The Year of the Runaways

by Sunjeev Sahota

  He picked up a fallen chair and launched it against the wall.

  ‘Stop this! Please! You’re behaving like a child!’

  When the doorbell rang the flat was still in darkness. Mr Sanghera sat in his red armchair. Classical music played on the stereo, as advised by the doctors: something he associates with a more peaceful state of mind, they’d said. Snatching up her chunni, Mrs Sanghera answered the door. It was their neighbour. She said she’d heard crying and thought she’d check if everything was all right.

  ‘Everything’s fine. Thank you.’

  In the kite-shaped hallway mirror Randeep saw the woman trying to look in, and his mother blocking her off.

  ‘I was sure I heard . . . Are the children all right?’

  ‘The children are wonderful. The girls are out for their dance classes.’ He heard his mother sigh, then, with no great zeal, begin the battle. ‘Did I tell you the twins got their kathak level fives? Can’t be long until Lata achieves too, no? Two years she’s been trying?’

  ‘Three.’

  ‘Ah, yes. Three. And Randeep’s here this weekend. NIT next year, with God’s will.’

  The door closed and his mother returned, looking strangely drained. ‘The things I do to make sure people say nice things about our family.’ It seemed to Randeep that none of the women enjoyed these encounters. It was all part of a bigger wheel that the world wouldn’t allow them to step off.

  The girls arrived home together, excitedly, until the atmosphere in the flat chopped short their laughter. The twins made straight for their room, silver ankle-bells tinkling, and Lakhpreet took off her wrap and unbuckled the thin green belt around her dress. She lifted the dough from the fridge and slapped it onto the kitchen counter.

  ‘I can’t cook in this dark,’ she said, but the only response she got seemed to come from the CD player, where the strings began to subside and with a mighty click the whole thing stopped.

  *

  Randeep finished unpacking the wretched suitcase and kicked it underneath his college bed. He sat on the tight cotton sheet, elbows on knees and fingertips to fingertips, looking through the circle of his hands at a burn on the carpet. He heard more doors shutting, more loud goodbyes – other students, other arrivals. He reached for his pillow and pushed his face into it.

  It had turned cooler by the time Abhijeet arrived, yanking his enormous cricket bag off his shoulder.

  Randeep sat up, rubbed his eyes. ‘Hi.’

  ‘Oh, hi. Thought you were asleep.’ He was groping about on the floor for something. He seemed in a hurry.

  ‘I’ll switch the light on,’ Randeep offered.

  ‘Don’t bother. I’m going straight out’ – he found his runners. ‘All the girls are in the lounge.’

  ‘Oh,’ and then, in a moment of daring: ‘Which girls?’

  ‘The usual. Shirenjoht, Mausam, Jaytha, Pups.’ He turned round at the door, hesitating. ‘Do you want to come?’

  He was asking out of pity, that much was obvious. They’d never become friends, he and Abhijeet.

  ‘Maybe later,’ Randeep said. ‘I want to finish this chapter.’ He looked to his desk for a textbook with which to supplement the lie. Abhijeet was already on his way, the luminous green of his moon-boots zipping through the darkness.

  Randeep made an eye in the window blinds. The day was darkening over, the yellow of the trees retreating. No, he wasn’t going to go down. It was stupid. He felt ashamed, recalling how he’d engineered the meet in the quad the week before. He opened his ring binder and turned to his timetable, determined to prepare for his lectures. Ten minutes later – nothing written, nothing done – he closed the folder and looked round for his wallet.

  The corridor was too narrow and carpeted an ugly brown, the dreariness compounded by a large black-and-white close-up of Albert Einstein hanging at one end. He took the stairwell down to the lounge and waited his turn at the vending machine, behind a boy in a white turban. What to choose? What to choose? He tried not to stare at her. She was sitting with friends on three squashy sofas, staring reverentially up at the television. He could see only her profile: the hair all loose and pulled forward over one shoulder, the knifish uptwitch of her thin smile, as if there was a tiny pulse at the very corner of her lips. He imagined lying beside her in a sunny park and every now and then getting up to bring her flowers. Someone called his name. It was Abhijeet, his arm around a girl at the other end of the room.

  ‘You won’t find no theorems here,’ Abhijeet said.

