Next to me, Munni rattled on and on about the flaws in the PDS. About how there were a gazillion bogus ration cards in circulation in Pavit Pradesh. How lakhs of above-the-poverty-line households had been included in the PDS list - inclusion errors, she called them. And lakhs of below-the-poverty-line families had been left out - exclusion errors, she said. But I wasn't listening.
I was the inclusion error, I thought gloomily as I wiped the sweat off my grimy face. I had no business being here. Suddenly, everything Dugguji had said last night made perfect sense. These people were Zain's family's responsibility. Everybody's money was on him. Bowing out of the race and leaving him a clear field was perhaps the best possible thing for me to do...
***
9
I decided to head back to Bauji's place that evening. Munni and Rocket Singh were finally satisfied that we had done as much as we could here. This was a huge relief, as I was frantic to get back to Amma and tell her about the deal I'd cut with Dugguji.
The train had left for the day, so we figured we'd just drive back in the Sumos. It would take only a few hours longer by road. I got Jugatram to close the skyroof, crank up the AC and then we hit the road. I had the back seat of one Sumo all to myself; well, except for my deep, dark secret: the suitcase stuffed with Dugguji's money that I'd told no one about. Oxygen was Gudia aunty's department, and I hadn't thought it wise to burden the team here with the knowledge that I was carrying a suitcase laden with lovely lolly. As our convoy turned onto the bumpy Dilli-Bittora highway, I lay back, propped my feet up against the bulging bag and fell into a fitful sleep.
I woke up with a start for no reason in particular. Maybe the Sumo jolted over a particularly bad pothole or something. Whatever. I sat up groggily, all stiff and cramped, peered out the window, and saw a sight that froze my blood solid.
A black Maruti Gypsy stood parked in the middle of the road - with two grey safari suited dudes inside it, motioning for us to stop.
They have permits to check any vehicle, any time, I remembered Gudia aunty telling me in what now felt like another life. If you don't have a good explanation for why you're carting around more than one-and-a-half lakhs, they confiscate it. And if it's more than twenty-five lakhs you will be instantly disqualified.
Using a very foul Pavit swear word that made Jugatram's head whip around in surprise, I leapt forward and grabbed the wheel. Ass in the air, hair in my face, stomach shoved painfully against the headrest of the front seat, I swivelled the Sumo to turn into a dirt track that had mercifully appeared on the left.
'Baby, what are you doing?' Jugatram bleated, wresting the wheel back from me.
'Never mind,' I told him grimly, 'just drive as fast as you can, and no stopping for anything, okay?'
He scratched his head.
'But the others?'
'Never mind about the others,' I said tersely, as I slid back into the back seat. 'They'll catch on. Now move.'
Hopefully, Munni would be smart enough to figure out why I'd suddenly changed course. After all, she must've noticed that I'd suddenly acquired a spiffy, heavy, new suitcase in the poorest part of rural Bittora!
We hurded down the dark dirt track for what felt like forever, Jugatram mumbling about his nightblindness. Finally, the road broadened out and hit a three-way fork. As neither of us knew which way to go, we were immensely relieved to spot a dhaba, and stopped with a showy squealing of brakes, spinning huge amounts of dirt into the air. I jumped out, thankful for my jeans and sweatshirt instead of the usual cumbersome sari, and asked for two cups of tea, as casually as I could, even though my heart was still pounding hard.
The tea would take a while, the sleepy-looking guy behind the counter told us as he rubbed his gummy eyes, pulled a pair of striped pyjamas over skinny, hairy thighs, and tied the drawstring dazedly. I averted my eyes, opened one of the huge thick glass jars on the counter and helped myself to a cream roll. After giving him ample time to execute a neat double bow on his naada, I asked him, 'Yeh... Bittora ka raasta batayenge, bhaisaab?'
'Hain?' His voice was a nasal twang. He looked at me vacantly, rubbing the tops of the glass jars with a filthy rag, making them progressively dirtier. Then his slopey bovine eyes skittered away from me to the tiny TV screen hanging above the stove. He had obviously decided to ignore me.
'Bhaisaab...' I said, louder this time.
'Hain?' he said again, his eyes glued to the TV.
'Bittora ki sadak?'
