by Cleo Odzer
The rains came. Bombay was as deserted as Goa had been. By this time anybody with half a mind had found some way to leave the country. Only the last drugs of the down-and-outers remained.
Bila from Dipti's allowed me to eat on credit, but I knew that many failed Goa Freaks owed him money, and he couldn't afford to support us all. Because of us Bila was in debt himself. I hated to take advantage of his generosity. I limited myself to one dish of his ice cream a day. The man from the travel agency that arranged visa renewals lent me rupees for a few days at the hotel.
A week later I was still desperate and also hungry. Not eating because you didn't have money to buy food was different from not eating because you were too stoned to eat. I wasn't anywhere near stoned. I rationed myself tiny bits of the tola of opium I'd acquired on credit from the Chor Bazaar opium den.
July 1979. Birmingham Bobby approached me on the street, hoping for a free hit of dope. After I disappointed him by not having any, he recounted the police trouble the Birmingham Boys had had in England: Birmingham Timmy was in jail there, Bobby himself couldn't return. Like me, Bobby was broke.
He slept on the streets with the beggars.
Holy cow! Living like an Indian beggar. Could that happen to me? It was not impossible, I concluded.
And so, in fear of a similar face, I contacted Rachid and became initiated into his traveller’s checks scam. Fleecing vacationers seemed the only means of survival. As I spent days in the rain with Dandruff and luckless tourists, I consoled my conscience by thinking they'd get their traveller’s checks refunded. The taste of raspberry doughnuts also helped soothe my mind. At least I no longer worried about food, drugs, or shelter.
Or rather, I didn't worry until I found myself in the New Delhi police station. With Dandruff in the cell that said "Ladies." And me in a police inspector's office. Under a desk. Chained to the desk. With the inspector stroking my hair and whispering how he would make everything okay.
"You are not having to cry," he said. "I can make everything okay for you. I can take away this manacle even, if you are wishing."
Arrested and chained to a desk—what to do now? I wanted to sleep. I wanted to forget everything for a while. How to handle the inspector? I didn't have many options. I could hassle with the guy, make a fuss, make an enemy of him, and probably not be able to sleep for hours. Or I could manipulate him with a clever story so he'd leave me alone. But that, too, would take hours, and my brain didn't have the energy to be that creative. Or I could give him what he wanted, which probably wouldn't take five minutes. After that I'd be able to sleep in peace. Maybe he'd even help me out of this mess. Of the choices, his way seemed the easiest and the most potentially rewarding.
"Okay," I told him.
"Okay?"
In the darkness I imagined a lecherous smile on his face. With a clanging, rattling, and jangling, he unchained my leg—and it didn't even take five minutes. After another two, I slept.
Morning filled the Office with activity—servants ferried glasses of water, police bandied papers, civilians shot in and out asking questions. The inspector couldn't have been sweeter to me. He plied me with tea and fried Indian food; jumped to find someone to accompany me to the bathroom every time I wanted to go; asked if I needed anything, anything at all. He treated Dandruff differently. He kept Dandruff handcuffed to a wooden chair, ignored everything he said, and spoke to him harshly. Dandruff hadn't had dope since the day before and felt sick. Good—the double-crossing creep. I had a ball of opium inside my dress.
In the afternoon Dandruff and I were driven to a courthouse. Rachid sent a lawyer for us, but I had barely spoken a word to him before being deposited in a lathes' bathroom, where two fat females in white saris guarded me. When they called me to the courtroom, Dandruff and I were pushed through a mob of turbaned Sikh lawyers and their clients. I didn't know when our turn had come. Our lawyer stood three feet, but several people, away, and I couldn't understand a word he said. Then I was led back to the bathroom. What had been decided? What would happen to me now? No one could understand my questions.
In the evening a guard ushered me to a truck. Scores of chained male prisoners were herded inside, and then, after a grilled door had been closed behind them, I was signalled to climb aboard. A long ride later we arrived at Tihar Jail. Machine guns protruded from corner towers. Machine guns! Yippee.