  And then Jaytha turned round. ‘Randeep!’ She beckoned him over. ‘Come sit, come.’

  He looked to Abhijeet, who was nodding at him, so Randeep closed his wallet and strode across.

  ‘Hi, Jaytha. How are you this evening?’ It sounded stupid now, though she didn’t seem to notice.

  ‘Here, sit with me,’ and she tucked her feet underneath her bottom, making room.

  He wavered, then slid in, jamming his hands into the crevice between his thighs. Her elbow jutted out and touched his own and that point seemed to be the epicentre for the wild buzz radiating through his body.

  ‘How was your weekend with your bhabhiji?’

  She smiled. ‘That’s what I love about you. You remember things. You’re so thoughtful.’

  Across the room, Abhijeet cheered. ‘Good on you, man! You got through her fortress. And believe me, many have tried; many have failed.’

  ‘Don’t be so vulgar,’ Jaytha said. ‘Not everyone’s a Neanderthal.’

  There was a woollen blanket over her legs which she opened out and spread across both their laps. She nudged closer to him so that elbows, arms and shoulders all touched. It took a while for his heart to calm, and he didn’t dare move. He just sat there with the others, watching some American TV comedy. The only interruption came when two girls entered the lounge and asked if they could change channels. They must have been scheduleds because some of the other girls pinched their nostrils together. He felt Jaytha tense up, her eyes hard on the TV. He sought out her hand under the blanket and squeezed and this she didn’t seem to mind.

  *

  One morning, a week later, he was shaken awake by Abhi, looming groggily over him, saying something about a call.

  Still in his pyjamas, Randeep went down to the stairwell where the receiver was gently bouncing on its blue coil. He put the phone to his ear.

  ‘Hello.’

  It was his mother, which meant it was his father. Yesterday, she said, he’d had a fight with someone at work. He’d broken furniture. She’d had to go in and calm him down. It had taken nearly an hour to get him up off the floor. She paused. ‘They all saw him crying.’

  ‘I’m coming, Mamma.’

  As he arrived home it took a moment to recognize the self-satisfied voice carrying up the hall. Vakeelji, his father’s lawyer. Randeep couldn’t face seeing him right away, so he slipped out of his shoes and curled his head into the twins’ room. They were sitting on the top bunk, in secret conversation.

  ‘I’m here,’ he said.

  They stared at him, waiting. Eight years older, he felt he really didn’t know them at all. Their world was just their bubble of two.

  ‘How’s things?’

  ‘OK,’ Ekam said.

  ‘Yeah, OK,’ Raji agreed.

  ‘Where’s Daddy?’

  ‘In his room.’

  ‘How is he?’

  ‘It’s a difficult stage,’ Ekam said, and Raji sniggered.

  He stepped across the landing and opened the door. His father was sitting on the other side of the bed, facing the window. Randeep shucked off his rucksack and went and sat beside him.

  ‘Daddy, it’s me. Randeep.’

  Mr Sanghera nodded. ‘You didn’t need to come.’

  ‘Vakeelji’s here.’

  ‘Come to look at the tamasha, no doubt.’

  ‘What happened at work?’

  ‘Please tell them I’m sorry.’

  ‘Tell who?’

  ‘And your
mother, too.’

  In the main room, Vakeelji took up all of the tall red chair, and not for the first time it struck Randeep that the lawyer’s small pink lips surely belonged on the face of a little girl. He was sipping very daintily from the best china teacup. Mrs Sanghera sat on the two-seater and behind her Lakhpreet leaned against the wall. Randeep looked to his sister and saw the flicker, the slight tightening around her mouth that she’d always done to convey to him that she was all right. He touched the lawyer’s feet.

  ‘Bless you, son, bless you. How is college? NIT next year?’

  ‘With your blessings.’

  ‘Always, always.’

  His mother explained Vakeelji’s presence. The DTTP had been in touch. They were concerned about his father’s application to his work. His ability to do his job. They were considering not formalizing his contract at the end of the trial period.

  ‘Can you believe it?’ Mrs Sanghera said. ‘So many years he has given to the government and this two-bit offshoot wants to cut him off like that. Who gave them the right?’

