The banging on the door became louder and more insistent. There was the sound of glass breaking. The window-pane. Thank goodness for the iron grill. More banging, and then the door burst open, flinging the cot away and scattering the steel shelves ranged on it.
Nimmo glared at the intruders. She recognized some of them—there was the fellow from the ration shop who always cheated her on her sugar rations, there was that Doctor Jaikishen who prayed forty times a day and sold medicines made of sugar and wheat flour to his poor patients. And behind them all, hiding like the coward that he was, was Asha’s husband.
“What do you want?” Nimmo asked, holding the iron rod firmly in her hands.
“Where are your men?” one of the men asked.
Nimmo looked at Asha’s husband. “Why are you here, brother?” she asked.
He shifted his eyes away from her straight gaze. “You better tell them what they want to know. Otherwise I can’t say what will happen,” he mumbled.
“You have known us for twenty, twenty-five years, brother. Why didn’t you tell them that my men are never here at this time of the day?” Nimmo said. “Satpal is in Modinagar, he called at your house, you know that. You were there, and Asha—you heard me talking to him.”
“Enough talking,” shouted one of the other men. There were only men in the group, Nimmo noticed. “Search the house. Tear it down till you find the rats who killed our Madam-ji!”
“I said they are not here, didn’t you hear me?” Nimmo screamed. She swung the rod around. “Set one foot inside this house and see what happens!” She was not her mother.
She heard a woman shouting outside the house. It was Kaushalya, her neighbour, owner of the chickens.
“What is going on here?” she called. “Nimmo, is everything all right?”
Nimmo shouted back, “Call the police, Kaushalya!”
The men advanced into the house and Nimmo lifted the rod high over her head before bringing it down hard on the nearest shoulder. The man she had attacked screamed obscenities at her. Somebody else grabbed her around her waist and prised the rod out of her hand.
“Help me!” shouted Nimmo. “Kaushalya, call the police!”
It was too late, of course. The men flooded through the house. One of them entered the bedroom and banged on the steel cupboard in the corner.
“What’s inside here?” he demanded.
“Nothing,” Nimmo said sullenly. She turned again to Asha’s husband, who was standing near the front door staring at the mess with a slightly shocked expression on his face, as if he had not really expected it. “Brother, why are you doing this to us?” she said to him. “We have been neighbours for so many years, tell these people we have nothing to hide, tell them. Please.”
Asha’s husband looked away uneasily. “Just tell them where Satpal and your son are and they will go away,” he said.
“They are not here,” Nimmo said. “Why don’t you believe me?”
“Open this cupboard,” said one of the men. He kicked at the door.
Nimmo glared at him. “I don’t have the keys,” she said.
“What is in here?”
“Just some clothes, that’s all. We are not rich people,” Nimmo said.
The man banged the cupboard hard so that it rocked slightly. “Is somebody inside?”
Perhaps it was Nimmo’s guarded expression, perhaps it was just an instinct. The man looked around the room and his eyes fell on the clothes that were heaped on the floor. “I asked, is there somebody hiding in here?” he asked again.
Nimmo shook her head. “I told you, my husband and my son are not here. I am telling you the truth. They are in Modinagar.”
Without another word the man picked up a sheet from the ground and started to tear it into strips. He jerked his head towards Nimmo and said gruffly to the other men, “Take her outside.”
“Why? What are you doing? I told you there is nobody here,” Nimmo shouted as she was hustled outdoors and to the front yard. “What kind of people are you? Have you no shame? No conscience?”
