Virtual Realities

by Neelum Saran Gour

  In what he congratulated himself was a superbly bemused tone Sravan answered: ‘If I were to lose my temper at your question and shout, “Blast you!” and if, an hour from now, you were to get yourself bumped off in a bomb blast, would you say—no, of course you wouldn’t be in a position to say anything—let’s put it this way—would it be logical to say that I slung the bomb at you? Or if—forgive my language—if you made a “Fuck you” sign at a girl on a bus and she happened to be raped an hour later in a park, would you be construed the rapist?’

  His brain was lucid, performing splendidly. The young reporter looked disoriented and Sravan seized his chance. ‘As for my son’s threat to kill, practically every eleven-year-old threatens his peer group with mutilation or murder every day of his life, thanks to the sort of psychological climate we live in. The fact that the kid actually fell off a balcony doesn’t necessarily mean that he was physically pushed.’

  ‘Your son was with the victim when the incident …’

  ‘Threatening to kill is not in effect culpable. A shout at a strategic moment can disbalance a tightrope walker. Would that be culpable?’

  The young fellow was by now at a loss.

  ‘No one actually saw my son administer the push and the kid himself remembers nothing. The only person who would have the true facts would be the victim, but I’m afraid he will not be in a condition to speak or recall much for a long time, if at all.’ He was trusting the average man’s reluctance to serve as a witness in a criminal case.

  But the young man’s confusion was momentary. In a voice of dismissive command he broke in: ‘You can suggest all those possibilities to your lawyer. All I want is the details. Name?’

  ‘Whose?’

  ‘The victim’s.’

  ‘Sorry. I don’t know.’

  ‘Your son’s?’

  ‘Ashvin Kumar Nishit.’

  ‘Father’s name?’

  ‘Sravan Kumar Nishit.’ Would this turn the item into a major scoop? Enlarge the font? He expected the fellow to be surprised but was disappointed.

  ‘Profession?’

  ‘Editor, teacher, writer.’

  ‘Teacher of what?’

  ‘Creative writing at the Nehru Centre. Editor of Swadeshi.’

  The young man considered, pen poised. ‘I once published an article in Swadeshi. That was before I joined Clarion. The only one.’

  ‘Why only one?’ asked Sravan. This very cautious.

  He seemed unwilling to confess but he did, despite himself. ‘I sent in four or five articles. Travel pieces. Rejected.’

  Sravan could see that it still rankled. ‘Did you send them elsewhere?’

  The young man nodded. ‘Came back with a bang.’ He grimaced.

  Sravan chose his words. ‘Why don’t you send them to us again?’ The benign editor, keen on encouraging young enterprise. ‘We’ll look at them.’

  The signal went across with clarity. There was a longish silence. Sravan continued, ‘We pay rather well. In fact I was considering introducing a regular travel column, and we needed a columnist with a flair for …’ His words trailed off as he tested the vibes in the air. ‘We also award an annual prize. Ten thousand bucks for the best travel feature, provided it’s a place in India and relatively little known. A link-up with the tourism department, you know. Swadeshi can just break even—what with our management’s rigid stance regarding selective ads …’ this last thrown in to cover that small inconsistency about paying well. ‘You can send in a special entry—I’m on the jury.’

  He did not look at the young man as he spoke. But he was aware that the ballpoint pen had stopped. A minor alteration of inflection, that’s all it took. The young man assessed his proposal without comment.

  Then he ventured, ‘Would the magazine also fund the travel expenses?’

  Bastard, thought Sravan. Aloud he said, ‘The plan would have to be submitted and passed by our finance cell, but it could of course be considered.’

  The young man turned back to business. ‘Now this incident …’

  ‘Accident,’ prompted Sravan.

  ‘I’m sorry—we can’t regard it that way. It comes under a specific criminal charge.’

  The little runt! That was the way it was going to be, was it? Sravan seethed. ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘The injured child is a Dalit Christian. The school management has released a damaging report.’

  ‘To your paper?’

  The fellow nodded. Sravan had his doubts.

  ‘The AICO has entered the fray.’

