Love Curry

by Pankaj Dubey

  Sore all over, Rishi shrugged off his dark humour, held his back gingerly and started to get up. Balancing himself tenderly on one elbow, he raised his head, looking to push himself up sideways. And fell back in shock. A posse of cops had ringed him in a vicious circle; their eyes and body language told him something was bloody wrong. They weren’t here to help, or wreak vengeance over a gentle collision. No. He was in deep shit! Deep, deep shit!

  The police edged closer, ordered him to lie on his stomach, and turned him around at gunpoint, not giving him a second to process what was going on. Caked in dust, bleeding and hurt all over, he winced, but not in pain. More than agony, what he felt now was fear—terror. He was terrorized and wanted to scream that there had been some big mistake. Only he couldn’t, for his mouth had gone dry and his senses were getting dulled. Something sharp had hit him somewhere in the back. These jokers surrounding him had immobilized him completely. He couldn’t move or speak. He was losing focus. Swimming … the ground was swimming … bobbing up and down … and … sirens! Sirens were the last he heard of the audible world.

  When he came to, he felt stiff, nauseous and filthy. Yanking up his arm, he made to wipe the dirt off his clammy face and got stuck. He couldn’t raise the damn arm. Had he damaged it? The half-shut eyes were jolted wide open. He tried to swing his arm and failed. It was locked. Every nerve in him shuddered in shock as the mind struggled to grasp the horrendous fact that his arm had been locked behind him, cuffed to the left one, rigidly bound in metal.

  Rishi went crazy then, jerking his arm up and down, trying to wrench free. But succeeded only in injuring his back. This was not real, it couldn’t be. Why would they do this to him? There was nothing he could think of that he’d done to deserve this—nothing. Why then? Was there another Rishi Mathur in London, who’d whacked his mom-in-law or quartered his girlfriend or robbed his neighbour? There must be, nothing else explained this. Jeez!

  ‘Help!’ he screamed into the darkness, and a door clanked open. Thank god! Now a sane conversation could start. They would’ve nabbed the right Rishi Mathur by now, if Rishi Mathur was who they wanted. Bastards! He would read them the riot act, let them know he wasn’t taking this lying down like some dumb foreigner. He would sue them for wrongful detention—make them bloody compensate …

  Two officers walked in. He was right—they’d come to talk to him.

  ‘Do you know Khalid Mohammad Siddiqui?’

  That was the first question. And it went on … and on … for hours … days … endless … Rishi soon lost track of time.

  28

  Her broken leg up in traction, Zeenat stared at it, seeing not her limb but the olive-green shirt and familiar face. Not in her wildest dreams could she have imagined that the voice she had begun to trust and listen to would be his. Her heart had sought refuge in the accepting space she’d found in him, her bubbling emotions rising up to meet a heart that understood and calmed her. Else, she would’ve been on the boil endlessly. And yet, to know that Rishi was her saviour was scalding! She squirmed in pain, her leg numb, her mind restless and her heart confused.

  Even if it were Shehzad, she would’ve laughed and swallowed it. He knew every inch of her, it wouldn’t have been this awkward if he’d chanced to peer inside her as well. But Rishi! They had always run parallel to one another, never intending to meet, looking straight ahead or the other way. Each took extra pains to avoid the other. What a wallop it had been to learn she had archived all her secrets in him. Life had become a joke—turning slapstick and mean. She shivered at this new reality. And that brought the nurse over.

  ‘Need another painkiller?’

  It took some time for Zeenat to switch back to the present, her mind was all topsy-turvy, but now she realized that weights and a pulley were helping keep her left leg in position. Well, the medical world is not so patient or sympathetic. The nurse moved on to other blast victims who were awake and hankered for her professional care and attention.

  Zeenat had not seen her come and she didn’t see her go. Her mind wandered back to the station, to that most ungainly moment in her life, when she found out that the man she had been thirsting to meet was the one she had always thought dry and dour. Such a tectonic slip was bound to send her mind and emotions haywire. And life had done one worse—it even snatched the ground from under her feet and pitched her right into the middle of a bomb blast, just a second after her seismic encounter. Not a moment did she get to assess the emotional damage.

