Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line

by Deepa Anappara

  “Let’s hope the gods have heard us,” Ma says.

  “You don’t need a puja to talk to gods. They can hear even if you whisper,” I say.

  Ma taps me on the back of my head. It’s a not-so-secret signal for me to shut up.

  “Jai is wasting his entire holidays not studying,” Ma complains to Pari as if Pari is my teacher. “Just see, if there’s anything you can do to help him—”

  “Of course, chachi,” Pari says.

  Ma looks pleased as she leaves.

  I sit down on the floor next to Pari. She places one of her textbooks on my lap.

  “Start studying EVS. When I finish Social Science, we’ll exchange.”

  Pari reads for a bit. I watch black ants twisting along the floor and I confuse them by breaking their line with a corner of Pari’s textbook.

  “Police-police-police,” a child screams. Someone else is shouting police too. Pari and I leave our books and run to the door. Pari puts a hand out to stop me from going any farther.

  “I promised your ma,” she says.

  “We have to find out what’s happening,” I tell her. “We’re detectives.” But I don’t move. The good and bad thing about living in a basti is that news flies into your ears whether you want it to or not.

  Pari and I listen carefully. We pick out the important-sounding words from the breathless clucks around us: police, arrest, snatch, children, baba, puja, success, TV-repair, Hakim. We put the words in an order that makes sense. The police have arrested the child-snatcher. Hakim, the harmless-looking TV-repair man? Not so harmless after all! The puja was an immediate success! The baba is truly God himself in human form! The canopy hasn’t been pulled down and the rugs haven’t been rolled up, but the gods have already blessed us.

  “Is it true?” Pari asks one of her neighbor-chachis who’s muttering who would have thought to anyone willing to listen to her.

  “Baba was right,” the chachi tells Pari. “It turned out to be the work of Muslims.”

  “Muslim who?”

  “The police have arrested four of them. A mullah gang.”

  The chachi turns away from us and says the same thing to someone else.

  Pari’s right foot taps the floor. “Four Muslims, arrested on the same day a Samaji baba holds a puja? Doesn’t it sound suspicious to you?”

  “Faiz will be upset,” I say.

  I’m upset too; I wasn’t the one who solved the case.

  Pari and I sit down on the doorstep. I see Faiz walking toward us. I wave at him and move my backside so that there’s space for him to sit. He slumps down next to me and says, “They took him.” He doesn’t look sad, just stunned, like somebody knocked him on the head and stars are still flashing in front of his eyes.

  “We heard,” Pari says.

  “They took Tariq-Bhai,” Faiz says. “They say he has Aanchal’s phone. Just because he works in a phone shop.”

  “No,” I say. “The police arrested the TV-repair chacha.”

  “Tariq-Bhai too,” Faiz says.

  Something tightens in my chest. I must have breathed in too much smog, so I cough to let it out.

  Faiz scratches his stomach, then wipes his nose against his sleeve.

  “Did he have Aanchal’s phone?” Pari asks.

  “Of course not.” Faiz’s nose turns an angry-red.

  “I was just asking,” Pari says.

  “The police checked our house,” Faiz says.

  “Without a warrant?” I ask.

  “They looked under the bed, even opened our flour tins. Said when we find Aanchal’s HTC phone, we’ll—”

  “That’s an expensive phone,” I say. “You can only make calls on Ma’s phone, but on Shanti-Chachi’s mobile, you can—”

  “Shut up, Jai,” Pari says, widening her eyes at me.

  “You must be happy,” Faiz says. “You wanted the TV-repair chacha to be arrested.”

  “Maybe you should go to the police station,” Pari tells Faiz. “Tariq-Bhai will need your help.”

  “Ammi is there with Wajid-Bhai. They told me and Farzana-Baji to wait at home, but I couldn’t sit doing nothing.”

  “Look,” Pari says. “You mustn’t worry.”

  “It’s very worrying,” I say.

  “Who else did the police arrest?” Pari asks.

  “Two of Tariq-Bhai’s friends from the mosque. Nobody you know.”

  I wonder if Tariq-Bhai could be a snatcher but it’s impossible. I have known Tariq-Bhai my whole life. He never once tried to snatch me.

