Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line

by Deepa Anappara

  “The main railway station,” Pari snaps at him. “Not metro.”

  The man directs us to a moving staircase. I wonder how far below we are from the ground. Pari holds my hand.

  “Your fingers are like ice lollies,” I say.

  Pari lets go.

  We come out into the smog that has wiggled into every corner of the city and coats our tongues with ash. We have to ask strangers for directions again. The railway station is across the road, a man tells us, and he asks us to take an overpass that lies beyond a police post and an autorickshaw-taxi stand. His voice is deep like a villain’s because he’s wearing a black mask with white skulls to stop his nose from breathing the bad air. The masks in the city are hi-fi, pink with black buttons, red and green with mesh strips, and white with yellow snouts and straps. They make people look like giant, two-legged insects.

  “The government schools here in the city, na, they’re very good,” Pari says when we are on the overpass. “Their students score better marks than private-school students who pay thousands and thousands of rupees as fees.”

  I hope we won’t see a single school. If we do, Pari will insist on going inside.

  We climb down the overpass, dodging the men and women who shoulder us, their bodies twisted by heavy bags. The main railway station is to our left. It’s huge; as big as the malls I have seen from outside, and it’s crowded too. I wonder why all these people are not at work and, if they don’t work, how they have the money to take trains. Ma says the same thing about those who go to malls between Mondays and Fridays.

  We walk around the station, looking for Bahadur and Omvir below boards announcing the times trains will arrive and leave. There’s a Faiz-shaped space between me and Pari. Had he been with us, he would have seen djinns in the dogs lying around the station. He says djinns often shapeshift into dogs and snakes and birds.

  I spot CCTV cameras poking their noses into everyone’s business from the ceiling, but I don’t look at them for too long in case the policemen watching me on the screen at the other end think I’m a suspicious character. There are policemen here at the station too, hovering near the many entrances, checking the bags of passengers.

  “We can ask the police if they have seen Bahadur or Omvir,” I say.

  “They’ll want to know what you’re doing so far away from home and arrest you,” Pari says.

  Her plan seems to be to keep walking, which is a stupid plan. We study the faces of the men and women at the station, sitting on their suitcases or sleeping on towels spread out on the floor, their belongings tied up in large plastic or cloth bags by their heads or feet. There are a million people here and it will take us months to ask everyone about Bahadur and Omvir. But the police can slow down or speed up the footage from the CCTV cameras that are all around us, and zoom in on Bahadur or Omvir easily.

  I see a run-down, double-storeyed building that’s separate from the station, but within the same compound. A board hanging to its side says:

  CHILDREN’S TRUST

  Children First and Foremost

  Of the Children, By the Children, For the Children

  “We should go there,” I tell Pari.

  “It sounds like a zoo with different kinds of children.”

  “Children are children,” I say, but I’m not that sure. Faiz will be sorry he didn’t come with us if it’s an actual children’s zoo.

  We head past a mock train engine, a little girl guarding a row of bags, a red-shirted porter balancing three suitcases on his head, and a man who barks into a mobile that he holds near his mouth and not his ear. Loud voices push themselves out of the speakers hidden around the railway station, warning people about bomb threats.

  Then we are at the building. It has a locked door with a sign that says Reservation Counter. Next to the door is a puddle where two mynahs wash their faces like I do: in and out of the water in seconds. We climb up a mossy external staircase to a terrace that surrounds a large room with huge windows. I can hear murmurs but I can’t see anyone.

  A man with hair combed over his forehead comes out of the room and asks, “Are you lost? Where are you from?”

  “We’re looking for two boys from our basti,” Pari says, showing him Bahadur’s photo. “This is one of them. His brother-sister think he ran away from home to take a train to Mumbai.”

  “Could even be Manali,” I say.

  “The other boy must have joined him here yesterday. Or today,” Pari says.

  “You ran away too?” the man asks. He doesn’t even look at the photo.

