* * *
*
FIFTEEN MINUTES AFTER THAT TV segment is playing on cable, this very same night, my WhatsApp is going prrng!
I am sitting with my sisters in my room, munching some fried pumpkin snacks, discussing everyone’s performance in front of the real cameras. Was Kumar keeping his nervous giggling to a manageable level? Was Peonji impressing with his life story of working in insurance and feeding his three children?
Dear Miss Lovely, my phone screen is saying.
When I am opening the WhatsApp from a number I am not knowing, it is continuing, I am from Sonali Khan’s film production company. Can we talk on the phone?
I am reading the words again and again. I am showing it, with big, big eyes, to all my sisters. Arjuni Ma, who is acting like she was never giving me any advices, is saying, “Is that—is that—Sonali Khan?”
Yes, that Sonali Khan, who is producing one blockbuster after another. Who in this entire country is not knowing the love story, filmed in foreign mountains, in I Am Yours Forever, or the fight sequences in the patriotic film Cricket Mania?
Suddenly, while we are all sitting there with mouths open, looking at the phone like it is a magic stone, it is ringing. When I am picking up, a woman is saying, “Lovely, did you get my WhatsApp message just now? We are thinking of you for a role in Sonali Khan’s next production. It’s a good role, a big role. Do you have time to come for an audition next week?”
My sisters are getting excited. They are leaning close to the phone and trying to hear. Everybody is pausing their eating of the pumpkin fritters so that their mouths are not doing crunch crunch.
While I am listening on the phone, I am looking with my eyes at my water filter, half-full, my mattress, flattened by our weight, my window, outside of which there is a woman carrying a tub full of soiled dishes for washing.
With all my dignity and all my calm, I, Lovely, am hearing this lady on the phone offering me my dream opportunity. “Yes,” I am telling her. “Yes.”
PT SIR
IT TAKES TWO WEEKS to get an appointment with Bimala Pal, and the appointment is no more than the chance to be in a car with her as she is driven from one place to another. The road they travel, in the center of the city, is thick with sedans and buses. A bicycle pushes forward in the wrong direction. Along the edge, tarps are strung between tree trunks for makeshift shops selling calendars, candy, cell phone covers. In the rearview mirror, PT Sir can see two white cars follow.
“Don’t ask,” says Bimala Pal when PT Sir asks how her work is going. The price of onions is soaring, and this is a problem for the government. She, in the opposition, is getting plenty of mileage from it, at least.
“The public is unsatisfied,” she says. “The government is failing to control the price. In the news, if you have seen the reports from local markets, every single person is complaining about the price of vegetables. It is hurting the common person.”
Turning to him, she asks if the lane before the school has held up over the months. No more waterlogging?
“None,” says PT Sir.
“And this has increased my prestige, in fact,” he reveals in a moment of friendly feeling.
At this Bimala Pal laughs.
PT Sir summons all his courage and says what he has wanted to say. “Madam, I want to do more for the party. I am ready for a bigger role. You have so many projects, maybe I can give my service—”
Bimala madam puts a hand on the headrest to brace against a bumpy stretch of road. Through the tinted windows PT Sir sees street-side vendors toss noodles, ladle biryani from giant containers, and scoop the white batter of dosa onto hot griddles. Through the windshield he sees, now and then, without warning, a pedestrian who holds an arm up and dashes across the street. Horns blare, drivers pressing angry palms against the wheel.
After a minute or two of silence, Bimala Pal speaks. “Actually,” she says, “good that you bring this up.”
PT Sir imagines an office with a leather chair. A computer of his own. An air-conditioned room where he can sit in the evenings, a part-time position to begin with.
But Bimala Pal has something else in mind. He was so good with the teachers in the village of Chalnai, she says, that she would like him to headline a rally at a village where he can present the party’s plans for the local school. They need a knowledgeable man like him in the field. And he will get a taste of a politician’s life.
“What do you say?”
The balloon pops. Quickly, the vision of a cool and comfortable office evaporates. This will be no different from standing out in the field all day, the blood circulation slowing below his knees. Of course, he accepts.
* * *
*
WINTER IS RETREATING, the sun regaining its strength, when PT Sir finds himself in a village called Kokilhat. In the shade of a mango tree with roots like knuckles grasping the earth, PT Sir holds a microphone while two lanky men, sitting on the branches above, support megaphones above his head.
A politician’s persona slips easily over his clean white shirt and khakis, the garland of flowers around his neck. PT Sir speaks, recalling notes he studied the day before: “We know that your local school has been closed for over two years! I heard all about the absent teachers, the leaks during the monsoons, the textbooks which were not available. That is why we will renovate the building completely, and hire teachers for every subject. We will make sure discounted textbooks are available before the first day of school for every child. What’s more, there will be free midday meals for your children!”
His voice booms from the megaphones. Ducks in a weedy pond nearby flee to the far side.
“Think of this not just as education for your children, but jobs for your family! We will need construction workers, cooks—”
PT Sir feels himself to be a kind of Bimala Pal. He is pleasantly surprised by his confident voice, the feeling of uplift as he stands before a crowd that has grown to a hundred or more. They are mostly men. It is true that many of them are here for the free bags of wheat flour. Still, they are here. PT Sir sees them craning to get a better view of him. He sees them listening to his words. Is this how powerful people feel?
