“Bahadur was working at the TV-repair shop, which is close to this place. And Aanchal’s and Chandni’s houses are also near here.”
“Omvir’s house isn’t,” I remind her.
“Maybe he came here to talk to the TV-repair chacha, same as we did. This is a good place for a kidnapper to kidnap. It must be empty at night. It’s almost empty now.”
“Maybe,” I say, but I say it sadly. I had all the clues and I didn’t make the connection. Pari did, her brain knitting things together with the speed of light. Pari is Feluda and Byomkesh Bakshi and Sherlock. I’m only an assistant, Ajit or Topshe or Watson-type.
“Are you blaming the TV-repair chacha again?” Faiz asks. “How do you know it’s a human kidnapper and not a bad djinn?”
“Maybe djinns hang out here the same way criminals like Quarter hang out at the theka,” I say. “This must be their adda.”
“Yes, the Shaitani Adda,” Faiz says.
“Doesn’t shaitan mean the devil?” I ask.
“Evil djinns are also called shaitan,” Faiz says.
“Why don’t you two start your own show called Djinn Patrol and save all this nonsense for it?” Pari asks.
“Loads of people will watch that show,” I say.
Pari can’t scold us more because we have reached Chandni’s house. We can tell it’s her house because there’s a crowd outside it. I recognize a few faces: Quarter, the press-wallah, Aanchal’s papa and Drunkard Laloo. Slouching at the doorstep of the house is a girl holding a baby. A woman leans into the shadows behind her, her face half-covered by a sari’s pallu. That’s Chandni’s ma, I guess. The house doesn’t have a door; a torn bedsheet hangs in its place.
Most men in the crowd wear saffron clothes. They must have been part of the Samaj demonstration. Only Quarter is wearing black, like always.
“I really don’t think this place is safe for you,” Pari tells Faiz.
“Quarter doesn’t know he’s Muslim. No one knows us,” I say, but my stomach turns, and it’s not from the stale rice and kadhi we had for the midday meal.
Faiz looks scared like a dog caught in a dog-catcher’s net, but he says, “I’m not going anywhere.”
He’s proving a point to somebody, maybe even us.
A man wearing a saffron robe, with a rudraksha bead necklace clattering on his chest, comes out of Chandni’s house. It’s a baba, I don’t know which one. There are too many babas in Bhoot Bazaar.
I crane my neck to see clearly. The pradhan is here, just behind the baba. I haven’t seen him in months. His black hair is glossy as if the sun is shining on it, even though today too the air is murky with smog. He’s a thin, short man dressed in a white kurta-pajama and a hi-fi golden vest-jacket buttoned at the collar. A saffron scarf is loosely draped around his shoulders. He speaks to Quarter, who bends down so his papa can whisper straight into his ears. Someone tries to interrupt and the pradhan waves him off.
The baba sits down on a charpai. People clutch his feet, they touch the hem of his robe.
“You were so right, baba,” a man says. He’s kneeling, and his head is bowed, but I recognize him. I tell Pari that this is the wrestler-type fellow who told Duttaram children shouldn’t work.
“Shh-hh, be quiet,” a chacha hisses at me.
“So right,” Wrestler-Man says to the baba. “Until your radiant presence shone light on the ugly truth of this basti, we didn’t realize it was the Musalman-people who were causing us so much grief.” He falls at the baba’s feet. The baba lifts him up by his shoulders and thumps him on the back. Three hard knocks with his hand rolled into a fist, straight on the stones of Wrestler-Man’s spine.
Wrestler-Man gets up to talk to the pradhan, who’s still standing behind the baba with his hands clasped to the front. The pradhan usually ignores people like us, but he listens now with a serious look on his face. Wrestler-Man must be one of the pradhan’s many informers in the basti. Ma says the pradhan pays his informers well; maybe that’s how Wrestler-Man got the money to buy a gold watch.
It’s Aanchal’s papa’s turn next. “Baba,” he says. “Such a relief you’re here with us. The second I saw you, my heart stopped aching. I know you’ll bring my daughter back.”
