I have been in this night before. This is the night Bahadur went missing, and also the night Omvir and Aanchal and Chandni and Kabir and Khadifa disappeared.
Pari and her ma turn up. Pari sits with me on the bed and Pari’s ma cries even more than my ma. Faiz visits with his ammi. “What are these mullah-types doing here?” a chachi asks, jutting her chin at Faiz’s ammi.
I’m floating above everyone, watching them cry, watching them trade gossip. Some people are here only to feast on our tears and words. They’ll carry our stories in their lips that stick out like beaks and feed them to their husbands or friends who aren’t here. “Beat Runu like she was two, he did,” I hear a woman say. “Shanti told me. You can’t raise your hand to your daughter after a certain age.”
“Don’t listen to them,” Pari says.
“Don’t you have to study?” I ask.
“These exams don’t matter. They can’t fail us until we’re in Standard Nine.”
“I’m not sitting for the exams either,” Faiz says. “No big deal.”
Pari’s ma cries some more.
Papa goes with a few men to search around the rubbish ground, the bazaar, and hospitals.
This isn’t happening. This is happening. God is twisting a screwdriver under my skin, not stopping for a break.
People talk about Runu-Didi. She was such a good girl, they say. Did all the chores around the house, no complaints. Talked to everyone politely, even when there was a scuffle at the water tap. That running business, she would have outgrown it in a year or two, and then she would have made a perfect wife, a perfect mother.
I don’t know the person they are talking about.
“My daughter isn’t dead that you should speak of her like this,” Ma says, sweat beading her forehead. Everyone hushes.
Forty-eight hours. When children disappear, if you can’t find them in the first forty-eight hours, then they are more likely to be dead. I’m not sure if it’s twenty-four hours or forty-eight hours. Either way Runu-Didi isn’t dead now.
“Do you remember this boy with loads of pimples?” I ask Pari. “Runu-Didi’s classmate who follows Didi around like he’s her dog or something?”
“I know that guy,” Faiz says. “Ekdum-waste.”
“He was standing next to her when we last saw her,” I say. “Pari, you remember?”
“I’ll tell someone,” Pari says. “We will find him.”
When I look at her, I can’t tell if Pari is upset or sad because she’s talking in the same manner as she always does. Her voice is not-high-not-low. It makes me feel I shouldn’t worry too much. I keep looking at her so that the screwdriver will come out of my chest, but she and her sobbing ma have to leave my side so that Pari can tell the right people to look for the spotty boy, and everything hurts even more than before.
“Jai, see, a man gave me this today,” Faiz says. It’s a crumpled green note that Faiz straightens between his hands. “American dollar,” he says.
“Is this the time for that?” his ammi asks.
Faiz puts the money back in his pocket. His nose is leaking.
If Didi had an amulet like Faiz does, would she have been home by now?
Someone leads Ma and me out of the house because the visitors are taking our air and neither of us can breathe. We sit down on the charpai outside Shanti-Chachi’s house. Tears run down Ma’s face and she doesn’t wipe them away.
I want to tell Ma that it’s my fault Runu-Didi is gone. I said a terrible thing to Didi, but worse, just the other night, I wished for a bad djinn to take her. I invited the djinn into our home.
Ma’s eyes loop me like a red-ink pen around a wrong answer. I bet she wishes I had disappeared instead of Runu-Didi. I don’t win any medals. I don’t get good marks in exams. I don’t help her with the chores around the house. I have never once carried water home from the tap. I deserve to be snatched. The smog twists around my ears, whispering the same thing. Should have been you-you-you.
Ma locks her palms in her lap. I see burn marks on her skin, and knife-nicks. She works too much, too fast, here at home and the hi-fi madam’s flat. Only Runu-Didi helped her, never me.
I hear Pari’s voice. She is cutting a path with her swinging hands through the crowd around us. “Move, move,” she yells at our neighbors until she reaches the charpai.
“Your papa has gone to the Shaitani Adda,” she says. “He’s talking to Runu-Didi’s classmates. Even that spotty boy he will talk to, okay?”
