Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line

by Deepa Anappara

  Their suspicions were confirmed one November evening when darkness descended quickly, as it does every winter. The sky was black that day, though still golden orange in the west where the memory of the last rays of the sun lingered. Inside homes, fathers pleated their legs in front of the television, glasses of whisky or tea raised to their lips, and mothers sliced enough okra for dinner and the next day’s lunch.

  At a traffic junction, a group of young men slowed down as they drove past a girl, asked her if she wanted a lift, and didn’t leave when she said no. The girl clutched her handbag close to her chest, called a friend on her mobile and said, “Nothing, yaar, just some men, doing bak-bak, so I called.” Maybe the friend stayed on the phone. Maybe the friend said, “I’ll send the police” and she disconnected to call the toll-free Woman-in-Distress Helpline numbers the police advertises in newspapers, and no one answered.

  The girl’s dupatta trailed the ground. She didn’t lift it up because what if a tiny movement of her wrist, a flash of the bare skin of her hand, made the men pounce?

  Maybe she could smell the aftershave on the man closest to her, see the strands of his hair carefully arranged with thick gel so that the breeze wouldn’t dishevel his style. Maybe she thought of the exams she hadn’t yet written, the boy she hadn’t yet married, the flat that wasn’t yet in her name, and the children she would never have.

  Maybe she remembered Junction-ki-Rani and wondered if her mother too would take to standing in scalding sunshine and winter rain. Who would look after her younger brother and sister, and who would remind her father to take his blood-pressure medications on time?

  She heard it then, a slap that held in its five fingers the force of thunder. The man with the waxy hair screamed. His cheek reddened. The car’s wipers flailed over the windshield. A dent shaped like a giant hand appeared on the roof. The driver pressed the accelerator, but the car didn’t move ahead; its wheels spun and spun as if the vehicle was stuck in mud.

  The men were repeatedly slapped and punched. Invisible fingers strangled their throats. Blood sputtered out of their mouths, and tears and snot trickled down their faces.

  Sorry, they cried to the girl. Make this stop. Please, we’re sorry.

  The wheels moved forward. The girl, still shuddering, watched the car’s tail lights disappear. Then she ran home.

  Afterward, when she had grasped the enormity of what had happened to her, she told her friends about how Junction-ki-Rani saved her. Her friends told others and some of them talked about it in front of a shopkeeper who told a chai-wallah and he told someone we know.

  Junction-ki-Rani should be worshipped like a goddess, like Durga Mata, but almost everybody is scared of her. On some nights, you can hear her cry, and on some afternoons, when the sun rinses the tomb’s walls at a certain angle, you can see the tracks left by her tears. Very few people visit the tomb or only those boys who want to take photos of themselves posing in the backyard to impress their friends.

  But, once in a while, a girl somewhere in the city, maybe she lives across the river, maybe she lives in a basti near here, will feel the fear that every girl in this country knows as she walks alone on a deserted road. It may be from the full-throated roar of bike engines behind her, or the sight of a hairy hand thrusting out of a jeep window to pull her inside, or the stink of a man’s sweat. She will remember Junction-ki-Rani, and the rani’s spirit will arrive to protect her. The man will be taught a lesson.

  Junction-ki-Rani is not a story. She lives—

  —you mean her spirit lives.

  She lives because she’s still looking for her daughter’s killers. And if she could, she would tell every woman, every girl, in the city: Don’t be afraid. Think of me and I’ll be there with you.

  We hope that you’ll never need to call her, but—God forbid—if such a moment arrives, we can promise you that she’ll help.

  This story is a talisman. Hold it close to your hearts.

  Wasn’t that a good story? You liked it, didn’t you, even if it was a bit too violent at times. Now, our throats are parched from speaking for so long. How about buying us a glass of chai, with malai on top perhaps? And a plate of samosas? The samosas of Bhoot Bazaar are famous even in the city. We will share. We don’t mind, do we, jaan?

