by Justin D'Ath
But I still felt nervous. I had a feeling Kasime wasn’t telling me something – something important.
7
BAAGH
Fifteen minutes after we left the hotel, Kasime directed our driver to pull in next to the kerb. We stopped in a dark, deserted street. It was lined on both sides with tall, shadowy buildings. They looked like warehouses, not places where people lived. There were no lights in any of the windows. And no street lights.
As Kasime and I scrambled out of the auto-rickshaw, the driver held out his hand just like he’d done outside the hotel. This time I didn’t shake it.
‘I told you I don’t have any money,’ I said.
His hand remained outstretched. ‘Please be giving to me your watch, sir.’
‘You can’t have my watch!’
‘I am most apologetic, sir,’ the driver said sorrowfully, ‘but it might be that you are not coming back.’
Now I understood. He wasn’t going to keep my watch, he would just hang on to it until Kasime and I returned with the money. Fair enough, I thought. I handed it over.
Light raindrops began falling as I followed Kasime into an alley. It wasn’t really an alley, just a crack between two buildings, barely wider than my shoulders. A strip of cloudy night sky glowed orange-brown from the lights of the huge city. But down in the alley nothing was visible. It was as if we’d entered a dark, creepy world, where we had to rely on our sense of touch, not our eyes, to find our way forward.
Something small and furry brushed past my ankle.
‘Kasime!’ I yelped. ‘I think there are rats!’
‘Shhhh,’ he whispered in the darkness ahead. ‘Always there are rats. They will not hurt you.’
My skin crawled. Rats mightn’t bother Kasime, but they bothered me. Especially in this pitch-black alley, where I couldn’t see them. I felt another one scurry across my foot. Ohmygosh! Why had I let Kasime bring me to this terrible place?
Three or four paces further on, I came to a dead end. Huh? Reaching forward to find Kasime, all I could feel was bricks.
‘Kasime?’
‘I am here,’ he answered.
Misty rain wet my face as I tipped my head in the direction of his voice. Kasime was about a metre and a half above me, silhouetted against the dirty brown sky.
‘You must be climbing now, Mr Samfox,’ he whispered. ‘There are holes to be putting in your feet.’
Then his skinny legs swung up and over, and he disappeared from view.
Running my hands over the wall, I found a series of small indentations where parts of bricks had been chipped away to make hand- and foot-holes. I climbed up carefully. When I reached the top, I scissored my legs across and discovered more holes on the other side. I climbed down next to Kasime. We were standing on a large wooden box, which was covered with plastic sheeting that rustled under our feet. Kasime clicked a cigarette lighter. Its sputtering flame illuminated a small courtyard. At one end was a tall iron gate, bolted shut. At the other end was a blue wooden door.
‘Welcome to my home,’ Kasime whispered.
I thought he meant the door. But when I jumped down and headed towards it, Kasime called me back. He stooped next to the box we’d been standing on, and lifted a section of the plastic sheeting that hung down over the front. The cigarette lighter lit up a nest of tatty blankets, rags and newspapers strewn about inside.
‘This is being my home,’ he said proudly.
Holy guacamole! ‘I thought you lived with Mr and Mrs Gutta,’ I said.
‘There they are living,’ Kasime whispered, pointing at the blue door. ‘Mr Gutta is giving to the orphan boys this box and this warm blankets.’
‘All five of you?’ I asked. It was hardly bigger than a tipped-over fridge. ‘Isn’t it a bit crowded?’
He shrugged. ‘In India it is crowded always.’
I looked around the courtyard. There was another wooden box partially hidden in the shadows to the left of the gate. It was slightly smaller than the one Kasime called home, but probably big enough for at least one homeless Indian orphan. ‘Does anyone live there?’
Kasime seemed surprised to see the other box. ‘We will be having to move that one,’ he whispered. ‘Can you be helping me, please?’
I wasn’t sure why Kasime wanted the smaller box moved, but I was happy to lend a hand. We slid it quietly to one side, then Kasime used a stick to pry loose one of the paving stones. Underneath, stuffed into a small hole, was a tobacco tin wrapped in clear plastic. Kasime opened its lid and removed a pile of dirty brown Indian banknotes.