  “A bad djinn has cursed us,” Faiz says. “It’s watching us cry and it’s feeling happy, it’s dancing.” He pushes his tongue out against the insides of his cheeks and rolls it around as if that will stop the tears from falling out of his eyes.

  “Let’s go to the police station,” I say.

  “I promised my ma and your ma we will stay here,” Pari says.

  “You don’t have to come,” I say.

  “Ya Allah,” Faiz says, hitting his forehead with the side of his right hand and then hitting it again.

  “Don’t do that,” Pari says, her voice cracking as if she’s about to cry too. Then she pulls the door to her house shut and shuffles her feet into her chappals. “We’ll all go.”

  * * *

  At the highway we find out from autorickshaw-wallahs and vendors where the police station is. None of us have been there before. We fast-walk, Pari holding Faiz’s hand, which is embarrassing.

  Outside the police station are huddles of women in black abayas and men wearing skullcaps. Some of the women wail and beat their chests. The men whisper about the “evidence” the police might plant in their homes to make it appear that those arrested are really criminals. We have to guard our homes, they tell each other, but we also have to be here. I wonder which family belongs to the TV-repair chacha, but I can’t tell and we don’t have the time to talk to them.

  The police station looks like a house. Its windows rattle, and brown, damp patches billow on the yellow walls though it hasn’t rained in ages. When we step inside, the room is so dark, it takes a few seconds for my eyes to see what’s around me. My heart races like it does before I have to show Ma my exam marks.

  The air in the room is heavy with murmurs and ringing phones, landlines and mobiles both. My legs bend like grass in the wind or maybe that’s just how it feels to me. I shuffle closer to Pari and Faiz.

  The policemen’s desks are cluttered with bulky computers and dusty stacks of files tied with string. In one corner of the room, to our right, are Faiz’s ammi and Wajid-Bhai, sitting in front of the junior constable who had come to our basti with the senior to take Bahadur’s ma’s chain.

  “Your people are here to protest against us, that’s all very well,” the junior tells them now, his voice loud and his face puffed up with importance. “But first, look at the state of this place. We aren’t in one of those cyber-police stations you have seen on the news. We don’t even have an air-cooler here. No drinking water. Out of our own pockets we have to spend money to buy twenty-liter Aquafina bottles. Everyone who works at this station has got malaria or dengue at least once. Think we have it easy?”

  “No one thinks so,” Wajid-Bhai says.

  “If your brother isn’t a criminal, the magistrate will let him out and you can take him home,” the junior tells Wajid-Bhai.

  “Please, I beg of you, this old woman is falling at your feet, don’t keep my son tied to a bench,” Faiz’s ammi sobs. “Let him sit. He won’t run away, I promise you in the name of Allah.”

  We look around to see where Tariq-Bhai is. The room we are in is like a corridor, with a door leading to a second room from where we can hear groans; that must be the lock-up. Faiz runs toward it and we dash behind him. A policeman sitting behind a wonky desk with newspaper strips folded under tw
o of its legs gets up and scrambles toward us, shouting, “Stop-STOP.” We don’t stop.

  The TV-repair chacha is chained to a chair. Two men stand in a corner, their hands and legs tied with rope. Tariq-Bhai is sitting on the floor, his head on his knees, hands cuffed behind him and chained to the leg of a bench. Faiz hugs him for a second before the policeman pulls him away.

  “Get out,” the policeman tells us. “You want to be arrested too?” He grabs Faiz by the collar and drags him out of the room.

  We run behind them, Pari shouting, “Don’t do that. Don’t do anything to him. I’ll complain to the commissioner. It’s wrong, how you have chained our brother like an animal. This will come on TV, and you won’t have a job tomorrow.”

  The policeman lets go of Faiz and turns to Pari. “If it comes on TV, maybe we will get a real lock-up,” he says, arranging the surprised features on his face so that he looks superior to us. “Make sure you tell the TV-wallahs we don’t have an inverter either, and so, when the current goes off, it stays gone for eight hours or more. Tell them we have rats in our quarters too, okay? Don’t forget.”