  ‘The chief minister, bhabhi.’

  She was only fleetingly deflated. ‘He could do all their jobs with his eyes closed.’

  Vakeelji smiled into his chins and very delicately set his cup down in its saucer, as if to make any noise was to risk some sort of detonation. ‘Bhabhi, we have to face the facts. Bhaji is not well. Inshallah, we all hope he reverts to his normal self soon but until then the department is naturally going to protect itself. In twelve months he will have his full government pension rights secured. Unless they are certain he is a viable long—’

  ‘Viable!’

  ‘Long-term associate, they will move to terminate before then.’

  ‘Then you must stop them, Harchand. We rely on you in these matters.’

  The lawyer showed his palms. ‘I will do my best, but I fear . . .’

  The silence seemed to frighten Mrs Sanghera into temporary submission. She rallied. ‘So what do we do? For the first time in history are the women of this house to go and find work? Shall I start offering my services to clean my neighbours’ latrines?’ She thrust out her arms from under the pallu of her sari. ‘Perhaps you think I should pawn my wedding bangles?’

  ‘Oh, don’t make so much drama, Mummy,’ Lakhpreet said.

  ‘I can find work,’ Randeep said.

  ‘They will still pay his school fees, yes?’

  The lawyer shook his wide head. ‘Given the ridiculous bureaucracy around our property laws, they will let you stay in this flat for one year until you move somewhere else. That is all. They will no longer pay for medicines, servants, transport, or, indeed, college fees.’

  Mrs Sanghera didn’t know where to look. ‘Why do they make the children suffer?’

  ‘I’ll find work,’ Randeep said. ‘I can help.’

  ‘You are staying in college.’

  ‘I can do both.’ He looked at her. ‘Honestly, I can.’

  She turned fiercely to the lawyer. ‘You see how brave my son is? He would never see his mother lower herself.’

  The lawyer sighed. ‘Truly you are blessed, bhabhi.’

  He found work quickly, doing weekend shifts for a British insurance firm who’d outsourced their call centre to Mirla Business and Technology Park. He enjoyed it. The office was bright, with potted-palm fronds down the aisle, and on the front wall hung a series of professional-looking world clocks: London, New York, Sydney. There was air conditioning, too, and he had his own piece of white desk space around which he’d made a fence of his textbooks.

  It was near eleven at night when he’d reach his digs and show his pass to the security guard and enter the lounge. Usually, it would be empty, but occasionally Jaytha would happen to be there and they’d drink hot chocolate from chipped blue mugs and talk about their day. He wasn’t at all certain how to coax their relationship forward, into a corner more intimate.

  At midnight he’d move to the stairwell and wait for his mother to ring. He’d asked her if he might buy a mobile with his wages – his wages were wired directly to her account – but she’d thought it unnecessary. Who would pay the bills, for one thing? The phone would ring and he’d lean tiredly against the wall and listen to her battles with the Chandigarh higher-ups. They were trying to cheat his father, she said. They are deliberately giving him impossible tasks to prove their point. I will not allow it. I will not let them make a fool out of him. Sometimes Randeep sensed glee in his mother’s voice, as though she were revelling in it all.

  ‘Your mamma’s probably glad to have someone to fight,’ Jaytha said one evening. ‘She sounds like a tough woman.’

  Randeep said she was, though on reflection he wasn’t sure, and she sounded far from tough the night she rang to tell him that the bastards had won. They’d forced his father out of his job.

  ‘What will we do?’ she cried.

  ‘How’s Daddy? What’s he doing?’

  ‘Nothing. Staring at the wall. He looks broken, beita.’

  Randeep put his fist to the wall and pressed his forehead against it. ‘Tell him I love him.’

  ‘Hain?’

  He shook his head. ‘I’ll find some more work. There are more shifts I can do.’

  ‘We can’t survive.’ She was starting to sound hysterical. Randeep imagined her balanced on the lip of the sofa, hair wild, the twins hiding in their bedroom, Lakhpreet trying to hold it all together. ‘Everyone will find out. We’ll have to move. We have no money. Oh, Rabbah, what will we do? What will we do?’

  ‘I’ll sort it out, Mamma. I’ll work. Listen to me. I’ll work.’