Faiz joins us.
“Jai, you have to be strong for your ma,” Pari says.
“Let him cry a bit if he wants,” Faiz says.
I don’t want to cry but I can’t turn off my tears either. There’s a blob of something salty in my mouth and I swallow it because I can’t spit it out. I see Ma watching me with an odd expression, tears wetting her chin and neck. Why are you crying? her face asks me. You never cared for your didi. You were always fighting with her.
* * *
Around midnight, the crowd thins. Pari has to go because she has to write the exam tomorrow-today, and Faiz has to leave because he has to work. Pari grips my hands tight, and even her usual ice-hands are warm from having been around so many people for so long.
“It’s my fault,” I whisper to her. “I wanted the djinn to take Runu-Didi and not me.”
“Don’t talk nonsense,” she says, but she says it softly. “You’re not the snatcher. It’s a bad person from our basti.”
“Djinns don’t listen to you or anybody else,” Faiz says. “They do what they feel like.”
Soon it’s just me and Bahadur’s ma and my ma. Bahadur’s ma leads us inside, and she sits in a corner, coughing and catching Ma’s eyes once in a while and weeping. She tells my ma about the morning she caught Bahadur sneaking the kitchen knife into his school bag. When she asked him what he meant to do with it, he told her: I’m taking it so that Papa can’t stab you.
“That’s how much he worried about me,” Bahadur’s ma says. “And what did I do for him?”
Soon she leaves too. The smog creeps in through the half-open door, dimming our already-dim bulb.
* * *
Papa comes home alone, shaking his head. “She isn’t there,” he tells Ma and Ma bursts into louder tears and Papa cries too and they seem like small babies.
“Did you go to the Shaitani Adda?” I ask Papa. “Did you talk to that boy who’s always around Runu-Didi? Did you see her school bag anywhere?” I’m asking these questions like a detective, and they sound stupid in my ears and it feels like I’m talking about a stranger, not my sister.
“That boy said something odd,” Papa says, but he’s telling Ma and not me. “He said, after Runu talked to the coach, she went and stood near the place Jai calls the Shaitani Adda. As if she wanted to be snatched. That area is empty even in the daytime. The boy said”—Papa’s sobs shake his shoulders and rattle his chest—“Runu pushed him away. Shoved him so hard he fell down. He went home after that.”
“Did he really go home?” I ask.
“The people who live near his house saw him. He helps their children with their homework, and he helped them tonight too.”
“Why would Runu do something like that?” Ma asks.
“It’s my fault,” Papa says, clutching his hair violently as if he wants to pull every strand out. “This is all my fault.”
IN THE MORNING WE GO TO THE—
—police station where Faiz’s ammi and Wajid-Bhai are already standing near the senior constable’s desk. Wajid-Bhai slouches as he demands justice, the words slipping out of his mouth easily. He must have been saying the same thing to the policemen for ten-twelve days now. Faiz’s ammi clutches a file that she sometimes holds out toward the policeman who pretends he can’t see it.
I glance at the white cloth bag that Papa is carrying. Inside it, Ma has put
her Parachute tub. I wish I had worked for more days, filled the tub with more rupees. Ma hasn’t even opened it to check how much money it holds.
The bag also has a photo of Runu-Didi. I didn’t have to tell Ma and Papa that you need a photo to investigate a missing-child case. They knew it already. In the photo, Didi is receiving a certificate for winning a race. She and the person awarding her the certificate are half-turned toward the camera, and Didi is smiling like she would rather not smile. A medal hangs around her neck on an orange ribbon.
We don’t have proper photos of Runu-Didi taken in a studio, like the ones of Bahadur and Chandni, and no family photos either with all of us standing in front of the folds of a painted curtain pretending to be the Taj.
A woman wearing a green sari with the pallu wrapped over her head, both hands guarding the baby in her belly, stops in front of Ma. “My children are also missing,” she says. “Kabir and Khadifa.”
“You spoke to the police?” Papa asks.
