A Distant Heart

by Sonali Dev

  Handing Kirit the tea, she withdrew into the kitchen and retrieved a water-soaked piece of cloth. It was a piece of her old cotton sari that she sewed and quilted into napkins and bandages for Rahul’s constantly scraped knees and elbows. She pushed him into a chair, and wiped his bleeding nose and dabbed his bruised jaw. But she would not berate him for being a ruffian, not when the man who was alive because his father was dead sat on the divan next to them, and with two aunts from their floor and his grandfather from Pune looking on for good measure.

  Kirit had been like an ant infestation these past few weeks. Rahul couldn’t seem to shake him off. He kept coming over and trying to strike up conversations with Rahul. But Rahul had a hard enough time talking to Aie and Mona and Mohit, so talking to a man he hated with such ferocity was out of the question.

  Finally, when the silence became too heavy to breathe around, Kirit spoke. “Your mother tells me that you and your brother and sister have not yet returned to school.”

  Rahul had been thinking about that. While he hungered to go somewhere where his mind would have something to do other than what it did now—play memories in an endless loop all day—the idea of being stuck for hours in a place where everyone knew him and therefore expected him to act the way he had before was out of the question. The only thing worse would be if they didn’t expect him to be the same person.

  In either case, what he and his brother and sister did was not the politician’s concern. Why couldn’t the man stop coming around and rubbing in their faces the fact that he was alive and kicking?

  When Rahul didn’t respond, his mother said, “Patil-saheb wants you and Mona and Mohit to go to St. Mary’s—that English school across the tracks by the bay.”

  Rahul pushed his mother’s hand away. His nose wasn’t the only thing throbbing. His entire body vibrated with anger. “No.”

  Everyone in the room looked at one another as though he, not they, had lost his mind. Didn’t they see that Baba would still be here if not for this man?

  But those looks held another truth. Suddenly, these decisions lay on his shoulders.

  Sometimes Aie used to ask him what he’d like for dinner. She usually gave him a say in what she packed in his tiffin box for lunch. But other than that both Baba and she had expected the children to do as they were told. Rahul hadn’t realized what a gift that had been.

  Now all those eyes stared at him, as though things of this magnitude suddenly were his to decide. Their gazes reminded him of the impact of the bullets that had vibrated through the air before exploding Baba’s chest. And like the bullets, the looks changed everything irreversibly.

  Over his mother’s head he saw his baby sister hiding behind the curtain that separated the outside room from the inside room. Aie had sewn it from an old bedsheet last year to provide Rahul some privacy when he did his homework in the inside room. Mona clung to the curtain the way she had taken to clinging to Rahul, not letting him go even as she slept fitfully, her open mouth drooling, her nose sniffling at intervals as though in sleep she registered her suddenly scary world in beats.

  Her eyes watched him and he gave her the barest nod, answering the question in her beautiful eyes, indicating that yes, she could come to him. She jogged across the room self-consciously and snuggled up next to him on Baba’s wicker easy chair with its long arms.

  “It’s the best education money can buy in this city,” the minister said, watching them with his always calculating eyes.

  “We don’t have money of that kind,” Rahul said, not recognizing the adult voice coming from his mouth. Not recognizing anything anymore. All the comfort and familiarity his home had been steeped in had disappeared, gone with such finality it might as well never have existed.

  “You don’t have to pay for it.” Kirit’s gaze fell somewhere between respect and a challenge. So this was how adults talked to each other, with their eyes and their tone filling in the gaps children could never quite fill in. Kirit waited to make sure Rahul understood, then filled that gap for him anyway. “I’ll take care of everything.”

  Blood money.

  Baba had used that phrase to describe the money the gangster Azaad bhai paid every month to the family who lived in the block right below them. Their oldest son had died in an encounter with the police. Died for Azaad bhai, apparently.

  “We can’t take your money. We won’t.” Not when his bullets had melted with Baba’s ashes.

  Baba would never have wanted that.

  Or would he?