  He joined the processing shift, nine p.m. to five a.m. There were four of them and overnight they had to log the day’s customer claim requests and vet them for ‘completedness’. If information was missing they pulled up one of the three standard templates and printed off a letter. They worked in isolation, one in each corner of the room, the only sounds the snicker of keys, the gurgle of the water cooler, the march of the clock. 2.30. 2.35. 2.37. Sometimes Randeep fell asleep into his elbow, only waking when one of his colleagues flicked a rubber band at him. The night sky had paled by the time his shift ended. He collapsed onto his bed for one, maybe two hours before trudging off to morning labs.

  ‘This is crazy,’ Jaytha said, one month into his exhausting routine. ‘You’re killing yourself. And you’re failing. When was the last time you failed a test?’

  ‘It was a stupid test, yaar. It didn’t even count.’

  But the next one did, and when he failed that too the deputy principal called him into his office. It wasn’t like him, he said. He was usually one of their finer students.

  ‘We had you written down as a real contender for NIT this year, Master Sanghera.’

  ‘Sorry, sir. I’ll do better.’

  ‘I hear your father has some issues at work?’

  Randeep sighed. It was all so predictable, the speed with which gossip spread.

  His mother called him daily, on the new mobile she’d finally permitted him to buy. Sometimes she accused him of not wiring all the money through. Mostly she just cried her complaints. That his father did nothing. That he just gazed at the wall listening to his stupid Schubert. They could all starve and he wouldn’t care. What kind of a man was he?

  ‘We’ve not been to the mall for two weeks. And how long before they ask us to leave this flat? I’m scared to answer the door. Every knock and my stomach falls away.’

  ‘It’ll get better. Uncle said we could stay in the flat for a year and then I’ll go to NIT and get a good job and everything will be fine afterwards.’

  One night, putting the phone down on his mother, he reached sourly into his claims tray. He was angry at her, at himself. She’d said that he wittingly stayed away from home. That they were struggling with his father and he never helped. He’d argued that he was working, working for them. But he knew there was truth in what she’d said, that exhaustion was easier than being at home, and it was this that a
ngered him. He clamped his head in his palms and looked again at the claim. They’d not signed it. Stupid people. How could they expect them to assess their claim if they didn’t even sign it? There was a telephone number scrawled at the bottom, in a shaky blue hand. Randeep punched the digits in so hard his finger blanched. He wanted to tell them how they’d made a mess of everything and that they’d have to fill in another form and send that in and why couldn’t they have just done things properly the first time? As the phone rang and rang, his rage wilted and he looked at the London clock and wondered what the hell he was doing. He had to put the phone down.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Hello? Oh, sorry, sir, wrong number.’

  ‘Who is that? John? Is that you again?’

  ‘Sorry, sir, I didn’t realize it was so late. I’ll say goodbye to you.’

  ‘Hang on, there.’ There was a dead minute until the man returned, his words now echoing. ‘Better. Who did you say you were again?’

  ‘Sorry, sir, I didn’t know it was so late. It was simply a courtesy call. I’ll bid you goodnight.’

  ‘Where you from? You Scottish?’

  ‘India, sir. I’m Indian.’

  ‘Oh, Indian. I’ve known a few Indians in my time. We fought together, you see.’

  ‘OK, sir. Thank you, sir. I’ll let you repair to your slumber now.’

  ‘In Burma. I was stationed with Balwant Singh, if memory serves. And it really doesn’t, these days.’

  He laughed, sadly, Randeep thought.

  ‘Always took a bucket of water to the shitter with him, that one.’ A chuckle. ‘Must’ve had the cleanest arse in Arakan.’

  Randeep switched the receiver to his other ear. He knew the battle. ‘The 1944 campaign, sir? We really out-foxed the Japanese, I think.’

  ‘Once we got Maungdaw, we knew we were in with a chance. As long as those tunnels stayed true.’

  ‘The tunnels. Yes, the tunnels. You must admit the engineers were heroes, sir. The Indian Seventh Division put their lives on the line for your country. We studied it at school.’

  ‘Balwant was one of those engineers. Couldn’t have done it without him. Does he still like his Fairweather’s?’

  Randeep paused. ‘I’m not sure, sir.’