‘It is my secret monies, Mr Samfox,’ he said, peeling off four one-hundred-rupee notes to pay the auto-rickshaw driver. He grinned up at me. ‘Do not be telling anyone.’
‘Your secret’s safe with me, Kasime.’
I considered asking him for the rest of his ‘secret monies’ – to pay for some of the stuff he’d stolen from me earlier in the evening – but then I looked across the shadowy courtyard at the box he and four other orphans called home, and kept my mouth shut.
Kasime replaced the tobacco tin and settled the paving stone on top. Together, we slid the box back. We tried to make as little noise as possible. But there was a noise – from inside the box.
A low growl.
I jumped back. ‘Something’s in there!’
The box wasn’t open at the front like the one where Kasime slept. It had a hinged lid on top. Kasime raised the lid a couple of centimetres and lifted the cigarette lighter to let some light in.
‘Baagh!’ he gasped, and dropped the lid.
Before I could ask what he’d seen, I heard the rattle of a lock. Someone was about to come through the blue door.
‘Challo!’ hissed Kasime, grabbing my wrist. ‘Come quickly!’
A few seconds later, Kasime and I were crouched in the big box, peering out through slits in the plastic sheeting. The door squealed open and a small Indian woman emerged, carrying a lantern. It must have been Mrs Gutta. In her other hand she was carrying a yellow plastic bucket. Crossing to the smaller box, she set her things down and raised the lid all the way up.
A strange sound came from inside the box – like the mew of a kitten, except louder and deeper.
‘What does baagh mean?’ I whispered to Kasime.
He leaned close to whisper in my ear.
‘Tiger.’
8
GO KASIME!
‘The box looks too small for a tiger,’ I whispered.
‘It is a baby,’ whispered Kasime.
We watched Mrs Gutta feed it. She used a bent brass ladle to scoop small pieces of chopped meat from the bucket and drop them into the box. A series of grunts, mewls and slurping sounds came from inside.
‘Why have the Guttas got a baby tiger?’ I asked.
‘For sell it,’ whispered Kasime. ‘Tiger is worth very much money.’
‘But aren’t they -?’
‘Shhhh!’ he silenced me.
Too late. Mrs Gutta was looking over in our direction. She must have heard us.
‘Stay here and keep most very silent,’ Kasime whispered. Parting the plastic sheeting, he slipped out into the courtyard.
Mrs Gutta smiled when she recognised him. ‘Namaste, Kasime,’ she said.
‘Namaste, Mrs Gutta.’
Kasime went over and peered into the box. He said something in Hindi that made Mrs Gutta laugh. They talked for two or three minutes. I heard them mention baagh several times. Mrs Gutta let Kasime drop a few pieces of meat into the tiger’s box. She seemed nice. I wondered why I was hiding.
I wasn’t left wondering for long.
A large shadow appeared in the doorway and a short, fat man walked into the courtyard. It was Mr Gutta. When he saw Kasime, he stopped dead. He said something in Hindi. Kasime shook his head. The man spoke again. He sounded angry. He marched over to the cowering boy and started yelling at him and jabbing a finger in his chest. I wondered if I should do something, but Mrs Gutta acted first. She spoke sharply
to her husband. Mr Gutta turned to answer her, taking his eyes off Kasime. The boy saw his chance. Ducking under his boss’s elbow, he charged across the narrow courtyard and disappeared into the building where the Guttas lived. Mr Gutta went lumbering in after him.
Go Kasime! I thought.
There would be another door leading out of the building into a street or an alley. As long as Kasime knew his way through, fat old Mr Gutta didn’t have a hope of catching him.
I had to get out of the courtyard, too. But I couldn’t go anywhere while Mrs Gutta was there. She must have known her husband had no hope of catching Kasime. Instead of following him inside, she calmly returned to feeding the tiger cub. She seemed in no hurry. Light rain was still falling, but Mrs Gutta was wearing a plastic poncho and she’d pulled the hood up. She talked to the baby tiger in a gentle voice as she dropped more pieces of meat into its box. It had a big appetite.
I wondered how big it was.
Mr Gutta returned a few minutes later. He didn’t have Kasime with him and he looked crosser than ever.
