‘Purity for all,’ I say.
‘Purity for all,’ they reciprocate.
‘It’s not just the dirt, Shalini,’ Mr Vijay continues, leaning back. ‘We need the boundaries for peace. Businessmen kidnapped for ransom. Rapes. So many women raped all the time. Now such things happen only on the Outroads. Families can keep their women safe. How many people used to die every festival. Remember? What food could be eaten. What dance could be done. Mischief-makers taking panga in each other’s localities. Swords and sticks and guns coming out. A lower man running away with a woman from a good family. They’d burn his whole family, his home, land, everything. Now every community can do what they want. If you respect the walls there are no problems.’
His finger sidles suddenly up my wrist. The cold metal of his rings is hard on the flesh and I let out a gasp and kick out in surprise and see in his smile that he’s confused fear for pleasure. The swell in his dhoti will not sit. It’s done, I tell myself. Almost there. The man with the stuffy nose had been playing with my toes, rubbing his fingertips across the desiccated sideskin. He snarls when I kick out. Mr Vijay stares for a few seconds at a point above his colleague’s head. Abruptly he stands. ‘Out. Everyone. Out.’ He rests a hand on my shoulder to keep me in place. It feels suddenly like I’ve journeyed there just now, that I’ve been somewhere else all this time.
The buzz of yellow light strengthens and sinks as the men depart. Then we’re back in the solitary cast of the light hanging above. Mr Vijay is smelling me, taking soulful whiffs. He is trying to place his head between my breasts, beads of saliva on his lips. ‘I want to give you the transfer, Shalini. But there are complications.’
‘Please, sir. I must go to Settlement.’
‘You must?’
An icelike finger of fear stabs my chest. ‘Sir, it’s only … I’ve been waiting so long. I’ve understood now, what you want from us. I want to help.’
‘I don’t care, you know,’ he laughs. His jaw rests on my breast, like a puppy. ‘Go there, don’t go there. It makes no difference.’ He slides his finger underneath my bra.
‘Then please, sir. Please.’
A shrewd light enters his eyes. ‘I don’t even care why you’re so desperate.’
‘Then what do you care for, sir?’ Tears course down the side of my face. They splotch the bed sheet next to either ear. ‘What is it that you care for?’
‘Will I see you again? I want to see you once more.’ The diction is jerky. ‘Once more. Once is enough.’ His right hand is tucked inside his dhoti and furiously hiccupping, the red and yellow thread on his wrist jumping in the dark. I close my eyes. ‘Tell me fast,’ he says. ‘Fast-fast. When will you see me again?’
‘As you wish, sir. It is your wish.’
‘No!’ he cries out. ‘Not my wish! Not like that.’ He looks down at his lap and releases an anguished moan. For a moment there is silence like after an echo, round, swaying, swelling ever further. He growls, ‘Your wish. It is your wish,’ and slaps a palm on my right breast. He twists the flesh, scrunches it like a crisp sheet of paper. He has my nipple between the tips of his fingers and his eyes are large as a fish on ice. The pain is roasting and pink. He looks half-crazed. Blood might spurt from my ducts. The right arm bounces even faster, the congress he conceals jittering the creases of his dhoti like an epileptic’s collar. With each cry I make his left hand squeezes harder. He is tugging my breast every which way, clamping down and then easing his hold. ‘Your wish, your wish,’ he is softly saying.
‘My wish, my wish,’ I whisper like a whore.
He yanks the bra cup off my breast. It tears slightly as it strains against my back and he moans again and brings his face to me. He clamps down on my nipple with fleshy, betel-red lips, gnawing like a toothless person, through the fabric. His shoulders, neck, chest, convulse to the beat his wrist is tamping upon his thighs, into his brain, craving completion, as his tongue flicks in and out, rough as a mop against the tip of my nipple. ‘My wish,’ I whisper into his ear, and suddenly, without notice, he has shuddered to peace, forehead on my stomach, deep, laboured breaths, nose buried in my waist.
Vijay is at the far end of the room wiping himself with an inside fold of his dhoti when I open my eyes. He has his back to me. I shift my bra back in place. Hold my palm at my breast to dry the patch thick and clammy with saliva before I have to step outside. It doesn’t make a difference.