  THREE WEEKS AGO I WAS ONLY A SCHOOLKID BUT—

  —now I’m a detective and also a tea-shop boy. I’m busy-busy but Faiz says he works a lot more than I do. That’s because my job at Duttaram’s tea shop is only on Sundays like today. It’s still hard work. It takes ages to clean just one of Duttaram’s pans. Their bottoms are sticky with burnt tea and spices and sugar. I have to scrub and scrub, and my fingertips turn blue from the icy water and my legs hurt from squatting to wash vessels.

  Faiz has told me my muscles will get used to it. Today is only my second Sunday working at the tea shop. Faiz also says I shouldn’t whine about a bit of hurt because I’m a thief and thieves deserve to be punished. I can’t tell him to shut up because he got Duttaram to hire me. He has sworn on his abbu not to tell Pari or anyone else about me stealing from Ma’s Parachute tub, or my new job. His abbu has been dead for a long time but Faiz is still afraid of him, so I know my secret is safe.

  I finish scrubbing a pan, but Duttaram gestures I shouldn’t get up, and hands me a dirty tea strainer and glasses to wash. His shop is only a table on wheels in an alley in Bhoot Bazaar, but his tea has a scent so strong it calls out to the tailor who stitches blouses for the headmaster’s wife, the shoppers haggling over the price of fenugreek leaves, and the butchers at the other end of the bazaar who always have blood spatters on their eyelids and pink animal flesh under their nails.

  If Pari were to see me now, she would say this is why India will never be world class like America or England. In those countries, it’s illegal to make children work. It’s illegal here also, but everyone breaks the rules. Sometimes Pari threatens to report the men who employ Faiz to the police, but she won’t actually do that because it would make Faiz ekdum-angry.

  I’m happy I have this job. I returned to the Parachute tub the 200 rupees I didn’t spend the day Pari and I traveled on the Purple Line. It was the best day, we had a proper adventure, but if I don’t earn 200 rupees quickly, Ma will find out I took her what-if money. I calculated that I’ll make that money by working at the tea shop for five Sundays, but last Sunday, my first day of work ever, Duttaram paid me twenty rupees instead of the forty he promised. He said I broke too many glasses. I think he’s just a cheapskate.

  Still, being a tea-shop boy is excellent cover for a detective. My ears can listen to gossip and collect evidence. After people buy a glass of tea, they stand around complaining about what’s wrong with the world. Sometimes they grumble about Bahadur’s ma who keeps pestering the police, the police who in turn have put up our hafta by ten rupees per house, and Omvir’s papa, who cries all the time. Everyone’s more upset about the hafta than the missing boys. Ma says ten rupees extra is a good price for peace of mind, but I don’t think her mind is at peace. She has removed the rolling pin and the roti board from our bundle by the door, but the rest of our good things are still packed up.

  “Chhote, how much time will you take?” Duttaram asks and tries to smack my head, but I duck, so his hand only hits the smoggy air.

  My cleaning is not as good as Runu-Didi’s cleaning, but Duttaram’s customers don’t care if there’s a sooty fingerprint on the side of a glass the way Ma would.

  After I finish washing, I serve tea and nankhatais. I’m cold, so I could do with a glass of chai too, but Duttaram offers me nothing. Hot tea splashes on my wrists as I run around. A brown dog with a black nose tries to trip me and grins like he has done something funny. Then he hides under a samosa cart nearby.

  Someone asks me if I’m Runu-Didi’s brother. I don’t see faces anymore, just dust-coated, paint-coated, cement-coated hands into which I press chai gl
asses. I have to look up to see who’s talking. It’s the spotty boy who follows Runu-Didi everywhere.

  “Your sister, the star athlete,” he says. He isn’t making fun of her; his tone is awestruck, like Ma’s when she talks to gods.

  “I don’t know what you’re on about,” I say firmly. Even if Ma were to see me, I’ll pretend I’m someone else.

  The afternoon rush starts. It’s mostly beggars who find Duttaram’s tea to be loads cheaper than the roti-subzi that people with money buy for lunch. I ask them about gangs that kidnap children and train them to steal mobiles and wallets.

  “Boys your age watch too many Hindi films,” says a beggar with hair standing up like the points of a star, and brown teeth that curve sideways and backward like Buffalo-Baba’s horns. “Go, get me some more chai instead of wasting my time.”

