A Burning

by Megha Majumdar

  I saw my mother then as a woman. I felt her humiliation. And where I had always felt shame, I now felt white-hot anger. Anger crept into my jaws and I had to gnash my teeth to be calm.

  Why was this our life? What kind of life was it, where my mother was forced to buy cheap vegetables in the middle of the night, and got robbed and attacked for it? What kind of life did we have, where my father’s pain was not taken seriously by a doctor until it was too late?

  So I made a decision. Whether it was a good decision or a bad decision, I no longer know.

  INTERLUDE

  BRIJESH, ASPIRING ACTOR, VISITS A NEW MALL

  A NEW MALL OPENED where the sewing machine factory used to be. My jaw dropped when I saw it. It looked like an airport. Sharp and spiky. Glass here, glass there. Lights everywhere, like it was festival time.

  On Sunday, after the acting class, I put on my new jeans and buttoned up my shirt with a horseman stitched on the chest pocket—Playboy shop in Allen Lane, go there sometime—then took out my phone and called my friend Raju, who does house-painting work. Together we went. Outside the mall, there were the snack boys and syrup-ice boys, and a few of them I knew so I nodded to them and they said, “Go inside, go inside, see how it is!”

  So Raju and I went. Raju had some paint on his arms. My hair was washed and combed. My shoes were a bit dirty, but I had put polish on top of the dirt and covered it up, almost. Then we stood in the line for the metal detector, and I looked up at the big posters of ladies wearing golden watches. Then we walked through the metal detector, and at this point I could smell the AC air coming from inside, with a smell of perfumes and leather bags also. Oh that cool air on my face. I felt good. I felt excited. The cool, cool breeze coming, when suddenly the guard caught my arm.

  “Fifty rupees,” the guard said.

  “What?” I said. “Go away, old man.” Can’t believe how anybody just asks for money, no excuse needed! I should also stand outside a mall and shout out amounts of money. See what I can get.

  “Fifty rupees admission,” said the guard, neither annoyed nor interested, his eyes looking somewhere else.

  “Admission to go to where? We’re just going to the shops,” said Raju, taking out his big new smartphone and holding it casually, just to show that he is a moneyed man.

  But the old guard was not fooled. “See, brother,” he began, “fifty rupees and you can go in. Otherwise, you enjoy the air outside.

  “Like me,” he added, but I did not have a mood to feel friendship with him.

  “But you didn’t take admission from that aunty!” argued Raju. The woman ahead of us, her soft white belly spilling over the waist of her pink sari, her elbows disappearing in folds of fat, a woman who surely eats mutton every day, she had already disappeared in the mall.

  “Do I make the rules, brother?” said the guard. “I am just telling you what is what. Now you want to quarrel with me and say, this person, that person! So what will I do? I am just telling you what is the rule. Now you decide—”

  So Raju and I stepped away from the entrance. We looked at each other. Neither of us wanted to say it. So Raju clapped my back and I smacked his shoulder, and we went to the syrup-ice stall and had some orange syrup-ice. Then we went back to work. Him to his house painting, that paint-smelling turban on his head again. Me to my electrician’s shop. It was giving me pain in my wrist, pain in my thumb. At least the syrup-ice was delicious.

  PT SIR

  IN COURT FOR WHAT will be his last case, PT Sir faces a counterfeiter, a man who sells fake Nikees and Adidavs to the local malls. His name, PT Sir reminds himself from a chit of paper before taking the stand, is Azad.

  The man looks suspect, that’s what PT Sir thinks. There is something too new about his clothes. His hair is smoothed back with gel. Is he wearing eyeliner? Could be. PT Sir has been told he is a counterfeit goods trader, an immoral man who is harming the national economy and deserves to be jailed. That is the charge with which they have brought him to court today.

  “Where do you get your supply?” says the judge.

  “Judge sir,” says Azad. “Believe me, this is all made up. I can’t even—”

  “Where?” repeats the judge. “You want to go to jail for this?”