The baba combs his beard with his right hand. Ash gathers at the tips of his fingers as if by magic. He drops it onto Aanchal’s papa’s outstretched palms, then hugs and thumps him three times on the back. Aanchal’s papa has a coughing fit. He’s such a weak man, I don’t think he could have done something to his daughter. He doesn’t have the strength to lift even a small child like Chandni. I think we’ll have to remove him from our suspect-list.
Drunkard Laloo gets up, and his slack arms swing like dead branches about to crash to the ground.
“Baba speaks the truth, no Muslim child has gone missing,” he slurs, his words oily with hooch. “Stop the evil Muslims, baba, stop them.”
I look at Faiz. He’s acting like he doesn’t care, but the scar near his left eye is twitching.
“She’s only a child,” a man standing next to Chandni’s ma says from behind the baba. That could be her papa. His uncombed hair rises up like flames above his forehead. “Hindu-Muslim, what does she know?”
“Son, we understand,” the pradhan says, turning around to look at him. “But do the bad people?”
A man hands the baba a glass of buttermilk, which he finishes in two quick gulps. Another man gives him a bowl of bhelpuri that he shovels into his mouth with a wooden ice-cream stick. I wonder if the baba is like Mental; maybe he can fix things, magic money like ash out of air and blankets out of smog.
“As I have informed Chandni’s mother and father,” the baba says, crunching the bhel and moving it from one inside-cheek to another, “they should do a special puja to seek God’s blessings. You”—he points at Aanchal’s papa and Drunkard Laloo and the press-wallah—“you can also help them.”
The people sitting on the ground chant Ram-Ram-Ram-Ram. The baba keeps the bowl to the side and rewards each disciple with a thump on the back.
“That’s how he blesses people,” Pari whispers to me. “I have heard of this thumper-baba.”
“Does he bless them or send them to the hospital?” I whisper back. Pari giggles.
“Children, come here!”
It’s the baba. I don’t know why or how he noticed us. Everyone else is looking at us too, and I wish they would stop and go back to whatever they were doing before.
“They’re Bahadur’s friends,” Drunkard Laloo says.
Aanchal’s papa watches me with narrowed eyes, but he doesn’t try to hit me.
Forceful hands push us toward the baba, who kisses us on our foreheads with a mouth that’s prickly with beard and mustache. He thumps us on the back, and the pain shoots up to my head but also down to my legs. He thumps Faiz too, which is good, because it means he can’t tell Faiz is a Muslim.
I sneak a look at Quarter and Wrestler-Man, standing behind Thumper-Baba. Quarter smirks at me as I rub my sore back. Wrestler-Man is still whispering basti-secrets to the pradhan. He looks at us, but if he has recognized me from the tea shop, it doesn’t show on his face.
Thumper-Baba’s words walk with us as Pari drags me and Faiz away: “In this basti resides great evil that doesn’t answer to our gods, and it’s up to us to stop it before it does more harm…”
* * *
It’s Christmas holidays now. We have more time to watch our suspects who aren’t djinns. Pari had crossed out the TV-repair chacha from her list, but she has put him back on because his shop is close to the Shaitani Adda. Faiz says Pari and I should start wearing saffron because we are acting like members of the Hindu Samaj. Pari explains that if we catch the kidnapper, we will be helping everyone, Hindus and Muslims.
Stake-outs are excellent for child-detectives like us. I can take Samosa with me, when he isn’t
busy chasing his own tail and lapping dirty water from puddles.
Today we are near the TV-repair chacha’s shop. Faiz has shirked work and come along with us because he’s worried Pari and I will outright accuse the chacha of child-snatching, and then Quarter and the Hindu Samaj will set fire to chacha’s beard or cut off his head with a sword. We have seen that happen to Muslims on the TV news. It’s strange that Quarter, our main suspect, is acting like he wants to catch the kidnapper.
Right now we are hiding the fact that we are on a stake-out by pretend-playing with marbles that belong to Faiz’s brothers. Samosa gets excited each time we flick marbles and barks too much.
“Why did you bring this idiot dog along?” Pari asks.
“He can track clues.”
“Everyone’s looking at us because of Pakoda,” Pari says.
“You know that’s not his name.”
“Can you make Chow Mein shut up please?” she says.
Faiz scoops up the marbles and drops them in his pockets; maybe he’s afraid Samosa will eat one.
