Virtual Realities

by Neelum Saran Gour

Isidore looked at her in grim satisfaction. ‘He’s close to it.’ He induced his spongy lips into a flat horizontal stretch. ‘I’m in touch with the Medical College Hospital. He’s in their emergency unit. His chances are slender.’

  Oh, hell! Sravan gripped the arm of his chair. Tried another voice. ‘You realize, of course, how we as parents are feeling? What we’re going through.’ It was a wrong voice.

  ‘The injured child has parents, too,’ was Isidore’s stinging rejoinder.

  He tried another voice. ‘You must be so used to injuries in the school campus. When one is handling a thousand boisterous kids … it’s an occupational hazard, I should imagine …’ He wasn’t too sure what he was saying. ‘When one kid accidentally inflicts a serious injury on another, isn’t it what the law calls a non-cognizable offence?’

  Any reference to the law set Isidore alight. ‘You aren’t quite understanding the seriousness of this, Mr Kumar. Here there was an intention to kill. Ask your son—he confessed before two witnesses. And anyway, the IPC may not cognize this offence. I as headmaster have to.’

  His son couldn’t be completely beyond his protection. The wires in his head cut deep. Strident words tingled on his tongue, but despair made him lower his voice suggestively. ‘The school needs a new gym or generator, perhaps?’

  Isidore’s eyes shone in grisly malice. ‘I suggest you hold on to your money. Mr Kumar. You’re going to need it to bail out your son.’

  ‘Bail! But he isn’t under arrest.’

  ‘Not yet. When the warrant comes, he will be. Maybe he will be remanded in custody first. The matter will be sub judice. Meanwhile, as headmaster I am detaining him here. I have unofficial instructions.’

  ‘From whom?’

  Isidore wouldn’t say.

  ‘You’ve actually … you’ve actually phoned the police! Over an accident? Over two eleven-year-olds having a scuffle?’ Pragya’s voice had risen in near hysteria.

  ‘Not I but the hospital, Mrs Kumar. It’s normal procedure. When any suspicious case is admitted, the hospital notifies the police. As for your son being a minor, that’s immaterial. The IPC has the same law for children and adults. Murder or intention to murder meet with the same …’

  ‘How d’you know there was an intention to murder?’

  ‘That’s the boy’s statement.’

  ‘Statement? A little kid’s adventure fantasy.’

  ‘Parents are blinded by affection, Mrs Kumar. But the law is very definite about this. I sent for a copy and have read all the sections very carefully.’

  Sravan turned to the kid. ‘What happened, beta?’ he asked in an altered voice.

  The kid looked up slowly at him. His eyes shivered with tears.

  ‘You pushed him?’

  The kid had gone dumb. His lower lip did the shrieking for him.

  ‘How did he fall?’

  Silence. The kid’s face puckered in a soundless bawl.

  ‘Did he jump?’

  No answer.

  ‘He jumped, didn’t he?’ The kid slowly nodded, his face twisted.

  Sravan advanced, feeling his ground cautiously. One false step and they’d be undone.

  ‘He … he jumped,’ whispered the kid. Sravan groped a few steps forward.

  ‘Superman or Spiderman or Batman? Or was it Godzilla?’

  The kid’s eyes sparked. ‘Spiderman,’ he whispered.

  ‘I can’t allow this,’ interrupted Isidore. ‘Mr Kumar, you’re prompting the child. This will not do.’

  ‘Can’t I at least have a word with him in private?’

  ‘Impossible. You go on and say what you have to say here in my office.’

  Sravan shrugged and turned to the kid. ‘Which one of you was Spiderman?’

  There was an answering gleam in the kid’s eye. ‘Him.’

  ‘I will not have this. Mr Kumar, you have just helped your son fabricate a complete statement to repeat. Here before my very eyes.’ In a disgusted aside he added, ‘I always say children learn lying at home.’

  Oh yeah, scoffed Sravan in derision. Here you teach them truth and moral science. He masked his irritation and kept his voice as composed as possible.

  ‘Nevertheless, you heard what he just said. This is his account.’

  ‘His previous statement was very different.’

  ‘D’you have it on record?’