  “I don’t know what you are saying, judge sir,” protests Azad. “I am only transporting what the boss man tells me, I don’t know real weal, fake shake—”

  “Who has brought the charge?” says the judge, exasperated. The lawyer points out PT Sir. He takes the stand. He tells his story: He bought shoes for eight hundred rupees, then after one walk found that the sole was ungluing from the shoe.

  “Who are you, mister?” interrupts Azad. He is listening, wide-eyed. “Who is this man? I have never seen him in my life. What is your issue with me?”

  The judge warns Azad to be quiet. In the end, the judge orders Azad to pay a fine of five thousand rupees.

  PT Sir looks at the man, and is shocked to see his eyes are wet. Azad is crying. In a panic, he wails, “Judge sir, I am just a transport man, where will I find five thousand rupees? I just got married, I have a wife to support now—”

  The judge, irritated, announces that a trade in fake goods will not be tolerated, not while he has a courtroom to preside over. “If you cannot pay the fine, you can serve a jail term,” he declares. “Is that what you choose?”

  LOVELY

  NOW THAT I AM owning a demo video, on Mr. Debnath’s recommendation I am visiting a casting director, Mr. Jhunjhunwala.

  Morning of the appointment, I am putting baby powder on my oily spots—forehead, nose, chin. Just in case he is asking me to film something right there!

  Once again I am going to the film district, but this time I am going in the opposite direction from Mr. Debnath’s house. I am passing by a big studio, built a hundred years ago, which is now blocking part of the road. Since big-big stars are filming in that studio, the municipal corporation is letting the studio stay.

  The casting director’s office is not far. I am walking down a lane where there is an open gutter thick with mosquitoes, and soon I am seeing a door that is saying Jhunjhunwala.

  The door is thin, and one plank of wood is splintered at the bottom. Along the stairway, I am feeling surprised to see red splashes of spit which are soiling the walls. To be truthful, this office is looking quite dirty, but who am I to know where fame and success are coming from?

  I am knocking on door 3C, hearing the loud voice of a man on the phone inside. The man is calling, “Come, come.” Inside, the man’s head is bent to the phone, and he is waving me forward, showing me the two chairs on the other side of his table. I am sitting, touching the edge of my blouse on my shoulder to make sure the bra strap is tucked inside. Mr. Debnath has prepared me to always sit straight and tall. The pose is making me feel confident when I am actually feeling nervous. Then I am waiting, trying to look a bit humble and a bit royal.

  The phone conversation is finally ending, and Mr. Jhunjhunwala is standing up, coming around to my side, and taking my hand in both of his hands. He is shaking my hand like I am the prime minister.

  “Forgive me for keeping you waiting,” he is saying. When he is speaking, a scent of paan is coming from his mouth. I can see his teeth are red from betel stains, so maybe he is the one spitting in the stairs every day. “Some producers, they depend a lot on me, and want to discuss every small detail…” He is shaking his head. What to do with these needy producers!

  “Chai? Pepsi?” he is offering, and a small boy is poking his head in through the door to take the order. How he is knowing that he is needed, I don’t know. But this is a professional film office, so this is how things are run in an office. I am saying water only, thank you, but Mr. Jhunjhunwala is saying, “Only water?” And then he is telling the boy, “Bring a cold Pepsi, straight from the fridge.”

  So I am drinking Pepsi
from a glass bottle, keeping the thin straw in one corner of my mouth like film stars do. I am not wanting to spoil my lipstick. In front of me, there is a table topped with a glass slab, and under that glass slab are autographed postcards by big movie stars. Some of the names I am recognizing. Are they prints or originals? I am thinking. And then I am scolding myself—look at me, so cynical! Of course they are originals. This is the society in which I move about now.

  Then Mr. Jhunjhunwala is sitting down, with his chai in front, and he is looking at me with a strict expression. “Now, your acting teacher, Mr. Debnath, is someone I respect very much. So I take it very seriously—very, very seriously!—when he says, look, here’s a student I think you should meet. Immediately I said, it will be my honor, just tell her to come quickly.”

