“Please don’t do anything so that they will kick you out,” I say. “I want to tell you everything, if you promise to print the truth. The other newspapers are printing rubbish, lies, they know nothing about my story—”
“That’s what I do,” he says. “Report the truth. That’s why I’m here.”
He glances at the clock on the wall. The guard on duty stands in a far corner and looks at us.
“Tell me your story,” says Purnendu.
* * *
*
WHEN I WAS A CHILD, I lived—
Believe me when I say you must understand my childhood to know who I am, and why this is happening to me.
“Tell me one thing first,” says Purnendu. “Did you do it?”
I lick my lips. I try to look him in the eye. I shake my head.
* * *
*
IN MY VILLAGE, the dust of coal settled in the nooks of our ears, and when we blew our noses it came out black. There were no cows, or crops. There were only blasted pits into which my mother descended with a shovel, rising with a basket of black rock on her head.
“Did you see her working?” Purnendu asks.
“I watched her once,” I tell him. “Never again.”
It frightened me to see her as a worker. At night I held her palm in my palm. The lines in her hands—lifelines, they call them—were the only skin not blackened.
* * *
*
MANY DAYS I WENT to school for the free midday meal of lentils and rice. There were rumors that we would get chicken in the festival season. Somebody said they saw a man ride in the direction of our school on a bicycle weighted with chickens, their legs bound, hanging upside down from the handlebars, all those white hens silent and blinking at the receding path. But that hoped-for bicycle never arrived.
I sat in this class or that class. It did not matter. When the language teacher reappeared after a long absence for her wedding, she chewed a paan stuffed with lime and betel nut, and told us to write our names on the tests. One day, she reminded us, “Stick five rupees to the page if you can.”
She would fill in the rest of the test if we did.
Soon, only goats were going to school, leaving pellets on the porch.
* * *
*
“TELL ME,” I SAY. “How does this sound to you? What kind of start did I get in life?”
Purnendu looks at me and smiles sadly. “Such is our country,” he says.
* * *
*
THEN THE POLICEMEN CAME to evict us. The company wanted to mine the land on which we lived, rich with coal. Why should the company let some poor people sit and bathe and sleep on top of vast sums of money?
For a week we had saved our shits in plastic bags which we twirled closed, and our urine in soda bottles we capped tight, to make what my mother and father called bombs. The rickshaw Ba occasionally drove, ferrying mine workers, stood outside, its accordion roof folded, blue seat gleaming, and I prayed for mercy—where could he hide a rickshaw?
We waited in our huts, tarp snapping in the wind, our throats parched but nobody willing to leave their house to go to the municipal tap.
The policemen were late.
When they came, they came holding bamboo sticks, followed by the rumble of bulldozers, whose treads I watched, frightened. Mother slapped my head and said, “What are you looking at with your mouth open? Can’t you hear I’m calling?”
Hit me again, Mother, I think now. I will bear it like a blessing.
I rubbed my head, and unscrewed my soda bottle a little, so that the cap would fly off midair and spatter the policemen. I threw my urine bombs at them, traces of liquid on my fingers. I untwisted the plastic bags and threw the hard and dry cakes of shit, the dust of our own waste making us sneeze.
The policemen laughed at our poor weaponry. Their bellies, hanging over their belts, quivered. They swung methodically with their bamboo rods, bringing down our asbestos and tarp roofs. They grunted and yelled with the exertion. One gentle policeman lined up the glinting sheets of asbestos against a naked wall, as if somebody would come to collect them.
Soon our houses were exposed to the sun, all lime walls and cracked corners. They looked like we had never lived in them at all.
The sight of our houses, so easily broken, startled me. I knew it would happen, but like this? Kitchens in which we had eaten before a flickering kerosene lamp, rooms in which we had combed each other’s hair, all roofless, soon to be crushed into a heap of brick.
News of our bombs had reached the police station, and new policemen arrived, this time wearing helmets and carrying shields of cane which looked like the backs of chairs, meant to deflect knives and stones. They had heard “bombs,” they were expecting bombs, and they were angry. But we had no real weapons. We had our bodies and our voices, our saved waste long gone.
When a policeman raised his bamboo stick to strike my mother, she screamed and threw herself at him, her voice strangled and soaring at once, her sari unfurling into the mud and shit at our feet, loose blouse slipping off her shoulders, her face black with rage.
“Leave our houses alone,” she screamed. “Where will we live?”
Until then I had naively believed another home would materialize, but in my mother’s transformation I saw the truth: We had nowhere to go.
Another policeman held her legs and began dragging her, and I watched in horror until I felt my arms rise and push him away, striking his face so that his spectacles fell and were trampled. My mother scrambled up and retreated, screaming curses until her voice snapped, the thread of it drifting down. In the meantime, somebody had smashed my father’s rickshaw. I looked, uncomprehending, at the bent wheels and slashed seat, my father kneeling to reattach, futilely, the cycle chain to the ruined vehicle.