  Isidore smiled. Thin slivers of teeth showing between loathsome purple lips. ‘Yes, Mr Kumar, I have it on record. And two witnesses’ remarks, too. And to my records I shall add how I have just watched you dictate a false statement to your son. Very quick and inventive, I must say. No wonder you are a writer and your son comes to be such an arrant liar. I’ve had complaints about him before. But a false witness shall not be unpunished, and he that speaketh lies shall perish. And if you continue to prompt the child I am sorry to say I shall give instructions to the security guards not to let you all enter the premises.’

  Sravan planted his elbows on the table. ‘Till when, say?’

  ‘Till this matter is decided. Or twenty-four hours.’

  ‘All without a warrant?’

  ‘A person can be arrested even without a warrant.’ Isidore swivelled round to the side cabinet and picked up a book. Ah, the Indian Anal Code! Sravan jeered inwardly.

  Isidore read in tones of a Sunday sermon: ‘ “Section Fortyone. Any police officer may without an order from a magistrate and without a warrant, arrest any person … ah, um … against whom a reasonable complaint has been made, or credible information has been received or a reasonable suspicion exists, etc. etc. The boy will have to remain here, and depending on the course of events he shall have to appear before a juvenile magistrate.” ’

  A sob burst from Pragya. ‘You don’t mean this! And the warrant hasn’t even come!’

  ‘That will not be necessary,’ said Isidore. He opened the IPC again. ‘It says here—Section Forty-three—“Any private person may arrest or cause to be arrested any person who in his presence commits a non-bailable and cognizable offence.” ’

  ‘Just a minute. In his presence, did you say? But this thing occurred …’

  Isidore faltered, then regained his balance. ‘You overlook that phrase about credible information. It’s no use, Mr Kumar. The boy has given us enough trouble. He is not a normal child. He needs treatment and rehabilitation and the law must take its course.’

  ‘Tell me, please,’ begged Sravan, reduced to emotional appeal now, ‘what possible satisfaction you as an educationist will get from seeing a child’s spirit broken because of an unfortunate accident. The child’s going through hell as it is. Let him go home. Rest and get over the shock. The law can take its course. Or some agreement out of court with the affected party.’

  The Reverend Isidore was unbending. ‘My position as headmaster is crucial. It is a question of responsibility. Moral accountability. Setting an example. Up to twenty-four hours I can keep the child here. Till news from the hospital arrives. Or a warrant of arrest.’

  ‘Why should that be necessary?’

  A wry smile from Isidore. ‘Mr Kumar, nothing that I have seen of you so far has encouraged me to trust your word. If I let the child go with you …’

  At this point Pragya began to cry. ‘How can you be so inhuman?’ she sobbed. ‘He’s just a small kid. An ordinary kid, not a criminal. We’re ordinary parents. You don’t know how hard it is to bring up a disturbed child.’

  Weeping women were outside Isidore’s script. He looked at this Magdalen with an impenetrable face and demanded austerely, ‘Then why do you beget them? A foolish son is grief to his father and bitterness to her that bore him. Thank God that I am a gentle and humane headmaster and I have not laid a finger on your son.’ He turned to Pragya. ‘Please don’t worry. The boy will be comfortable here. Tomorrow we shall see which way the wind is blowing.’

  ‘Can’t I at least bring meals for him?’ begged Pragya.

  ‘That will not be necessary. He shall have what he needs. W
e’ll give him rice and dal and vegetables and whatever you people eat.’

  Sravan smarted. Bloody cur! He felt like asking, And what do you people eat? Fucking black English pariah? Steak-and-kidney pie?

  He tried one last time. ‘I find this absolutely amazing, Father …’

  ‘What I find amazing, Mr Kumar, is that you haven’t even once asked about the other child—the injured child dying in hospital.’

  Sravan fell silent, overcome by confusion.

  ‘And now, please, I have work to do.’ Isidore dismissed them summarily with a wave of his bat-like hand, lolling out of his wide cassock sleeve. ‘You, boy, sit where you are.’ He rang for the attendant. ‘Send Brother Eugenius.’

  The kid began to whimper.

  ‘Quiet,’ snapped Isidore. ‘Not a sound, mind.’ The kid collapsed in a spasm of sniffles.

  Pragya could not hold herself in check any longer. She flew to Ashu, knelt before him, flung her arms about him. ‘I’m not leaving you here, baby,’ she sobbed. ‘I’ll sit on the pavement outside the school, baby. You shan’t be alone.’