I feed Samosa a bit of the rusk Ma gave me for breakfast. It’s a good thing he loves rusk and I hate it. Ma thinks Runu-Didi and I sit at home all day, studying for our exams that will begin the day school reopens. But Didi leaves for training soon after finishing her chores. We don’t ask each other questions. We are good at keeping our secrets.
The TV-repair chacha steps out of his shop with two of his customers and sees us. “You’re playing here because you think Bahadur will come back to my shop first, haan?” he says. “You’re such good children.”
He asks us if we want tea, and we say no, but his words make us feel so bad, we call off our stake-out and go to the Shaitani Adda. We check for any clues the kidnapper or djinn might have left, but there’s only the usual rubbish we see in every alley in our basti: toffee wrappers, chips packets, newspapers trodden into the ground by slippered feet, goat pellets, cow dung, a rat tail left over from a bird’s meal. The broken Goddess Saraswati is still looking stunned in the weeds.
“We could tell grown-ups about this place,” I say. “Maybe they can keep watch here, 24/7. Night too.”
“When did you become so stupid?” Faiz shouts. The amulet that keeps him safe from bad djinns bounces around his throat. Samosa yelps. “You tell anybody anything about this place, people will hundred-percent blame the TV-repair chacha. They’ll think he’s the snatcher, same as you.” Then he stomps off, the marbles rattling in his pockets.
“You shouldn’t have upset him,” Pari says.
“Me? You’re the one who made the TV-repair chacha a suspect.”
Samosa barks.
I can tell the Shaitani Adda is a bad place full of bad feelings because it makes even good friends fight.
CHRISTMAS DAY IS ALSO THE DAY OF—
—the Hindu Samaj puja to ask our gods to vanquish the great evil in our basti. Even Ma has taken the morning off from work so that she can attend it.
I’m dressed in my usual clothes but Ma is wearing a gold-plated chain around her neck and she has lipsticked her mouth red. Runu-Didi has put on a blue salwar-kameez shimmering with sequins. Ma braids Didi’s hair, and Didi keeps saying she isn’t doing it right.
“When you were only a little smaller than Jai, you used to run behind me, begging me to tie your hair just like mine,” Ma tells Didi. “You thought I looked beautiful.”
“You’re still beautiful,” I say and Ma smiles. When she finishes with Didi’s braid, she hands over bangles and a silvery chain for Didi to wear. Runu-Didi looks much older now, like she has secrets I can’t guess.
The puja is being held near Aanchal’s house, but closer to the highway, so that important Hindu Samaj people don’t have to trudge through our basti’s muck. I hope the men from the dhaba with the disco-light Ganpati and the auto-stand won’t tell Ma they have seen me before.
A red canopy has blossomed like a gigantic red rose in front of the dhaba. Below it, brown rugs have been rolled out on the ground. In the middle of the rugs is a brick square piled with firewood.
The workers at the dhaba are making puris. This is the best bit of the puja: we are going to get free food at the end of it. I feel sorry for Pari and Faiz because they are missing out on a feast. Pari’s ma has gone off to work, leaving Pari alone at home to study. Pari doesn’t even mind because she likes studying.
The pandal is empty except for a few Hindu Samaj people dressed in their trademark saffron clothes. They wander around with their heads held high, pointing out to others the things that need fixing. Then I see a woman running toward us, her hair loose and wild, a blanket slipping down her shoulders, trailing behind her and gathering dust. She sits down at the very edge of the pandal, near its entrance from the direction of the highway. Her back rests against a pole that looks as if it could crash any moment. Ma and I go to her, but Runu-Didi stays behind so we won’t lose our spots.
“What happened?” Ma asks the woman I recognize as Chandni’s ma. Then Ma shouts at the men from the dhaba, “Get her some water. Hurry.”
One of the dhaba-men brings Chandni’s ma a steel glass, water filled to its brim. She drinks it quickly, looks at Ma, and says, “I went to the police station.”
“Why?” Ma asks.
“I wanted them to attend the puja, so that they could hear the baba talk about Chandni. My daughter, who is missing.”
Ma nods her head. “I heard.”
