‘I need to wrap up my funding. These three weeks will determine—we’ve been here for years. Three weeks will not –’
My mind was whirring too. I needed a few more weeks to unearth what was really going on at Fantasia. How had the lead been mixed into our paint? And why were some kids affected more than others? I didn’t realise I had been mouthing my questions aloud, because Manas almost seemed to echo my thoughts: ‘Why Adit more than –’
‘I was reading about it online, I think Hansika’s painting project must have made it worse for Adit. Maybe the lead was mixed into some of the wall colours, but not into all. Perhaps some of the weaker kids were more vulnerable. We really have to get everything tested –’
‘Exactly,’ Manas said, clinging onto the slightest reasons to extend our stay. He was already scrolling through his messages, his thoughts seesawing between his dying business and his family’s wellbeing. ‘Can’t get another apartment so quickly. We’ll have to move into some hotel. But three weeks –’
‘Two, Manas. Two more weeks. Then I don’t care if we move into a hotel. I need Rhea out of here.’
I thought too of other children in our project who ought to be tested and treated: Gaurav, Joel, Bijoy, Sonika. Unlike Hansika’s child, some kids were only mildly affected. Perhaps, chelation or some oral treatment could cure some of their afflictions? Surely the mothers would be grateful for that?
I called Kalpana. I couldn’t build a case against the builder if I didn’t have enough data. Somehow, I thought, Kalpana might cooperate if only to improve her kid’s school grades?
Kalps asked me to come over when I said I wanted to talk to her in private. ‘There’s no one at home anyway, so come on over.’
We sat out on her backyard deck, which overlooked the glimmer of dark green leaves in the water. I’d opted for tea, but Kalpana was merely sipping water.
‘So, Veds, what do you want to tell me?’ Her voice was kindly and concerned, her eyes eager. She thought I needed her advice on something.
‘Kalps, I’ve discovered what’s happening to our kids. I mean you must have noticed we have too many issues in this place...’
‘Issues?’ Kalpana said, as if she were rolling the word around her mouth.
‘Oh you know, fogginess issues, and then all that misbehaviour. And Gaurav, I believe, has an attention issue...’
‘That was just a phase. He’s doing fine now.’
‘Kalps, what I’m trying to say is our kids have been poisoned. And the builder’s responsible. Maybe it has to do with something he’s done in the past. We should really get him to pay for this. But in the meanwhile, we should get our kids treated and our walls cleaned up.’
‘I don’t understand you at all, what are you talking about?’
‘Can you get Gaurav tested for lead poisoning? And Akshay, too?’
‘Why should I?’
‘Because our paint’s contaminated, there’s lead in our walls.’
‘How do you know that?’
‘I’ve tested the paint from our family room, and it’s definitely contaminated, Kalps. Hansika’s kid has also—’
‘Listen, at this point, I don’t want my boys being dragged into something. And by the way, the paint in your home or Hansika’s might have an issue, but there’s no problem in ours. My kids are doing fine, so why are you raking this up?’
She didn’t want to admit that anything was wrong with her perfect life, it was clear. As I walked back to my villa that evening, I was filled with a sinking dismay. If my friends in the community rebuffed me, what hope did I have with the others?
Just as I entered my home, the intercom buzzed. Had someone else stumbled on my finding? It was Raj, still jetlagged from his tour of Venezuela and Peru, but bristling with energy.
‘Vedika, can you come down to our place?’ Raj said, without a courteous ‘please’, without lowering his tone to soften his command. Yet I rushed there at once. After all, I needed Raj, a man severely affected by this, a man directly in touch with the builder.
I should have sensed something even as I walked into Raj’s villa. It was Hansika who let me in, with a visible strain on her face. She always looked frazzled so I didn’t think there was anything unusual about this. ‘Can you wait here,’ she said, vaguely pointing to the morning room where the furniture wasn’t as plush as the living room. ‘Raj will be with you shortly.’ Why was she deserting me? Why hadn’t she offered me a drink like she usually did?
After a long fifteen minutes, by which time I was nervy and impatient, Raj appeared. Why did he summon me to his home and then make me wait?
‘So?’ he said, doing away with any pretence of politeness, omitting even a cursory ‘Hi.’ ‘I heard you’ve been digging into things here?’