  I am smiling, sipping. The fizzy and sweet drink is making me feel good.

  Mr. Jhunjhunwala is saying, “Now. Kamz, I mean, Kamal Banerjee, you have heard of him?”

  Who has not heard of the great director Kamal Banerjee?

  “So Kamz is casting for a film just now. Let me tell you the story. It will be a love story with a twist, set during a harvest season in which a whole village is suffering because too little rain, too few crops, you see, like that. It will be a blockbuster, mark my words. Now, there is a scene in which a hijra, a bad luck hijra, comes to the village, saying, ‘Give me money no, mother, please, my child is starving,’ et cetera, okay? And our hero, who is suffering himself from his fields dying, mind you, in his suffering he comes out and chases away the hijra with a broom.”

  I am sucking my Pepsi too fast now. The main part is coming, surely.

  “You,” says Mr. Jhunjhunwala, “will be perfect for the hijra part. Do you have your demo CD with you?”

  I am wanting to be a heroine on-screen. At least the heroine’s sister or girlfriend. And here is the great casting director telling me about a minor role, where the character would be chased off-screen with a broom! I am putting the straw away from my lips. My heart is sinking, and all of a sudden this room is making me unhappy. I am seeing the mousehole in the corner. I am feeling the wobble in this old chair. I am saying in a tiny voice, “Yes, sir.” I am handing him the CD in its case.

  Mr. Jhunjhunwala is feeling the disappointment in my voice. He is taking the CD and leaning back in his chair. “You know,” he is saying, looking at the ceiling, “many people come to me and think I can put them in a movie, instantly. But it doesn’t work like that. If you are serious about your career, if you don’t want to remain on an amateur level, then you have to start at the entry level.”

  “Yes, of course, sir,” I am saying. “I did not mean— Oh I’m just learning how the business works! Forgive me for not knowing.”

  “No, there is nothing to forgive in not knowing,” he is saying, feeling a bit friendly again. “Let me look at this CD, and then I will call you, fine? Please pay the hundred rupees fee on your way out.”

  “Fee!” I am saying in a feeble voice. “There is a fee?”

  “Am I looking like a nonprofit agency to you, Lovely?” Mr. Jhunjhunwala is saying, smiling. “Yes, the fee is for keeping you in my roster, looking for roles for you.”

  When I am climbing down the stairs, belly full of Pepsi sloshing inside, I am feeling scammed. One, he was taking my hundred rupees, and two, I will never be getting a good role from him. Are all these men playing a joke on me?

  Outside, the sun is too bright. I am holding a hand above my eyes. I was hearing once that Reshma Goyal, who is now such a big star, was plucked by a casting director at a Café Coffee Day. One cup of coffee there costs one hundred rupees. This thought is making me sigh. If I was rich, I could be chasing my dreams in that way also.

  For a few minutes I am feeling so disheartened, all I am doing is walking down the street and scrolling through WhatsApp.

  My sisters are forwarding me helpful advices.

  Warning from All India Dieticians Professional Group: Do not eat orange and chocolate in the same day, otherwise—

  Don’t answer phone calls coming from number +123456; it is a way of using your SIM to call internationally—

  One sister is sending me a joke.

  Why is Santa Singh keeping a full glass and an empty glass beside his bed at night? Because he may or may not drink water!

  I am looking up and seeing a boy at a corner shop. He is refilling someone’s cell phone credit, scratching a card with his fingernail to get the code, but his eyes are straight on my breasts.

  “Want to come drink my milk?” I am shouting.

  Now I am close to the train station, but instead of taking the train, I am walking, walking, walking. My feet are turning left, right, left on their own, until I am standing in front of a house I am knowing very well. It is a two-story house, painted yellow. Azad’s house. So what if he is married? He was the one telling me that our bond cannot be broken by man-made rules. But now it has been many days, he has not come to me only. I am wishing for his embrace now. I am wishing that he is coming to me again, and we are sitting on the floor eating chocolate ice cream. I can be telling him all about Mr. Jhunjhunwala. I know he will even be making me laugh about it.