  Sravan did not speak. ‘I’m beginning to see it all,’ he said cryptically. An array of possibilities flashed through his mind. ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘You’ve come for my report. The facts of the case are— and I don’t care what the school management has reported—it was a game between these two kids. They were on this balcony. One of them, that one in hospital, climbed the railing. Spiderman or something. My son was too incoherent—shock—but this is what I gathered. What my son actually did is produce a bloodcurdling yell, something to the effect that he’d kill. That’s the “intention to kill” the school management’s harping on. But it was just an innocent yell.’

  ‘What makes it innocent?’ asked the fellow shrewdly.

  ‘What makes it innocent is that the so-called accused had not foreseen the consequences of his yell. That shout made the other child lose his balance, but to foist culpability on a child because of an accidental sequence is deliberate and mischievous politicizing. Which paper did you say? Clarion?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Katrak Group?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Oh, all right.’

  When he had shut the door behind the fellow he stood a while, resting his back against it, thinking fast. In a couple of minutes the phone rang. Pawar’s voice. The fucker must’ve been posted at his window, looking out for the departure of the journalist.

  ‘Who was that, Sravanji?’

  ‘I’m sure you don’t need to ask.’ Try as he might, he couldn’t be polite. ‘Did you send him?’

  Pawar sounded injured. ‘I don’t know what’s given you the idea. Sarita and I just wanted to tell you that we’re all keeping mum—not saying anything. That fellow’s been around, asking questions about the kid.’

  ‘Oh, yes?’

  ‘We didn’t say a word.’

  ‘Thanks,’ said Sravan drily. ‘Good of you.’ He put the phone down. What a ball the neighbours were having. Paying him back for years of snobbish aloofness. He felt reasonably sure the journalist had every detail about the kid’s advanced delinquencies. And there was no knowing if his offer to that jerk would be taken up. For all he knew, it might be put down as conclusive evidence of his general corruption. He found himself pacing the floor and realized that he hated this house, had hated it for years without being aware of it. Parts of it felt close, dense with noxious stress fumes. He decided to pour himself a drink.

  He’d just settled down on the settee when a shattering rap descended on the front door, an imperious rain of thuds. He put down his drink, unbolted the door and took in the swinish insolence of the uniformed figure that strode in with an air of unchallengeable gumption.

  ‘Sub-inspector Satish Dubey. Nazirabad Police Circle.’

  The offensiveness of the voice dared him to resist. Prompted him to realize what resistance might cost him.

  He regarded Satish Dubey’s flabby, sweat-slick face. His loose-packed belly flesh spilling over his leather belt. His huge hams tight in khaki. The paan reddening his clammy lips.

  ‘There is a doorbell, Mr Dubey,’ he said quietly.

  His visitor apparently found the civilian address provoking.

  ‘Sravan Kumar Nishit? Father of Ashvin Kumar Nishit?’ he read out.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’m here in connection with the case in St Benedict Public School. The attempt-to-murder case, Section 307. The accused is your son?’

  Sravan kept a disdainful silence.


  ‘You are to produce him. He is to be taken into police custody.’

  Even more pressing than the need to preserve his dignity was the urgent need to still his face.

  ‘My son isn’t here,’ he answered.

  Dubey reverted to bluster. ‘Did I say right now? You are to produce him tomorrow at the Nazirabad Police Station at 10 a.m. sharp.’’

  ‘My son is a minor. Eleven years old. He can’t be placed in the common sort of lockup. What arrangement have you for minors?’

  He’d taken in the situation somewhat, decided to play cool.

  Dubey threw him a searching look. Assessing his response. There passed into his bragging voice a micro-inflection that Sravan instantly caught—a faint dip of tone he himself had used with the journalist a short while ago.

  ‘Once the arrest is made—even before the warrant comes—we can put him elsewhere under police surveillance,’ Dubey said.

  ‘A hotel?’

  ‘Why not? If you pay the tariff. Understand?’

  Too well, thought Sravan. ‘How much is the expected … tariff?’