‘Did Hansika tell you what I’ve found?’
‘Listen, woman, you should stay out of matters that you don’t understand.’
‘What are you talking about Raj? I know what I’m doing. I’ve taken that paint to a lab. We’ve tested Adit’s blood. And Rhea’s.’
‘Fact is Vedika, you’re not a psychologist or a doctor, you don’t know anything about children. So please don’t drag your half-wits into other families.’
For a second, my face must have stayed expressionless. I couldn’t believe he was talking to me like that. I was looking around for something, anything I could hold onto while I absorbed the reality of his obnoxious behaviour.
‘You had no right,’ he continued, ‘to test my child. I know my child better than you do Miss, so please stay out of my household.’
‘Raj, frankly this issue isn’t limited to your household. All our walls are contaminated. We’re all victims. We all have a stake in this. I can’t believe that you don’t want to look at the evidence when it’s staring you in the face.’
‘I heard you’ve been peddling this rubbish to Kalpana as well. She was so upset, you have no right, Mrs. Manas, to interfere in this. And these rumours that you’re spreading, do you realise what they can do to our property values?’ I knew it didn’t take long for news to travel inside our complex. If Kalpana had already relayed her anger to Raj, were the others preparing to shut me out like earlier?
‘Raj, have you even seen the lab report?’
‘Which lab was this?’ he asked.
‘A lab in Banashankari, they’re well reputed. But you can always get it tested again.’
‘Rubbish, this test is bullshit. There’s no bloody problem with the paint in this place, so don’t go spreading these rubbishy rumours. You won’t be able to pay back your loans tomorrow, if the property sinks.’
‘Raj, is that all you care about? Property values? These are our children we’re talking about. I’ve even lost my child...’
‘Vedika, you can do whatever you want with your family, but don’t interfere in other—’
I interrupted him, infuriated. ‘Raj, what’s wrong with you? Can’t you see the evidence all around you? This is the truth, this is what’s happening, and we should jointly approach the builder. After all, he’s responsible.’
‘Vedika, you have no clue about these things. This is the problem when women start interfering in things they don’t understand. I hope you haven’t told a hundred people about this, because if you have, we’d have to reconsider your status as a legitimate member of our community.’
‘Are you threatening to throw me out?’
‘I’m not threatening you in any way, you’re the one who’s threatening all of us.’
‘I think I made a mistake coming here.’ I rose and moved rapidly towards his front door.
‘Listen, I don’t want you approaching anyone else.’
‘What I do with this, Raj, is my business.’
When I stormed out of his house, my face was beet-red and my heart pounding so rapidly, I felt giddy near his hedge. Perhaps Kusro had been Senior Mehta’s partner in Kushi? If so, Raj wasn’t the right person to challenge the builder.
On the way home, I received a c
all from the court clerk. He said he had found the file, but since he needed to travel out on a personal mission, I needed to arrive immediately to collect my photocopy. Given everyone’s reactions to my discoveries, there seemed to be no better time to leave this place. I booked my tickets at once, and this time I told Manas I was going to try to figure out how the poison had seeped into our homes.
THIRTY-EIGHT
AT DHOOLVANSH, I HAD requested Govind, my erstwhile charioteer, to meet me at the station. I didn’t want to trek through the deserted road again. Emerging from the grim maws of the deserted station, I was relieved to encounter his slippery leer and pockmarked face atop an orange, polyester shirt. Even on the phone, he had seemed unsurprised at my return. I asked him to ride out to the court straightaway—I wasn’t planning to spend another night at that hotel. I planned to return to Patna the same evening, by bus.
The court house, with its imposing domes and red brick façade, felt like a stage setting. When I mounted the paan-splattered stairs again, reclipping my dishevelled hair into a tight ponytail, I was directed into an interior room that seemed like the private chambers of a judge. A large room, its concrete floor covered with Kashmiri rugs, encircled by glass bookcases that held ponderous brown and gold books. Like a ghost reentering the land of the living, the clerk slipped into the room from another door, concealed by the bookcases. He seated himself behind the teak desk, and watched me steadily, his lascivious eyes resting briefly on the bulge in my handbag. With a balletic movement, he slid open a drawer and extracted a thin brown envelope. He placed it on the desk, and pinned it in place with his painted, twisty fingernail.