The houses fell. Walls and roofs of our shelter turned enemy, wreckage coming down on our heads, the rising dust making us cough, paint and brick in heaps on the ground. The policemen, finally calm, bamboo limp by their sides, looked frightened. Maybe the houses looked too much like their own. In the end, one policeman pleaded with us, “Orders came from above, sister, what will I do?”
* * *
*
“TIME, TIME,” CALLS A GUARD. She strides about the room, striking each bench with a stick. Our hour is over.
My brother, Purnendu, stands up and lifts the cloth bag on his shoulder.
“Next week,” he says, “and the week after that, and the week after that, for as long as it takes.”
His words play in my ears with the sweetness of a flute. I watch him go, past a door which magically opens for him, and I turn back. Inside, a woman beats her head on the wall. Once, I might have felt that way too, but now I don’t. Now I float beside her, her scrape only hers, not mine. I am on my way out. As soon as the newspaper publishes my story, the door will begin to open for me. Where public feeling goes, the court follows. Freedom will result not from boxes of papers and fights over legality but from a national outcry.
I walk past the woman striking her head. A guard appears, and tells the woman, in a tone of boredom, to stop striking her head.
“What are you doing,” the guard drones. “Stop it right now.”
The woman pauses, turns, and strikes the guard with her head.
“Ooh!” gasps the corridor.
The woman is taken away, screaming, for something they will call treatment.
INTERLUDE
A POLICEMAN FIRED FOR EXCESSIVE VIOLENCE DURING SLUM DEMOLITION HAS A NEW GIG
“HIGHWAY.” YOU SEE, THIS is a fancy word. This road is just a road. It runs straight through the forest. It is paved, and in the rains it is potholed. You see the mounds of red soil? Termite hills. There used to be deer, but we haven’t seen any all year. So my friends and I, we come usually at night, yes, regularly at ni
ght. Ten o’clock, eleven o’clock. After our women and children have gone to sleep.
Me, personally, after I lost my job after that cursed slum demolition, more than a decade ago, I never got a job again. I do some of this, some of that. Some transportation business. Some import-export. Some middleman fees. That’s how I manage.
These days, as I was saying, my friends and I come to this highway, and we park in our cars by the side and wait. One time a poor old villager, maybe the village guard, came tottering up to us saying, “What, son, did your car have a breakdown?”
We laughed. “Grandpa,” we said. “Have you seen this car? It’s from foreign! It doesn’t break down!
“You go,” we said to him, “go back to sleep. Go.”
The old man understood and went away, or else some of our younger brothers were just itching to use their cutlasses for something other than cutting weeds, you know what I am saying?
Gradually a truck came. It had one of the major signs of cow transportation—some liquid dripping from the back. Now, it could be water, okay. But really? It could also be cow urine. It could mean there are cows on that truck, holy mother cows being taken to slaughter by some bastards. We made it our job to stop the slaughter. If we don’t defend our nation, our way of life, our holy cow, who will? We waved our flashlights and the driver stopped.
When the truck stopped, our men went around to the sides and hit the truck, bang bang bang, so that any cows inside would move. That’s how we would know if that truck was carrying cows. We heard nothing. Meanwhile, in front, the driver was yelling, “What are you all doing? This truck has only potatoes! I am taking potatoes to cold storage!”
“So what is the water?” challenged one of our men, holding his cutlass by his side.
“It rained!” shouted the driver. “It didn’t rain here?”
Turned out, he was telling the truth. So we let that truck go.
We are moral men. We are principled men.
But let me tell you, there are persons who don’t have any respect for our nation. They don’t have any respect for mother cow, and they attack her for beef, for leather, all sorts of disgusting things. There is really no place for such persons in our society, don’t you think so?
PT SIR
EARLY IN THE MORNING on Republic Day, a haze of pollution softens the skyline, and children stand sleepy-eyed before the national flag, singing the anthem. Teachers watching the show hold handkerchiefs on their noses to ward off smog and chill.
When it is time for the students’ parade, PT Sir walks down the line of schoolgirls, reminding them to swing their arms high, to beware of limp salutes. He inspects their uniforms: Their white shoes are clean, their fingernails are clipped. He is almost done with his final check when there is a murmur of activity at the school gate. Somebody has arrived.
Leading a small group of people, the principal shows the way to somebody who follows. Then PT Sir sees a familiar saffron scarf hanging loosely about the neck of a woman in a white sari. Bimala Pal shushes his exclamations.
“I had work right next door, I will only stay for two minutes,” she says.
A student promptly unfolds a chair in the front, and a few more for the assistants and bodyguards who follow. Another student is dispatched to buy tea and freshly cooked shingara, pastry filled with spiced potatoes and peas. The principal, too flustered to look for the petty cash box, hands the student money from her own purse.
Bimala Pal protests, “Please, nothing special for me. I have just come to visit, even though your sir did not invite me!”
At this she looks at him, teasing.
PT Sir bites the tip of his tongue and shakes his head. “How would I invite you to such a humble event?” he says.
Rows of teachers and students gape at the VIP visitor, while her bodyguards stand as a wall behind her, sunglasses on their noses, declining the plastic chairs procured for them.
