Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line

by Deepa Anappara

  “Wouldn’t we have told someone if they were?” he says.

  A police jeep trundles down to the rubbish ground, its engine sputtering. Behind it is a yellow JCB excavator and a police van with wire meshes that keep its windows safe. More policemen and policewomen than I have ever seen before step out of the vehicles and stomp through the rubbish. The letters P and O are missing from the jeep’s side, so it reads LICE.

  “Call Chandni’s father,” a man shouts at another man. “He must be at work. He said to call him if we got any news.”

  “You do it,” the second man says. “I don’t have his number.”

  The police form a cordon in the part of the rubbish ground where the scavenger children discovered the box. Varun and his wife are moved to its center. The excavator lurches toward the cordon, its track wheels flattening the rubbish, its long claw dangling in front.

  Men and women from our basti walk behind the excavator. Policemen snap their fingers and cluck their tongues, and order everyone to turn back.

  An old woman flings a handful of blackening vegetable peelings at a constable whose shirt has no arrow-badges. Soon others pelt the policemen with whatever their hands can gather from the ground, pebbles, stones, plastic wrappers, balled-up newspapers, shreds of clothes, Tetra Paks.

  “Traitors,” they yell. “Child-killers. Murderers.”

  A stone hits the senior constable’s knee and he hops around on one leg. I want his leg to be broken.

  “Stop, stop,” Quarter pleads with everybody. “They’re here to do a job. Let them do it.”

  The senior constable limps through the trash toward the jeep.

  “We will leave if you do it again. We will take the JCB with us,” he shouts.

  That stops the stone-pelting. Two scavenger girls share a muddy carrot, giggling after each bite. The sound of the JCB scatters pigs. Bottle-Badshah walks up and down, surveying his kingdom, telling his children not to scavenge in front of the police. “You’ll end up in a juvenile home,” he warns.

  * * *

  We wait and wait and wait, me and Papa and Ma. We take turns to cry. I cry first and then Ma and then Papa.

  “My boys and girls are the real heroes,” Bottle-Badshah tells a man who was in our patrol. “If not for them, that criminal would never have been caught. I’m telling everyone because by tomorrow my children will be forgotten, and the Hindu Samaj will take credit for everything.”

  The badshah sees me between Ma and Papa, and his ashy hand reaches forward to tousle my hair. I shrink into Ma’s sari, and the buttoned sweater she’s wearing on top of it.

  “Don’t worry, daughter,” Bottle-Badshah says to Ma. “The police are asking the right questions. Finally.”

  A policewoman dressed in a khaki shirt and trousers, holding a baton in one hand and a cap in another, comes over to talk to Ma about Runu-Didi.

  “You wouldn’t even file a complaint,” Ma says. “That’s why people are so angry.”

  “I’m from a chowki,” the policewoman says. “It’s under the big police station but we can’t tell the people there what to do.”

  The policewoman pats Ma’s elbow. They both look uncomfortable.

  An hour or so passes, I don’t know for sure. The JCB keeps shifting the trash from one side to another. They haven’t found anything. This is good news or bad news, I can’t tell which. The waiting people whose families are whole and who have got nobody missing chat around us, pretending to be detectives. Why did Varun do it when did he do it how did he do it. It’s like a game for them, a guessing game.

  I can’t listen to these people anymore. Ma can’t stand it either. She gets up and races toward Varun. I run after Ma and so does Papa.

  Runu-Didi would have been four times as fast as us.

  The waste around us hisses and sputters as we run, it bites our feet, it tries to pull us down. Two cows stumble away from us.

  We reach the cordon.

  “Ask that man to tell me where my daughter is,” Ma shouts.

  The policewoman who said she was from a chowki stands in front of Ma, her palm an inch short of Ma’s face. “Have patience,” she says. She doesn’t let Ma move forward.

  Dogs bark excitedly. Samosa isn’t here, he must be under the samosa cart near Duttaram’s tea shop. Varun sways as if he’s drunk, dark blood thickening around a cut on his eyebrow. His wife cries.