  He has been irritated by our marriage talk, that much I know. But he will come. I am looking at the balcony, eager to see a shirt or pant which is holding the shape of him. But the clothes strings are empty. There are only Azad’s shoes drying against the balcony railing. Azad wore those shoes so much, I can recognize them from this distance also. It is this Nike brand, but it is better because, instead of one tick, it has two. Azad was always knowing the latest style. My heart is thinking of all those times he was opening those shoes inside my house, my room, and embracing me—

  Suddenly a man is saying, “O ma, please to let the customers come.” I am turning around. There is a vehicle repair garage behind me, smelling of diesel. The man who is talking to me is a Sikh uncle. He must be owning the repair garage. He is wearing a gray uniform and a red turban.

  “Why?” I am demanding. “Am I an elephant that I am blocking the whole path? Your customers can’t walk here if they want?”

  But immediately I am having one frightening thought: I am not wanting Azad to accidentally see me like this. So I am sashaying away.

  “Okay, uncle,” I am saying. “You asked nicely, so I am gone.”

  JIVAN

  UMA MADAM TAPS HER steel-tipped stick against the bars of our cells. Down the corridor she goes, clang clang clang.

  “Up, up,” she calls. “Time to get up!”

  I hear the sound coming closer. In front of my cell it stops. I look up from the mattress, where I have been, not asleep, but unwilling to begin the day. It is six in the morning, and the sun’s heat has already warmed the walls and cooked the air. My skin sticks. When I raise my head, Uma madam points her stick through the bars. “Especially you!” she says. “Because of you we are having to take all this trouble. Why are you still sleeping?”

  My case has brought scrutiny upon the women’s prison. TV channels and filmmakers want to show how we live, what we do. I imagine them crawling inside, observing us like we are monkeys in a zoo: “Now the inmates have one hour to watch TV. Then they will cook the food.” The more requests the administration denies, the more suspicious they look. The men and women of the administration protest that it is a matter of security and safety. But what does our prison have to hide? How bad are the conditions? The public wants to know. It is looking likely, we hear, that some TV requests will be granted. Before the camera crews appear, the prison must be “beautified.”

  “Beautification!” Uma madam scoffs as she walks away.

  This morning, I receive the task of scrubbing decades of grease and black soot from the kitchen walls. Others mop and wipe the floors, replace lightbulbs, and plant saplings in the garden. A favored few do the gentle work of painting murals on the walls. Amer
icandi, leader of all, sticks a melting square of Cadbury in her mouth and supervises.

  * * *

  *

  THE WORK CAUSES old aches to flare. Throughout the week, women complain about the long hours on their feet. The steel wool and kerosene with which I scrub grease make my palm burn, but who knows if this hand, at this task, in this prison, is mine? In my mind, my hand grips the table in front of me in the courtroom, watching as my supporters—Kalu, with his neck tumor; Lovely, of course; some regular customers of my mother’s breakfast business who have been asking her to reopen her morning shop—appear in the courtroom to tell all gathered that they have seen me taking books to Lovely. They know I teach her English. Lovely’s neighbors know too. Isn’t this, the knowledge of a dozen people, a kind of evidence?

  * * *

  *

  THE NEXT TIME PURNENDU comes, I tell him about the day I told my mother I was quitting school.

  “Ma,” I said to her one day, “I will tell you something, but you can’t be angry.”

  Purnendu leans forward, as if he is my mother.

  She turned around from the stove, a flour-dusted ruti on her upturned palm, and looked at me.

  “After class ten,” I said, “I will leave school. I will work and support you and Ba.”

  My ears were hot. My mouth was dry.

  “Who taught you these stupid things?” Ma said, looking up at me. “You want to leave school? Look at this smart girl! And do what?”

  “Work, Ma, work!” I said. “Ba has not worked in so long, because his back is not healing. That nighttime market is not safe for you. Did you forget how you got attacked? How are we making money?”