  But Isidore thundered so imperially over her bowed head that she subsided. ‘Control yourself, Mrs Kumar. In case you’re thinking of sitting outside and making a spectacle of yourself, let me advise you not to. No good will be served. You’ll only attract attention to this incident. The press and then the other guardians. Believe me, no one will be on your side. Public sympathy will be with the hurt child and his parents. In the interest of your child I advise you to go quietly and leave him in my charge.’

  The terrible reality struck home. Pragya, growing pale, staggered to her feet and clutched at Buddhoo’s hand for support.

  ‘It’s okay, Father,’ said Buddhoo smoothly. ‘I’m not a parent or even a relative. And I’ll be outside the gates. Just for the kid’s consolation and his mother’s confidence. I assure you I won’t attract anyone’s attention.’

  20

  He was surprised it was not a private ward. That there was no glass door to stop him, no uniformed guard or sentry or board listing visiting hours. A government hospital. Only government hospitals register police cases.

  The ward was shared by three other patients. A burnt woman beneath a metal mesh, two road accidents and, in the corner, the case he’d come to check up on. He still preferred to think of it as a ‘case’. He prowled around the passage, nervousness locking his jaws. He sat on a bench, lit a cigarette. A young doctor passed, told him to smoke outside. Relieved at the chance to get away, he nodded and fled to the green patch outside the emergency block. In a few minutes he slunk down the corridor again, stood outside the ward in question and peeped in at his ‘case’. He could see the top of the drip stand and the inverted bottle of glucose. Tubes. Blood-transfusion kit. He could make out the little black cart that held the oxygen cylinder. And three persons.

  Through the gap in the screen, his eyes settled on a small hand, held stiff along a splint with the glucose tube attached. He could feel his breath turn laboured at the sight.

  The young doctor passed again, carrying a file. Saw Sravan lurking at the door and raised his eyebrows quizzically. Sravan grew instantly self-conscious, began walking slowly down the corridor, exaggeratedly concentrating on the numbers of the wards. When the young doctor vanished into an adjoining ward, Sravan made sure no one else was about and made his way back to the door of the ward. He studied the three around the bed. A scruffy woman with hair a dusty henna and puffy eyes, her face streaked. She wore a faded green salwar-kameez that she’d had no time to change out of. A short, mousy man with scanty hair, wearing a creased safari suit pulled on in haste. Or maybe he had just been informed at his workplace. A girl in a skirt and rubber slippers. The woman sat on a stool, holding the hand flat upon its splint. Sravan had come with a chequebook and a mouthful of words. At the far end of the corridor the young doctor appeared.

  Buddhoo let him in when he rang the doorbell. ‘Back for a bite of dinner,’ he said briefly.

  He crept into the dining room like a thief. Pragya was sitting stock-still at the table. Her eyes drilled into the depths of his guilt and fixed him, impaled him to his shame. He stood there, helpless. ‘I couldn’t,’ he said.

  She scorched him. ‘Why?’

  He shook his head. ‘Don’t ask me why.’

  Her eyes clutched at his face. ‘You didn’t speak to them at all?’

  ‘No.’ He tried detaching his face from her grip. He wasn’t up to this; it was a situation beyond his capacity. Sometime in the future, in secret, he’d try writing it all out—the faces, the crossfire of suggestion and threat, the appeal, the terror. He feared that even on the page he wouldn’t be able to manage it. ‘I spoke to a doctor instead.’

  She looked ready to fly into a passion. ‘A doctor! What good will that do?’

  ‘He explained the exact situation to me. Medically, I mean.’

  ‘Oh, God!’ she gasped in exasperation. ‘Medically!’ She mimicked his voice. ‘Listen to him!’

  ‘I had no words,’ he said lamely. He envied her gift of release in simple anger.

  ‘Funny, isn’t it? You weren’t required to deliver a soul-shaking speech. You just had to go and stand beside them. Say you were Ashu’s father. Say you were grieved. That you wanted to share the work and the expense …’

  The sharp blade of her voice sawed at his raw heart. Her eyes narrowed. ‘Or were you scared? Or are you incapable of direct words now?’

  He couldn’t risk using real words now—no matter how he used them, they sounded professional. Like something in a shop window.

  ‘What did the doctor tell you?’

  He told her. Repeated the medical terms, not daring to look at her. She had screened her face with both hands.

  Presently she removed her hands and asked, her voice queer: ‘What does it mean—this four-quadrant aspiration? And this … this diagnostic peritonial lavage?’

