by Tania Malik
“If there’s anything I can do—” Madan said, making to get away from Sourav and his oaf of a brother, and back to his son in the car.
What an idiot Madan had been. A reckless, vengeful idiot. Madan couldn’t believe he’d thought Sourav was in any way like him just because they grew up a short distance from each other in kindred towns. Nostalgia had blinded him. Avtaar Singh would never have recruited a gutless ass like Sourav.
“Look at me!” Surjit said. He brought his face close to Madan. The stink of his sour breath made Madan hold his own. “You can’t even breathe near me, and you want to do me a favor. What can you do for me? That’s my son, my heir, lying in the hospital.”
There was no reasoning with the man. Madan’s hand itched to pound the bastard’s already pudgy face to pulp, but he thought of Arnav. He needed to get back to Arnav. How could he have been so stupid as to bring him here? And, he needed to calm the man. “It was not meant to happen like this,” he said.
“Not meant to happen?” Surjit mocked. “I’ll go to your house and fuck your wife red, then I’ll do your sister. And if you don’t have one, I’ll fuck your mother. Then I’ll say it wasn’t meant to happen.”
Madan’s fist shot out and Surjit staggered backward. Blood spurted from his nose. It was rote instinct. At Sourav’s shout, his men came forward to help him. Righting himself, Surjit threw them off. He blew his nose like he was clearing the mucus from a cold, and cleaned his bloodied fingers on his shirt. Madan turned away in disgust. Through the rolled-up window he could see Arnav, up front in the driver’s seat.
Surjit followed Madan’s gaze. Both men watched for a long moment as Arnav, unaware of what was going on around him, turned the steering wheel of the stationary car left and right, the soft curve of his cheek rising with his smile, his tongue sticking out in concentration, still absorbed in his pretend game of driving the car.
Madan began to make his way back. He was almost at the car when, from the corner of his eye, he saw Surjit grab a revolver from one of Sourav’s men and come after him.
“I’ll show you hell,” Surjit screeched at him. “You think you can cause this mess and walk away? Someone has to pay.”
Madan turned to face him. A smear of blood shone greasily on Surjit’s chin. Farther back, there was only Sourav and his henchmen, unmoving against the background of construction rubble. Madan looked at the gun pointing to his heart. He tensed, quickly assessing his next move.
The gun swung away from Madan, the aim readjusting to a target behind him.
“Now you’ll feel what I feel,” Surjit said.
Madan threw himself at the car. He heard the gun discharge.
He felt the whiz of the bullet, and was thankful he was in the way. But he had turned porous, become nothing but air. He landed hard, shattered glass pouring over him.
Madan reached for the car window, debris burning his eyes. He pulled himself up by the door handle, but he couldn’t see Arnav. He saw only the splatter of blood dripping slowly onto his outstretched hand.
CHAPTER 19
IN AN UNOCCUPIED HOSPITAL ROOM, TWO SOMBER POLICEMEN stood before Madan. He could hear voices and footsteps from the other side of the closed door, and could feel Ketan-bhai’s supporting hand on his elbow as he grimly accepted the policeman’s condolences. Madan stared blankly at the insignia on the policeman’s sleeve. His shirt was stiff with blood where Arnav’s head had rested just a short while ago. He had rinsed his hands but they still felt wet and sticky from trying to stanch the blood flowing from his son’s chest.
The creak of the ceiling fan slicing through the air caught Madan’s attention. When he was four, Arnav had developed a fear of ceiling fans. He believed that if the fan rotated too fast it would spin off the ceiling and whiz through the room, chopping off ears and noses as it flew through the air. “Turn it off, Papa, turn it off!” he would yell, and Madan would quickly flip the switch. Papa had always saved him.
After the policemen finished with their questions, Ketan-bhai led the senior of the two officers to the corner and handed him a wad of notes “We want to take our child home,” Ketan-bhai said. “If the paperwork is completed soon, we’d be thankful.”
“We’ll be in touch,” the lead inspector said with a nod.