  The JCB’s claw turns the waste again. A black plastic bag comes up.

  “What’s that?” a voice shouts from near my ma. It’s Aanchal’s papa.

  A policeman picks up the dirty bag with his bare hands, unties it and holds it upside down. Out falls a bunch of old Hindi film VCDs.

  “What did you do to my Aanchal, you animal?” Aanchal’s papa screams.

  Varun’s eyes are half-shut. His chin drops down to his chest. A policeman prods him with a baton. He stands straight.

  * * *

  It’s late afternoon now, not yet forty-eight hours. Bottle-Badshah asks his scavenger children to spread out sacks on the ground so that we can sit. I know Runu-Didi isn’t hidden here but Varun knows where she is, and maybe if he stands here for long enough, stones slicing his skin, the truth will rush out of his mouth.

  Chandni’s ma and papa arrive. People circle them like hawks.

  The pradhan isn’t here anymore. I didn’t see him leave. Quarter is in charge. His gang-members bring him food in plastic packets from Bhoot Bazaar.

  Pari turns up at my side with her ma, who must have left work early to bring Pari home from school. Faiz isn’t with her.

  “We heard,” Pari says. Her ma sobs.

  I move to the side, making space for Pari on the dirty-white sack. She sits with her shoulder pressed to my shoulder, and she puts her hand into mine.

  “How did your exam go?” I ask.

  “Okay,” she says.

  I don’t ask her if she thinks Varun is a djinn. I know what she will say.

  Drunkard Laloo presses one nostril with his index finger and shoots snot out of the other. Ma and Bahadur’s ma talk, their heads down, cheeks damp. Another jeep arrives with even more police. Varun collapses to the ground. The policemen wake him up with kicks and spit that waterfalls out of their mouths, which he can’t wipe off because his hands are cuffed. “Don’t, don’t, forgive, forgive,” his wife shouts.

  Ma gets up and wanders by the rubbish like a ghost. A fish bone is stuck to the sole of her left slipper. Pari’s ma walks with her, saying Runu will come back, I know. But she cries the entire time she speaks.

  “I wish my ma would stop,” Pari says.

  The air turns colder. The smog licks us with its mangy-grey tongue as we rub our red eyes. What are the police hiding behind the cordon? Have they found bodies? Is Runu-Didi in a plastic bag? I can’t think of it, I won’t think of it. The JCB growls, it beeps and pings as it goes backward and forward, it sputters and coughs.

  “Getting dark, haan,” Drunkard Laloo says. This must be when he usually goes to the daru shop for his evening quota of hooch.

  “Leave if you want,” Bahadur’s ma says. She sounds as disgusted as I feel.

  Faiz and Wajid-Bhai arrive. They say they heard what happened from the basti-people and Bhoot Bazaar shopkeepers.

  “Don’t you have work?” I ask Faiz. I know he stacks shelves at the kirana store after a day of selling roses.

  “Not tonight,” he says. He sits on the very edge of our sack, most of him on the filth-strewn ground. His hands are full of thorn-cuts, and his voice is hoarse, probably from breathing fumes on the highway.

  “You didn’t go to the police station?” Pari asks Wajid-Bhai. “They can’t keep Tariq-Bhai in jail when that man”—she gestures toward the cordon—“has been caught. Red-handed.”

  “They say it will take time. But Tariq-Bhai will be released, I’m certain
.” Wajid-Bhai sounds excited though his face is trying to look normal. A sharp stone rolls down my throat.

  The pradhan returns to the rubbish ground. He speaks to the police. Then he claps his hands so that we know he is about to give a speech.

  “Varun and his wife will be taken to the police station now,” he says. “They’re refusing to talk, and the police haven’t found anything else in the rubbish.”

  “Can’t they get some battery lamps and continue this work over the night?” Chandni’s papa asks.

  “They’ll come back tomorrow,” the pradhan says. “You have already seen how tirelessly Eshwar—my son—has worked for you today. And I have done what I can too. Remember the puja I organized? Our prayers are slowly being answered.”