‘And regarding the transfer?’ I ask. ‘We will be meeting again?’
‘What’s that?’ he asks, without turning around.
‘Once again, you said. We will meet once again.’
‘Oh yes.’ He picks up a folder from the end of a table and studies it intently. ‘No, that’s okay. You can have the transfer. I’ll see to it.’
FORBIDDEN FRUIT
My first week at the Ministry of Settlement. I’ve been given charge of room 401, a dim space with grey walls and eight rows of desks, four to each, like an examination hall. I make tea, wash the lunch plates and utensils, swab the oil smears and steam rings off the long table at the rear of the room. A late afternoon run for samosas. Dust the desks. Once a week unplug and shake out the keyboards to evict shreds of food and hair and skin. Sweep, mop, secure the windows against birds and monkeys. Then I can go home.
The stool they have given has no backrest. My legs dangle. I feel vaguely simian. The nasal lilt of an ambulance siren drifts in from the road. A young woman here looks just like Dipanita. She sits by the window, centred precisely in a square of sunlight. Once in a while a frizz comes loose and falls on the side of her face like a lash of laburnum, and when she bends to write one shoulder blade distends her back, sticking out of her sari blouse, like a shark fin emerging from a smooth pale sea.
She stands and stretches, unbothered by the men who turn their necks. This girl reminds me of the Dipanita I once knew, the confident crackpot I grew up with. Not the drawn, anxious woman I had coffee with one Saturday morning ten years ago.
*
Ten years ago. I remembered Dipanita’s number at once, but I must have dialled it a dozen times before we actually spoke. It wasn’t just Dipanita. All my friends. What I’d been through, I knew, was too much for any of them to accept. Things like this didn’t happen to them, to us. My existence now was a threat to their idea of home. It would not do to plumb this depth. I pictured the reactions. Concerned but confused; a flicker of an embarrassed smile; warm, knowing nods when they looked properly upon my clothes, when they heard about life outside the walls, outside the city. I needed clarity. Not pity.
Eventually I held my courage. Dipanita sounded so excited to hear my voice. She said I should come to her place, they’d just redone the living room, and prattled on for minutes about a new designer sofa set. I almost disconnected the call in disgust. But I realised as she spoke that my call had made her nervous. Then she was angry herself. Six years. You don’t even call? You know how worried we’ve been? What we thought? The angrier she sounded the happier I felt. It made me think that I was once again part of things, present in the moment, as if the years between were an interlude, a false loneliness. For a long time after we spoke I felt quietly excited. The next day I went into the city. I found a little shop on the border of the East Slum that served the neighbourhood children. The counter of this shop spanned the front, to make sure the crowd of kids couldn’t touch the toys. The toys were themselves depressing, tiny wood-wheeled carts to drag around by string, dolls fashioned from wafer-thin plastic, blue eyes, pink-cream skin. Pressing a doll even lightly left an indent you had to pop out from the other side.
There are also shops that serve the ragged lowest sectors. Some communities have erected walls out of a sense of ancient pride but are in reality so poor they cannot sustain even neighbourhood markets, forget the marbled gleaming multi-decker malls the others have. The toy shop I found smelt terribly of milk, but here at least you could walk the two dusty aisles, handle the toys. Pari was two years older than my daughter. Eleven. Ne
ither dolls nor dresses seemed right. Then I spotted, underneath a wooden shield, coated in dust, a small pink box with an envelope-style flap cover. One thousand fifty rupees. The cover illustration had a slinky woman in red high heels and knee-length sheath blowing on her nails. The back of the box claimed this was the ideal starter kit. It came with a small bottle of white nail polish, stamp, scraper, two stamping plates with flower, heart and star designs. I imagined her friends crowding around her, examining her nails from every angle.
The boy was two years younger. There was a child’s cricket bat, shrink-wrapped, thick rails of dirt across the plastic. It looked poorly made, with a scuff of tiny white splinters above the splice, but I didn’t have money for much else. When I reached home I dampened the tip of a cloth and wiped clean the packing. I wonder sometimes if Riz and I would’ve had another child. A young boy, my laadla, my prince, whom all three of us would cosset, feed, spoil. His nest of unruly hair, incisors too big for his jaw, a delicate paunch. He would play squash, just like his father.