  * * *

  I work and work. I grow tired, I sulk, but no one notices my sulking. I should be playing chor-police or cricket or hopscotch right now. I wish I had never stolen Ma’s money. I want to pretend I didn’t, but each time I remember the Parachute tub, sweat dampens my armpits and muddles my eyes.

  Faiz turns up at the tea shop in the evening with a bandaged thumb and a mask around his face made of a rag. “I was chopping ginger, but the knife was too sharp,” he explains like he doesn’t want to explain at all, and sits down next to me as I wash glasses.

  “Waiters have to chop things too?” I ask.

  “The cook fell ill. All of us had to help in the kitchen.”

  Today Faiz worked at the dhaba by the highway, where truck drivers stop for lunch and dinner. He’s always collecting wounds and scars like tips at the places he works. No one tipped me today. You don’t get tips at a tea shop.

  “I’m thinking of recruiting that dog for our detective mission,” I tell Faiz, pointing at the dog under the samosa cart. “A dog can help us find Bahadur and Omvir’s gone-cold trails.”

  Faiz pulls his mask down so that it hangs around his neck like a scarf.

  “Dogs are stupid,” he says. “They run toward dog-catchers as if the men are carrying shammi kebabs for them.”

  “Dogs can flare their nostrils and pick up the stink of a bad man’s feet or the coconut oil in his hair from all the other thousand-million smells in the world,” I say. “Your nose can’t do that.”

  “Is this a playground or your place of work?” Duttaram asks me, which isn’t fair. My hands are washing the glasses even as I’m talking. “Take this to those people over there,” he says, gesturing first at a wire rack full of chai glasses and then a group of men standing around an empty pushcart.

  “I’ll do that,” Faiz says.

  “Fine,” Duttaram says.

  Faiz hands the glasses to the men prattling on about a beautiful woman who arrives in a fragrant cloud of ittar at the tea shop every morning as soon as it opens. They use words that Ma would say aren’t fit for child-ears.

  “Duttaram, you have started hiring children to cut costs?” asks a tall, hatta-katta man with a chest that looks wider than the door of our house. He’s probably an egg-and-ghee-eating wrestler who goes to an akhara every morning, and he may also be the kind of man who calls the police about child labor.

  The wrestler-type fellow eyes me as he accepts the glass of chai Duttaram reluctantly thrusts in his direction. His sweater sleeve rides up. A gold watch circles his hairy wrist. I can’t tell if it’s real gold or fake. On the inner side of his wrist where the hair is less and the skin is so fair it’s almost white are red lines tinted pus-yellow at the edges, probably made when a mosquito bit him in his sleep and he tried to scratch the itchiness away.

  “Everything okay?” he asks me. “This man isn’t giving you trouble, is he?”

  “He’s my boss,” I say. “A good one.”

  “You should be studying. Or playing.”

  “I do that too.”

  “You go to school?”

  “Of course.”

  “You do your homework every day? Or do you stay out until it’s night, playing cricket?”

  This man isn’t my headmaster that he should ask me such questions. I shake my head. Maybe I mean yes. Maybe I mean no. Let him guess.

  “You’ll eat a chocolate?” the man says, kindly, sliding his gold-watch hand into his trouser pocket.

  “No, saab,” I say. We shouldn’t take sweets from strangers. Guru taught me that at the city railway station.

  “Suit yourself,” the man says.

  “Jai, you work at my tea shop,” Duttaram says when the wrestler saunters over to the group of men discussing the ittar-lady. “Does that make my tea stall yours?”

  “What are you saying, malik?”

  “Exactly. This fellow, he does some work for the owner of a hi-fi flat, and he thinks that makes him hi-fi too.”

  “What work?” I ask. I don’t know any men from our basti who clean and cook for hi-fi people.

  “Who knows,” Duttaram says.

  “Which building?” Faiz asks. He puts the empty wire rack on Duttaram’s table.

  “Golden Gate. People say the flats in those buildings are so big they take up an entire floor.”

  I make my eyes wide and look at Faiz. Ma never tells me these most-amazing facts about hi-fi life. She only bak-baks about her bad boss-lady.