  “But our children,” Kabir-Khadifa’s abbu says. “My wife, she’s about to have our baby, she can’t take this much tension.”

  “What about Runu?” Papa asks.

  “The police have to complete the formalities of filing a case against Varun and his wife,” the pradhan says. “There are procedures to be followed. Leave them to do their job.”

  “If they had done their job, we wouldn’t be here today,” a man says.

  “Let’s not antagonize the police now,” the pradhan says. “I’ll personally go to the police station and check they’re doing everything right.”

  “Duttaram had said the wrestler worked in a hi-fi building. Remember its name?” Faiz asks me.

  “Golden Gate,” I say.

  “Maybe he has locked up Runu-Didi in that building,” Faiz says.

  “His boss-lady wouldn’t let him do that,” I say, but then I think of the bad boss-ladies I have seen on Police Patrol. I’m too stupid for forgetting something so important. How could I have forgotten? I must be going crazy. I can’t think a single thought clearly.

  I tell Papa and Ma about the hi-fi flat. Faiz says sometimes flats are empty for ages because hi-fi people live in foreign countries or in the city and visit only once in a while. Ma says this is true. Papa repeats everything to the pradhan and Quarter, who are preparing to leave. “We should go there,” Papa says.

  “We can’t wait,” Ma says. “My daughter could be there right now.”

  “Only very special people live in that building,” the pradhan says, looking irritated. “They don’t even know about this basti, I’m sure. It’s not their fault their servant has been arrested.”

  “Surely you can ask the police to check,” Papa says.

  “Golden Gate is not a tea shop that you can drop in for a glass of chai whenever you feel like it,” the pradhan says.

  The police shove Varun and his wife into the back of the van. People shout abuses at him, call him sisterfucker and motherfucker.

  When the police vehicles and the JCB drive away, the press-wallah says, “They didn’t even tell us anything about our children.”

  “I’m going right now to the police station,” the pradhan says. “I’ll talk to them about this Golden Gate business. I’ll call you.” Quarter asks a lackey to take down everyone’s mobile numbers. Then they leave.

  It’s almost forty-eight hours and we still don’t know where Runu-Didi is.

  THE RUBBISH IS A SEA OF—

  —rustling black now except where charcoal fires smolder orange. Pari tugs my hand.

  “We need answers,” Kabir-Khadifa’s abbu says. “We have to make the Golden Gate people open their gates.”

  “Let’s show them what we are made of,” Aanchal’s papa says, thumping his chest.

  “Off we go,” Drunkard Laloo says, but he heads in the direction of the rubbish ground. Bahadur’s ma runs after him and brings him back.

  Our long procession sets off, passing Bottle-Badshah, now reclining on a charpai-throne in front of his house. “Be careful,” he shouts after us.

  Strangers join our group, drawn to us maybe because of the anger in our stride. Their day must have been ordinary and dull, like mine once used to be, and now they are eager to witness a fight so that they will have a story worth repeating at the tea shop tomorrow.

  Past the rubbish ground are the first of the hi-fi buildings, and here the roads pick up width and smoothness. They are paved with asphalt and lined with neem and amaltas trees. Pari and Faiz stay close to me. I don’t want them to see my sadness, but I’m also glad they are here.

  A bunch of stray dogs bark as they chase their enemy dogs across the dark road. Samosa would never snarl at anyone like that.

  We reach a sloping side road that leads up to Golden Gate. It’s lined with street lamps and plants trapped in cages. The building is a jumble of cream and yellow, not gold. I imagine Runu-Didi with her face pressed against the window of a flat, her breath drawing a misty circle on the glass.

  Papa and other men from our basti talk to the watchmen who have two offices by the entry and exit gates. CCTV cameras with their pointy noses snuffle around us. Hi-fi people go past boom barriers in their sleek cars and jeeps. Special Golden Gate stickers are stuck on their windshields so the watchmen can tell easily that they belong inside.

  “How could anyone have smuggled Bahadur and Aanchal and Runu-Didi through all this?” Pari asks. “They would have made some noise.”