Good, I thought. Kasime must have escaped.
Mr Gutta pulled a mobile phone from his pocket and handed it to his wife. Then he reached into the box and lifted out not one but two cute, little tiger cubs. They weren’t much larger than house cats, with heavier bodies, larger heads and clumsy, over-sized paws. The cubs hissed and struggled as Mr Gutta held them up, dangling them by the scruffs of their necks. Mrs Gutta used the mobile phone’s inbuilt camera to take five or six photos. Each time the flash went off, the cubs snarled and clawed at the air. I felt sorry for them. They were damp and frightened. They looked much too young to be away from their mother. Where was she?
After the photo shoot, Mr Gutta made a phone call. The conversation was in English but I couldn’t hear most of it because he had his back to me. Just before saying goodbye, Mr Gutta turned around. ‘I have taken for you some photographs,’ he said. Then he spent half a minute poking at the keypad. I guessed he was sending the tiger photos to the person he’d just called.
Suddenly there was a crack of thunder and the heavens opened up. I had never seen such heavy rain. It came down so hard I could barely see across to the other side of the courtyard. Mrs Gutta quickly shut the tigers’ box and followed her husband inside. The door slammed behind her.
Now was my chance to get away. I slipped out under the plastic sheeting. And was instantly saturated. Raindrops crashed down like bullets. They hammered against my skull, they stung my bare skin. I clambered up on top of the box and rose shakily to my feet. It was like standing in a waterfall. I tried to look up but the rain beat my eyelids closed. Blindly, I ran my hands up the bricks to find the top of the wall.
And something grabbed me.
9
COMPLETE CRAZINESS
With a howl of fright – ‘Shishkebab!’ – I wrenched my hand free and leapt backwards, forgetting I was up on the box. Luckily it was only a one-metre fall. And luckily the courtyard was about five centimetres deep in rainwater. I landed with a splash instead of a thump. But I was still winded. And badly spooked by the thing that had grabbed my hand.
Was it a monkey?
Next moment – splash! – the thing landed right beside me.
Hooley dooley! I thought, scrabbling backwards on my heels and hands.
But the thing came after me.
‘Mr Samfox!’ it cried. ‘Are you being okay?’
It was Kasime. He must have come round from the front of the Guttas’ house and then climbed back over the wall.
‘I’m fine,’ I said, my heart beating time with the hammering of raindrops. ‘I slipped, that’s all.’
He helped me to my feet, then disappeared ahead of me into the big, open-fronted box he called home. It was mostly dry inside. The plastic sheeting was doing a good job. But I didn’t want to be there.
‘Shouldn’t we get going?’ I asked.
‘It is too much rain,’ said Kasime. He wrapped a blanket around himself. ‘We will wait for it to be stopping.’
‘What about Mr Gutta?’
‘He is not knowing we are here.’
I listened to the raindrops drumming on top of the box. ‘How long will the rain last?’
‘In the morning it will stop,’ said Kasime.
‘But I have to go back to my hotel tonight. My parents will be worried sick.’
‘It is too much rain, Mr Samfox. In the morning I will get another auto-rickshaw to be taking you to your hotel.’
‘What about the one that’s waiting?’ I asked.
‘That one is gone,’ Kasime said.
‘But he’s got my watch!’
There was shuffling beside me. Kasime placed a wet metal object in my hand. ‘I have paid to the driver the monies.’
Good old Kasime! I slipped my watch back on. ‘What happened with Mr Gutta? Why was he so mad at you?’
‘It is because I have help you to escape,’ he said. ‘Also he is most unhappy because I have seen the baagh. Mr Gutta is not letting the orphan boys come home tonight because it is most secret, the tiger babies.’
‘Where did they come from?’ I asked.
‘Mrs Gutta say a farmer has shooted the mother, and Mr Gutta has pay to the farmer ten thousand rupees for buying the babies. But he is selling each tiger baby for one lakh’.
‘How much is that?’
‘It is more numbers than I can be counting,’ Kasime said. ‘Mr Gutta will be very rich man.’
‘Who’s going to buy them?’ I asked, remembering the photos Mrs Gutta took and the phone call her husband made.