“I want those bastards,” Madan said abruptly, as if waking from a stupor. The policemen looked alarmed as he moved toward them, blood in his hair, his arms and face scarred from the broken glass. “I want every one of them. I am going to kill—”
“Madan,” Ketan-bhai interrupted, laying an arm on his. “The inspector will do all he can.” He glanced apologetically at the officer. “You understand that he is very distressed right now, otherwise he never talks like this.”
Madan shook Ketan-bhai off him. “Do you know me?” he asked Ketan-bhai. “You don’t know me; don’t know what I’ve done or what I am capable of.”
“We are all upset,” Ketan-bhai said again to the officer.
“We’ll open the case and get the warrants going,” the inspector assured him.
Madan’s hands suddenly were on the man’s throat. “No. You don’t understand,” he shouted. He could hear Sourav’s brother’s words echoing back at him: Someone has to pay. He slammed the inspector’s head against the wall. He felt the man’s Adam’s apple, his struggling breath on his face. He squeezed harder, droplets of spit spraying onto the inspector’s face.
“Madan!”
“Someone has to pay, Ketan-bhai,” Madan roared, as Ketan-bhai and the other policeman pulled him off.
Ketan-bhai clasped Madan tight. “You are paying,” Ketan-bhai said in his ear.
When the light broke though the space between the curtains, Madan had to remind himself that he was in his bedroom. He could hear Preeti through the walls. She was with her mother. Her keening had filled the house throughout the night. When he had returned from the hospital with the news, she had launched at him, her mouth open grotesque and wide, shrieking. Unable to hold her up, he let her crumple to the floor. She had clawed at his shirt, the last vestiges of her child now flakes of blood stuck under her nails.
He forced himself to move his limbs and get out of bed. Every part of him was a numbing ache. He had been unspeakably reckless. He had thought that all he had created and achieved and built from the ground up made him untouchable and invincible. He had thought his boy would be by his side always. He had been wrong. “Every move has a consequence,” Avtaar Singh had told him as they had watched the wrestlers in the pit.
Downstairs everyone was up and about. Nalini was organizing breakfast. Ketan-bhai was on the phone taking care of the final preparations, and Dilip was overseeing the rearrangement of the drawing room, helping to move sofas to the side, laying white sheets over the carpets for the prayers that would go on for the next thirteen days. The pandits would be here soon. Had he agreed to all this, pandits and praying? He couldn’t remember.
“Sit and eat something,” said Nalini. She pushed him into a chair at the dining table, placing a pile of toast before him. Madan stared at the charred bread and pushed it away. Preeti sat at the other end of the table, her hair a disheveled pile atop her head, wearing the same clothes from the day before. Her eyes followed Madan as he moved around the room.
Her teacup hurtled across the table and grazed his head, breaking into jagged pieces of rosy pink china, cutting his scalp.
“Why did you take him with you? What were you doing there? How could you bring Arnav someplace where there were guns?” she asked. “Always, ‘I’ll take Arnav. Let Arnav come with me.’ Now who’ll bring him back to me? Where is he? Where is my son? Bring him back to me. I want my baby back,” she howled.
Preeti pulled at her hair, swaying and shouting. Her mother led Preeti back to her room, and Ketan-bhai came in. “She does not know what she is saying,” said Ketan-bhai. “She’s distraught.” Tenderly, he dabbed at the drops of tea and flecks of blood on Madan’s cheek with a napkin. “How could you have known?” He placed
his hand on Madan’s. “Don’t blame yourself. It won’t change anything and will only make it worse for you and her.”
What did Ketan-bhai know about blame and responsibility?
Arnav lay on the drawing room floor on a bamboo stretcher, his body wrapped in thick white cotton cloth brightened by garlands of marigolds. An oil lamp burned nearby, casting flickering shadows on his still form. The pandit murmured a chant, asking Madan to repeat it. Madan almost refused but then found that he didn’t have the energy.
At the crematorium, funeral pyres burned in various spots for those sharing this day with them. Madan looked up at the blue sky and the circling carrion birds and at all the faces around him. Faces with eyes that saw and mouths that breathed and hearts that beat, while on a burning bed of sandalwood his boy went up in a rush of flames.
