by Vaseem Khan
And now Chopra was here too.
As dawn was breaking he had been hauled out of the truck and dragged, still protesting, through the jail’s arched entranceway. Behind him the fifteen-feet-high cast-iron gates had ground shut with an ominous clang. To the ululations of a dawn call to prayer, he had been marched through stone corridors to the warden’s office.
The warden, a small man with a perfectly round, lacquered head, had smiled at him from behind a bare desk. “Welcome, Chopra,” he said, gesturing towards a chair. “My name is Mukherjee. May I offer you some tea? Fresh from Darjeeling.”
Chopra sat down awkwardly, his hands cuffed before him. “There has been a mistake,” he said.
“Ah!” smiled the warden, tapping his small white teeth with a spoon. “If only I had a rupee for every time I have heard that particular refrain. Why, I would be as rich as Tata himself.”
“I am a former policeman,” said Chopra, reining in his temper. “I have an identity card in my pocket. You will see that I am a special advisor to the Chief Minister.”
“Of course you are,” said Mukherjee. “Of course you are.”
He did not bother to ask for the card. Instead, he slurped at his tea, which he drank from a delicate porcelain cup. He pointed at a shadow on the wall. “Do you know what used to be there? It was a clock. I removed it on the day of my fifth anniversary here. You see, the very worst thing about running a prison such as this is ennui. The death of the soul by a thousand cuts. I was not born to this life, Chopra. I am a poet at heart. I have even had a modest volume of my work published. Nothing to send the literary giants of this world scurrying for cover, but I take a quiet pleasure in my endeavours. One must bow before one’s muse, yes?” Slurp, slurp. “Do you know how many years I have been here? In this graveyard of the mind? Ten years. Ten long years in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by murderers and rapists, arsonists and whoremongers. At first I thought it would be the ideal place to hone my talent. A haven away from the hustle and bustle of city life. But now it is all I can do not to smash my brains out against these very walls.” Slurp, slurp. “And then fate drops the star of fortune into my lap.”
He set down the cup. “Last night I received a call. From a, let us say, political heavyweight. He tells me that a prisoner will shortly be arriving at my little fortress, a man by the name of Chopra. This Chopra, I am told, is a special case. He is to be held at Gouripur at the High Court’s discretion, pending trial. Indefinitely held, incognito. No phone calls, no contact of any kind. I do not know what you have done, Chopra, or perhaps I should say, I do not know who you have upset, but it does not pay to make the gods angry.” The warden drummed his fingers on the desk. “I find myself facing a moral dilemma. The poet in me shrieks at the injustice of it all. And yet, one man’s misfortune is another’s silver lining, yes? I suppose there is a subtle poetry in this, too… What do I long for? A princedom by the sea, a quiet place where I might break a lance with like-minded souls. If I follow my instructions, if I simply do what is requested of me, then I will be set free. I will escape the ignoble irony of being a prisoner in my own prison. I will be transferred. To another post, perhaps even out to Kolkata, the cultural capital of our great nation. Instead of child murderers and bandits, I will spend my days in the company of lyricists and wordsmiths. I must say that I find the prospect… soothing.”
“And what happens to me?” asked Chopra.
“You have a choice before you. Settle in and do your time quietly. Or kick up a fuss. If you should choose the latter, then I am afraid your stay here could be most unpleasant. After all, how do you think your fellow inmates would react should they discover a policeman has taken up residence in their midst?”
Chopra bristled at the implied threat. “I am innocent,” he growled.
Mukherjee smiled. “I knew a man who once tried to prove to me, a priori, that he was immortal. In the midst of his soliloquy he was struck down by a heart attack that froze him stone dead in his chair.”
He picked up a bell and rang it.
Two warders entered and lifted Chopra briskly to his feet.
“This is wrong and you know it,” said Chopra, through gritted teeth.
Mukherjee grimaced. “The world is an imperfect place. I wish that it were not. I urge you to consider Tagore’s words: ‘If you cry because the sun has gone out of your life, your tears will prevent you from seeing the stars.’”