Once we were inside, a guard brought me to a side area. Another female prisoner waited there. She was being searched.
Oh, shit! My Opium. I couldn't lose the opium now. Oh, no!
I hurriedly dog it from my dress and held it in my palm. One of the guards ran her hands over my body. While she searched my feet I shoved the opium under my tongue. She moved up my torso and opened each palm in turn. Nothing there. With my head bent down so she could slide her hands through my hair, I snatched the opium from my mouth and pressed it into my hand again. Next she looked in my mouth—behind every tooth. She was satisfied.
Whew! How had I managed that?
The Indian prisoners went in one direction, and I was led in another through a garden, into a maze of walls.
"Here she is!" I heard suddenly, and I saw two Westerners run to me with big smiles. "Hello, there! Welcome to Tihar. I'm Frin. This is Marie-Andree."
Marie-Andree spoke Hindi to the guard, who then went away. What a relief to be among people I could communicate with—and they seemed thrilled by my arrival. They lavished good wishes on me as they took me to our quarters. Originally isolation cells, the compound now housed foreign nationals.
"We have this whole area for ourselves," I was told. "Tomorrow we'll show you around. Class A prisoners five in a mansion. That's where they kept Indira Gandhi."
"Indira Gandhi was here? Wow!"
"Tihar is a renowned prison," said Frin. "You know the entrance hall you just passed? That's where Sanjay Gandhi made his famous speech after his arrest."
Our compound had ten cells. The three of us occupied the front ones. At the other end lived an Indian prisoner who acted as Frin and Marie-Andree's servant. Her three children stayed with her. The other cells were empty. Each had two rooms: an outer one, with Bars on the front and roof, and an inner one with a toilet, and plastered ceiling and walls. A barred door connected the two rooms. Marie-Andree draped a blanket over mine for privacy. Frin filled my arms with necessary items, like mosquito repellent, toothpaste, and toilet paper.
Marie-Andree had decorated her rooms with pictures, electronics, and brought-in furniture. As the three of us lounged on her comfortable sofa and enjoyed the dinner cooked by the servant, we exchanged information about ourselves.
Marie-Andree, a French Canadian, had been arrested three years before when her boyfriend, Charles Sobraj, was picked up for mass murder. Apparently while the two of them had been travelling Asia, Charles had been leaving a trail of dead bodies. The authorities didn't believe Marie-Andree had been ignorant of Charles's escapades and arrested them together. With her case famous in Canada, Marie-Andree received stacks of letters from people wanting to help her. She even had one from Prime Minister Trudeau.
Frin, an American, had been caught at the airport smuggling hash. She'd been in Tihar eight months. She and Marie-Andree were pleased to have new company and sounded disappointed when I told them I was in for possessing stolen traveller’s checks.
"That's nothing," said Frin. "You won't be here long."
When I asked about buying opium, Marie-Andree said she'd speak to Charles. In the same way he'd enchanted his victims before killing them Charles bad charmed the director of Tihar. He had the run of the prison and met with Marie-Andree several times a day.
At ten o'clock a guard wearing a sari and jingling her keys came to lock the doors. In a last-minute scramble Frin and Marie-Andree checked that I had everything I'd need.
"Here's a candle in case you want to read after lights-out. You have matches? Mosquito repellent?"
Locked in for the night, I moved the mattress to the front cel
l to sleep under the stars. Tomorrow I wouldn't have to wangle traveller’s checks from tourists. I wouldn't have to stand with hapless vacationers as they realized their vacation funds had been stolen. Tomorrow I wouldn't have to worry about starving or sleeping on the streets. Maybe this wasn't a bad place to spend the monsoon, after all.
Rock and roll blared from Frin's radio next door. When Elvis came on singing "Jailhouse Rock," Marie-Andree asked her to make it louder, danced. I danced with a door knob like I did at the age of thirteen to the TV show "American Bandstand." The blanket-covered door swung open and closed to my steps.
"If you can't find a partner, use a wooden chair, let's rock, let's rock everybody in the old cellblock was dancing to the jailhouse rock."