“But those animals beat me here”—Chandni’s ma touches her neck—“here”—she twists her left hand to touch her back, just below her blouse and above her sari skirt—“and here too.” Now she touches her legs. “I asked them why they’re not looking for my child, and they said, We’re your servants or what? They asked me, Why do you people pop out kids like rats when you can’t take care of them? We’ll be doing the world a favor if we wipe out your slum.”
I think of the words RODENT BAIT STATION written on a metal box in our school playground, next to a paved area where the midday meal food is unloaded from vans.
“You take your grievances to baba,” a man tells Chandni’s ma. “He will help you. But now, in the name of Lord Hanuman, stop with all this rona-dona. We spent a lot of money to organize this event.”
Chandni’s ma smiles an embarrassed smile, draws in her sniffles, and smooths her hair with her bruised hands. The dhaba-wallah takes his steel glass back.
I don’t know why the Hindu Samaj man said they spent a lot of money on the puja. The money came from us. Every Hindu gave what they could to the men from the Samaj who went around the basti with a bucket into which we dropped coins and rupees. The Samaj and their goondas are so scary, no one dared to say no to them.
“The police will change their tune,” Ma tells Chandni’s ma, “now that baba himself is on our side. A holy man like that wouldn’t even have glanced at people of our caste before. Things are changing for the better. See, even the smog is less today.”
People start arriving for the puja. They take off their chappals and shoes before they step inside the pandal. A Samaj man appoints three boys to watch over everyone’s Poma and Adides and Nik shoes. Ma, Didi and I forgot to remove ours.
Thumper-Baba appears with the pradhan, Quarter and his gang-members, and Wrestler-Man. Maybe Wrestler-Man is not just the pradhan’s informer, but also an important member of the Hindu Samaj. I edge closer to the pole so that the baba won’t be able to hit my back.
“My dear child,” the baba tells Chandni’s ma, “you have had to endure so much. But worry no longer. I’ll solve every one of your troubles.”
Chandni’s ma falls at his feet, wailing again because she’s grateful or sad, I can’t tell. The baba thump-thumps her back and then she can barely get up; this must be like a second police beating for her.
We leave our chappals with the watcher-boys, and Ma and I are allowed to accompan
y Chandni’s ma. The baba, the pradhan, Quarter and Wrestler-Man sit right next to the fire. Our places are behind the baba, and our row soon turns into the sad row with all the parents of the missing children, Omvir’s ma with her boxer-baby who’s sleeping through the noise, his press-wallah papa and his bad-dancer brother, Bahadur’s ma, Drunkard Laloo, Aanchal’s papa and her brothers, Ajay and the other one whose name I don’t know. Chandni’s papa isn’t around, probably because he’s working. I smile at Ajay, but he turns his head away.
Ma calls Runu-Didi, but she refuses to join us. She’s sitting with her running-friend Tara and Tara’s ma.
Someone lights the firewood, the puja begins with chants that I don’t understand, and hot smoke burns our throats. Out of the corner of my eyes, I see Ma holding Chandni’s ma’s hand. I don’t think Ma has seen Chandni’s ma before today, or only at the toilet complex or in the queue for water, and now she’s behaving like they are sisters. Ma’s eyes are damp with tears as if her own child has gone missing. I’m right here and it’s like she can’t even see me.
* * *
After the puja, which is excellent because we get buttermilk with chopped coriander floating on top and as much aloo-puri as our tummies want, Ma lets Runu-Didi stay at home, but she leaves me at Pari’s house. She thinks Pari can help me get good marks in the exams.
Ma would have taken me to work if she could, kept me under her nose and shouted at me to study all day, but she can’t. Her hi-fi madam thinks basti-children are full of germs and TB and typhoid and smallpox, even though smallpox has been gone for ages.
I don’t want to go to any building where they think I have the pox. Papa says we should have self-respect even if others don’t respect us. When he says others, he means hi-fi madams and also the guards at malls who are basti-people like us but won’t let us in because we don’t look rich.
“Will the puja work?” Pari asks Ma, standing at her doorstep and pulling down the hem of her blue frock, which looks like a hi-fi frock. Pari gets good clothes from her ma’s hi-fi madam, who gives away shiny things when they lose even a bit of shine.
Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line Page 19