  “Of course not,” Pari says.

  “We want to find our friends. We think they’re at the station,” I say. It’s hard to get a word in when I have a blabbermouth for an assistant.

  “Achha-achha, I thought you were runaways,” he says. “Where are your parents? Why aren’t you at school?”

  “Our parents are at work. We don’t have school today. The government has declared a holiday. Because of the smog,” Pari says.

  “Did they now?”

  “Yes, this morning,” Pari says. “You can ask someone if you don’t believe us.”

  I don’t think the man will check but he takes out his mobile, swipes his fingers up and down the screen and exclaims, “You’re right. It’s a holiday.”

  “We told you,” I say. “You didn’t believe us.”

  “And I’m sorry I didn’t believe you,” he tells me with a smile. “I work here, for the Children’s Trust. Our center helps children like you who come to the city for whatever reason. Children who aren’t with their parents. Children who may be in danger. That’s why, when I saw you, I thought you were lost.”

  I didn’t know this was a job; hanging around a railway station to help children. It’s an odd job. If Faiz were here, he would have asked how much it pays.

  “This city isn’t safe,” the man says. “All kinds of terrible people live here. I can’t even begin to tell you—”

  “We have heard about child snatchers,” Pari says.

  “I have seen them too,” I say. “On Police Patrol.”

  Pari rolls her eyes.

  “It’s much much worse,” the man says. “Things are so bad they can’t even show it on TV. I’ll tell you because you shouldn’t have come here without your parents. I’ll tell you so you won’t do this again. Do you know there are people who’ll make you their slaves? You’ll be locked up in a bathroom and let out only to clean the house. Or you’ll be taken across the border to Nepal and forced to make bricks in kilns where you won’t be able to breathe. Or you’ll be sold to criminal gangs that force children to snatch mobiles and wallets. Take it from me, I have seen the worst of life. This is why children should never travel unaccompanied. This is why I’m giving you a lecture. What you’re doing, it’s irresponsible. It’s downright dangerous.”

  “Have you seen this boy?” Pari asks, her voice as cool as her ice-hands, holding up Bahadur’s photo. “Was he here? Have you seen his friend?”

  “The police should be doing this, not you,” the man says.

  “The police don’t care about us because we’re poor,” I say.

  The lecture-man clicks his tongue like a lizard but he takes the photo from Pari’s hands and studies it.

  “How old is he?” he asks.

  “Nine,” Pari says. “Ten maybe.”

  “I can’t say I have seen him. Was this what he was wearing when he left home?”

  “He was wearing our school uniform. Same as what he’s wearing now,” Pari says, jabbing my sweater.

  Pari’s uniform is the same colors as mine but instead of trousers she wears a skirt and long socks. When we reach Standard Six, her uniform will be a salwar-kameez like Runu-Didi’s. Boys’ uniforms are always the same, so Ma will make me put on these trousers even when I’m tall enough to pluck jamuns from trees.


  “I haven’t seen any children in uniform here other than you,” the man says. “If they were waiting for a train on a platform, alone, a chai-wallah or a porter would have alerted us.” He returns Bahadur’s photo to Pari. “Truth be told, thousands of children come here daily, and we don’t get to talk to every one of them. We try, of course. But the numbers, the logistics of it, it’s a nightmare.”

  Faiz would say this man is ekdum-useless.

  “Since you have come all this way, let’s go inside and ask the children here. Maybe one of them saw your friends.”

  Pari and I look at each other because we don’t know this man and maybe this room on the terrace is a trap.

  “We have classes here for children to attend if they want. But sometimes we don’t teach them anything and instead they watch TV.”

  This sounds like the kind of school I want to go to but it’s also impossible that this is a real school.

  “It’s a place where street children can feel safe for a few hours,” the man says. “If they like it, they can move into one of our shelters, or they can go home. We help them do whatever they want.”

  “We’ll talk to them,” Pari says.