The next day I joined Marie-Andree for visiting hours. Class A visiting hours. Visits for the lower classes involved crowded clumps of relatives shouting at crowded clumps of prisoners through three sets of bars. The Class A lounge comprised separate areas of tables and armchairs. I was dying to meet Charles. It's not often one is introduced to a mass murderer.
Shortish and handsome, he had a mesmerizing dazzle to him. His gaze projected genuine concern as he informed me that my opium would be delivered the next morning.
Life looked peachy. I hoped the lawyer wouldn't release me too quickly. I hated the thought of going back to hustling tourists. No, this wasn't a bad place at all. I loved jail.
The next morning I lay nude in the sun after a delicious breakfast made by the servant. A guard arrived and motioned for me to collect my things and follow her. When Marie-Andree ran over to investigate the unusual request, I realized something was wrong. Foreign words flew between them. Marie-Andree grew miffed.
"What's happening?" I asked her.
"It is so stupid. They want to move you to Nari Katin."
"What’s that?"
"It is for juveniles! I am telling her you are not a juvenile."
"I'm twenty-nine."
More exasperated words in Hindi.
"You have to go," Marie-Andree said to me. "They think are sixteen."
"That's ridiculous! They have my passport."
"The director does not believe it. He says you do not look more than sixteen."
People always mistook me for younger than my age, but this was crazy. The man had my passport.
My one dress hung where the servant had left it to dry after washing. Frin lent me one of hers. Marie-Andree packed me a basket of fruit and sundries, and I was whisked away. But my opium! I wouldn't survive long without it, and it would be delivered any second!
No way to stall. The guard led me through the compound where Sanjay Gandhi made his speech and out of Tihar by a side door. Along a dirt path parallel to the road, she escorted me to Nari Katin. I was directed through more gateways and finally to an end building.
Within half an hour of arriving at my new residence, I panicked. Nobody spoke English. Not a soul. Not one word. I was surrounded by young girls, some no more than nine or ten, most of them teenagers. At first a supervisor brought me to a dormitory where sixty beds crammed together. Then she took me to a side room with eight beds. She pointed to an empty bed and patted it. It was a bed in function only, bearing little resemblance to what I'd consider the definition of the term. It was wood. No mattress. No pillow. I was presented with a blanket and a folded rag that was supposed to act as a sheet but that did not come close to approaching the ends of the "bed."
My seven roommates stared at me. They giggled and whispered until they realized I couldn't understand what they were saying, then they snickered and talked louder. Little by little every girl in the complex came to stand in the doorway and look. The latecomers pressed the earlier ones further into the room until they had me surrounded. One touched my hair, and soon a dozen fingers were testing its texture. Growing braver, they explored all of me and all of my things, and by the time one of my roommates shooed them out, half my fruit was missing.
It took linguistic feats coupled with acrobatics to discover the whereabouts of the bathroom. Nothing in my previous travels had prepared me for what I eventually found.
A long building that was once a series of sleeping rooms, its corridor abounded in turds. More turds and running urine covered every room. A six-inch concrete platform in each room seemed to be the most popular place on which to squat and drop one's faeces, but by no means did the prisoners restrict themselves to these areas. They shat wherever there was room for another pile. No toilet paper; I bet none of the girls had ever heard of it. Each room had a spigot, but only one produced water. Apparently the working spigot was where dishes, clothes, and teeth were washed. Needless to say, that room was full of shit too.
Get me out of here.
Dinner consisted of a plate of cold rice and a cold chapati, a round flat bread that was tasty when fresh and warm but miserable when old and cold. Ugh—I had a cup of tea.
I needed opium. That was my most pressing problem. I would run out the next day. But how could I acquire any when no one understood what I said? I tried the words "opium" and "chando" with a few of the girls. The effort did little more than entertain them. They watched me mouth words and gesticulate as if I were a mime artist brought in for their amusement. They didn't seem to interpret it as an attempt to communicate.