  Dubey turned evasive. ‘That depends on the nature of the crime—and your paying capacity. This being a murder charge …’ And now it was in a pungent aside that he went on. ‘We might decide to lodge the accused in a private house—before he appears before the Juvenile Magistrate.’

  Sravan spoke in a finely calibrated murmur. ‘I wonder—could I suggest—under the circumstances—my own apartment? Could he be brought back from the police station to his custodial cell in this very house? Under your surveillance, of course. Seeing that he’s a minor. If I pay your … tariff?’

  Dubey leered acceptance, even a crude semblance of approval at the finesse in Sravan’s mode of suggestion. One artist saluting another.

  ‘We’ll see about that tomorrow,’ he said, friendlier now that the deal had been struck.

  ‘This is an arrest without a warrant, right? Section 56?’

  Dubey’s friendliness vanished. ‘That’s my business, not yours. Ten a.m. sharp. Produce the accused before we come down for him.’ This delivered with due rhetoric effect. A policeman’s last word.

  Sravan could hear his heavy boots clumping down the stairs, then the revving of the Honda mobike outside. He didn’t go to the window lest he catch Pawar spying on him.

  The strain was getting unbearable, a huge threatening nimbus engulfing him. A journalist and a police inspector! Those two scenes he’d laboured to write during his long spell of sterility. How had those scenes been tossed into his life with such sureness of aim? He had the nightmarish sensation of sinking powerlessly into the quicksands of his own book in a horrid, paranormal subsidence. The house felt too still. Refrigerated silence massed up on all sides of him, impossible to defrost. His nerves felt the numbing chill of it. In one gulp he downed his drink and hurried to the phone to dial Mridul’s number.

  21

  Mridul drove home at four in the morning. At nine he called up.

  ‘Relax, Sravan. I rang up Shukla. He’s SSP for Nazirabad Circle. It’s okay. No FIR lodged so far. The cop who called last night was hoaxing. Shukla’s made enquiries. Fellow named Dubey—sub-inspector, Nazirabad Thana—he’s working on a burn case. Attempted dowry death. He went investigating at the emergency unit of the Medical College Hospital. Must’ve picked this up there. Sravan—are you there?

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘That Dubey bastard must have been a freelancing shark come to extract a cut …’

  He heard Mridul’s earnest voice and remembered the night they’d spent in their chairs in the flat. He thought of thanking him. For his decency, his uncomplicated concern. Then the thought of Mridul phoning from that familiar bedroom filled him with acute discomfort. Not to mention Mridul’s obvious ignorance of the review he had done. His tangled vocal cords struggled for control.

  ‘Isn’t it too early? There’s still time for an FIR.’

  ‘There’s nothing on at the police end—so far. Maybe there won’t be. Hope for the best and see if you can stall it. You’d better handle that journalist and the paper he works for. I’ll be round in the evening. Straight after office. Six-thirty.’

  Six-thirty! As if he, Sravan, didn’t know it. He’d always taken care to leave Malini’s apartment well before that.

  There wasn’t time to spare. He consulted the directory and dialled.

  ‘This is Sravan Kumar Nishit. I’d like a word with J.B. Katrak, please.’

  The morning edition of the paper carried a tepid account of a fall in a local school in which a child ‘sustained injuries’ and was ‘hospitalized by the school authorities’. A casual 200-word affair tucked away on the third page. There was nothing in the account to suggest any other way of reading the event. The word ‘accident’ appeared.

  It was past eleven when Pragya and Buddhoo turned up, sleepless and dishevelled. He gave them the newspaper without a word.

  ‘That’s the official hospital record, too,’ said Buddhoo after he’d run his eyes quickly over the report. ‘By some merciful stroke the hospital’s recorded it as an accidental fall.’

  ‘But the other party? The parents?’

  ‘They’re only human. Sravan. They’re furious. Emotional. Actually they’re not sure exactly how it happened, and there hasn’t been time to pursue the point. They’re short of hands. The poor kid needs every minute. And we—Buddhoo-bhai and I—we’ve managed to persuade them.’ Her voice was deathly tired, her face white with strain. ‘In fact they even said this morning as we were leaving that even if they had lodged an FIR they would’ve submitted an affidavit denying their charges. That’s big of them, isn’t it? But then, often the police aren’t willing to drop the case. Mercifully it hasn’t reached that point. Though some AICO activists did call on them for a statement and tried provoking them. Turning it into a class issue.’