Then a man in the crowd shouts, “Will there be Muslims teaching their religion at this school? Then we will not send our children!”
PT Sir clears his throat. “Well,” he begins. “I respect your religion. I respect your sentiment. Public schools are for all, but we will keep in mind your community—”
In the back, where the crowd consists of curious stragglers, some men laugh. A joke drifts through the margins that PT Sir cannot catch.
PT Sir calls, “The important thing is your religion will be respected, your morals will be taught, at this school. I assure you! Vote for Jana Kalyan Party in the upcoming elections!”
PT Sir thumbs off the microphone and hands it to a boy who begins bundling up the cables. The men holding the megaphones throw the metal mouths to a partner waiting below, then leap to the ground, their feet sending up clouds of dust. They clap their palms free of splinters.
It is then that a young man in the middle of the crowd shouts, “A holy mother cow was killed. Yes,” he continues, as there is a stunned silence, “killed in our own village!”
People wandering away stop and turn toward him. A small circle opens up around this man, who continues, “What will we do? Will we stand here and listen to a speech about a school? Are we not men?”
PT Sir raises his arms. “Be calm, brother,” he calls. “Better that you don’t spread rumors.”
But the crowd begins to agitate. Men shout, “Who was it? Who was it?”
“Who killed the cow?”
“Whose cow?”
From where he stands, PT Sir shouts, “Please be calm, your village chief will investigate—”
Nobody is listening to him.
PT Sir hears names floating, names of the only ones who eat beef.
PT Sir shouts again, “Rain is coming, please be calm and—”
But the crowd bellows and lumbers, like a many-limbed animal discovering its ferocity. As one they direct their feet to the area where the Muslim villagers live.
PT Sir follows the crowd. Only a few minutes ago he was in full control of these men, inspiring them with words about school. Now they speed down narrow and narrower lanes, passing by children who look up from bathing, their eyes peering out from soaped faces. Mothers and fathers appear and snatch up the children, drawing them inside despite their cries.
“Stop,” PT Sir cries. “Listen here! The party will not be happy with you all. Don’t you want the school—”
Unbelieving, his heart beating too fast, beside him the impassive face of the driver who drove him here, PT Sir watches the crowd find the house. He watches them rattle the chain on the doors, then break the flimsy panels open.
INTERLUDE
THE VILLAGERS VISIT THE BEEF-EATER
KILL HIM BECAUSE HE ate beef, that Muslim.
Come prepared with daggers and homemade pistols, and we will go as a force of the good god to that man’s house. His door surprises us—two rotting planks of wood held together by a chain which, when we grip it, leaves our fingers smelling of iron.
But no, it is not that which surprises us, but the fact that we remember gripping this chain to rattle, innocent. “Brother, borrow your ladder?” we asked him before.
You see, he is our neighbor. A decent man, sure. His beard descends as a cloud to his chest, and our sons fear him for how he tests their mathematics whenever he sees them. “Eight times five?” he says to them. “Square root of forty-nine?”
They say he used to be a schoolteacher, but of what use is that? We all used to be something else.
Now, behind the door we know well, the stillness of the house strikes us as false. It makes us angry. The heat of the day, our empty stomachs—we are not happy. How could we be happy when our sacred mother cow is being senselessly slaughtered? Do not forget! The cow who has given us milk (oh yes), and has drawn the plow through our great-grandparents’ fields (yes), and has borne our goddess to her heavenly home (oh yes), that very cow has been killed like a common pest by this Muslim. What can we do? What must we do?
In the room behind the door, three daughters, too young to be of any use. We cut them like their father cut our holy mother cow. Our people, the true people of this nation, are a flood of cleansing water, our arms and legs full of muscles which grab and swing, our grip never more certain than when it closes around the resistant throat of the man’s wife. Never more certain than when it stretches open her legs.
—Too ugly! we think at first.
—Aha, not too ugly after all, we know later.
We shatter the fading photographs on the wall, we shake the cupboard until a few gold bangles fall out, and we fall upon the gold like it is a drop of water in a desert.
Rolled up in the corner, a carpet for praying on, so we piss on it, and laugh. A terrified man is dragged down from the roof, the Muslim we are after. He moves his mouth, but he has taken out his dentures, and his sunken cheeks beg and beg before his voice finds itself. He joins his hands in prayer, and we say, “Now you have learned to pray properly?”
He watches his wife’s legs opened by the true men of this country, and he appears to die before we can kill him.
Anyway, we stomp on his skull so that the cream of his brain splatters on the floor. Teach him to have ideas about killing our holy mother cow, whom we love and respect.
Later my man says, opening the small icebox and hauling out a chicken, “But where is the beef?”
PT SIR
PT SIR LIES IN bed that night, an arm flung over his head, his wife snoring by his side. He looks at the shadows cast on the ceiling by passing headlights, and in a kind of daze he knows this much: His career in politics is over. Never before has he thought of it in such grand terms—“career in politics”—but now, on the verge of losing it, he knows how close he has come to having it.