That had been a few short hours ago.
Since then, Chopra had been stripped, given a white prison uniform stamped with black chevrons, and dumped into a cold cell on the second tier of one of the prison’s ten inmate blocks.
His cellmate had slept through his arrival, which was just as well. As the guards had walked away Chopra had held in the urge to protest his innocence. In one thing Mukherjee had been correct—Chopra could not let his fellow inmates discover that he had once been a policeman.
He had paced the cell in silent fury, before flinging himself onto the bunk, his mind aflame with bitterness, and the first intimations of a genuine terror. But, try as he might, he could not think of his next move. Eventually, he felt his eyelids drooping as sheer mental exhaustion took its toll.
Half an hour later a banging sounded along the corridors, waking him from a fitful sleep.
The prisoners were assembled outside their cells, then marched out into the courtyard. Chopra was ordered to stand with a group of other new arrivals.
A fierce sun burned off the last tendrils of morning fog.
An enormous man emerged from a whitewashed stucco barrack set apart at one end of the courtyard, and swaggered over to the new arrivals. Chopra regarded the colossal bulk, the thick, shaven head, the lantern jaw. One eye was white with disease. His scarred knuckles were like walnuts, and his biceps strained the sleeves of his black uniform, which marked him out as a prisoner who had been conferred the privilege of supervising his peers.
The huge man washed the gathered inmates with a baleful look.
“My name is Buta Bheem Singh. When I was twelve years old I shot my father through the eye with a crossbow and strangled my mother. I once killed a man with a kettle because he spilled my tea. When they finally caught up with me they sentenced me to death. But the gallows collapsed when they tried to hang me. They called it an act of God and gave me a life sentence instead. I have been here seventeen years and I have killed seventeen men in that time. They can’t do anything to me. In here I am God and the Devil. When I tell you to do something you will do it. If you don’t, I will kill you.”
Chopra heard one of the new men whimper behind him.
Having delivered his welcome speech Singh wandered away.
They returned to their block groups, where they were split into work gangs and bundled into labour trucks. The gates of the prison creaked open, and the trucks roared out from the compound, swirling dust in their wake.
An hour later they were deposited at a sandstone quarry.
Here, the prisoners were handed pickaxes and rock hammers, and ordered to begin hacking away at the quarry face or breaking down hewn rocks. Others piled the broken rock into rusted wheelbarrows and dumped the contents into industrial trucks, which roared out of the quarry at regular intervals, bound, no doubt, for the insatiable construction sites of the big city.
Chopra stood in the sun, looking around him at the dust and noise. He was reminded of the workers who reshaped Mumbai’s profile on a daily basis, faces bleached by dust as they broke cinder blocks into rubble, an army of ants that never stopped. He glanced down at the manacles that shackled his ankles together. The sheer implausibility of his predicament froze him.
“You!” growled a voice. “Those rocks won’t break themselves.”
Chopra turned to see the brute Buta Singh glaring at him. Singh was wielding a bullwhip, which he flicked menacingly.
A movement from above made him look up.
Perched on the lip of the quarry, high above the toiling prisoners, a man with a rifle
across his knees sat and smoked. Behind him, in the cloudless sky, vultures circled, riding the thermal currents that rose off the baked earth below.
“I would do as he says,” muttered a voice to Chopra’s right. “His patience is as limited as his intelligence.”
Chopra hefted his pickaxe and struck the wall with all his might.
Chips flew in all directions, one slashing his cheek. A droplet of blood welled up, fell, and was instantly soaked up by the dust at his feet.
“Not like that!” admonished the voice. “What are you trying to do? Bring down the cliff? Don’t exert yourself. Work when he is looking. The rest of the time, pretend to work. Here, watch me.”
Chopra looked around at his neighbour, a diminutive, elderly man with a goatish grey beard and a white skullcap. He recognised the man—it was his cellmate.
