She’d tied me to the bedposts one hot afternoon when we heard footsteps followed by banging on the bedroom door. At first I thought Bibiji had escaped. Then the door crashed open, and Mr. Khanna stood before us in a brown safari suit. We had carelessly left the back door unlocked. I wrenched myself free of my restraints, chafing my wrists badly.
Panic flowered on Sarika’s face, but only for a moment. With exaggerated slowness, she reached for her bra and bathrobe, while I stumbled into my discarded jeans and T-shirt.
“If you can’t knock like a civilized person, at least have the courtesy to look away,” she said to her husband. But I could see that her hands were shaking.
Mr. Khanna’s wide, brutish face appeared paralyzed on one side. “All these years I thought the hag was half-mad,” he said hoarsely. “Then one day I asked myself: Ashok, how long since Sarika nagged you for anything? She seems content. What has changed?” He licked his lips as if they were parched. “You were certainly clever, Sarika. It took my man quite a while to discover your tricks.” He produced an envelope and threw it at her. Photos spilled to the floor.
“Get out,” Sarika said, eyes looking down. It took me a second to realize she meant me. I was flustered, but worried for her safety. “Now,” she hissed. “I’ll take care of it.”
“Sorry, Uncleji,” I mumbled stupidly as I passed Mr. Khanna. The thick, stubby fingers of his right hand were clenched as though around an invisible club.
“Beta,” he said, “ask your bua to arrange your funeral party.”
I grabbed my satchel from the dining table and fled. Bibiji, let free, was shucking peas on the floor. She rocked back and forth and chanted noisily.
Later that night, I climbed up to my bua’s flat, my heart flap-ping like a wild bird in a cage. Everyone was watching TV with blank expressions. Nothing has happened, I thought. Sarika has managed it. Then Bua rose and asked me to follow her to the veranda. I saw the smirks on my cousins’ faces and my legs turned to leaden weights.
Mr. Khanna had been over. He claimed I’d dropped in on Sarika asking for more cash. I’d complained that my bua withheld food and money. Sarika had listened because I’d been so respectful in the past. Then, in full view of Bibiji, I’d tried to give Sarika a hug. She had smelled cheap liquor on my breath and gently pushed me away. I was a boy, and boys can get stupid ideas when they have a woman’s attention. But I had been insistent. I’d demanded a kiss. I had pulled so hard on Sarika’s arm that I had badly bruised her.
I flinched. I knew who had caused that injury. Then I saw how red Bua’s eyes were.
“You have one hour to pack your things,” she said.
“Where will I go?” I said, becoming angry. My college exams were a week away.
“I don’t know. Stay with a friend. Get a hotel with all the money you are making. Go indulge your new habits—fancy clothes and, now, drinking.”
“What Mr. Khanna told you wasn’t the truth,” I said quietly.
“Sarika has a known reputation, beta. But this is a public shaming. Whatever his reasons, Khanna will make trouble if he sees you here.”
As I was leaving, she stuffed some hundred-rupee notes into my hand. I didn’t refuse, but once outside I dropped the notes in the mail slot.
I camped outside the graveyard gates with my bags. There were any number of cheap hotels in Paharganj, but I was in the mood to see what destitution felt like. The air was dusty and full of exhaust fumes. Till midnight, traffic was brisk on Ramdwara Road, with people buying vegetables by the hiss of gas lanterns and groups of raggedy foreigners stumbling to their hovels, high on hashish. Soon, the market began closing down. A number of vendors put out their bedding right on their stands and carts. The smell of rotting vegetables hung like an unwelcome blanket in the night heat, the quiet broken by snatches of disco music blaring from hotel rooftops.
I was jostled awake during the night, I thought, by someone brushing against my luggage with evil intentions. But it was just stray dogs chasing enormous rats.
In the morning, Johnny took me to his bachelor abode. It was what I’d imagined for my sisters and me—one room in an alley not far from the lodge where I met some of my aunties. It overlooked a shared courtyard with a peepal tree. Johnny owned a kerosene stove, some aluminum pots and utensils, one wooden cot, and a trunk. There were no family photos. The solitary bright spot was a postcard taped on the wall showing blue skies over a white sand beach.