I’d just finished wrapping the presents when my phone buzzed. Dipanita sounded like she’d been crying. Some part of me had been expecting this call. There was a problem, she’d explain later. Would it be okay if we met at a restaurant in her sector? I agreed at once. I could tell her husband didn’t want me in their house. They must’ve fought about it. He believed I would bring the outside in with me, disease, filth, immorality. All of that is now attached to my person, to my eternal person.
*
One evening I sat with Dipanita in my living room. Leila and Pari were in a corner, laying out an imaginary meal on my daughter’s Minnie Mouse tea table set. They came to us periodically to demand Riz blow up balloons for them. They would volley the balloons in the air and chase the bounce. Since Pari was older, quicker, Leila followed her everywhere.
I was spread out on a beanbag. Dipanita was on the couch and Riz in his armchair, smoking a cigarette.
‘She’s the fastest girl in her class,’ Dipanita said.
‘She’s very tall,’ I replied.
‘Make her a runner!’ Riz said, excited. ‘Or a tennis player. She’s got the height. I’m going to take Leila very soon. Tennis lessons. That’s how they do it abroad. You have to start early.’
‘Dips,’ I said, ‘at least applaud his optimism. Both of us suck, but daughter is going to be Steffi.’
Leila and Pari had been bouncing their balloons off the ceiling. Now they slowly approached us. Pari stood, hands behind her back, in the vacant space next to a coffee table. I thought she might recite a poem. Her right leg twisted behind the other. She looked down at the carpet with a shy smile. ‘I won all the races in my Sports Day,’ she said. ‘Wow,’ I said. ‘Your Mamma says you’re the fastest in your class?’
‘I am,’ she said, nodding seriously. ‘Not just the girls. I beat the boys also. All of them. They all came after me.’
‘Very good, Pari,’ I said. ‘Remember that when you’re older.’ I shot a sly look at Dipanita. ‘Find a boy who comes after you.’ The three of us were a beer in and we began to giggle. Pari stood perfectly still, scanning each of our faces methodically, puzzled.
‘Yes, Auntie, I will.’
‘I’ll kill you, bitch,’ Dipanita whispered, still laughing. ‘Don’t dirty my angel’s head.’
Leila had silently watched us sink into laughter as we spoke to Pari. She misunderstood. She left the carpeted area around the coffee table and walked around the leather couch until she was standing a few feet behind my beanbag. She leapt at me even as I still laughed, wrapped her arms around my shoulders from behind, knees scrabbling across the pliant cushioning, clinging to me with all her strength.
‘Someone’s jealous,’ Dipanita said.
Leila was giggling also now and trying to climb me. I put my arms behind my back, found a grip and heaved her around to my lap. I buried my face in her neck and vibrated my lips like a car motor, tickling and wetting her. She squirmed with a sense of our oneness, of the feeling we shared, that we were each in exactly the right place, that the world held nothing outside this touch. I felt her wriggle in my own bones. Leila still had then the comfort every child needs, it hadn’t yet been taken, that her home lay in these arms, that here she was safe. She had flattened me onto the beanbag. I heard running steps on the carpet. Pari took a flying leap and landed on us and then I was submerged in tiny arms and legs and hands and feet.
*
Two days after we spoke on the phone, I travelled to the Gupta sector, a sprawling crescent swathe very close to the political sector, invitation in hand. Dipanita’s letter had the formal typewritten note, with her signature, identification number, address and biometric mark. On the other side she’d written in pencil: ‘Dear Shalini: Still in shock. Been trying to figure out ways I can help. Talked to some of the girls. We have to do something. Can’t wait to see your beautiful face next week. All my love, Dipanita.’ Despite myself, reading the note brought a thrill. Maybe this would end. Someone could be called. Leila inched closer.