After he gracefully counted the notes and nodded his head, I flipped through a sheaf of papers titled ‘xxxx Residents Society vs. Kushi Mining Ltd.’ Skirting the legalese and running my frantic eye through its contents, I gathered that the case was being fought by the residents of the slum tenements located near the erstwhile mining company. Many of these people had been farmers on the fertile Eastern banks, and persuaded by the company to sell their lands at throwaway prices. My heart raced and hands shook when I alighted on their main grievance: the company had polluted their river water with lead, resulting in severe health problems across the population and weird behavioural issues in their children. They demanded compensation for their damaged lives, new homes on the Western side, and cleanup of the water. It was too late to renege on their land deals, but they wanted adequate recompense for the agony inflicted by large-scale dumping of toxic sludge into their river. The document listed all the plaintiffs who were fighting the case. There was no mention of Mira.
‘Why was Mira killed?’ I asked.
‘Daughter of one of the main activists. Her father and someone called Nitish Patel were leaders of the movement.’ The clerk spoke in an unexcited sing-song, as if he were reciting a nursery rhyme.
Nitish Patel was a leader of the movement? No wonder he remembered Mira. But why was he reluctant to disclose anything? Had he orchestrated the Fantasia setup? How? I felt lightheaded and slightly giddy, but I tried to keep my voice steady. ‘What about Kusro? How is he connected?’
‘Don’t know any Kusro.’ The clerk rose to indicate the end of our meeting.
In my brief rickshaw ride back to the bus station, my thoughts eddied around the document. We passed a hoarding stuck over with cinema posters, Deepika Padukone jostling with the Goddess Durga, whose tongue seemed to be stuck out at my fatuousness. Durga, the ubiquitous Goddess in Kolkata, was telling me something. That the protestors, the members of that Fantasy Residents’ Society, had set up Fantasia to avenge the company’s misdeeds. They had intentionally coated our walls with lead. But who was it, and who, then, was Kusro? Would such an arrogant hotshot be in cahoots with the activists? Was all this being done without the moron’s knowledge? Perhaps, plotted by some insider in his company? Was Kusro linked with Kushi? Surely the similarity in the names was not a coincidence? Were the events in Fantasia a revenge against Kusro too? Just who was that wretched killer clown?
As I boarded the rickety, lurching vehicle, I received a message from Manas. ‘Crisis at work, funds frozen. Rushing to meet bankers. Will be back shortly. Rhea’s fine, with Mariamma.’
While I retrieved it inside an unbelievably slow network, I felt slightly nauseous. Why was everything around me collapsing? I needed Manas around to plot next steps. We were all in danger, we needed to move out of Fantasia. Why was he caught up in another blasted crisis?
When I had seated myself inside the jerky bus, I ran my eyes over the list of plaintiff names. Most plaintiffs seemed illiterate, since their names were accompanied by thumbprints rather than signatures. Unfortunately, the names were inscribed in Hindi. Eventually recognising my reading difficulty, my Kolkata school had exempted me from learning a second language. I could speak a somewhat broken Hindi, but the Devanagiri script was almost as foreign to me as Mandarin or Arabic.
Briefly I scanned the thumbprints. One seemed unsettlingly familiar. I knew those arches and loops, and the manner in which particular lines ended abruptly or bifurcated into two from the painting stuck to our refrigerator. I asked a passenger, a kindly middle-aged man, seated next to me if he could read Hindi. He nodded. I asked him to read the name by that thumbprint. ‘Kantabai,’ he said, without a moment’s hesitation. ‘And the name below it, says, beta, Venumadhav.’
I dropped my mobile. It clattered on the vehicle’s metallic floor loudly. For a few seconds, everything around me vanished inside a blinding flash. Blood rushed into my cheeks and my fingers quivered as I bent to pick up my mobile. How had I not fathomed this earlier? Mariamma, my indispensable maid, was Kantabai. Mira, my friend and playmate, was her daughter. The milkman, the person who endorsed Mariamma’s character, was her son and Mira’s brother. Besides, why hadn’t I stumbled on what was always in plain sight? Our blustering bear-like milkman was the bloody clown. He had been working inside Fantasia when Sajan died. At suspiciously low rates. I realised with rising fury that I had voted to keep him in. Had his fogginess been an act? Was he cannier than we thought? After all, he had ushered his mother into the community. As an accomplice, perhaps?