“My cousin in Mauritius,” he explained. “He says I should emigrate, but I’m too old.”
“Thank you, Johnny,” I said. “As soon as my exams are over I’ll find another place.”
“Play chess with me every night, and you can stay forever.”
That evening the power went out while I was studying, and, with a hand on my thigh, he made a very different request of me. It was put gently, but with a clear expectation. Initially I was anxious, even fearful. But unlike my last lover, Johnny was tender in his attentions before he was forceful. Later I realized I enjoyed being held in the safety of his short, burly arms.
I knew Sarika would be waiting for a message so we could settle accounts and discuss the future. If she was aware how close I was, we could find a way to meet. I was sure even she was feeling badly about turning me in.
Meanwhile, I had to resume business on my own. I phoned an aunty by the alias of Devika. This lady, whose voice I knew well, said, “Wrong number.” I wasn’t concerned; it only meant I’d called at an inconvenient time. But two days later, the number was cut off. In this way, one by one, the numbers in my diary disappeared from service, snuffed out by an invisible hand.
I went to see the aunty on Doctor’s Lane, and another bungalow I’d visited many times near Bengali Market. I rang and knocked in both places, but no one answered.
“Friend,” I told Johnny one morning during these harrowing days, “one more favor from you. Please take a message to a lady in Basant Lane. Tell her I need to settle my tuition account.” I’d told Johnny I’d fought with my bua and it was awkward going back to the railway colony. For his trouble, I put money into the pocket of his shirt hanging on a nail.
“I am a bachelor,” he protested. “What use do I have for that?” But I didn’t listen; I needed as little charity as possible. As he dressed to leave, I wrapped what was left of my earnings inside my underwear and locked them in my suitcase.
All day I paced in his room. As the sun got stronger, the walls heated up, until I felt I was being slowly cooked. In the late afternoon I must have fallen asleep. When I awoke, my half-shirt drenched in sweat, Johnny was priming the kerosene stove in the dark, the blue flame lighting up his creased face. The way he crouched on his haunches, his compact upper body folded over as he worked, made me feel a pang of affection for him, my one loyal friend.
“I met your lady friend in the railway flats,” he said. “She wouldn’t let me in. She said no one needs a tutor now.”
“What about settling what she owes me? For her nephew’s tuition?”
“She got angry. She said: ‘We’ve paid our dues. Tell the tutor to keep what he has. But there is no more work.’ Then she shut the door in my face.”
It was as though someone had shot me point-blank through the heart. In bed that night, I turned away when Johnny reached for me. He was silent for a while. Then he said, in his somber way: “I don’t know all your troubles, Mukesh. But if you’ve been treated unjustly, you must stand up for yourself.”
Over several mornings I wandered down Basant Lane with a dark umbrella over my head, looking over the boundary wall at the buildings rising in staggered rows. Days of punishing sunlight had unevenly bleached the pink distemper on the outside of the buildings; to my eyes they had a mottled, diseased appearance.
I was sure Sarika was padlocking her doors now. I noticed that adjoining flats on each floor shared the narrow servants’ balcony, with just a wall dividing it into two parts. A plan took shape in my head.
I knew Sarika headed to her gy
m and beauty salon on Monday mornings. I waited with my umbrella outside the colony gate to see if this ritual had changed, and, indeed, it had not. I followed her as she walked to the taxi stand on the main road. Her slender profile from the back, the sight of her pert shoulders in a T-shirt, made me melt through the center of my body.
By the following Monday my preparations were complete. I bought a length of strong rope, a crowbar, and a switchblade, and I put them inside a backpack. I got my hair cut with a quarter-inch clipper. Johnny said I looked different, tougher.
I shaved closely and wore dark glasses and clean pants, shirt, and shoes. “Soon I’ll stop being a burden on you,” I told my friend. He shook his head at me indulgently, but I knew what I had to do.
I walked one last time toward Basant Lane. I entered the colony compound with confidence, my backpack over my shoulder. The guard at the gate saluted smartly. I climbed up the stairs in Sarika’s building two at a time.