  “If Varun had a car, he could have hidden them inside,” Faiz says. “They aren’t looking at the backseats”—he gestures at the watchmen—“if you live here, they know your face, they let you in. But how can Varun have a car?”

  He can’t. He only has a bicycle. Does this mean Runu-Didi isn’t here?

  Papa and others are still talking to the watchmen, their voices and hands rising up into the air. One of the watchmen says this tamasha has been going on for too long, we’re calling the police.

  “Call them,” Aanchal’s papa says. “You think we care?”

  The sound of a siren forces us to turn around. For once, the police are everywhere today.

  There’s just enough space between the people in the crowd for me to see a policeman’s shoes clack-clacking on the side road. The shoes are brown, not black like those of the constables, so this policeman is an inspector. A man standing on the balcony of a first-floor flat takes a video of us with his mobile phone.

  The police inspector talks to the watchmen, then turns to us and says he has called the owner of the penthouse flat where Varun worked. “The owner isn’t here right now, but we are checking everything, I assure you,” he says. “But please, remember, these are all top people who live here. Let’s keep the noise down to a minimum.”

  We wait, again. Pari finds out from someone that a penthouse flat means the topmost flat.

  Keep my daughter safe, Ma prays next to me. She repeats the prayer nine times as she has been doing all day.

  I look up. I imagine Runu-Didi flinging open a balcony window from the highest flat and jumping, all of us running to catch her before her head hits the ground.

  Another police van arrives. Constables stroll around, leisurely, as if they are taking a walk in a park.

  “What happened to that Varun fellow? His wife?” Pari stops one of them and asks.

  “Lock-up,” the constable answers. “They will never see the sky again.”

  “Who wants to see this sky?” his friend says and laughs. “It’s full of poison. They are better off in jail, not breathing this air.”

  The crowd at Golden Gate gets bigger. I don’t know where the people are coming from, if it’s from our basti or elsewhere.

  The watchmen let in a silver car that’s as big as a jeep, but it stops just inside the gates. Pari, Faiz and I shove and make our way toward the barriers so that we can see what’s happening. Ma, Pari’s ma and Wajid-Bhai come with us.

  A woman dressed in a white-and-gold salwar-kameez, silky black hair falling down her shoulders, wearing sandals with heels as long as pencils, steps out. In her left hand she
clutches a black bag, and in her right a mobile phone. The inspector is allowed in to talk to her. I can’t see the woman’s face clearly. She waves her hands toward us, the basti-crowd, and keeps making and taking calls on her mobile.

  It gets darker. The inspector finishes his conversation with the woman and comes out. Her car-jeep disappears behind the walls. A watchman offers the inspector a plastic chair, and the inspector stands on it as if it’s a podium. Constables hold the chair’s arms and back steady.

  “The madam is horrified and saddened to hear of the tragedy that has unfolded in your slum settlement,” the inspector says. “She’s a very important person, a friend of our police commissioner.” The inspector touches the upward-curving edges of his thick mustache with his thumb and index finger spread out. The chair wobbles, the constables grasp it tighter. “Such an upright citizen would have had nothing to do with the disappearances. However, as a courtesy to me, madam will take me to her flat, which she tells me, she bought only recently, for investment purposes. Madam doesn’t stay here often because she has several properties. Madam’s mistake was to hire the criminal who is currently in our custody. Please understand, his family has been working for madam’s family for three generations. They’re from the same native place. When madam was looking for a caretaker for this flat, someone suggested his name to her. Hiring him was her only mistake. She regrets it deeply. Now, madam is being generous enough to allow me inside without a warrant. We’re going to check everything thoroughly. We request your cooperation. If we find something, we will let you know immediately.”

  The too-long speech has made everyone restless. Murmurs rustle through the crowd, spin and gather weight, turn into shouts.

  “No,” someone says, raising their fist.

  “We have to see with our own eyes if that monster has tied up my daughter inside,” Papa says. He’s standing near the watchmen’s office by the entry gate.