The man with the pregnant woman, who must be Kabir-Khadifa’s abbu, whispers, “We have to keep bothering them until they do something.”
They ask us to go with them to the junior constable, who is nodding sympathetically as he listens to a man dressed as if he works in a fancy office. A bus driver has dented the man’s car worth thirty-two lakh rupees. The policeman hisses when he hears the price as if hot water has burnt his hands.
“It’s not me you need to convince about your son’s innocence,” the senior constable says across the room to Faiz’s ammi and Wajid-Bhai. “Speak to your lawyer. The magistrate has given us permission to hold him for another fifteen days, and only the magistrate can tell us to free him.”
At least they know where Tariq-Bhai is, even if it’s a terrible place like jail. I would rather Runu-Didi was in jail than a snatcher’s car or a brick kiln or a djinn’s belly.
The senior constable calls us over. He asks Wajid-Bhai and Faiz’s ammi to leave. Faiz’s ammi pats Ma’s hand as she passes us.
Ma and Papa, and Kabir-Khadifa’s abbu and ammi, start talking at the same time. “Slow down,” the senior says. Ma’s mobile rings and, in the two seconds it takes her to cut the call, the senior scolds her, “Do you think I’m running a bazaar here that you can walk up and down, taking your time, deciding what to buy?”
“It’s my boss-lady,” Ma says. “She must be wondering why I haven’t turned up.”
Papa gives the senior constable Runu-Didi’s photo and says she’s the best athlete in her school, maybe even the whole state. He says she’ll compete in the National and Commonwealth games when she’s older. When I tell Runu-Didi that Papa praised her, she’ll laugh and say, who ever knew he had even one good word to say about me. Then I realize I may never hear her speak again; those who went missing haven’t come back. My eyes sting as if someone has rubbed chili paste into them. My chest hurts.
“I have seen you before,” the senior says, waving a file at me. “You ran away from school one day because you were bored.”
Ma and Papa glower at me.
I can’t see Bahadur’s ma’s gold chain around the senior’s neck. Maybe he sold it and split the money with the junior. “Are you going to put Runu-Didi’s photo on the Internet to send to other police stations?” I ask.
“What do we have here, Byomkesh Bakshi in disguise?”
The senior laughs as if he has cracked the best joke. I bite the inside of my cheeks like Faiz does so I won’t cry.
Papa takes the Parachute tub out of the bag and puts it on the constable’s desk. “We can get more,” he says.
“You think I need hair oil?” the senior asks, but he picks up the tub, opens the lid, and sees what’s inside. Kabir-Khadifa’s abbu-ammi look sadder. Maybe they don’t have any money to give the policeman.
The senior returns Didi’s photo to Papa.
“Internet?” I say.
“Not working now,” he says.
Ma and Papa plead with him. Come back in two days, he says finally, shaking his head and jiggling his legs as if we are the ones being unreasonable.
Outside the police station, I tell Papa, “We don’t have a second Parachute tub to pay him again.”
“At least he listened to you,” Kabir-Khadifa’s abbu says. “He told us he’ll have our basti demolished because it’s causing nothing but trouble for him.”
Ma looks at the sky, like she’s hoping God will come out of heaven and give us an answer, but the smog keeps its coat zipped up and doesn’t let out even a sliver of light.
* * *
Papa and Ma decide they have to check the hospitals Papa couldn’t check last night. I think they mean the Casualty sections but maybe they also mean morgues, and they don’t want to say morgues in front of me.
Ma’s hi-fi madam calls her on her mobile again. This time, Ma takes the call. She explains why she can’t be at work today. The hi-fi madam is not on speaker, but we can still hear her. When will you come? Tomorrow? Day after? Should I find a new bai to do your job? Your daughter must have run off with a boy. I heard it’s happening a lot in your area.
Ma says nothing, just snaps the threads that are hanging loose at the end of her pallu. Finally, she says, “Two days, madam. That’s all I’m asking for. Please forgive me for giving you so much trouble.”
After she hangs up, Papa says he and Kabir-Khadifa’s abbu will go to the hospitals. Ma and Kabir-Khadifa’s ammi will go home with me.