As I had expected, the front door of her flat had a large lock on the outside. The servant’s door appeared bolted and locked from the inside—Bibiji was trapped. But the neighbor’s service entrance was open; they illegally sublet their quarters and people always went in and out. I stepped through and walked along the servants’ balcony toward Sarika’s side. It was quiet. If anyone saw me, I would say I was Mrs. Khanna’s nephew, locked out by my aunt.
I straddled the dividing wall between the two flats, hanging precariously off the parapet as I crossed over. A vein in my temple throbbed. I found the door to Sarika’s kitchen latched from inside, but I was a contractor’s son and knew railway construction. I cracked open the foot latch with a few kicks, then leaned against the lower part of the door. It strained open a few inches. I reached into the gap with my crowbar and pried down the top latch.
I found Bibiji cowering on the living room floor. She hiccupped and gurgled as I tied up her hands and wrapped a strip of cloth around her mouth. Her eyes widened when I used my knife to cut the rope. She fell down as if dead. I picked her up and took her to her room.
For an hour I examined every item in the household: refrigerator magnets, ashtrays, the doll case, confidential files in Mr. Khanna’s desk. I lay on Sarika’s bed, but it felt strange and unfamiliar somehow. I searched through open cupboards for money, though all I found were bedsheets and pillowcases.
I heard the front door open and close, and then the squeak of the inner deadbolt being drawn. If only we had taken such precautions before. I waited in Bibiji’s room, where the old woman lay facedown, groaning occasionally.
Sarika screamed once, seeing Bibiji trussed up like a goat, but I had my knife out and Sarika was a smart woman. I made her sit down in a chair and tied her hands and ankles. She was wearing a polo shirt, light jeans, sneakers. She had cropped her hair below her ears. It made her look even more like a boy. Her hands smelled of fresh nail polish. Her left eye twitched and she cringed at my touch, but she stayed quiet.
“I came to settle our business,” I said, keeping my voice steady even though my temples were pounding hard.
“The network is gone,” she replied, leaning forward. “I told your friend with the long face.”
“Mr. Khanna shut it down?” I said, trying to sound reasonable.
“I did,” she shot back. “Ashok knew about the boys, but not yet all the ladies.”
“There were other boys?” I burst out without thinking.
Contempt flashed across her face. “Poor Mukesh,” she said, despite her position. “You were only the cheapest.”
I winced and shut my eyes. I clenched my aching head between my fists, the knife in my hand. When I opened my eyes, she was attempting to rise.
“Don’t move!” I shouted. I was finished with her indignities. “I’m only asking once: Where is the money?” I held up the knife.
“There is two thousand in the almirah. Untie Bibiji and I’ll get it. But if you ever return, my husband will be waiting.” Was it fear or amusement in the curl of her lips?
“I’m not a thief who needs to hide. I came for my due, not charity.”
She looked at me as though I were an exasperating child. “Then why threaten me with this bandit act? Ask the one who has it.”
“Mr. Khanna?”
“My husband doesn’t need your money,” she said scornfully. “Your sad-faced friend. I wondered why you sent him. I could tell he was unreliable with just a glance.”
I felt punched in the gut. My legs became unsteady. “Why would you lie?” I cried hoarsely.
“What kind of company are you keeping? You’ve forgotten everything I taught you.” She’d risen to her feet despite my admonition. She held out her hands in a wordless demand to be untied. She was commanding me, just as she always had, from the day we met in her flat to the last time she farmed me out as her bull.
I stood staring at her open-mouthed. I should have known she’d efficiently neutralize my threats. Cornered and defeated, I raised my knife to slash her ropes, but just then, a sharp knock on the front door startled us both.
“Sarika,” a gruff, familiar voice called out. “Open the door. Are you alone?”
For a moment I thought time itself had unwound—a strange, sick sensation.
“Good work, Mukesh,” Sarika said. “Did you alert him before coming?” But there was a false note in her bravado now.
“What is he doing here?” I hissed, as the knocking changed into banging. The room was beginning to spin.
“He must have posted his man outside. Did you think of that when you made your plan?”
The pounding grew insistent. Bibiji groaned. Mr. Khanna was making loud threats that he’d break the front door down, that no barrier could keep Sarika from him. The bolt on the door, though strong, couldn’t hold him out indefinitely.