  Wajid-Bhai hurries to our side. He straightens Faiz’s sweater where the policeman’s clutch has bunched it up. “What are you doing here? I told you to stay at home,” Wajid-Bhai says. But he lets us stand with him while he talks to the junior constable some more.

  Faiz’s ammi hugs Faiz and cries. “You saw what they have done to your brother,” she says.

  Wajid-Bhai tells the policeman he’s going to hire a lawyer.

  “Try it,” the junior sniggers.

  “Take Faiz home,” his ammi says, pushing him toward us and then wiping her cheeks. “Farzana must be wondering where he is.”

  “How will we pay the lawyer’s fees?” Faiz asks when we are outside. “It must cost thousands of rupees.”

  “We’ll figure something out,” Pari says.

  IT’S THE LAST DAY OF THE YEAR—

  —and it’s dark now, but Papa and Ma aren’t home yet. I’m sitting by our front door, my eyes following a bear-shaped balloon a boy flies into the smog. He must have snatched it from the decorations for New Year in Bhoot Bazaar.

  Ma is late because her hi-fi madam is throwing a party that will begin at night and go on till morning. We never have parties for New Year in our basti, though some people burst crackers. I don’t think anyone will do that this year though. Our whole basti is having a mood-off because too many bad things have happened. The missing are still missing, Tariq-Bhai is in prison, and Faiz is selling roses by the highway for extra cash.

  Runu-Didi brings a pot of cooked rice outside to drain the water, one of Papa’s old shirts twisted around the pot’s mouth to keep the heat from burning her fingers. I stand up so that the water won’t splash onto my legs. Didi does all the cooking and shopping these days, sometimes with her basti-friends, sometimes with the neighbor-chachis. She has to walk up and down the same alleys ten-twenty times a day, collecting water, going to the toilet complex, buying vegetables, buying rice. She says I don’t help at all, but I do.

  Something shifts the smoky air around us, a flurry of noises, footsteps pounding the ground. It goosepimples my skin, dries my mouth. A group of men zigzag through the alley, stopping to talk to grown-ups.

  Shanti-Chachi comes out of her home. “Stay right there, you two,” she says.

  Didi takes the pot back in but returns to my side, Papa’s old shirt still in her hands. She twists it tightly around her fingers. The men talk to the women in the alley, who scoop up their children and run into their houses. Windows are pulled shut, doors closed. Shanti-Chachi listens to the men with her hands on both cheeks. The bear balloon, now abandoned, brushes against the edge of a tin roof and bursts. It sounds like a gunshot on TV.

  Shanti-Chachi clutches her heart. “What was that?” she asks. She sees the dying bear but doesn’t look comforted. She walks over to me and Didi, puts her hand on our shoulders and steers us inside. She shuts the door even though the smoke from the kitchen-fire hasn’t left our house.

  “What have you made for dinner, Runu?” she asks.

  “Just rice. We’ll have it with dal.”

  “What did those men want?” I ask.

  “I’ll wait with you two until your mother gets home,” Shanti-Chachi says. “It’s past dinner-time and her hi-fi madam is still making her work. So heartless that woman is.”

  Runu-Didi switches on the TV. The newsreaders are sad that people can’t celebrate New Year’s outside because the winter smog has other plans.

  Shanti-Chachi’s husband knocks on the door to give chachi her mobile. “It won’t stop ringing,” he says. He nods at us and leaves. Chachi walks around the house with the phone pressed against her ear, not saying anything except haan-haan and wohi toh. She opens tins and checks what’s inside them. She even inspects the Parachute tub. If Ma had told her the tub holds our what-if fund, chachi would have guessed a little money is missing because she’s smart like that.

  “Someone disappeared?” Runu-Didi asks when chachi finishes another phone call.

  “You should tell your ma to put a clove or two into the chili-powder tin,” chachi says. “That will stop the powder from getting spoiled.”

  The door opens. It’s Papa. He’s home early and he smells a bit like Drunkard Laloo. Papa never smells like that; only once or twice a year maybe. Nodding at Shanti-Chachi, he says, “Came home as soon as I heard. It was good of your husband to call me and Madhu to tell us they are”—he looks at Didi and me—“fine.”

