The lights turned off. I toggled the switches again, but nothing worked. I slid into a sitting position. I ripped all the papers around me into familiar squares, and fluttered out a stream of rockets. The darkness was immaterial to my bloodied, folding fingers.
When I was done, grey puffs were drifting in through a slit on the doorway. Smoke? They were suffocating us, smoking us out just like Sajan had been. I rushed to Rhea, held my palm against her nose. I needed to protect her from this. The smoke was sliding into my throat, infiltrating my lungs and veins. I coughed and sputtered. I slipped back into a black dreamless state.
When I shook myself awake, light radiated through the shattered window, as if the world were mocking my absurd optimism. Miraculous rescues and happy endings were the stuff of fairytales.
I slumped on the floor again, forlorn. The room, the reality surrounding me, didn’t seem to make sense anymore. I lost sense of time. How did they matter, those ticking clocks, those passing hours, when I was entering that great, expansive darkness.
Just as I was losing consciousness again, I saw something had been slipped into the room through the crack in the window. It was an eight-legged fiddler crab, perfectly folded from one of my rocket papers. Bijoy! My assistant was around, he knew we were in here. Bolstered by the thought of an imminent rescue, I was also moved by how perfectly he’d drawn out the marsh-dwelling creature. I didn’t know if the silent tears streaming down my face were evoked by relief or pride at the little boy. Even if his speech still lagged behind others, his origami skills had already overtaken that of many origami masters.
In a short while, I heard voices. Manas’ voice and Bijoy’s excited sounds! Summoning the last dregs of my waning energy, I banged at the door with my fists. I needed to make sure they heard me, even if doing so shattered my bones. Someone was fiddling with the handle to the other room. I pounded harder. I shouted: ‘MANAS, MANAS, I’m here.’ My voice, clogged with smoke, hardly seemed to emerge as loudly as I needed it to. But then miraculously, the door twisted open.
Through smoky clouds, Bijoy grinned at me, his smile overtaking his coyness. He was holding one of my origami shapes and he wrapped his arms around me as he mouthed his first five-word sentence: ‘Auntie, don’t worry, Uncle here.’ I almost fell into my husband’s arms.
FORTY-ONE
IF SAJAN’S DEATH WAS Fantasia’s price, then Karthik was its gift. We adopted him from an orphanage on the outskirts of Mumbai. Soon after Damini’s disclosure, Manas and I had moved to Mumbai. Manas accepted a job there, while I gladly distanced myself from the old life.
The orphanage was a decrepit Victorian structure, donated to the Catholic Missionary by a Jewish family that fled the city after the 2008 terrorist attacks. Set on a farm with strips of vegetable patches beyond the steel gate, its antiseptic, medical odours mingled with those of ripening tomatoes from outside. Beyond the house, in a large field that grew peanuts, the children enjoyed picking pods and shelling sun-dried piles.
At first, we hadn’t intended to adopt a child, but Karthik stole our hearts. I had been volunteering there, helping with special kids after our move. Every Thursday, I was assigned to work with Karthik, a five-year-old with Down’s syndrome. For a few minutes we merely held hands in a companionable silence. Then after an hour or two with alphabets and numbers, it was time for our reward. The table between us, a wobbly, wicker table, held a Chinese checker board and our drinks: his, a slurpy strawberry milkshake, mine, a lime soda with ice. I bought the drinks from a cafe across the road - the same drinks each time. We were comforted by our routine, by the predictable sameness of our interactions.
We didn’t play a game exactly. We moved the checkers forward, one at a time, till the two front rows bumped into each other. Then we moved them back. A few times, Manas and Rhea came down with me. Rhea held Karthik’s hand while Manas moved his checkers more aggressively, or out of order. Even in this game, Manas was intent on winning. I punched him once, ‘Manas, do you really have to?’ ‘What?’ Manas said, wilfully thick-headed. Karthik smiled, his spit dripping slowly. He liked their company and wanted them to return.
After a few months, the decision was made. The Catholic head of the Mission cried when Manas and I submitted the adoption papers. ‘You know, all these days, I used to watch this child, slumped in a wicker chair on that corridor. Every week, other adoptive parents filed past with their little babies. My heart used to go out to him, the one who was always left behind. I wept for him, but he always smiled, as if he knew something that I didn’t. Now I realise he was right. There was a reason for his optimism.’