  “We can think about it, right, Rahul?” his mother said gently, that deference in her voice like barbed wire around his wrists.

  Kirit got up and walked to him. Rahul had the urge to rise, to meet him halfway, to somehow not be dwarfed by him. He stayed in the chair, his sister tucked into his side, his mother leaning on the chair back, his baby brother fast asleep on a quilt on the floor. Kirit sank to his haunches and spoke directly to Mona. “What do you want to be when you grow up?”

  “A doctor,” Mona said without hesitation. Baba had bought her a toy doctor set on his last payday. Ever since then, she had been pushing that stethoscope into the chest of anyone who would get within arm’s distance of her. Suddenly, Rahul was grateful she hadn’t been in that hospital that day. Her dream remained untainted. For that one thing, at least, Rahul didn’t feel like such a failure.

  Kirit smiled as though Mona had impressed him deeply. “My wife wants our little girl to be a doctor too, like her grandfather,” Kirit said, and for one moment he looked just like Baba had looked when he talked about them. “You know you have to study very hard to be a doctor. Almost hundred percent on all your exams.”

  “She’s only six years old,” Rahul cut in, and Kirit turned his focus on him.

  “You know that medical college, engineering college, any college, in fact, is all in English in our country, correct?”

  Rahul refused to flinch. “Our school teaches English.” He switched to English. “Mona can speak English.” He sounded like he was reading a sentence out of Mona’s textbook: This is Mona. Mona can speak English.

  “I speak English. I write English.” Mona recited next to him, and he dropped a kiss on her head.

  Kirit patted her cheek and turned to Rahul again. “I’ve looked at your report cards. Your marks are impressive. Near one hundred percent on everything. You could be whatever you choose to be. English as a second language will only hold you back.”

  And my father had to die in your place for me to get that? It wasn’t an option. Rahul would take his chances with what Baba had provided.

  Kirit stood. “There’s no hurry. This is a lot to think about. Talk to your mother before you make up your mind. I’ll come back tomorrow.”

  * * *

  Aie wasn’t speaking to him. She placed the steel plate with his favorite okra with dal and rice on the cement floor in front of him, with a little more force than necessary. Mona raised startled eyes at Aie and then looked at Rahul for an explanation. He gave her a nod. Eat, don’t worry. He wanted her not to worry. He wanted to wipe that look from her eyes forever. The constant fear of someone walking on a shaky bridge over deep water when they didn’t know how to swim. A look too old for her beloved face.

  Mohit, on the other hand, hadn’t registered that their lives had altered in any way. Every evening when the sun sank down to the edge of the sky, which was usually the time Baba came home, he ran to the railing that edged the veranda connecting the blocks on their floor and pressed his face between the timber spindles. His eyes brightened as other fathers returning home from work walked across the courtyard playground, then deflated each time he realized they weren’t Baba. When Rahul could’t take it anymore, he would pick up Mohit, grab his plastic cricket bat and ball, and take him down to play. Just that easily Mohit would forget. Until dinnertime when he’d ask again. “Dada, when will Baba come home?”

  Aie’s eyes would fill and Rahul would try again to distract his three-year-old mind with cricket or a st
ory.

  Aie mixed a bowl of rice and dal and placed it, a little more gently, in front of Mohit. He stuffed his mouth until his cheeks puffed out. As soon as he started to chew, the excess rice squeezed out between his lips. Without even thinking about it, Aie swiped it off his mouth with her fingers and glared at Rahul.

  “Do you realize how selfish you are being?” She popped the excess rice back into Mohit’s mouth.

  “You want to take money from the man responsible for Baba’s death?” Rahul still couldn’t believe he could use that tone with Aie when just weeks ago she would have slapped him upside the head for it.

  “Don’t talk like a mad person, beta. I’ve stayed silent so far because I know what you’ve been through. You’ve been so brave.” Her eyes softened. “But it was your baba’s job to protect the minister and he did his job like the brave, upstanding man he was. Like an officer.” Her voice wobbled before cracking again. Baba had worked his way up the ranks from constable to naik to hawaldar, and then studied hard to take the exams that let him jump to the position of assistant sub-inspector. “You are insulting his memory by blaming the minister for his death.”