  Inside the room, just as the man said, a small TV is attached to the wall, but it’s switched off now. Below it, children—some my age, some older, some younger—sit on bedsheets spread like mats on the floor. They look up when they see us and one of them says, “Tourist? One dollar please.” But they realize quickly that we look like them, so their eyes go back to their teacher. There are only two girls in the classroom.

  “These children are looking for their friends who are missing,” the lecture-man says. He turns to us and says, “Show them the photo.” Then he tells the teacher, “Take a break.” The teacher sighs, removes his glasses and rubs his eyes.

  Pari and I sit cross-legged on the floor and introduce ourselves. Pari talks to the two girls. Talking to the boys becomes my job. There are fifteen or twenty of them, so it’s not easy. Bahadur’s photo passes from one hand to another.

  “Good photo,” a boy says, but he hasn’t seen Bahadur before.

  “Where are you from?” I ask the boy sitting closest to me.

  “Bihar,” he says.

  “How did you get here?”

  “Train, how else? Think I have enough money to buy an airplane ticket?”

  “Why?” I say though he’s too rude. He looks a little like Faiz and has a scar on his face that’s much fresher than Faiz’s, running down from the tip of his left ear to the corner of his mouth. “Why did you come here?” I ask again.

  He touches the scar and says, “Baba.” His answer takes away all my words. I have no more questions. Our investigation is a waste. I spent Ma’s money for nothing.

  “Talk to Guru and see,” a girl tells Pari just as we are about to leave. “He’ll be standing near the main ticket-reservation counter with his boys. He knows everything that happens around here. He sees us even if we can’t see him. He’s like God.”

  THE CROWD AT THE RAILWAY STATION LOOKS BIGGER—

  —when we go back there from the Children’s Trust. A busy train must be stopping here soon, or one such train has just arrived. I wonder why some trains are crowded and others aren’t. It must be because the packed trains go to cities where millions work and the empty ones go to places like Nana-Nani’s village where there are more buffaloes than people and hardly anyone has TV.

  Near the ticket counters, Pari and I can’t find Guru and his boys but that’s because we can’t see much; only the bodies of people, thin, plump, straight like rulers or bent like sickles.

  “I’m beginning to think I was right about Quarter,” I tell Pari. “Maybe he’s snatching children and forcing them to steal things, like that lecture-man said. It must be a new gang that he has started.”

  Pari opens her mouth to speak, but just then, a hand grips my shoulder tight. It’s a woman with two thin gold chains around her neck and gold hoop earrings dangling from her ears.

  “You lost, boy?” she asks. “Come, I’ll take you to your parents.”

  “We’re fine,” Pari says. “Our friends will be here in a minute.”

  The woman smiles. Her teeth and gums are stained blood-red with paan.

  “You look hungry, beta,” the woman says and pinches my cheeks with her sharp nails. “You too,” she tells Pari. She removes a pouch tucked into the waistband of her sari and opens its strings. I have heard of thieves who carry vials of dizzy-making perfume in their pockets to spritz on people before stealing their wallets. This woman is up to no good. I move to the side and push Pari away from her too.

  “Here,” the woman says, taking an orange sweet wrapped in cellophane out of her pouch. It’s crinkled like a real orange segment and dusted white with sugar.

  “We don’t want it,” Pari says.

  “No need to fight,” the woman says. “There’s one for you too.”

  “Don’t touch the sweets,” a voice hisses at us and, the next second, the voice is by our side, scolding the woman. “Auntie-ji, isn’t it time for you to retire? Isn’t it time to go to Varanasi and take a dip in the Ganga? Shouldn’t you be uttering Lord Ram’s name day and night?”

  The woman spits to the side in disgust, releasing a thin line of pink-colored saliva, but she walks away from us.

  “You should know better than to take sweets from strangers,” says the voice, which belongs to a boy who has two other boys standing behind him, one on each side, as if they are his bodyguards. “It’s the oldest trick in the world.”

