me that you won’t get involved with any of this nonsense? Please?”