  Mona started spilling tears into her food, and Rahul pushed away his plate, stood, and lifted her onto his hip. He carried her out and sat down on Baba’s easy chair. His hands were clean. He hadn’t touched his food.

  “Did that minister man really kill Baba?” Mona asked as he wiped her chubby, light-skinned cheeks. Little Foreigner they called her in their chawl. She was the only one of the three kids who had not only taken their paternal grandmother’s light coloring and pale eyes but also inherited their mother’s flawless features. He carried her to the sink in the corridor and wiped up her nose, which had been running as much as her eyes.

  “I’m sorry I said that. It’s not true.”

  She wiped her face on his shirtsleeve. “Then why don’t you want us to go to the big English school?”

  Before he could answer, his aie stuck her head out of the kitchen door, Mohit on her hip, his face and hands smeared with rice and dal. He must’ve gotten into the food when Aie looked away. “Very soon the minister is going to stop coming around and making that offer,” she said.

  Rahul put Mona down. “Go wash Mohit up. Then tell him a story and put him down to sleep.”

  “Yes, Dada.” Mona took Mohit from Aie and carried him through the back door to the back corridor that connected the communal bathrooms they shared with their neighbors.

  Aie continued to glare at Rahul, but she grabbed his arm and dragged him back to his paath—the low wooden stools they sat on to eat. “At least eat your dinner. All that stubbornness must be burning up so much energy.” She smiled weakly, and he sat down cross-legged in front of his plate and ate.

  “Did you know that your baba’s father always told him that he was stupid for working so hard to become an officer when he was already a hawaldar? He thought it was wrong for someone to be unsatisfied with their station in life. ‘You were born a hawaldar’s son. It’s your destiny. Why can’t that be enough for you?’ he always asked. But your baba believed we make our own destiny. He believed that, in this country, in this city of ours, if someone works hard, there are no limits. Your grandfather believed that breaking caste lines was a sin. But your baba believed that if you didn’t take the opportunities God offered you, that was a sin. He would want you to take this opportunity and make the best of it. If something good comes out of something bad, who are we to turn it away?”

  But Rahul couldn’t. He didn’t know why, but he could not take money for Baba’s death. He wiped up the last of the dal and rice from his plate and poured water over his hands to rinse off the food. Then he rose and carried his plate to the drain in the corner of the kitchen. Some of the other blocks in their chawl building had installed standing sinks in their kitchens. Baba had promised to have one put in for Aie when he received his first promotion. Now it fell to Rahul to make sure Aie didn’t spend the rest of her life washing dishes squatted over a drain.

  “Baba’s pension and provident fund insurance will pay for books. Many children from our school become doctors and engineers,” he said.

  “Really? Like who? The Kulkarnis’ son was the first one in our chawl to do it. He’s been at JJ Medical College for only a year, and his mother tells me he has been struggling so much he’s become as thin as a broomstick.” She picked up the paath stools off the floor and stacked them up in a corner. “And what provident fund? We’ll have to bribe everyone up and down the chain to see any of Baba’s fund and insurance money. By the time we see one paisa, you’ll only be able to use it for your children’s education. If we’re lucky, that is. His pension barely covers food. My sewing and catering orders and the money your baba saved up can only go so far.”

  The way her lips were pursed together told him she wasn’t going to let this go.

  “I’ll go to the police station tomorrow and talk to someone about Baba’s provident fund.”

  But he would not take money from that man.

  * * *

  The only reason Rahul showed up at the police station so early was that he hadn’t been able to sleep one wink all night. One problem with being good with numbers was that once he started making calculations in his head he couldn’t stop until he had a solution. Frustrated by his ability to race through the problems they gave him, a few years ago his teachers had let him take math with the upper classes. Those classes were harder, but until now he had never been faced with a problem he couldn’t find a solution for.