Sunshine turned the polished black gate into an enormous mirror. This gate, four storeys high, operated at two levels. By the ground pedestrian traffic filed towards it, the line progressing in minute spurts. Directly over our heads was the flyroad. The old cross-girders sent out a thundering judder every time a car went above. A mound of trash sloped out from the sector wall, covering the pavement and rain gutter, petering out at the edge of a row of huts. All the rich communities have a Slum roosted at their walls, where servants, sweepers and scavengers from the concomitant castes make their homes. The men and women in line with me had all come from these huts.
The clothes of the man in line in front of me were damp and musty like a sodden newspaper. I’m told this system works well. Earlier servants would sometimes have to change their names, cooks had to lie about their caste, their religion, maids claim they were born a rung higher so they could wash the dishes and swab the floors of the high-caste homes in their vicinity. That was before, when the city was haphazard, before order had been achieved. Now servant-shanties come up along the edges of the communities they’ve served for centuries. No one need cross the city for work or pretend to be what they’re not. Riz’s parents used to serve this special kebab, spicy, soft as a pastry, prepared by a thirteen-year-old, a bawarchi boy who came to their kitchen from the Qassab Slum outside their sector. They were happy to have him and he was happy to have such good masters. A fine system.
We were a few feet from the towering gate. I could see only some of the way up. The hinges were long, alternating triangles, tapering to a point about halfway along the gate’s breadth, fastened with dozens of giant rivets. Paint hung off the gate in patches, revealing islands of tangerine rust. The hunched men and women ahead were showing identification papers. In turn they stepped through a Judas gate that opened and shut like a tiny winking eye. A fleshy, middle-aged Repeater, white shirt open to his belly, processed the documents of each of the Slummers with an irritated air. His forearm brushed wetly against me, clammy skin, sweat-curled hair. He read the invitation letter, looked me up and down. Reluctantly he pulled me from the line.
‘Come this way. This line is not for you,’ he said, heading towards the gate. Black and white chest hairs leaked from the U of his vest. ‘Why have you come here?’
‘Doesn’t it say in the letter?’
‘Never mind what it says. I asked you.’ As he said this he turned and stuck out an arm at the chest of a tall fellow at the top of the line. The tall man had bent his neck preparing to walk through the Judas gate, but he jerked back at the Repeater’s sudden swing. A gap opened up and I was angled through the inlet. The line watched without rancour.
‘Thank you. The letter should explain. I’ve come to meet an old friend.’
‘I will have to check.’ He looked at the well-worn sandals, the dust lines on my sleeves from the railing on the bus. ‘Guest!’ he said. A sallow, sweaty palm upright to indicate I should stay. He walked
to the guard booth, began speaking into a phone.
I found a high-shouldered ber and leaned against the trunk, on a gnarl like an enormous snail shell, keeping an eye on the guard shed. The flyroad that entered the gate thirty feet above us now declined, returning a river of metal-toned cars to earth. The line I had just been pulled from had cleaved in two. The women walked two at a time into a white shed with the curtains tightly drawn. The men filed into a narrow arrangement of canvas screens. There was no roof to the screens, so I could see the tops of their heads. A Repeater waited. One by one they pulled T-shirts and kurtas off over their heads and bent to remove their lowers. When they were dressed again they’d join one of the clumps of Slummers that had moved beyond the checkposts, making their way to a home, school, office, hospital, wherever they’d found a bit of work.
The guard is waving me on, pointing at the road I should take. Two or three minutes’ walking and a green begins either side of me. Low hillocks, kempt grass, trees thrown one way by the wind like sails on an open sea. The lingering fingers of trash stink are gone. Now the smell of daffodils, fresh-turned sod, and suddenly, the wonderful pungency of aloo dum. Some families have laid out a picnic on a wooden table. A film song reaches the road. A servant boy, oiled hair shining, sighs open an enormous PET bottle of highlighter-orange soft drink. With both hands he pours measures into Styrofoam cups. The men are playing a game of cricket.
The road leads to a canal with swirling, murky water, pine-green in parts, alongside it a busy cycle and running track. Young couples lie fully clothed on beach towels in the broad strip of shade bordering the water. I descend from a footbridge into an open garden pocked with wrought-metal tables and chairs. This seems to be the place. Waiters in dress shirts, a trio of guitarists walking between the patrons singing Spanish Sinatra. I round them and find a table in the far corner, away from the families.
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