  “We told her we didn’t want it,” Pari says. “We aren’t stupid.”

  The boy smiles as if he’s impressed with her for talking back. He has a narrow face, copper-colored hair, and the grey-green eyes of a cat. A black muffler with red stripes is wrapped around his neck. Tied around his wrist is a gauze strip brown with dirt and dried blood.

  “Are you Guru?” I ask. “A girl at the Children’s Trust told us to speak to you.”

  “You have run away from home, haven’t you?” he asks us like everyone else. I’m getting tired of these questions.

  “No, we haven’t,” Pari says.

  “That woman you were talking to, she works for a trafficker. You know what a trafficker is?” Cat-Eyes asks.

  “They turn children into bricks,” I say, which isn’t what I meant to say at all.

  Cat-Eyes laughs but it’s a quiet, short laugh. “Her sweets put you to sleep and then her boss carries you away and sells you as a slave. You were lucky we came here when we did.”

  “If you know that woman is bad, why haven’t you told the police about her?” Pari asks. “Why isn’t she in jail? She must be giving the sweets to someone else right now.”

  “The police can only arrest her if they catch her doing something wrong,” Cat-Eyes explains to Pari patiently, the same way Pari explains things to me. Even his tone is the same as hers; tinged black with irritation but also smooth and vain. “They can’t put her in jail just because she has orange sweets in her bag. She’s clever, that woman. Sly also. She’ll never get arrested because she knows how to disappear before anyone realizes she has snatched a child.”

  “How do we know you aren’t working for her?” I ask.

  “You’re smart kids,” Cat-Eyes says. “What are you doing in a big railway station like this without your parents?”

  “We came here to take our friends back to our basti,” Pari says. “They might be here.”

  “Guru is the right person to ask,” one of the bodyguard-boys says. “This is his area.”

  “You’re Guru?” Pari asks Cat-Eyes. He nods. She gives him Bahadur’s photo. “Seen this boy before? He would have been wearing the same uniform we’re wearing.”

  Guru stares at Bahadur’s photo for a long time, biting the white skin flaking from his dry lips.r />
  He and his sidekicks look much older than us, fourteen or sixteen or maybe even seventeen, it’s impossible to guess. Their faces are burnt crisp by years of outside, their chins are bristly, and mustaches sprout above the corners of their lips like patchy thickets.

  “Is this your brother?” Guru asks.

  “Bahadur is our classmate,” Pari says. “CLASSMATE.” She has to make her mouth a loudspeaker because the queues at the ticket counters are long and noisy, and people are fumbling and swearing at each other to get to the front. The air smells of sweaty feet and smoke. Our school queues are less rowdy and we behave much better and we aren’t even half as old as these people.

  Guru makes us move away from the counters and asks, “When did your classmate disappear?”

  “Last week,” Pari says.

  “From where did he disappear?”

  “The school,” I say. “No, Bhoot Bazaar.”

  “It’s a market near our basti,” Pari says. “Bahadur disappeared and then a friend of his disappeared too. Omvir. Just yesterday. The two of them might have been planning to run off to Mumbai or Manali.”

  Guru looks at the photo again and returns it to Pari. “We haven’t seen him,” he says. “Or any other children in your uniform. We’re certain. But we can ask the railway police to take a look at the CCTV footage. They might catch something we missed. Have you talked to them?”

  “Pari didn’t want to,” I say.

  “That’s smart,” Guru says. “They can be mean to strangers. But we know one of them well. He was like us, then the Children’s Trust took him in. He lived in one of their shelters for years before he became a cop.”

  We walk with Guru to the station entrance where we saw the policemen before. On the way, he tells Pari that she must be a good person; no one else would travel this far to look for missing friends. He even carries her backpack for her. My bag is growing heavier and heavier as if the air is stuffing books inside it.

  Guru asks us to wait and talks to one of the constables who is inspecting a bundle carried by a woman dressed in a burqa.