And what really transpired at Fantasia, after all that? Damini didn’t really achieve her objective. Because the whole incident hadn’t been publicised as she’d expected. The residents realised they couldn’t sue anyone because there wasn’t anyone left to sue. The Kusro organisation, investigators found, was linked to underworld dons in Mumbai, whose illegal funds had financed Fantasia. Damini or her father must have set up those links.
At the meeting, the three selectors admitted that they had been duped even more than the others. They had been prodded by a personal letter from ‘Kusro’ to donate to the Dhoolvansh Missionary School. Jacob had been cajoled by a tip-off from Damini to invest in Entertainers-for-hire. The kids, we discovered, had been persuaded by Damini during their healing session to blame Bijoy for Sajan’s death. Bijoy and Sajan had been the last kids in the room, and only Bijoy had watched a masked Damini lock my son into the smoking chamber.
The rest of Damini’s crew had absconded from the project, but apparently Damini and her father were captured by the police, heading towards the Maldives. They poisoned themselves inside a prison cell, their bloated bodies sprawled on the floor, clasping each other’s hands: the loudest and most theatrical voices from Dhoolvansh.
But the other folks were never found. Not Mariamma, not Venkiah, not Gowri, or anyone else linked with the team. Some migrants, in the village outside our Whitefield complex, were from Dhoolvansh and privy to Damini’s plot. But they had vanished too with the core squad. With all witnesses gone, I never did find out who Mira’s masked killers were. Baba’s dementia had tilted into a gelid silence, and some aspects of my past were destined to remain concealed. I agreed with Manas, that perhaps it was easier that way.
Though the case had been escalated into higher echelons within the police force, the story wasn’t picked up by any news channels as the residents wanted it that way. A silence that was easy to enforce since Jacob had a stake in most channels and papers. More than the effects on their health, folks feared plummeting property prices.
Manas wound up his company and accepted a job that involved fund-raising for a social venture in Mumbai. We were relieved to get out. Strangely, Manas developed a stronger loathing for the place than I did.
After we had left Bangalore, others researched the effects of lead for themselves. They realised that it was wiser to quit the place, rather than risk rising levels in their kids and in themselves. Later, when I googled less common effects, I suspected that I had been a victim in more ways than one. My childhood dyslexia might have been caused by the milder levels of lead on the other side of Dhoolvansh.
Other adults had been impacted as well. During those years, some of us had suffered from bouts of constipation and diarrhoea. But we hadn’t realised it was a shared issue. Hansika had wrongly blamed her digestive troubles on the lemons she was sucking during her pregnancy. Just before we left, Kalpana and Manjushri admitted to suffering from inexplicable digestive issues, off and on, during their Fantasia years. Towards the end, Manjushri developed wrist drop, a condition that she initially attributed to her golf-playing. In those last weeks, her hand hung limp and swollen at her wrist, like a ripened fruit about to drop. Online research confirmed that lead acted on peripheral nervous systems in adults.
Before our move to the island city, there was a last committee meeting that Raj presided over. In that meeting, Raj presented his findin
gs about lead levels inside the community. ‘We’ve spoken to many experts, who have assured us that the long term value of these homes will NOT be affected in any way. In fact, Hansika and I will stay here till our home is repainted. The rest of you can make your own individual decisions, but as an owners’ group, we should ensure that this news does not leak into the papers. After all people are just waiting to spread unnecessary rumours.’ At that point, he looked at me very deliberately. People had started associating the fallout with me since I was the one, as Raj put it, ‘who had meddled in their lives.’
So, how did it end with all the others? Recently, I was on the phone with Razia, who filled me in on their lives.
‘At first, what most of us felt was guilt. We were trying to do our best for our kids, and they were being poisoned all along, and we didn’t act because we weren’t sharing as much as we should have been. But I don’t know if it could have been otherwise, it was all so complex,’ Razia said. ‘Of course, I go overboard now. I bought some toys for my niece, and I had them sterilised before I gave them to her.’
Razia and Sid opted to remain in Bangalore, though they moved quickly to an apartment in the centre of the city. Danny was in college now, pursuing a degree in Commerce. Sid continued his private practice but he also started volunteering at government hospitals. ‘It was like a wake-up call for us. All of us started asking those deep questions, like what we really wanted from life, if we had only a few years left.’
The Mehtas moved back to the U.S., because Raj felt that Adit would perform better in that environment.
Bijoy had been withdrawn from his special school and was being tutored in art and sculpture at home. Every summer, he visited us for a fortnight, and I was as proud and delighted as Bishnu, by his growing language skills.