A moment later, their leader came out of the house and left with the other men. Nimmo looked after them, bewildered and relieved that she and Kamal were still alive and unhurt. Then, from the window of the bedroom, a spire of smoke emerged. Choked by dread, Nimmo ran back inside and saw that the man had lit a bonfire with the bedsheets, her children’s textbooks, clothes and anything else that would burn. A strong smell of kerosene filled the room mixed with the odour of smoke. In the centre of the fire stood the steel cupboard. Nimmo heard herself screaming, a high-pitched stream of sound that seemed to belong to somebody else. Nononono! She tried to bat the fire down with her bare hands. Kamal, I am coming. She ran to the kitchen and rushed back with a bucket of water. Then another and another. Blankets, towels, anything. And screaming all the while, Kamal Kamal Kamal. She raced to and fro, her hair wild about her face. The fire wasn’t dying down. It licked the steel cupboard into a white heat, the green paint curling away, and was that her daughter shouting from inside? It was the last safe place in the world, that bin of grain, stay there my daughter, stay there, you will be safe. Don’t make a noise or they will get you. She ran madly back and forth and tried to enter the flames, which leapt about the room making everything blood-red and smoke-black. Where are the keys? Where is the bowl with the keys? Must get to Kamal. Nimmo crawled around the room, along the edges of the fire, looking for the key in the mess of things on the floor. The bastards have stolen the keys. The murderers, the bastard murderers.
Strong arms dragged her out of the room. Kaushalya’s husband. Kaushalya stood behind him in the room that was not burning and clucked like one of her chickens: “Nimmo, let it be, let it be. You will get hurt. Those are only things that are burning, Nimmo. Let it be. The police said they will come as soon as possible. I told them what happened. They said you must come and file a report. Nimmo, come out!”
Nimmo fought to get back to the room where the cupboard held her daughter. Kamal I am coming.
The hen again: “Cluck, cluck, cluck, it’s okay, it’s okay!”
“No, it is not okay,” Nimmo panted, still tearing at the arms around her waist. “My Kamal is inside!”
Dawning realization in the hen’s eyes. “In the room? Where is she? I didn’t see her.”
“Inside the steel cupboard, the safest place—she is there, my little daughter,” wailed Nimmo. “Nobody can touch her there.”
Across the city, Pappu searched for a new set of tires for the scooter that needed repairs. When he reached the supplier’s shop, it was shuttered and the normally busy street was deserted. A tea-shop owner, seeing Pappu standing uncertainly on the sidewalk, shouted at him to go home and stay inside.
“They are beating up the sardars all over the city. Better go home, son,” said the wizened old man. He too was busy pulling the shutters down on his tiny shop.
By the time Pappu returned empty-handed to his father’s shop, the busy street there had been shuttered as well, and a dense silence had descended. Mohan Lal, his father’s partner for the past twenty-five years, waited anxiously outside the closed shop for him.
“Son, I decided to close the shop. Everybody is advising this,” Mohan Lal said as soon as he saw Pappu.
Pappu looked uncertainly at the grey-haired man, stooped from years of hunching over machine parts. “So should I go home?” he asked.
“No, no, my house is closer. You are too conspicuous with that turban and beard, especially today, son, especially today. I live a few minutes away, and you will be safe in a Hindu home—they won’t look for you there.”
Pappu followed him down the narrow gully, a familiar path that he had taken often enough to celebrate many festivals and family occasions with this elderly man who had been a part of his life since his birth. There was the tiny temple dedicated to Shiva, there the quilter’s shop, the drain outside thick with floating puffs of escaped silk-cotton, the chatai-maker’s warehouse, all shuttered and watchful somehow
. Pappu was uneasily aware of eyes following the two of them.
As if sensing the young man’s feelings, Mohan Lal said in reassuring tones, “Don’t worry, I know all these people. They are harmless.”
Finally, after a walk that seemed far longer than the ten minutes it actually took, they reached a small house at the end of the lane. Mohan Lal’s wife, Shanti, cautiously opened the door and ushered them in.
“I will phone your mother and tell her that you are here with us,” Mohan Lal said. “If the phone booth is open, that is.” He turned to his wife. “Don’t open the door to anyone, you hear?”
“I know, I know. You be careful also,” she warned before shutting the door.
She turned to Pappu and said kindly, “Sit, sit. I will get you some tea.”