  ‘I think they’re tests. To check rupture of abdominal organs. Putting in fluid and then taking it out and checking it … That’s what the junior doctor said …’ he finished weakly.

  ‘Coma?’

  ‘Yes.’

  She was always one for lightning decisions. She picked up the car keys. ‘Pass me that chequebook,’ she said briskly. ‘I may be late. Don’t wait up.’

  ‘Where’re you going? The hospital?’

  ‘Yes.’ She turned to Buddhoo. ‘You coming?’

  ‘Sure,’ answered Buddhoo, and he followed her out.

  Sravan bolted the door after them, sank into his chair and waited for the enormity of the thing to come and capsize him. All of a sudden his head unlocked and the horror came lurching up. He had to set his teeth and gulp it down. The medical terms became ghastly visions. Hemiplegia. Intra-cranial haemorrhage and contusion. There was also the rupture of a lung, resulting in blood and gas collection in the pleural cavity. Fracture in the lower back and paraplegia of the lower limbs. The kid might be paralysed for life. The poor mite. Here Sravan was, trapped in a runaway script, resisting it with all his might and unable to suspend or change it. He wished he could unknot and weep, simply and exhaustively as a child does. He tried. A horrible cramp travelled up his throat. He sobbed to disgorge the gob of pain—for that kid, that other one with whom he felt this awful connection, linked by this umbilical cord of guilt.

  Much later he found himself thinking straight again. It was a quarter to ten when the doorbell rang.

  A youngish man with a camera, a notebook and a cocky face. Reporter from a local paper. A card. S. Moolchandani from the Clarion, sent to cover this incident.

  ‘Incident?’ queried Sravan.

  ‘This St Benedict Public School case. A kid’s been hurled down from a fourth-floor balcony.’

  ‘Criminal Violence in Local School’. This young jerk probably had the headline all ready in his head. Sravan cursed him with all his venom. But kept his face mildly enquiring.

  ‘Who tipped you off?’

  ‘Kid
s, parents. Rumours afloat …’

  Despite his manful effort to wear a mask, Sravan couldn’t bite back the grim retort. ‘Pity this is all they picked for you. Your paper, I mean. Playground politics.’

  The young smughead stiffened and Sravan instantly realized his error. Wrong thing to say. This guy took his job seriously. A new hand, painfully conscientious in his obligations to truth and to his paper, pathetic bastard! Going against the grain, Sravan managed to expel the glint of mockery from his voice and produce the proper tone of complimenting appeasement.

  ‘What I meant was—how’s it they send the dynamic young guys to cover these trivial Page Six items and keep the useless old fogeys to cover the real issues?’

  He’d touched a raw spot. The young man’s face turned sulky. ‘I can’t choose, can I?’ he shrugged.

  ‘Oh, I’m sure you can’t,’ said Sravan. Then he added lightly, ‘I’ve been a bit of a newspaper man too.’ No, wrong again. He somehow always managed to use the wrong voice. This one now sounded kind of condescending. He switched to a more casual, offhand tone. ‘Used to be. They’d send me out on the most boring assignments. So I’d inflame them into red-hot controversies. Pure spite, you get me?’

  The young man did. And didn’t think much of it. ‘Good for you,’ he remarked. A hardened cynic, this constipated turd!

  ‘Now, about this incident …’

  ‘Accident,’ corrected Sravan.

  ‘There’s a kid seriously injured. Reports say he was shoved.’ He held his ballpoint pen like a stiletto. ‘Getting down to the intention part of it …’

  Sravan pulled a chair.

  ‘Why don’t you sit?’ he urged in a voice of suave persuasion. ‘Shall I make you a drink?’

  ‘No, thanks.’ The young man looked irritated at the interruption. He sat. Sravan sat on the divan opposite the rug.

  ‘What d’you mean? That the kid who fell off the balcony did it intentionally? Juvenile suicide?’ he asked innocently.

  The young man jerked his head in annoyance. ‘Juvenile homicide’s more like it,’ he said. ‘The Clarion picked up this story from a parent who wishes to remain anonymous. The headmaster of the concerned institution cannot be contacted for an interview at the moment, but we have reports that the guilty party is being held at the hostel of the institution. For tomorrow morning’s edition we’ll make do with your version. Now, your son is alleged to have declared his attention to kill minutes before the victim crashed down from the fourth-floor balcony. What is your account of the incident?’