He watched as the man tapped at the rock face with a practised rhythm. “My name is Iqbal Yusuf,” he added eventually.
“Chopra,” said Chopra.
“You have the look about you.”
“What look?” Chopra began tapping the wall, copying Yusuf’s metronomic movement.
“As if you don’t belong. As if you can’t quite believe that you are here. You must lose this look. This look sends a signal to the others. It is like a wounded deer in a field of lions.”
“What do I do?”
“Act like a hardened criminal.”
“I am not a criminal at all,” said Chopra.
Yusuf sighed. “Only God knows what we truly are, my friend. But for now, you must decide whether you will be a deer or a lion. Proclaiming that you are not a criminal will not help your cause, of that much I can assure you.”
A ruckus behind them made Chopra turn.
He saw another of the new arrivals standing motionless by a rock, weeping. The man was tall, but there was a babyish quality to his bespectacled features, a softness to his frame that spoke of years of good living.
“A political prisoner,” observed Yusuf dryly. “These days if you upset the wrong people you end up here. That is not to say he is not a criminal. Whatever he has done, he made a bad mistake.”
A sense of nervous dread stole over Chopra as Buta Singh approached the man, crunching over the stony ground in his black sandals. “Why have you stopped working?” he growled.
The quarry fell silent as, one by one, the inmates turned to watch the hapless newcomer.
“I shouldn’t be here,” sniffled the man. “I’m not a criminal like you. I merely moved some numbers around. What’s wrong with that? Everyone does it. It was my cream!” he yelled suddenly. The man had worked himself up, as if he had forgotten where he was, and who he was speaking to.
“You have been badly treated?” said Singh sweetly. “You shouldn’t be here with scum like us, yes? You should be somewhere nice, where they give you an oil massage before bed, and allow you to watch TV all day?”
“Yes! Yes!” nodded the prisoner eagerly. “I knew you would understand!”
“Let me see what I can do,” said Singh. He turned around, tapping his lip thoughtfully with a meaty finger.
Then, in one fluid movement, he spun back and lashed the bullwhip at the hopeful prisoner, catching him across the cheek.
The man shrieked in pain, his spectacles flying off to crack on a nearby rock, blood spilling on to his uniform. He fell to the floor writhing as Buta Singh continued to lash at him.
Finally, he lay still, whimpering pitiably.
“It is your first day,” growled Singh, wiping a sleeve across his brow. “So I will be lenient. The next time…”
He turned, and stalked away.
The prisoners resumed work with redoubled vigour.
“He is insane,” whispered Chopra, the metallic taste of fear settling at the back of his throat.
“Of course,” said Yusuf. “What did you expect? Welcome to hell, my friend.”
A TUTOR FOR IRFAN
Poppy, balanced precariously on the cane stool, hooked the last of the marigold garlands to the nail on the wall, then stepped down to examine her handiwork.
Criss-crossed by garlands of flowers and paper rosettes, the office was a profusion of colour.
From the sofa Poppy’s mother, Poornima Devi, sniffed disapprovingly. “I suppose you intend to turn the rest of the restaurant into a brothel too,” she carped.
Poppy sighed. “It is the festival of colour, Mother.”
“Then why don’t you decorate me while you’re at it? A widow in her white widow’s sari painted every colour under the sun like some streetwalking strumpet. I am sure your father would approve.”
“My father loved Holi,” said Poppy.
“That’s because he was a bigger fool than you!”
Poppy was too tired to argue. The thought irritated her and she pushed it to one side. She was not used to being tired. She had always considered herself possessed of an exceptional level of energy, but lately she had been finding herself overcome by sudden bouts of fatigue, and in the middle of the day too! Ever since she had begun her job at the St. Xavier Catholic School for Boys, in fact. Between that, managing her home, spending her spare time at the restaurant, and looking after Irfan, Ganesha, and her husband, she had more than enough to do, consuming every hour God threw her way. She did not resent any of these duties—they filled out her life, and gave her a happiness that she could not have imagined just a short year ago.