In response, he just looked at the TV, where a fat man in a tight kurta was running into the arms of a coy, busty babe in a ghagra-choli with a cone on her head and a large black dot on her chin.
'Bittora-Dilli Highway?'
His gaze flickered to me for just a moment, then swivelled right back to the TV, where the fat man had the busty chick up against a haystack. She was squealing loudly.
'Dilli ki sadak?' I bellowed.
'It's right in front of you,' said an amused voice behind me. 'Are you running away, Jinni?'
Startled, I spun around, spraying crumbs from my crusty cream roll all over Maruti Zain's chest.
'Whoops,' I said automatically, 'I've spoilt your nice white kurta. Sorry.'
His dark eyes lit up appreciatively. 'And you like my nice white kurta,' he said grinning. 'You said so.'
I started to grin back foolishly, but then recovered my wits. I was not going to be suckered and practically seduced again, I told myself firmly.
'I am not running away,' I said coldly. 'I'm just... a little lost. That's all. What are you doing here?'
He raised one quizzical eyebrow. I wasn't impressed.
'I'm driving back from Tanki,' he said mildly.
Alone?' I asked.
'Yeah.' He shrugged. 'I wanted to think - and I do that best when I hit the road alone.' Then he added, his eyes dancing, 'You were on the front page of the Tanki Times this morning, by the way. Holding some kind of adult sex toy.'
I winced.
'You looked pretty, though,' he added consolingly. Then he grinned. 'Pretty professional.'
'I'll have you know that AIDS awareness is a huge issue in Tanki,' I said loftily. 'And it's really juvenile of you to poke fun at hard-core educative initiatives--'
'But you were the one doing the poking,' he pointed out, straight-faced.
I glared at him, at a loss for words.
'Chai,' said the dhaba guy, slapping down two steaming glasses, half filled with bright orange liquid, on the counter.
'Hey, thanks, Jinni,' Zain said as he picked one up and began to slurp noisily. 'I really needed this!'
'It's not for you,' I said crabbily as I picked up the other glass. 'It's for Jugatramji.'
'Jugatramji?' Zain said, looking around eagerly. 'Wow! Hey, Jugatramji!'
This, because Jugatram, ratondhi notwithstanding, had spotted Zain after nine long years and was stumping up to say hello, grinning in delight.
He tried to shake hands but Zain, all enthusiastic, manly affection, drained his tea in one long draught and swung the old man into a warm hug. As they embraced, doing that whole, peculiar, macho-emotional thing, I stood around grumpily, feeling extremely redundant, dipped my cream roll into my tea and bit into it resentfully.
'Zain baba, good you have come,' announced Jugatram, when they had finally disengaged and stopped slapping each other on various parts of their anatomy and exchanging compliments on what good shape they were both in. (Top ki body banayee hai, baba! Bilkul James Bond lag rahe ho, Jugatramji!) 'Now Jinni baby can just follow your car home.'
'Jugatramji, your baby will never follow me home,' said Zain, shaking his head.
But I wasn't listening. I could see a pair of headlights behind him, a long way down the road, too indistinct to be identified as yet, but every instinct I possessed screamed that it was the EC Maruti Gypsy.
'That's right,' I said distractedly. 'Jugatramji, can I talk to you for a bit?'
He nodded, looking solemn, then leaned over and stuck his ear right next
to my lips.
'There's a suitcase in the back seat,' I whispered. 'Take it out and keep it anywhere - in the dhaba, on the road, in a ditch, just not in the vehicle. The EC are coming to check.'
He nodded unhurriedly, his expression unchanged. Then, yawning lightly, he plodded towards the Sumo.
I turned back to Zain with a smile. Behind him, I could see the headlights of the Gypsy getting closer. The luminous On Election Duty sign was now clearly visible between the twin beams, gleaming ominously, like teeth in the dark.
'Cream roll?' I proffered, holding up my tin plate.
'Why, yes,' he said, looking pleasantly surprised. 'Thanks, just one, I don't want to eat up Jugatramji's share.' He turned to the dhaba guy, who was happily engrossed in the TV again. 'One more tea, please.'
As Zain bit into his cream roll, I saw Jugatram stagger into the channa fields, lugging Dugguji's suitcase. And that was when a plan of true, evil genius bloomed in my brain.