Tomorrow, they would return to collect the bones and the cooled ashes. In a few days, Madan, Ketan-bhai and Preeti’s father would leave for Haridwar. All that Madan had left of his son he would scatter in the Ganges.
Days later, Madan found himself alone in the house. Ketan-bhai and Nalini had finally gone home, returning to their lives. The servants were gone for the day, and Preeti was, he assumed, with her parents. Even when she was in the house, in the days after Arnav’s death she moved past Madan as if he were invisible.
Madan retired to Arnav’s room. A musty dampness permeated the air. He had drawn all the curtains shut. There was no need for sunlight. His head hurt. Sleep had become an erratic friend.
Since Arnav’s death Madan had called Sourav repeatedly, but he had only once answered the phone, saying, “Shit, I’m sorry.” From then on, a robotic message informed him that the number was unavailable. Surjit claimed he had been nowhere near Delhi at the time of the shooting. The police had lodged a case and gone to bring him in, but he had filed anticipatory bail and was out free until it was time to come to court. The goons had disappeared, as had the gun, and the police wondered how they could prove the brother’s presence in Delhi when there was only Madan’s word. The story disappeared from the news.
He opened the drawer of the bedside table and removed his son’s old shirt. The stripe pattern was coming through the splotchy bloodstain on the front, which had turned brown. He sat on the bed and studied the variegated lines of the splatter, a familiar rosette of blood. In his boy’s bed, his shirt clutched in Madan’s arms, he did not notice when he fell asleep.
Pandit Bansi Lal leaned on his cane. Madan peered at him in the dimly lit hallway. Suddenly the pandit thrust his cane aside, shoving his arm under Madan’s nose. A baby lay there, cozy and asleep. Pandit Bansi Lal began to hobble away. Go after him, Madan, he heard someone shout, he has Arnav.
Madan ran but could not catch up, and soon the pandit’s figure faded in the distance. Madan spun around; he was in a grove of trees. Again, he saw the pandit’s retreating figure and ran after him. Not that way, he heard. He twisted and turned in the thicket of swaying trees, trying to decide which clearing to take. In the dusky light, a dhoti-clad figure shuffled away.
He heard laughter and the screech of tires and abruptly the pandit appeared in front of him. Madan raised his hand to grab him, but the pandit was out of his reach. A baby’s cry pierced the air. Don’t hurt him, Madan shouted. Pandit Bansi Lal shimmied before him, sweeping the cloth off the bundle in his arms.
He gave a lopsided grin, presenting the bundle to Madan like a waiter proffering a tray of pastries. Madan leaned in, peering closely.
“Very sorry,” said Pandit Bansi Lal.
The baby wasn’t Arnav.
Madan’s eyes fluttered open to the sound of his voice. He did not start or sit up, but lay calmly in bed, the covers smoothed over him. It was the same strange dream that often disturbed his sleep, though sometimes instead of through the trees he would chase Pandit Bansi Lal over the brown, muddy waters of the canal, the pandit skimming easily away over the water’s surface.
“I thought I heard you call for me.” Preeti stood silhouetted against the corridor’s night-light.
His heart pounded. He shivered.
“Madan?”
He shook his head to clear it, but she thought he was telling her to go and she returned to her room.
Wait, he tried to say, but his mouth was dry, and the plea stayed glued to his tongue.
CHAPTER 20
THE LANDFILL WAS A MOUNTAIN OF WHITE. THERE WAS SO much garbage that as he drove by, his eyes, unable to distinguish shapes, colors and sizes in the undulating landscape of waste, washed the entire spectrum in a milky bright light. From the cocooned hush of the car, Madan couldn’t hear the squawks of the circling buzzards above or the scavenging boys calling to each other as they weaved between the stoic cows determinedly chewing on peaks of trash and lazily taking in the plentiful landscape.
The outskirts of Delhi fell away. Behind him lay the keyhole ramparts of Red Fort and the call of the muezzin from the minarets of Jama Masjid.