“What should I do?” I asked, my gut in my throat. I was completely in her hands once again.
We heard the cracking of wood and metal. But instead of panicking, Sarika grew thoughtful. Slowly, her face took on an expression of perverse satisfaction, like those moments when she would examine her love bruises. “Stab me,” she whispered, like an endearment.
I looked at her in fear and disbelief.
“You have to,” she said calmly. “Remember, the ropes won’t convince him.”
“I couldn’t,” I said, trembling like a man with convulsions.
“Do it,” she ordered. “Now! Quick.” And she smiled the most chilling smile I have ever seen. “Bring it here, I’ll help you.”
I ran back to Paharganj. I kept waiting for shouts from behind me, a crowd chasing me down. Instead, people backed away when they saw the blood on my shirt. A foreigner with matted hair, wearing a torn shirt and lungi, said, “Man, are you okay?” but I brushed past him. When I got to Johnny’s, my luggage was lying outside his door. My clothes were there but the money was gone from my suitcase. The lock on the door had been changed. I peered inside through a crack in the courtyard-side window. The room was empty. I pulled out a fresh shirt. My fingers were so rigid, my hands shook so hard, unfastening and fastening buttons took an eternity.
I abandoned my luggage and went to the cemetery. The workers grinned and told me Johnny Sahib had already left on a holiday. I came out in the bright, hot street and wanted to find a place to lay my head. There was so much time till nightfall. I stopped by an open gutter and heaved. Sarika didn’t have to help me in the end; the knife had slipped into her side with effortless satisfaction. “It feels like heaven,” she’d said, her fair face twisted in pain. She had fallen in an awful corkscrew motion, on her knees then her hands. “First-class first,” she’d said, before she closed her eyes. Did she know it felt good to me too? Hell was the look on Mr. Khanna’s face as we passed each other in the living room, my bloody knife in my hand.
I wandered through the alleys and byways of Paharganj for hours. I ventured by New Delhi Station but there were too many police cars. Eventually, it was dark. I knew I had to run but first I needed to rest. I scoped
the cemetery perimeter until I found a place I could clamber over. With difficulty I scaled the wall and jumped inside. I found a freshly dug grave and crawled in. The earth was cool as I lay on my back. I stared at the inky sky and waited for dawn’s unforgiving light.
HOSTEL
BY SIDDHARTH CHOWDHURY
Delhi University, North Campus
The first time I saw Zorawar Singh Shokeen was through the small gap between the doors connecting my room in Shokeen Niwas to the adjoining one. He sat astride a large, naked Punjabi woman in her late thirties who had buttocks that even film star Asha Parekh would be proud of. She was on her knees, at the edge of Jishnu Sharma’s cot. Jishnu da (MA, Previous, English, Ramjas), meanwhile, was in my room looking as usual philosophical and tragic. His left hand was buried in his loose, discolored Tweety Pie Bermuda shorts which he never washed. In fact the shorts were so stiff with profligacy that the story went that once during an argument in the hostel over who was supposed to pay for the Old Monk khamba that Friday night, Jishnu da in anger had taken off his shorts and thrown them in Farid Ashraf’s face. Though Farid managed to turn his head in time, he cut his fingers on the razor-sharp edges of Jishnu da’s shorts. The next day Farid (third-year History Honors, KMC) had to get a tetanus shot.
So right now, with his left hand Jishnu da was “making baingan bharta,” in his own immortal words. Eight or ten boys from the neighboring rooms were clustered in mine, their faces shining with barely repressed lust, the air dank with sweat and Navy Cut smoke. It was 2 o’clock in the afternoon on a hot July day in 1992 and I had just returned to my room after my first day at Zakir Husain College. A week earlier I and my friend Pranjal Sinha had arrived in Delhi from Patna and landed up at Shokeen Niwas. Pranjal had taken admission in Hindu College reading Economics while I got English at Zakir.
“He has taken her once in the chut, then in her mouth, now he is doing her ass,” Pranjal informed me in a cool matter-of-fact way, after taking a long drag from his cigarette. He added as an afterthought, “Jishnu da too is on his third shot.” Then he bowed and beckoned me to the slightly ajar door.
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