What did he witness today? With each turn of the ceiling fan’s blades, he knows, and he refuses to know. He pulls a blanket up to his chin, and covers his ears in the warm cloth. He knows what he watched, and in watching and not lifting a finger, condoned. He is no less than a murderer. He turns from side to side, seeking a position of comfort, until his wife drowsily scolds him. Then he lies on his back, still as a corpse.
In the morning, eyes gritty with sleep, he cannot stand to shave his face. He cannot bear to look at his face in the mirror. What face is this? Does it belong to him? He prepares to tell Bimala Pal what happened, and to offer his resignation from the party roll. Perhaps her benevolence will keep him out of jail, perhaps it will not. The massacre happened in his presence, perhaps even started from his comments about religion.
The sun rises higher in the sky and, somehow, absent from his body, PT Sir finds that he has bathed himself and eaten a simple breakfast of oats. He has worn his shirt, and tied his shoelaces, and now he stands at the door, ready to go.
* * *
*
WHEN PT SIR APPEARS at her door, Bimala Pal is pacing in the living room, a phone held at her ear. She wears a beige shawl whose frilly edge flaps as she walks. She gestures at him to sit, and disappears into the office.
PT Sir sits at the edge of the sofa. He feels faint, and lowers his head between his knees. A concerned assistant offers him cold water, and he gulps down one glass, then another.
When Bimala Pal emerges, she asks, “How was your rally?”
Then, looking at his sweating face, she says, “Are you feeling all right? Do you need water?”
PT Sir shakes his head.
“I had water,” he replies, the words catching in his dry mouth. A high-pitched keening lingers in his ears. Following her to her office, he feels that his legs have disappeared.
“Actually,” he begins, once they are in the closed office. “The rally yesterday…”
“You don’t look well,” observes Bimala Pal. “I’ll tell Raju to call a taxi for you—”
“No,” he interrupts. He cannot leave now. “One thing happened at the village.”
PT Sir tells Bimala Pal everything. His tongue forms its own words, and he barely hears them over the drumbeat of his pulse. When he finishes, the two of them sit in silence. A crow alights outside the window and harshly caws. Through the closed glass of the window, PT Sir can see its outline.
For a while, Bimala Pal looks silently at the crow too.
PT Sir waits for her to tell him to leave, to never contact the party again. He will return to his schoolteacher’s life. It was what he had, before. It was not unbearable.
Then she looks up and gives him a smile. “Have a biscuit,” she says, pushing an open packet toward him. “You know, it is sad that a man died, very sad about the children too. I can see you are disturbed. I understand. But did you lay a finger on them? Did you personally hurt them in any way?”
When PT Sir realizes that she is waiting for his reply, he shakes his head.
“Then why,” Bimala Pal says, “are you taking the weight of it on your own shoulders?”
PT Sir comprehends each word a moment after she speaks it. Could she be forgiving him?
“There is nothing to forgive,” says Bimala Pal. “In politics, you will see, sometimes it feels that you are in charge of everything and everyone. But we can only guide them, inspire them. At the end of the day, are they our puppets? No. So what can we do if they raise their hand, if they decide to beat someone, if they feel angry?”
PT Sir dislikes this justification. At the same time, he reaches desperately for the only relief he has felt since the massacre. Bimala Pal does not seem angry. She does not even seem surprised.
Looking at Bimala Pal’s good-natured face, her hands joined on the table in front, her kind eyes wrinkled at their corners, PT Sir feels that she has saved him. From what, he no longer wants to imagine. Yes, she has saved him.
When Bimala Pal speaks next, he understands that she has known what happened all along.
If anybody asks, she tells him, PT Sir is to say that the unstable brick house in which the man was living collapsed. It spontaneously collapsed. And how does PT Sir know? He was doing a rally nearby. It is true that the house did collapse—when the party wrecked it with hammer and ax. It is true that the house did fall upon a man who died.
All of that is true, Bimala Pal reminds him, a gentle smile on her face.
Afterward, PT Sir walks down the road, feeling the protective wing of the party sheltering him. He opens his mouth and gulps air until a beggar looks at him strangely. The Muslim man’s family perished, nobody is denying that, but he himself will be all right. Maybe that is all that can be salvaged.
At home, when he parks himself in front of the TV—he has taken a sick day from school—his mind wanders while his eyes remain captive. When late afternoon comes, with its hint of darkening, he surrenders to heavy sleep which anchors him to his bed till he is running late for school the next morning.
For days, the matter eats away at him. His wife asks, meanly, “Have you fallen in love with a teacher at your school or what? Your head is somewhere else these days.”
How he wants to tell her. One night, he climbs into bed beside her and smooths the rolled cotton inside the blanket cover for something to do with his hands. After a long while he says, “Are you listening?”
His wife, watching a recipe video on her phone, jumps, and laughs. “I was so absorbed in this pasta, four different kinds of cheese, look, I forgot you were—”
PT Sir makes such an effort to put together a smile. He does. But he cannot knit one together.
A Burning Page 16