  It wasn’t just her heart, even her brain and eyes needed fixing. At least, that was how she saw it. But the doctors were concerned only with her leg and had scheduled her for surgery as soon as one of the OTs freed up. She hadn’t been told all that much, not that she cared to know. She wasn’t going anywhere for quite some time. There was much to be figured out, and she wasn’t good at thinking on her feet. They could keep her in bed for a whole week and she’d be okay with it.

  Mullah hurried through the ward, his heart breaking as he passed beds and beds of burnt, wounded and disfigured victims from the blast site. Till he reached his princess. She looked so frail and so inelegant, with her leg sticking up like a scarecrow’s hand, all the colour gone from her face and a breath that came heavy and laboured.

  ‘Zeenat, you shouldn’t have gone to that museum,’ he lamented.

  ‘Museum?’ She woke up from her daydream to ask.

  ‘You don’t remember? Are you okay … is your head fine? Tell me!’

  She looked blank and that upped his concern and hysteria. Had she lost her memory? Or was it concussion? Running back to the doctor in charge of the ward, he checked on the exact status of his princess’s injuries. Why wasn’t she responding adequately? She was in shock, he was told—post-traumatic shock. And they were right in a way. Her heart was in shock and her mind traumatized.

  Praying fervently, Mullah begged Allah that his daughter recover enough to lead a normal life with everything and everyone she knew and loved. Love made him think of Ali and he wondered if Ali had got the chance to meet her and profess his love before the bomb had gone off.

  ‘Ali! Did you meet Ali?’ he inquired even as they were wheeling her away for surgery.

  ‘Ali?’ she repeated, looking lost. Then sighed, ‘If only it were Ali … things would have been so simple …’

  Mullah caught on to that one word he wanted to hear. Ali. She remembered him! Also, she sounded like she was keen on him. He rubbed his hands in glee and thanked Allah profusely for granting his wishes with such speed. His mind now raced ahead to start planning for the wedding once she was done with the surgery and the hospital. He would have to be patient, he knew. A bride could not look ravishing hobbling on one leg.

  While he fantasized, a crazed media thronged outside. Waiting for a sound bite, a story, a quote, a candid shot, anything at all that would make for an exclusive in the next broadcast or the morning newspaper. They had reported on the seven people killed and the larger number that was injured. Every inch of the blasted Holborn station had been shown again and again. The reaction from Downing Street had been telecast, debated and done away with. Scotland Yard, as usual, had not been very forthcoming; on being hounded for an update, it had let out that forensics were on the job, trying to home in on the type of bomb. And yes, they had picked up suspects, but as of now, there was nothing more to say.

  So the air was thick with rumour and conjecture, a lethal mix, way thicker than the smoke from the blast. The injured at the hospital could definitely tell more, as they had been there, and seen what the tight-lipped officers hadn’t. Every patient that got discharged was thus waylaid by reporters and cameras, and pestered to rewind to that horrendous moment and cough out every bit they could.

  Not much was known except what had already been reported. It had been a single blast, and not a series as had been feared earlier. An unexploded device had been discovered by an alert guard, near the riverfront. It had since been defused by the bomb squad. But even that turned out to be a b
omb dating back to the Second World War. Holborn appeared to have been the sole target. It was a small, busy station, the perfect site for a terror attack, promising maximum casualties and footage.

  As night crept in, the media got a bite to chew on. The main suspect was an Indian. Not from Iraq. Not from Jordan or Syria. The tabloids and channels went berserk conjecturing who it may be and why.

  Indian? Mullah shook his head. No place was free of the menace now. Things would get bleaker for South Asians in London now. He shook his head again as he called up Fiza. He told her to check on the tenants before she came to see Zeenat. ‘Check on Ali first,’ he said, ‘make sure he’s okay. He is more important to us.’

  By the time Zeenat came out of surgery, the media had stumbled upon a whole new cult of terrorists to feast upon. Scotland Yard had given them a tasty bite. It would be splashed on the front page of all the papers tomorrow morning. The channels had enough meat for their late-night shows and got busy putting it all together. This new development had something to do with a tattoo. Or at least that’s what Mullah had picked up from the hospital grapevine.