Kasime yawned, as if he was bored by all my questions. ‘Mrs Gutta say a man from another country will buy.’
‘Does he own a zoo or something?’
‘No. It is for keeping in the rich man’s house.’
Now I understood. Mr Gutta was involved in the exotic pet trade. Rich people from other countries paid thousands of dollars for baby tigers to keep as pets. It’s highly illegal. I’d seen a TV documentary about it. A special organisation called the Ramid Tiger Project was trying to put an end to it.
‘We should tell the police,’ I said.
‘No, Mr Samfox,’ Kasime said firmly. ‘Already I am being in too much trouble from Mr Gutta. He will not let me to live here.’
That reminded me of something he’d said earlier. ‘Where are the other boys staying tonight, Kasime?’
He yawned again. ‘They are sleeping in the broken car of Mr Gutta so no one can be stealing it.’
The more I learned about Mr Gutta, the less I liked him. Imagine leaving four small boys overnight in a smashed-up car. But when I thought about it, the car was probably more comfortable than the damp wooden box where Kasime and I would be spending the night. I wrapped a blanket around myself and leaned against the back of the box. It was going to be a long night.
Something ran up the blanket and stopped on my shoulder. I felt wet whiskers tickling my ear.
‘Shishkebab!’ I cried, knocking whatever it was away.
‘What has happen?’ Kasime asked.
‘I think there’s a rat in here.’
‘There are many rats, always, Mr Samfox. They will not hurt you.’
I felt another one on my foot. I kicked it away. ‘How can you sleep with rats crawling all over you?’
Kasime didn’t answer. I heard deep, steady breathing from his end of the box. He’d gone to sleep. Amazing.
I tried to follow Kasime’s example, but every time my eyelids started drooping, I’d feel another rat crawling across me. It was impossible to relax. Impossible to sleep. I tried covering myself completely – head to foot – with rags and blankets, but I could still feel them scuttling all over me. Rats. Horrible, dirty, disease-carrying rats.
Poor Kasime, I thought. Imagine having to sleep like this every night. But at least he was asleep. I was never going to get to sleep at this rate.
Then I had a brainwave.
I rummaged through the nest of rag
s and newspapers around me until I found what felt like a large plastic shopping bag. Ripping it open, I put it over my head and shoulders like a mini poncho. Then I ducked out into the rain.
Thirty seconds later, I was back. And I brought something with me. Well, two somethings.
‘Yiieee!’ Kasime cried when one of the cubs started licking his face.
‘Don’t worry,’ I said. ‘It’s just one of the tigers.’
That probably wasn’t a sensible thing to say to someone in India.
‘Yiieeeeee!’ he wailed.
‘They’re just babies, Kasime. Big kittens.’
‘B-b-but why is baagh here?’ he asked in a trembly voice.
‘I couldn’t sleep with all the rats crawling over me,’ I explained, drying one of the damp cubs with a rag. ‘I thought the tigers might keep them away.’
‘It is complete craziness, Mr Samfox. They are tiger!’
‘They’re babies. They won’t hurt us.’
‘Mr Gutta, when he find out, he is being too angry.’
‘He won’t find out.’ I passed the dry cub to Kasime and started drying the second one. ‘We’ll put them back before he gets up.’
Kasime wasn’t convinced. ‘To have this tigers in my home, Mr Samfox, is very bad thing.’
‘It’s better than rats,’ I argued. Since I’d brought the cubs in, I hadn’t felt a single one on me. ‘Wrap it up with you inside your blanket. That’s what I’m doing. They seem to like it.’
They did like it. In two or three minutes, my little tiger was snuggled up against me, fast asleep.
Moments later, I was asleep, too.
10
BYE-BYE BABY TIGERS
Someone was shaking me.
‘I have bringed for you something, Mr Samfox, whispered Kasime.
I yawned and rubbed my eyes. Strips of pale daylight shone through chinks in the wood at the far end of the box. There was no longer any sound of rain. In its place were other sounds: beeping car horns; the rumble of a jet plane taking off from the Delhi airport; a rooster crowing. I glanced at my watch. It was just after seven-thirty in the morning. Pushing my blanket aside, I looked around the cramped interior of Kasime’s home.