As the bus trundled forward, my stomach churned with another thought: Rhea was still with Mariamma. I called home. There was no response. I tried Manas but his phone was switched off. So was Mariamma’s. I tried to calm myself. After all, Rhea had been safe the last time around. She must be outdoors, roaming around the complex. Surely, they wouldn’t target our family again?
Despite my frantic attempts to return in a hurry, my journey back was hampered by all sorts of preposterous delays. The highway ribboning through Dhoolvansh and Patna was blocked by a farmers’ protest. Apparently, that morning, a local farmer had hung his debt-ridden frame from a tamarind tree. The body, bedecked in yellow and orange chrysanthemums, was parked on the road. Around it, gaunt neighbours, dressed in thin white dhotis and torn vests, squatted to proclaim their joint rebuke of market forces. The unflinching bus driver reversed the vehicle, careening backwards on the sun-shimmering asphalt and lurched into a dusty pathway that forked off the main road. A few kilometres down, a goods train had veered off its parallel tracks, and blocked the trail like a wounded slug, awaiting another rescue train to haul it back to the station. The bus heaved back onto the highway and waited, behind a serpentine queue of other vehicles, for the farmers to disperse. Two hours after we started moving again, the bus broke down. We were offloaded, after a few hours, into another bus, with standing-only space, our swaying bodies colliding with other riders across bumpy stretches. Braver passengers clambered onto the roof, listing the bus to a slanted ride on half its wheels. I had always shuddered at the sight of such buses from the cushioned distance of an air-conditioned car. Now my own world was tilting.
All along, my frequent calls to our landline and to Mariamma received no response. Where were they? I tried Kalpana but she didn’t pick up the call. Was she still mad at me? I tried Manjushri and then Bishnu
too, but couldn’t get through.
I had, predictably enough, missed my scheduled flight, and the next flight was interminably delayed. My phone battery was low, and my panicky calls to Manas, from a payphone, constantly landed in his voicemail. Why was the landline just ringing and ringing? How could Mariamma and Rhea have stepped out for so long? During the fourteen hours inside the sticky airport, my mind loped across many macabre scenarios. Mariamma had said she would take care of her ‘like her child’. The child who had been lynched on the mango tree.
My fidgety eyes settled on a passenger next to me. While working on a newspaper anagram, he wrote the letters out in a circle. I envied him for being occupied by something as trivial. I briefly shut my eyes and the builder’s tagline, ‘So Wildly Kusro: A Rainbow Dale’ pranced inside my head. A curious pattern seemed to click into place, and I jolted into wakefulness and frantically fished out an old bill from my handbag. I pencilled the letters out in a circle and started crossing them off, as I formed words. Why hadn’t it struck me earlier? But for the article, the Fantasia tagline was an anagram for ‘Wow! Your Kids’ Brains on Lead!’
My heart’s thumps were louder than the flight’s bumps as we careened towards take-off, at last.
THIRTY-NINE
THE GATE GUARDS, WHEN I called out to them from my taxi, said they hadn’t spotted Rhea or Mariamma exit the complex. I consciously slowed down my breathing. Unless they had scaled our impossibly high walls, they were likely to still be inside. But when I asked about Venkiah, my heart plunged at their response. Apparently, the milk hadn’t been delivered for three days.
At home, I was greeted by an empty living room. I tore through the dining and kitchen and backyard, shouting out my daughter’s name: ‘RHEA, RHEA.’ I wasn’t sure if I believed in any God, but I was already praying to a higher force. Please God, Please God, not again. I called out again and again. I screamed for Mariamma too. There was no response. I bounded up the steps, into the master bedroom and then to the study. The gym, the terrace, Rhea’s room. My voice was already feeling slightly hoarse but I was still shouting. I didn’t care about flustering our neighbours or shattering Fantasia’s famed quiet. I wanted my daughter. Now.
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