  Try as he might he hadn’t been able to come up with a way to stretch Baba’s pension check and the interest from the savings to pay for rent, school, and food. Not even if Aie’s sewing and cooking orders magically doubled. Let alone put money away so they would have enough for his college. Once he got a job he knew he would be able to take care of everything, but until then their money kept feeling like their sheets, not sufficient to cover the feet and the shoulders at the same time.

  Baba always said that the only time a police chowki didn’t feel like the chaos outside a sold-out movie theater showing a super-hit movie was before ten in the morning. Apparently, criminals liked to sleep in. Maybe eight a.m. was far too early, because the criminals weren’t the only ones asleep at this hour. The constable folded over the reception desk was drooling onto its metal surface and snoring loud enough to scare away anyone looking for justice. Rahul was about to knock on the desk to wake the sleeping constable, but a sub-inspector came out of the bathroom and Rahul caught his eye.

  “Kay re? What for you’re here?” he asked, looking Rahul up and down while zipping up his fly.

  “I’m Hawaldar . . . I mean . . . Assistant Sub-Inspector Savant’s son. I need to speak with Shinde kaka.” Inspector Shinde was Baba’s boss. He had only recently been transferred to this chowki, but Rahul had met him a few times and then in the hospital and at the cremation. He had asked Rahul to come to him if he needed anything.

  The man looked around as if to check who else was listening. “Oh, you’re that Savant’s boy. Sorry about what happened.” But he didn’t look sorry at all, and Rahul’s defenses rose. “Shinde-sir is off duty today. Out for family wedding. You come.” He scratched his crotch and beckoned to Rahul to follow him into his office.

  Rahul joined his palms. “I can come back when Shinde kaka is here.” But the officer didn’t stop so he followed him into the office.

  The man sank into a chair behind a desk and narrowed his eyes at Rahul. “What’s so special about your Shinde kaka? Tell me what you need and maybe I can help you.”

  Perhaps the man wasn’t as creepy as he looked. “I wanted to talk about Baba’s provident fund.”

  The man looked over Rahul’s shoulder. “Shut the door behind you, boy.”

  Rahul had nothing private to talk about, and the request struck him as odd. But beggars can’t be choosers, as his aie loved to say. So he did as he was told.

  “You look more like your mother,
ha?” the sub-inspector said needlessly. Matching you up with your parents seemed to be the favorite pastime of adults who met you for the first time, and Rahul nodded. “Very beautiful woman, that one is.”

  Rahul had heard it a million times, but coming from this man it sounded somehow offensive. But he didn’t know what to do about it, so he said, “Where would I find out about Baba’s provident fund?”

  “I’m in charge of that paperwork. Did you know that?”

  “Good, so I’m in the right place then.”

  The man laughed, an unnecessarily loud guffaw, and walked around the desk and pulled out a chair for Rahul. “Sit.”

  Rahul didn’t move. “I can stand.”

  “Did you not hear me? I’m responsible for the paperwork. That means if I don’t file it, you don’t get the money. Do you know how much of a backlog we currently have? Most people have to wait for a few years.”

  “A few years? But Baba died on duty.”

  He laughed that sick laugh again and patted the chair. “Put your bum here and I’ll explain. I said it could take a few years. I didn’t say you would have to wait a few years.”

  Rahul had this thing inside that he always thought of as a barometer. He could gauge when things were wrong or right. And he knew something was wrong here. Something was very wrong with this man. He knew sitting down was a bad idea, but he knew he had to get Baba’s money. So he sat.

  “I can tell you’re a smart boy,” the sub-inspector said and licked his lips and scratched his crotch again. Did he have some sort of infection down there? Because he kept touching himself far more than was decent. “So your baba was a hawaldar until last month?”

  Rahul nodded. Baba had studied late every night to pass his exams to go from being a hawaldar to an officer. Rahul had stayed up with him, quizzed him, and even explained some of the math on the test to him.