And yet, there was that matter of finding her eyes closing when she least expected it, and sleep stealing over her at the most inopportune times.
Being the Modern Indian Woman wasn’t easy, she reflected, no matter what Sunita Shetty said on her show… Am I getting old? she wondered briefly.
She dismissed the heretical thought immediately. A woman in her early forties, old? Nonsense. Her mother was old. Chef Lucknowwallah was old. Her boss at St. Xavier, Principal Augustus Lobo, was old. But Poppy… Poppy was as young as the day she had married Chopra.
Talking of her husband, where in the world was he?
When she had awoken that morning, there had been no sign of him. Of course, ever since he had started the detective agency it had necessitated him sneaking off at odd times of the day or night to pursue some unwary suspect. It was a compromise she had learned to live with, the price of her husband being able to continue doing what he loved since retiring from the force. But they had agreed he would always notify her in advance. She would prepare a tiffin, and lecture him on the need to take his angina tablets. He would roll his eyes, but take the tiffin anyway. And it was always empty the next morning when he stumbled in bleary-eyed, having wasted another night playing Mr. Big Shot Private Detective, when he should have been tucked up in bed beside her.
At least he had promised to take things easy. She hadn’t forgotten about his ailing heart even if he had, gallivanting around like the star of his own action movie.
But this time it was different. He had told her nothing.
He had not come home, and she had been surprised to discover that he had not even phoned her. She had tried calling him, but he hadn’t picked up. Then it had been time for her to go to work, forcing her to put the matter to one side.
It had been an exceptionally busy day at St. Xavier—a sports day for the students—and she had barely had time to sit down. Yet she had called him again and again, to no avail. With each call her anxiety grew.
When she had finally arrived at the restaurant it was to discover a very agitated Ganesha pacing the compound. The fact that Ganesha had returned but her husband had not convinced her that something was deeply amiss. According to the staff the little elephant had refused his feed. He had trotted over to Poppy and immediately wrapped his trunk around her arm, tugging at her in a gesture she knew signified his anxiety.
There was a knock on the door, and one of the waiters entered with Poornima’s supper.
The old woman inspected the contents. “I swear that oaf’s cooking gets worse by the day. Can’t he see that I
am an ailing woman?”
Poppy sighed again.
Earlier that week her mother had twisted an ankle. Rather than stay at home she had chosen to continue attending the restaurant. “You don’t expect me to leave that dolt in charge of the place, do you?” Poornima had said, meaning Chef Lucknowwallah. “The man can barely cook and remember to breathe at the same time. You’ll be bankrupted in a week.”
The long-simmering feud between the chef and Poornima had been a source of much consternation to both Poppy and Chopra. Both were combative types, and proprietorial about the restaurant, neither willing to concede an inch. They existed in a state of uneasy alliance, which fractured all too frequently.
A second knock sounded on the door. “There is a woman here to see you, madam,” said the waiter.
Leaving her cantankerous mother to take a rickshaw home with her supper, Poppy walked through the kitchen and out on to the rear veranda.
The woman waiting for her on the planed boards of the veranda was tall, broad-shouldered, and dressed in a staid navy blue sari with a white trim. Her thick grey hair was pulled into a severe bun, and her dark face was flat and sombre. She clutched a bamboo cane in her right hand. The hand had been badly burned; the scars were old but vivid.
There was something about the woman’s forthright gaze that bothered Poppy.
“I have three conditions,” the woman said. “They are non-negotiable.”
“Excuse me?”
“Firstly, my salary. I require five thousand rupees per month, not a paisa less.”
Poppy’s mouth fell open, but nothing emerged.
“Secondly,” said the woman, without waiting for a reply, “two meals per day will be provided by you.”
“But—” Poppy began.
“Lastly, and most critically, I will do things my way. There will be no interference from anyone. That goes for you, too. Do you agree to these conditions?”