'Hey, could I drive back with you tonight?'
Zain looked up in surprise, chewing absently. As his dark eyes locked into mine, I suddenly wondered how nice it would be to kiss him now, to taste his mouth, all mixed up with sweet, crumbly vanilla cream. My stomach executed a slow, perfect belly flip at the very thought.
I shook my head to clear it.
'Isn't that... highly irregular?' said Zain. 'I mean, wouldn't the esteemed Pappu disapprove?'
I shrugged defiantly, my cheeks hot. 'I feel like doing something highly irregular.'
One mobile eyebrow flew up at this. 'Cool,' he drawled, grinning.
The poor fool. His mind must've rewound to our steamy encounter in the boobs of Bunty's building. Unlike mine, which was rewinding back to how that steamy encounter had only been a calculated, softening-up technique to coax me into withdrawing my candidature.
Anyway, I'd got him all excited. He quickly wolfed down the rest of the cream roll and dusted the crumbs off his kurta. 'C'mon!' he said. 'Let's go.'
'Grrrreat!' I purred. 'Jugatramji, please put my clothes' suitcase in Zain's vehicle, he'll drive me home. You take the Sumo and come tomorrow.'
Jugatram looked a little confused. 'This one?' he said meaningfully, being careful to heft Dugguji's extremely heavy suitcase like it was filled with candyfloss.
'Obviously,' I replied sunnily.
He swung the suitcase lightly into the back of the Scorpio, then staggered and sat down rather suddenly, slightly breathless.
'Are you okay?' Zain asked, taking a step forward.
'Oh, he's fine,' I said, panicking a little. 'It's a very light bag.'
Jugatram shot me a killer look from under his grizzled brows. 'But I am a very old man,' he said austerely.
'Sorry' I said, not very attentively because the black EC Maruti Gypsy had finally rolled up.
Two suited dudes alighted from it and smiled all around. 'Hello, hello,' they said, in low, matching gravelly voices.
'Hiiiii!' I practically sang back at them, like we were meeting at a cocktail party.
'Stopping for tea, officers?' said Zain.
'Oh, no,' they replied in unison, shaking their heads. 'Actually...' they managed to sound both wheedling and menacing at the same time, 'we would like to search the vehicles.'
Zain's nostrils flared. He started to say, his pleasant voice just a little haughty, 'But this is ridicu--'
But I interrupted him graciously. 'No no, Zain saab. Of course the officers have to do their duty!' I gestured towards my now squeaky-clean, purged-of-all-oxygen Sumo. 'Please, go right ahead!'
They nodded and strutted over to the Sumo. One of them recorded everything with his camcorder, the other meticulously searched every possible nook and cranny in the vehicle. Dashboard, seats, under the mats, inside the suitcases, on top of the luggage carrier, under the chassis. Finally, they came back and regarded me sulkily.
'All clear?' I said breezily.
All seems to be clear,' they acknowledged grudgingly.
'Now hurry up and check my fellow candidate's vehicle,' I said bossily. 'I'm sure he's in a rush, too.'
'Oh, that won't be necessary, madam,' they said, sliding a hesitant, appeasing smile in Zain's general direction. 'We checked that vehicle only fifteen minutes ago. That is why sir was getting angry. But he misunderstood. We won't trouble you again, sir. Goodnight.'
And with that, they turned around and sped away, leaving behind a huge cloud of dust.
Come back, I wanted to yell. Come back and disqualify him! This dude has one crore in the backseat of his car! This discovery could make your career! It could make your life! It could make my life, actually!
But of course, I didn't.
Instead, somehow managing to swallow my chagrin, I turned to Zain and said, as politely as I could, 'You know, you were right, this is highly irregular. I think I'd better go home in my vehicle only. I'll just unload my bag--'
But he took one step closer, looming disconcertingly over me.
'Oh, no,' he said, his voice pure velvet. 'No way. You are going to drive home in my car. Like you promised. But,' he added, his dark eyes dancing, 'I'll let you unload your "clothes" bag,' (he actually made inverted quote marks in the air, how humiliating!) 'and put it in your car, and Jugatram can drive it right behind us. So that if we're stopped again, there's no confusion about which bag belongs to whom. All right?'