  29

  He heard the cell door open again and shrunk back. He no longer wanted to see them. Once, ages ago, when they first brought him here, he had prayed for some official to come so that they could talk and he could clear his name. All that innocence was now dead and buried in the stale air of this almost windowless, grey, cramped cell.

  It was pointless telling them the truth, for they grilled him on things of which he had no clue. They tried to beat it out of him. They got nothing, for he had nothing, and this riled them badly, leading to more insane questions and a more sullen silence on his part. His mind had fallen asleep, and his battered body was now refusing to install a new coping mechanism every day. How long had it been since they brought him here? Days? Months? Years? Time had ceased to matter within these walls. Surviving every interrogation was an achievement in itself, marking a level of endurance he had never known he possessed. Beyond that, life—or the shadow of life he led here—was boring and repetitive.

  Two figures staggered in. He heard them come, but he did not rise or look up from his corner, till one addressed him by name.

  ‘Rishi!’

  He knew that voice! His head jerked up, eyes dilated, and his breath caught. It was a familiar voice … he had stopped hoping for such a miracle.

  That was … that was … Ali! And … Shehzad!

  Rishi sat gaping, not daring to believe that they were real. He waited for them to come up to him, if they were there in flesh and blood. Devoid of hope and resigned to accept this as another figment of his delirious imagination, he sat still.

  ‘Rishi!’ Shehzad shook him by his shoulders and called out his name.

  ‘You okay, mate?’ bellowed Ali, drawing near.

  Rishi nodded his head, wordless.

  After days—maybe months—he was once again overcome with emotion. Life in captivity had reduced him to a zombie in every way, numbing his thoughts and emotions. And then out of the blue, he had company. Rishi wept with joy.

  Finally, he had someone to pour it all out to. The way these Brits had screwed him, catching him for being at a station. Thousands of others had been there too. Why him? Then throwing him here, locking him up like they do with a dog, slapping all kinds of charges on him, trying to link him to groups he knew nothing about. They’d cross-examined every bloody thing he’d done these ten years. Hell, even the music he liked was being questioned. Telling them he was only an agony uncle cut no ice. They prodded him to confess stuff he didn’t know about … had never done. They were making him out to be someone else, someone they could pin the blast on. Bloody racist pigs! Forcing him, torturing his body and playing dirty mind games to kill his spirit. He got bent, but did not break—not yet at least.

  ‘You …’ he got up and pointed at Ali and Shehzad. ‘You go tell the world! Shout my truth out to them! You … you know it. Tell them all. Now,’ he said, wiping his tears.

  Ali hugged him then, squeezing the breath out of his frail frame. Shehzad swore loudly and hit his fist on the wall.

  Rishi let go of Ali to stop Shehzad. ‘Don’t. They’re watching us. Don’t upset them. They won’t let you come again.’

  Shehzad laughed then. But this was not his laugh … not at all. Something was not right. He looked at Ali.

  The Pakistani’s eyes had misted. ‘Janaab … we’re all screwed.’

  Rishi’s world spun again. He lurched on to the wall for support, and waited for his head to stop spinning. The numbness was coming back too. Shehzad and Ali rushed forward to catch him, unnerved by his state. They had been through hell too. But Rishi probably faced the brunt of it as he was the one at Holborn, and they, in the vicinity. Bloody Asians! Bloody terrorists! That’s how England was now branding them—ever since that blasted evening.

  In some time, Rishi got a grip of himself, stood up straight and gave them a twisted smile. Their faces seemed consumed with concern. He peered closer, seeing them properly for the first time since they had entered his cell. His housemates didn’t look very good. In fact, they … they looked like him. Like zombies. For, they were prisoners too, caught like him, screwed by fate and the colour of their skin. All three of them were paying for having been at the wrong place at the wrong time.

  ‘Why?’ It took a while for Rishi to scrape out that one word. Why had they picked on his housemates?

  ‘It’s easier to believe outsiders are the wrong ones. Happens all the time.’