Pappu sat on the charpoy Shanti had unrolled in one corner of the room that served as both living area and kitchen. He had come to this house many times when he was a boy, but his visits became less frequent as he grew older, largely because Mohan Lal’s daughters were also grown up and it would not look right for an unmarried man to visit a home with young women in it.
“It is very kind of you to help me like this, Chaachi-ji,” Pappu said shyly.
“My child, where is the kindness in taking care of one of our own? These are difficult times for you, and it is our duty to help. Your father would do the same for us, I know that.” The thin, grey-haired woman, squatting before the gas stove that sat on a raised platform constructed of bricks and a wooden plank, waited patiently for the water to boil. If she was unhappy about allowing danger into the fragile safety of her home, she showed no sign of it.
She handed Pappu a glass tumbler of boiling tea and settled down to chop vegetables for the day’s meal. The silence was broken by the sound of a child screaming in one of the neighbouring houses, and then suddenly there was a knock on the door, tentative at first and then more authoritative. She looked up and whispered to Pappu, “They are here. What to do?”
“I’ll go outside, Chaachi-ji. I don’t want to cause trouble,” Pappu replied softly. He could handle this; what could they do to him?
Shanti shook her head. “No, son, no, you are not causing trouble,” she said. “And my husband would never forgive me if something happened to you out there.”
There was more banging on the door and several voices shouted at Shanti to open the door.
“I’m coming, wait,” she called back. “I am in the bathroom! What is the hurry?”
She pushed Pappu ahead of her and into the tiny bath. “Stay here. Maybe they will go away.”
Pappu crouched in the damp, narrow space and waited fearfully. “Who’s there?” he heard Shanti asking.
A male voice ordered, “Open the door. We need to talk to your husband.”
“He isn’t here,” she said.
“We want to see for ourselves, open the door,” the voice demanded.
“I told you he is not here.” Shanti’s voice held a tremor of fear.
A steady banging started up. “Open up,” an implacable voice said. “Otherwise we will break this door down.”
Pappu heard the door open. He glanced around the tiny bathroom thinking there was nowhere to hide, no exit other than that flimsy wooden door, rotting and ragged around the bottom edge where the water touched it constantly.
“What is the matter with you people? Hanh? I told you my husband is not at home. Is this any way to behave with a woman?” scolded Shanti.
“Where is the sardar?” a voice asked—the same one that had threatened to break the door.
Looking around in a panic, Pappu spotted Mohan Lal’s old-fashioned razor on the sink and grabbed it. He removed his turban and unbound his hair. Gripping the razor, he started sawing clumps of hair, cursing at its thickness.
Shanti shouted, “Ask anyone, this is a Hindu home! There are no sardars here. I will call the neighbours if you don’t leave right now.”
Someone laughed. “Arrey, Aunty, one of your neighbours told us that you had a sardar hiding here like a rat. We don’t like rats, so we are here to catch him.”
The man who had spoken first said in that same quiet monotone, “Is that the bathroom where you were just now? Why is the door closed? Who is in there?”
Pappu caught sight of himself in the flecked and spotted mirror above the sink. He had not even managed to get through half the hair. And his face, there was all that hair on his face. What was he to do with so much hair? And so little time? God, he prayed, send me a miracle. I will do any seva for you, I will wash the floors of every temple in this country for a year, for two years, I will dedicate my life to the poor, oh God send me a miracle. He attacked his face, scraping away at his beard and moustache, cutting himself all over in his haste. Blood flowered against his skin and flowed down his neck. Never mind, he thought, never mind.
“In the bathroom?” Shanti’s voice was etched with tension. Pappu could hear it. He grabbed a bunch of his beard and pulled it hard, trying to wrench it out by the roots, his eyes filling with tears at the shooting pain. “My daughter is in there now. Who else would be there?”
“Your daughter? All of you are going into the bathroom one after another? Something you ate, hanh? Ask her to come out then. We don’t want to hurt innocent people, Aunty-ji,” said the quiet man.