'Oh, all right? I snarled with bad grace, deciding to be thankful I hadn't been caught with large sums of money on my hands. Getting him disqualified had been a bit of a long shot, anyway... and I would've lost all the money too.
But it would have been money well spent.
***
We didn't speak for the first twenty minutes. Me, because I was sulking. And he, I realized after about five minutes, because he was struggling not to laugh.
'Fuck you,' I said finally, just to get the conversation going. For some reason, this made him burst into loud, guffawing laughter. I ignored this uncouth behaviour in as queenly a manner as I could, till finally, he managed to control himself long enough to gasp out, 'It is money inside that suitcase, I hope, not a couple of dead bodies or something?'
'As if you don't know,' I said darkly, 'considering it was your Uncleji who gave it to me!'
He stopped laughing abruptly. 'Duggu uncle?' he asked. 'Why'd he give you money?'
'To withdraw, of course!' I said. 'Don't pretend you didn't know.'
'Oh, I know,' he admitted with a frown. 'I mean, I know he meant to make you an offer. Pretty cheeky of him, I thought. But I was sure you wouldn't accept it. Don't tell me you did?'
I nodded. 'I did.'
'Amma hasn't been too well,' I continued, 'and I... well, everyone seems to think you'll win in any case... so I thought I'd just cut my losses, you know.'
He flashed me a quizzical look.
'Somehow, that doesn't quite add up with your trying to get me disqualified just now,' he remarked drily.
'Oh, that was just a knee-jerk thing,' I assured him serenely. 'An automatic reaction to your generally insufferable manner.'
He frowned.
'But I'm not insufferable,' he said. At least, not intentionally. Is that how I come across?'
Now what? Of course he wasn't insufferable. Just that, every time I looked at him, I felt so vulnerable, so smitten, so exposed somehow, that I had to be nasty to him to preserve some kind of fundamental internal balance.
Then his frown deepened. 'I'm sorry your grandmother's unwell, Jinni. But... are you sure about this withdrawing thing?'
I nodded sombrely. 'I'm sure,' I said. 'It's the only thing to do.'
He absorbed this for a moment, and then said, 'But what about ethics? Taking money to withdraw? That's not a very principled thing to do, is it?'
'Hello, you're the one offering money,' I pointed out at once. 'You think that's ethically sound? Besides, what about all the money I've spent already? Someone has to make that good, right?'
'Fair enough,' he commented wryly. 'Spoken
like a true granddaughter of Pushpa Pande. So you're going to leave Bittora to the mercy of the IJP, is that it? Suppose we run amuck, re-reconverting the Christian tribals in Durguja?'
'You won't,' I said confidently.
'But what would Bauji have said?'
'Bauji would've been cool,' I said lightly.
His lips curled. 'Because he was a hypocrite too, just like his wife?'
'No,' I replied steadily, my voice like ice. 'Because it's you. He trusted you.'
He flushed. 'Are you being sarcastic?'
'No, you're being defensive,' I said shortly.
He sighed. Are you sure about this?'
I shrugged evasively and said, 'Zain, you're a good, clean guy-it's not like I'm leaving my hometown to Dwivedi or Pant. Frankly, if I'd known you were standing, I probably wouldn't have agreed to stand in the first place.'
'Really?' he asked, reaching for my hand and grasping it, his grip almost painful in its intensity. 'Wow, Jin, it means so much to me that you're saying that. I really want you on my side.'
I couldn't quite bring myself to respond to this.
He continued eagerly, 'I have so many plans for Bittora, so many things I want to get started! All the stuff we talked about when we were kids, what we wrote about in those Enforcer 49 comics. Come home one day, I'll show you.'
I nodded as animatedly as I could. Then, not just to change the subject but also because I badly wanted to know, I asked casually, 'Why'd you never get in touch with me? After the cupboard thing, I mean?'
Silence.
Like, a long silence.
'You're driving too fast,' I said.
His glance barely flickered to the speedometer. 110.
'No, I'm not,' he said shortly.
'Okay,' I said with a shrug.
'Honestly?' he said after a while, finally glancing my way.
'Well, obviously.'
He said, slowly, thoughtfully, his eyes still on the road, 'Well, to tell you the truth, at the time, I didn't know how special it was.'
Battle for Bittora Page 22