  That was Ali. Rishi saw the Pakistani’s frame shudder in disgust. He was boiling inside, but there was nothing he could do about it.

  ‘Why the hell did you go to Holborn, Rishi?’ Shehzad vented it out on the Indian. He had to do it to someone, else he would go mad.

  Rishi understood his state—he felt the same way.

  ‘Zeenat.’

  ‘Zeenat?’

  Ali and Shehzad cried out in one voice, not understanding why Rishi, of all people, would have gone anywhere for her. The two couldn’t stand each other.

  Rishi eyed her two suitors warily. Two pairs of eyes pierced through him, sharp and incisive, questioning him. He couldn’t meet them today. Hell! Where to start and how? His mind was stuttering. They’d been through so much already and were hurting badly. This would bleed them more. How could he do it to them?

  Ali shook him hard. ‘Out with it, mate.’

  ‘Shehzad,’ began Rishi, sweating, ‘you remember that girl I was chatting with?’

  Shehzad looked blank.

  ‘Go on,’ Ali was squirming in impatience.

  ‘That night you came to my room and found me online? That … that …’

  Shehzad’s eyes widened in shock. ‘That was Zeenie?’ He couldn’t swallow this. Why, she was staying over with them that night. On the sofa, at their place. And all that time, this crap was going on? Girls! He should’ve known. They’re all one colour and creed—sick!

  Rishi saw the Bangla face go white, and it pained him to see his friend this way. He knew the baggage the fellow carried … this could pull him under. Rishi had never wanted it to be this way. He hadn’t known it was Zeenat, nor had he known this guy was so serious about her.

  ‘Shehzad, I didn’t know it was her.’ Desperately, he tried to reach out to him. But Shehzad looked lost. ‘I … I saw her there, first time that day.’

  ‘What?’ Ali found his voice and asked, ‘She was at Holborn too?’

  Rishi nodded, unable to look up or speak.

  ‘Have they got her too?’ Ali shot back.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  The three of them looked at each other. This had not struck them before. Mired in their own shit, it had not entered their heads that she might also be drowning in the same mess.

  ‘We didn’t meet,’ Rishi told them. ‘We couldn’t … the bomb went off.’ In their eyes, he saw the same dread that had overtaken him at the station when he couldn’t find her.

  ‘
You’re one shady fellow,’ Ali declared, finding it tough to digest this news.

  ‘He said he didn’t know,’ Shehzad bounced back, seeing Rishi go to pieces. ‘Don’t kill a dead man.’

  Before Ali could hit back, Rishi took control of the conversation. ‘No one’s dead. And no one’s going to be either.’

  ‘I won’t let anyone mess with me!’ Ali was still aggravated.

  ‘We’re in this together,’ Rishi looked the Pakistani in the eye as he spoke.

  Shehzad was getting the drift, and tried to calm down his housemate. ‘Our battle’s with them,’ he reminded Ali, pointing at the door. ‘Not with each other.’

  ‘You’re right,’ agreed the Pakistani and held out his hand to both.

  Their countries, their love, their suffering—all of it ceased to matter. The three of them came together as one again that day in that cell. They stood holding hands, like Zeenat would make them do, in a promise of friendship and support. Forever.

  ‘Wait,’ Shehzad cried out as they were about to let go of each other. His eye fell on the tattoo he’d etched on each of their wrists. ‘They kept grilling me about this tattoo.’

  ‘Me too,’ boomed Ali the very next second.

  Rishi nodded a yes as the other two turned to him for confirmation. So it was the damn tattoo that had further messed things up. That tiny bowl of curry on their three wrists, it clubbed them together—and alarmed the British agencies no end.

  ‘Shehzad!’ Rishi and Ali were both at his neck. This Bangla dude spelt trouble even when he tried to do good.

  ‘Relax,’ Shehzad shook the boys off. ‘Stop attacking like the fucking Brits.’

  It was left to Rishi once again to restore order. As they sat cramped together, debating their next step, Rishi made a suggestion. ‘Let’s first get all our stories out—leaving nothing out.’