  ‘But if that kid should recover both speech and memory?’ He uttered the question bothering him.

  ‘Oh, Sravan, shut up! Don’t make it difficult for me. As it is I’m sick of these strategies and subterfuges.’

  ‘But just in case the kid does remember?’

  ‘Then you’ve got your unfailing yarns to fall back on.’ He was taken aback by the bitterness in her voice. ‘As for me, I’ll take the situation as it comes.’

  He looked from Pragya to Buddhoo. ‘How’d you talk them out of it?’

  Pragya clicked in weary irritation. ‘You’ve got it all wrong. Sravan. We didn’t “talk them out” of anything. This wasn’t lawyer or writer stuff, for God’s sake!’

  He saw his overstep, wondered if it was some sort of moral limitation of his.

  ‘Oh, okay. How’d you do—whatever you did?’

  ‘I didn’t go rehearsed and prepared. It wasn’t an act. Sravan, that poor kid’s in a terrible state. They saw my horror was real. They saw that anything the law could extract out of me, I was only too willing to double. Treble. It wasn’t compensation—that’s a dirty word, after you’ve taken one look at that poor mite. It was buying peace for myself—if that’s at all possible.’ Her voice trailed off.

  ‘So now we’re on hospital duty as long as we’re needed. Pragya pays for things; I do the running around. They attend to the kid. Fair enough,’ added Buddhoo.

  One last point of curiosity. ‘You didn’t convince them it was an accident?’ he asked cautiously.

  ‘It wasn’t an accident,’ said Pragya in a low voice. ‘You know that. Nothing but the truth can work in these situations, Sravan, though you may not take me seriously.’

  He didn’t want to argue with her. He told them about the visit of the reporter, the sub-inspector, his talk with Katrak.

  ‘And now I think I’ll phone Isidore. Another hour or so and he’ll be guilty of illegal detention of a minor.’

  Isidore’s voice was emotionless. ‘Yes, you may come and collect him,’ he granted. ‘There has been no FIR. It is God’s mercy to you.’

  There was a moment’
s silence. Then Isidore added, ‘I have to tell you that I am expelling your son. That is something I have to do. For my conscience. I have the whole parent body to consider. There are many rumours. There will be no peace until and unless some action is taken. So I must ask you to take your son away. Put him in another school—in boarding school, if you like. I will give him a transfer certificate.’

  That evening they sat alone watching TV, the kid and he. Pragya and Buddhoo were away at the hospital. They sat in what Sravan imagined was a companionable silence, experiencing, in their separate ways, the backwash of a hideous experience.

  The animated film on TV showed the final episodes of a sailor story. A ship on the horizon, a faint mast, a puff of white sail, a dark hull looming. Then a flash of telescope lens in the sun—an outcry of shouting and waving. Ship ahoy! A boat cleaving through the choppy waters. The English sailor lands on the shingly strand. Advances, hand extended. Bos’n Martin Shrewsbury of Her Majesty’s Patrol of the Spanish Main …

  Sravan rose and switched off the TV.

  ‘Did you do it?’ he asked the kid.

  He’d wondered if this kid was merely dazed, or whether he had some kind of crisis-proof armour. All evening the kid’s utter normality had baffled him. As though the horror had dripped off him like water off a duckback raincoat.

  The kid looked at him, straight and unflinching. ‘No,’ he said calmly.

  Pragya had not asked the kid any questions. She’d left all that for later. Poor kid—there’d be weeks of conscience-raking, psychological drilling, parental counselling, confessional therapy. He knew Pragya. It was going to be a moral third degree. As for him, he recognized the protective capacity of denial.

  ‘I know you didn’t,’ he said to the kid. A gentle lifelong fiction they would foster and share. Absolutely reciprocal.