A pack of nine-year-olds followed me and peered at me from behind pillars. My roommates were older than the other 'prisoners,' and sometimes they came to my rescue, but only after indulging in a long belly laugh at my predicament.
Help—get me out of here!
I slept the first night to the sound of seven people breathing and tossing about. At noon the next day I swallowed the last of my opium. Now what do I do?
My fruit disappeared, everything disappeared. They stole all Marie-Andree's provisions except for the mosquito repellent. I roamed the buildings around the courtyard searching for inspiration or for someone who spoke English. There was neither. Only the front door was locked, and through it came the occasional supervisor. As each new supervisor arrived I tested her as a potential ally, but always with negative results. Not one understood what I said or cared to. As the afternoon progressed I became frantic. The Opium was coursing itself out of my body. What do I do? I couldn't imagine being sick in a place like that. I scanned the rooftops. Could I escape over them?
GET ME OUT OF HERE.
More meals of cold rice. I drank the tea. By night time I was terrified. What would I be like in the morning?
When I awoke to the next day's bang and clatter, I was afraid to open my eyes and take stock of my body. It was, however, impossible to sleep with seven people moving around and dragging things noisily across the floor. The wood beneath me dug into my right shoulder, my hip bone, one knee, and an elbow. When someone burst into the room screeching, I surrendered hope of falling back to sleep. How did I feel? Scared. And weak. Uncomfortable. And hot. I threw off the blanket and sat up. Four little girls hung on the doorjamb and stared at me. Now I was freezing. Here it goes. It's starting. Now I'd just get sicker and sicker.
I wrapped the blanket around me like an Eskimo and rushed out of the room. I went to the locked front entrance. Nobody there. I prowled the courtyard. No one anywhere. Only children. Children who spoke English. Three paraded behind me, giggling. I returned to the front door and waited there a while, but nothing happened. Nobody came. I had to calm down, I told myself. I wasn't that sick. Maybe the opium had withdrawn me from the smack the way methadone did for heroin users. On the other hand, if the sickness was just starting, now was my chance for action, while I wasn't that bad. But there was nothing on which to act. CALM DOWN.
If only I had something to read. Or something to do. But there was nothing. What about a sunbath? Maybe I could enjoy the hot sun on my skin.
I went to the far corner of the courtyard, spread the blanket on the concrete, took off my clothes, and lay down. Every single one of the girls came out and stared at me. I closed my eyes.
Within a minute I hear
d a voice. "Please, you dress," it said. I looked up to see a woman in a green sari. "Have you no shame?" she continued. "We do not behave in that manner in this country."
As I shake my head I saw eighty girls laughing hysterically. Oh, yes, now I remembered. Indians never saw each other naked. They never even looked at their own bodies. When they washed themselves, they kept their clothes on and washed around this and around that. I'd forgotten.
I dressed and went searching for that woman. She'd spoken English. Where had she gone?
I found her in a room adjacent to the dormitory. I begged her. "I have to get out of this place! I don't belong here! I'm twenty-nine! I've been living in India four years! Get me back to Tihar! Please!"
"I am sorry," she said. "I am simply the music teacher. You must to speak with someone else."
"But nobody understands me!"
"I am sorry. I can do nothing." She held an odd-shaped stringed instrument that she offered to one of the girls sitting at her feet. The girl accepted it and plucked. A twang filled the air.
Get me out of here.
I paced the room while the teacher instructed the girls how to twang mercilessly on the instrument. They ignored me. I had to do something. Think! Think! Think! Suddenly pieces of glass from a nearby broken window sparked an idea. Could I fake a suicide attempt? I selected a triangle of glass, looked sharp. Filthy. I made a swipe with it along my wrist. Ugh—the glass was so dirty I'd probably get tetanus or something. I made another cut. It didn't bleed, but I couldn't bring myself to do more. I squeezed out a speck of blood. I looked around. Nobody cared what I was doing. Finally I heard someone walk nearby, and I turned to provide her with a better view. Footsteps. I heard an exclamation; I'd been spotted. An older girl removed the glass from my hand. She called the teacher. I gave another squeeze to produce blood.