  * * *

  In less than an hour, Duttaram gives me twenty rupees and tells me to beat it. Faiz doesn’t let me protest and drags me off.

  “Stop breaking his glasses when you’re washing them, and he’ll pay you properly,” Faiz says.

  I broke one glass. That can’t cost twenty rupees.

  I stole a nankhatai from a plate though. I make sure Duttaram isn’t watching me, then drop a few crumbs for the dog under the samosa cart.

  “Here, boy, here,” I say to him. He has watery eyes that look like they are lined with kajal, and a tail curved like a C. Patches of fur are missing from his coat, and his ribs stick out, but he smiles at me and gobbles up the food in seconds.

  I leave a trail of nankhatai crumbs on the ground and the dog follows me, his tongue mopping up the food at my feet.

  “What if that dog is a bad djinn?” Faiz asks.

  No way this dog is a bad anything; he’s too nice.

  “I’m taking the dog to Omvir’s house,” I say. “Will you go get Pari and meet me there?”

  “I’m not your assistant. Don’t tell me what to do.”

  “Please, yaar, please.” I beg with my hands folded as if in prayer.

  “Fine,” Faiz says, but he doesn’t look pleased about it. He sets off on a run.

  I decide I’ll call the dog Samosa because he lives under a samosa cart and smells excellent like samosa too.

  Samosa and I have a long chat. I bring him up to date on our detectiving. We haven’t done much because we have to go to school and we have homework and our parents don’t like us being out after dark. We did follow Quarter twice to the theka, but he didn’t do anything suspicious, just drank daru. Unlike the other drunkards there, he became quieter and quieter with every sip.

  “This is why I need your help,” I tell Samosa. “Your nose can find out where Omvir and Bahadur went.”

  I wonder if their smells are still left in our basti or if new smells have pushed them out.

  Samosa wags his tail. He’ll be a much better assistant to me than Pari. Samosa and I will have our own secret signal as soon as I think of one.

  * * *

  Omvir’s ma is sitting on the doorstep with her boxer-baby on her lap, singing a song to him. Her right hand pats his tummy. I ask if I can have something that belongs to Omvir, she says shoo-shoo-shoo. “Don’t bring that dirty dog anywhere near my child,” she says.

  I think she’s always-angry because she has an angry baby. Samosa isn’t dirty.

  Omvir’s bad-
dancer brother isn’t around. He must be helping his press-wallah papa like Omvir used to. A neighbor-nani sitting with her feet stretched out on a charpai calls me over.

  “You’re worried about your friend,” she says in a voice that’s cracking, maybe from oldness.

  “We say prayers for Omvir and also Bahadur at assembly every morning,” I say.

  Samosa sniffs the legs of the charpai on which the nani is sitting. A hen clucks and hurries away from him.

  “You must have heard,” the nani says, “Omvir’s father has stopped working. He’s going from alley to alley with Omvir’s photo, dragging his other son along. He isn’t bringing home any money. What will they eat? How can they eat? She is”—the nani nods at Omvir’s ma—“talking about going to work herself, but who’ll look after her baby? Does she expect me to do it, at my age?” The nani’s voice rises with each question.

  Omvir’s ma is talking in baby language to her boxer-baby, whose fists are now yanking her hair. The nani complains some more about Omvir’s papa. “Kept borrowing money,” she says. “There are thugs at their door every morning asking for it back, and still he doesn’t go to work.”

  It’s a sad story, but I only half-listen. I wonder what’s taking Faiz and Pari so long.

  “The press-wallah always believed something terrible would happen to him,” the nani says. “He thought he would lose his job, that his wife and children would starve, and now it’s all coming true.”

  “Where’s the dog?” I hear Pari’s voice asking.

  “Look,” I say, pointing to Samosa’s black nose peeping out from under the charpai.

  Faiz has brought Pari here just like I asked him, but she has a book in her hand, which even for a show-off like her is too much. She wants everyone to know that she’s the only one in our basti who has got a green card from the reading center, which the center didis give those who have read over a hundred books. Faiz and I have zero cards because we have read zero books.