There had been no one up when he’d left early that morning, the driveway gravel slick with dew, his breath visible in the crisp air. He hadn’t told Preeti where he was going, or that he was going at all. Nor had he told Ketan-bhai.
Dusty faces peered down at him from the bus windows, villagers and townspeople returning home. On the far side of the road, two plodding elephants with smears of red on their foreheads flapped their ears. Loaded trucks lined the highway.
The car sped north along Grand Trunk Road. Gone was the narrow, two-lane, potholed road. With this new highway, it would take him half the time to reach Gorapur than it would have twenty years ago.
Towns and villages appeared and then disappeared in his rearview mirror. He looked for signs heralding his approach to Gorapur, but on either side of the highway massive billboards sprang up relentlessly before his eyes, the artwork in bold colors conveying as much as the written messages:
Dream no more . . . It is here. The City of Tomorrow. Jeet Megacity.
You are thirty kilometers away from Jeet Megacity . . . come see the home of your future generations.
Jeet Megacity . . . A luxurious oasis of peace and prosperity.
Vastu-friendly apartments and villas. World-class facilities.
Live green. Love green. Be green. Dream green. Jeet Megacity.
He forced himself to ignore the signs. He drove straight on, slowing down when the billboards petered out. Water-drenched paddy fields rippled out on either side of the highway, dissolving into swaths of maize, their broad leaves flowering open in supplication to the sun. In the distance, a lookout tower stood in solitary contemplation.
At last a broad, metal sign, GORAPUR WELCOMES YOU, arched across the road. He drove under it, and after a few kilometers the surroundings began to look familiar. The roads crisscrossing the center of town were as before. It was everything that stood around them that had shifted and changed.
Now that he had his bearings, Madan felt the town reaching out, drawing him in. He drove on, the singular action of moving forward taking full possession of him. He knew where to turn, when to cross and where, finally, to stop.
He was at the corner. The road straight ahead led to the main house, and to the left was the turn into the narrower street of the servants’ quarters. He parked to one side and got out of the car. A slow-moving bicycle rickshaw trundled past.
He had been twelve when he stood at this corner after having just met Avtaar Singh for the first time. “How old are you, boy?” He could hear that voice boom in his head. “How old are you?”
Very old now, saab.
He couldn’t see any obvious changes to the main house. Long and broad, as he remembered it, a row of windows peeking out from behind the pointed tips of the Ashoka trees. The gate was shut. How many times had he driven in and out of it, or stood outside frittering away the time with Jaggu, or stepped out through it to take Prince on his daily walks?
Back in his car, he turned onto the road to the servants’ quarters, then got out and walked to the ru
sted gate. He peeked in. The courtyard was empty. Strokes of a broom scored the dust on the recently swept cement floor, and a puddle of water lay at the base of the water pump. The doors of all three rooms were closed. There was no rope bed outside by the wall.
The middle door swung open and a man emerged, wringing a cloth and wiping his face. He quickly recovered from his surprise at seeing a well-dressed man at the entrance.
“This is the back way,” he said, waving his cloth at Madan. “The front is from the main road.”
“I’m looking for Durga,” Madan said. “She works in the main house?”
“Durga?” the man repeated.
“This house belongs to Avtaar Singh?” Madan asked, realizing he shouldn’t assume that nothing had changed.
The man nodded. “I don’t know of a Durga, but I’ve not been here long.” He knocked on the adjoining door and another man came out. They walked to Madan and the first man said, “He’s looking for someone called Durga, says she works here.”
“Durga?” The man spat a glob of phlegm into the street’s drain. “Durga? Oh, yes, a few years ago. She’s not here anymore.” The men looked at Madan curiously.
“Do you know where she is?”
“No.” The man shook his head. “She moved away after her father-in-law died. I heard she went to live with her daughter.”
Madan stepped back, surprised. “Gone to live with her daughter? Are you sure we’re talking about the same Durga? Her daughter lived with her.”
“No.” The man was quite firm now. “The daughter would visit but she didn’t live here, not since I’ve been here.”