Many folks expected Simi and Jacob to separate. But it was Kalpana and Vicky who divorced, both kids opting to stay with their father. The court, however, granted Kalpana visiting rights, so she stayed alone, but not too far from them. Akshay opted to join the University of Minnesota rather than a high pressure Ivy, a decision that Kalpana found more difficult to wrestle with than her own divorce. After high school, Gaurav planned to skip college entirely, and backpack around the world for a few years, before picking his vocation.
Manjushri and Krish moved to Singapore, where their bewitching daughter, Aishwarya, continued to dazzle all she encountered. She was among the few fortunate residents, who was unaffected by the lead. Maybe the toxic paint hadn’t been evenly brushed across our homes after all.
Tushar’s son Suhel, unfortunately, was caught by the city’s cops in some drug raid at a party that had many other Fantasia kids attending, including Joel. Despite Tushar’s influence, and arduous efforts to have him released, the kid was put behind bars. Fortunately, all the other adults, including Raj and Joanne, pitched in to have him released in a few days. Later, he joined a liberal arts college near Delhi, where he seemed to be thriving.
Folks had lost touch with Subbu and Joanne but someone heard that Joel was doing well at an American community college.
‘And what about Simi?’ Razia asked. ‘Weren’t you in touch with her?’
‘Yes, she moved to Australia with Ishan. Her son had ADHD but he’s doing better now. Simi herself is passionate about this foundation she’s running for kids with learning issues. She’s really doing some great work. Who’d have thought she’d change like that?’
Thimakka returned soon after. Apparently, she had been held hostage in her village by Damini’s crew. She confessed that she had been the one who had planted the thorny twigs in Sajan’s drawer as a warning of sorts. She wanted us to move out before more dangers crept in. She had sensed that the village and Damini were plotting against us. But she was afraid to warn me explicitly as she wasn’t sure if our home, in particular, was being bugged and watched.
I offered her a live-in position in Mumbai at twice her earlier salary, but she seemed unwilling to move. She continued working for another Fantasia home at her old salary. We sent her a cash gift of two lakhs to reward her for everything she’d done.
A few months later, when we visited Thimakka’s house in the village, we expected her to be living in a slightly improved structure. But we saw practically no change in her life. There was only a wooden shelf added, to store her utensils. Everything else was the same—the plastic curtain dividing the kitchen and living, the single cot covered by a flowery bedspread. The broker accompanying us said that each household in the village had only accorded themselves 5,000 rupees. Touched by Thimakka’s generosity, we asked why she didn’t take more. ‘That’s all I need,’ she said, simply.
Manas and I decided, at first, that we would gift a portion of the property sale to the Victorian orphanage. After all the homes were now certified as being toxin-free by an environmental agency, and the market had started buzzing again. Later, we decided we would gift the value of the entire property to the orphanage. But since we couldn’t hang around for too long in Bangalore, we eventually signed off the property (and its accompanying loan) to trustees and asked a high-end broker to manage the sale.
Much later, we discovered that the broker had been so struck by our imaginative gift, he had gone out of his way to fund the cause. A rich philanthropist also became interested in the project. He spread the word, and instead of a single buyer, there were twenty buyers, each one willing to donate sums ranging from a few lakhs to a crore. When we heard about the final price, even we were shocked. Clearly the orphanage was able to transcend market values in a manner in which we couldn’t.
One weekend, Manas, Rhea, Karthik and I headed out to Srirangapatna with the copper pot containing Sajan’s ashes. Manas and I stood watching, hand in hand, as our kids gleefully scattered their brother’s whitish-grey remains into the river’s roiling waters.
The white particles mingled with the river’s foam while a painted stork tautened its neck and took flight. Its pinkish tail receded into the clouds like a puff of cotton candy and Karthik turned to his sister and smiled—a wide open smile with his teeth shining like stars.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
TO THE FABULOUS EDITORIAL team at Westland for championing the book, combing through the manuscript and offering excellent suggestions: Deepthi Talwar, Sanghamitra Biswas.
To Westland’s ingenious design team for embodying the story in the best way possible: Vishwajyoti Ghosh, Sonakshi Singh.
For bringing the cover to life: Haitenlo Semy.
For sage editorial comments: Rajni George.
For carefully reading and cheerleading, for believing in the project: Smrithi, Gita, Sangita, Jyothi, Namita, Apoorv.
To my ever supportive and loving family: Oma, Sekhar, Dash, Revathy, Deepa, Rahul, Boo, Aruna, Srivats, Lavoo, Arjun, Vees, Nivi, Rishiks, Anya, Dhruvie, Taru, Kahaan and Shivaan.
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