“I’m not scared of morgues,” I say. I have seen morgues on Police Patrol; they are ice-cold metal freezers that maybe smell of Lizol.
The grown-ups look startled as if I have said a word that no one should say aloud because it brings bad luck.
“Why don’t you help your ma look for Runu around the bazaar?” Papa tells me.
Papa and Kabir-Khadifa’s abbu hire an autorickshaw to take them to the hospitals. Ma and Kabir-Khadifa’s ammi and me, we go toward Bhoot Bazaar. Vehicles zoom past us but they don’t sound loud anymore. A glass wall has come up between me and the world.
* * *
Ma and I walk the length of every lane in Bhoot Bazaar, asking about Runu-Didi. We describe her again and again.
“She’s twelve,” Ma says.
“Thirteen in three months,” I say. My birthday is a month after Didi’s.
“Hair tied in a ponytail, with a white band,” Ma says.
“Grey and brown salwar-kameez,” I say. “The government school uniform.”
“This height,” Ma says, pointing at her shoulders.
“She was wearing black-and-white shoes,” I say.
“She was carrying a school bag, brown color.”
We have no luck, but this is better than sitting at home. Ma keeps calling Papa, and she lets out a big sigh of relief each time he tells her nothing, nothing. I pray to God, to Mental, to the ghosts who hover above Bhoot Bazaar and whose names I don’t know. I don’t want Runu-Didi to be in a morgue. Please please please.
We go into the theka lane. The anda-wallah is taking a delivery of eggs stacked in plastic trays and tied to the pillion of a bike, from a man who hasn’t removed his helmet. Quarter and his gang-members are making fun of a drunkard half-asleep on the ground. Their feet prod the drunk’s ribs. Quarter never sits for his exams, so today is the same as any other day for him.
Ma asks Quarter too about Runu-Didi. I don’t think Ma knows who he is, but Quarter knows who Ma is talking about. His mouth widens, he snaps his fingers at his lackeys, he takes out a mobile from the back pocket of his black jeans-pant and scrolls up and down. If he snatched Runu-Didi, he’s hiding it well; he looks extremely surprised.
“She’s the one who’s always running, yes?” he says, his eyes on his mobile.
Ma nods, maybe shocked that Runu-Didi is famous.
Quarter asks us to wait and walks around making calls on his mobile
. He orders his gang to search for Runu, everywhere. He introduces himself to Ma as the pradhan’s son.
“My father is concerned about the goings-on in your basti,” he says. “He’s doing all he can to help.”
“Can’t your father talk to the police?” Ma asks.
“He will,” Quarter says. “You go home now. We’ll bring you news.”
* * *
I tell Ma about Samosa and how he can track scents. Ma hardly listens, just says don’t go near stray dogs, they have rabies. We pass Duttaram’s tea stall, and I explain to him that Runu-Didi is missing.
“What’s happening in this world?” he says. “Who’s doing this to our children?”
His children are at school, and safe, and not even in our basti.
He asks Ma if she would like some tea, no need to pay me, but she says no.
Samosa comes out of his home under the pushcart, shakes off the shreds of blackening coriander that the samosa vendor has chucked on his patchy fur for a laugh, and sniffs around my legs. Samosa can find Runu-Didi by smelling me; we are brother and sister.
“Where is she?” I ask Samosa, pushing him forward.
“Jai, come here,” Ma says.
Samosa runs back to his home. He can’t find Runu-Didi through me. I stink too much.
* * *
We search and search for Runu-Didi, around the bazaar and the rubbish ground where we ask scavenger children and Bottle-Badshah about Didi. I try to think of who could have taken her. It’s not the TV-repair chacha because he’s in jail, not the spotty boy, and not Quarter either because he didn’t know Didi had been snatched. That leaves djinns and criminals I don’t know.
Ma’s tears slash lines into her cheeks and around her lips that seem to be turning blue. She leans on me when we finally walk home, and her weight makes me tilt to one side. Our neighbors stare.
Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line Page 24