Now, with Bimala Pal seated and a dish of shingara in front of her, an earthen cup of milk tea at her feet, the principal offers, “PT Sir is one of our most valued teachers.”
PT Sir looks at her, amazed.
“He is beloved by the students,” the principal continues. “Really, it is his hard work that has made this ceremony come together.”
PT Sir smiles graciously at the lies, then turns away to help the students begin the parade. The girls march in single file, their knees rising higher at the sight of Bimala Pal, their voices crisply calling out the beat, “One-two-one! One-two-one!”
PT Sir watches as the playground fills with his students. His back is straight as a rod, a pen smartly tucked into his shirt pocket, his chin held a little higher.
* * *
*
AT HOME, PT SIR’S wife offers him a paneer kebab, cooked on the stovetop.
“Don’t make that face,” she says. “Paneer is good for you. With your cholesterol, you should be eating less meat.”
So he eats the cubes. They are a bit dry.
“You can’t make proper kebab without a tandoor,” responds his wife, miffed. “Don’t eat it, then.”
But he eats. While he eats, he tells her the story of Bimala Pal’s visit. How the Jana Kalyan Party’s second-in-command came to his school to see his ceremony.
“You are so easily flattered!” his wife says. “She was coming to see where the terrorist went to school. What else did you think?”
* * *
*
ONLY A FEW WEEKS after PT Sir’s ego is thus punctured, he comes home from school to find a letter in the mailbox. Inside, on the sofa, when he tears the edge open, he sees an invitation on Jana Kalyan Party letterhead. He jumps up and waves it before his wife, who is seated at the dining table, tucking cheese inside slit chicken breasts.
“Look what has come!” he says. “How did they find my address?”
His wife wipes her hand on her kameez and takes the letter in hand.
“They have their ways,” she says with a smile.
To go to this special event, which will be held on a Monday, PT Sir requests a half day off from school.
On the given date, PT Sir rides a train, then a rickshaw, to the Kolabagan slum. He holds his small leather bag on his lap as the rickshaw descends from the main road into the lanes of the slum, jerking and bouncing over potholes, crossing buildings of brick, then half-brick, then tin and tarp. Jivan lived nearby, he knows, so he observes the surroundings all the more keenly. At a corner, before a municipal pump where water spills, men with checkered cloths wrapped around their waists rub their torsos with soap, their heads white with froth and their eyes closed to the street. The rickshaw moves on, the driver’s legs pumping. On a rickety bench before a tea shop, customers sitting with ankle resting on knee and drinking from small glasses in their hands look at PT Sir as he passes by.
When the rickshaw deposits PT Sir at his destination, he finds a crowd gathered in front of a primary school. Damaged in the attack at the railway station nearby, the school building has been renovated over the past months, and is being reopened with great ceremony by the Jana Kalyan Party. The school is no more than a five-room shed. Murals on the exterior walls show a lion, a zebra, and a giraffe strolling alongside a herd of rabbits. A sun with a mane like a lion’s smiles at them all. A civic-minded artist has included, low to the ground, an instruction to passersby: Do not urinate.
There are children here. The students, presumably. They hold stick brooms and sweep the grounds around the school building. Bent over like that, one hand on knee, the other on the handle of a broom, sweeping dust from dust—the children’s posture is that of service. It moves PT Sir. This is what a school ought to teach, he thinks. How come his school doesn’t instill such feeling in the students?
When a party assistant arrives, he recognizes PT Sir, thumping him on the back and asking how the school building looks. PT Sir
says, “First class!”
“Have you seen inside?” the assistant asks. The two of them walk up to the door and peep in.
There is a vacant room. It looks incomplete, until PT Sir realizes there will be no benches here, no chairs. The children are used to sitting on the ground. Probably they will share one textbook, photocopied to death. After the first wave of donated supplies runs out, the children will write with pencil nubs chewed and sucked.
Still they will come to school.
“And look at my own students,” PT Sir shares. “They are fed and clothed and schooled, given every convenience and comfort.”
“My son,” agrees the assistant, “goes to extra coaching for every subject. English, maths, chemistry, everything. I think, what are they teaching him at school? If they are not teaching him the subjects, are they teaching him manners, loyalty to the country, et cetera, et cetera? No!”
The two men pause when a box of sweets comes around.
“Take my students,” says PT Sir. “Will they ever sweep the school grounds? Will they ever paint a beautiful mural like this? Never! Because they”—and here he pauses to chew his sweet—“are trying their level best to flee the country. They work so hard on applications to American universities that they ignore the school exams, failing and crying and pleading—they had SAT I! They had SAT II! What are these nonsense exams? Why will the school allow such brain drain?”
The party man listens intently. When he is done with his sweet, he claps crumbs off his hands, then clasps his hands behind his back like a diligent schoolboy. “The problem, you see,” he joins in, “is we teach our children many things, but not national feeling! There is a scarcity of patriotic feeling, don’t you think so? In our generation, we knew our schooling was to…was to…”
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