  “Shocking,” chachi says, “what’s happening. I don’t know how you can stand it.”

  “Stand what?” I ask.

  “Two more children are missing,” Papa says. “Musalman children. Brother-sister. Went out to buy milk earlier this evening and haven’t got back yet. Almost the same age as you two.”

  Farzana-Baji is loads older than Faiz, so he hasn’t been snatched.

  “Jai, what this means is that the kidnapper is still out there,” Papa says. “Do you know why I’m telling you this?”

  I hate it when grown-ups talk to me like that.

  “Will Tariq-Bhai be released now?” I ask. “He couldn’t have kidnapped from jail.”

  “Who knows anything,” Shanti-Chachi says.

  “Did the Muslim children disappear near the transformer?” I ask. “It’s also a temple and it’s close to Chandni’s house.”

  “How do you know where her house is?” Papa asks.

  “We saw the transformer when we went for Thumper-Baba’s big puja. That place is like a manhole into which children keep falling tak-tak-tak. Shaitan djinns live there. We call it the Shaitani Adda.”

  “Who’s we?” Runu-Didi asks.

  “Pari and Faiz and me.”

  “Jai,” Papa says, “this is not a game. When will you understand that?”

  * * *

  That night I dream of child-legs and child-hands hanging out of bloody mouths and then I hear fighting voices. I think it’s part of my bad dream, but when I open my eyes it’s morning and Ma and Papa are arguing outside about who should stay back to look after us.

  Runu-Didi is sitting on the bed, her hands propping up her chin, her face scrubbed. She and Ma must have already fetched water.

  “Look at how they’re being raised,” Papa says. “A girl who runs around like a boy, and a boy who wanders around the bazaar like a beggar. It’s a wonder they haven’t been kidnapped yet.”

  “What are you saying?” Ma yells. “Is that what you wish on your own children?”

  “That’s not what I meant,” Papa says.

  We hear shuffling feet and I lie down quickly and pull the blanket over my head.

  “I know you’re awake, Jai,” Ma says. “Get up, come on. I’m taking you to the toilet complex today. Runu, roll up the mat, boil water for drinking
, cut some onions.”

  Didi glares at me as if I’m the one forcing her to do chores.

  Ma doesn’t even let me brush my teeth properly. In the toilet queues, I see Pari with her ma and Faiz with Wajid-Bhai. Ma drags me toward Pari’s ma; she wants to check if Pari’s ma is planning to stay at home today.

  “Are you trying to sneak them into our queue?” the woman behind Pari asks, waggling her fingers at us.

  “We don’t need your spot,” I say.

  “The police arrested Tariq-Bhai and the TV repair-chacha for nothing,” Pari tells me.

  “Musalman-people can’t be trusted,” says the nosey woman.

  “Don’t you know that Muslim children have also disappeared?” Pari asks, her right hand on her right hip. Then she turns to me and whispers, “You heard, the brother and sister who disappeared also lived near the Shaitani Adda.”

  “Faiz is right. It’s the work of a bad djinn,” I say.

  “Nonsense,” Pari says.

  Faiz is watching us from his queue. I hardly see him anymore because he works all the time, to help his ammi pay the bills Tariq-Bhai used to pay. I shoot him with a finger gun.

  “Yes, they should really be shot,” the woman behind us says. “All this is their fault.” She points at Faiz’s ammi, standing ahead in the ladies’ queue with Farzana-Baji. Both of them are wearing black abayas. “This basti has become a den of criminals. The government will kick us out any day now.”

  “It’s your fault,” someone shouts at her. “Two of our own have gone. You think my brother did that from jail?”

  It’s Wajid-Bhai.

  “Who knows what you people are capable of?” the woman says. Monkeys chitter-chatter on the toilet roof. “Maybe you snatched your own so that we’ll stop blaming you.”

  Ma’s phone rings. “Haan, madam,” she says. “Haan, you’re right. No madam. Yes madam. This one time only…”

  “Why doesn’t your brother just tell the police where he has hidden our children?” a man roars at Wajid-Bhai.