“Yes, I will do that, but if she is bathing, it might take a few minutes.”
“Who takes a bath this late in the morning?” one of the men wanted to know.
“We poor people have to bathe whenever there is water in the taps,” Shanti said bravely. “Six o’clock, ten o’clock, who knows? This is the way in this part of the world! But I will tell her to hurry up. You can wait outside.”
“Oh no, Aunty-ji, it is cold outside. We will wait here, and you can make us some tea while your charming daughter is bathing,” the quiet man said.
Pappu heard Shanti approach the bathroom door and shout, “Daughter, these men want to make sure that there are no men in there. Finish your bath quickly and come out properly dressed.”
The bathroom floor was covered in hair. Pappu didn’t know what he was supposed to do. Turn into a woman? He looked at his square-jawed face in the mirror, half-shaved, bristly and bleeding where the razor had cut through skin, swollen where he had tried to tear the hair off his face, his long tresses unevenly butchered. And he gave up. It was no use, they would get him anyway. There was to be no miracle for him today, he knew that now. With a steady hand, he finished shaving his face, trying not to think of the sacrilege he was committing. Then he gathered his remaining hair into a ponytail. He pushed the mess on the floor to a corner, and emerged from the bathroom.
A silence met him as he stepped out followed by a crack of laughter. “Arrey, Aunty, look at what that bath did to your daughter! She has turned into a man! Is there a demon in there doing magic?”
Laughing, they dragged Pappu out into the silent gully. One of the men jammed a car tire down over his body, pinning his arms to his sides, poured kerosene over him and flicked a match, setting him alight.
At the Modinagar terminus, the driver refused to let Satpal into his vehicle.
“Isn’t my money good enough for you?” Satpal demanded. He was tired and irritable. The previous evening, a passerby in the market where he had gone to eat his dinner had spat at him and shouted, “Murdering whore-son!” And when he had whirled around to confront the man, he had been surrounded by a group of men armed with crowbars and sticks. If some people on the street had not intervened, he knew he could have been seriously hurt. The incident had left him shaken and anxious to get home to Delhi as soon as possible. Indira Gandhi’s death had unsettled people everywhere, he told himself, and there were always thugs and malcontents willing to use the prevailing mood of anxiety for their own ends. He realized that his turban and beard made him a clear target.
He had reached the terminus as early as possible to catch the first bus. But now the idiot of a driver wouldn’t let him climb in.
“But that’s why I am trying to get into your bus, sahib,” protested Satpal. “I live in Delhi. How else will I get there?”
“For your own sake I am saying no,” the driver replied. “I can’t guarantee that you will be safe on this bus. Find a hotel and stay inside. That is my advice, take it or leave it.”
Satpal turned away, angry and helpless. He waited for the next bus, and again wasn’t allowed to get on. A taxi would be horribly expensive, and if the road to Delhi was as unsafe as the first driver had indicated, perhaps it wouldn’t be a good idea either. Satpal left the terminus and started walking towards the market, hoping to find an inexpensive hotel room, when the first blow landed on his back. He turned around and found himself face to face with a gang of men, their faces filled with hatred.
“Killer!” they shouted. “Fucking murderer! We’ll teach you to kill helpless women.”
Satpal backed away only to find his path blocked by more men. He lowered his head and ran into one of them, taking him by surprise. He raced through the gap that opened up and across the road to a shuttered café where he had earlier noticed two policemen.
“Help!” he shouted, waving his arms to attract their attention. They did not seem to notice him. He reached them and grabbed one by his arm. “Help me,” he pleaded. “Those men are going to kill me.”
He looked over his shoulder. The group was strolling towards him. “Please, help!” he begged again.
The policeman he had grabbed gave him a considering look. “I have no orders to help,” he said.
“What?” Satpal cried, incredulous.
“I am not in charge of crime, Sardar-ji,” he sneered. “I am only here to direct traffic. For crime report you have to go to the police station. I am not authorized.”
Can You Hear the Nightbird Call? Page 28