Noma, 3 August. Janaki Dubey, a student at Swami Devanand Degree College, has been missing since the last two days. She had left home for college on Saturday. When she didn’t return that evening, her father went to her college to check. There, the other students told him she had not come at all that day.
Bhaiyya handed the phone over to his wife. She too had an entire list of instructions for me. Failure brings with it plenty of guardians. I put the phone on mute and kept it aside as my sister-in-law continued to speak. I asked Sahadeo, ‘How far is Noma?’
‘Pretty far,’ he said, then added with a chuckle, ‘Seventy kilometres.’
Soon, we entered a dense forest. I asked him to roll down the windows. There were teak trees all around us. The dark road ran between them. The sun hadn’t climbed in the sky, so the trees threw long shadows on the road. We crossed one shadow after another quickly. Occasionally, I could see trails disappearing into the jungle. Did people live inside?
Sahadeo said, ‘This is called the Kushmi jungle. Once, it spread as far as Assam, but no longer.’
I was familiar with this forest. But I had read that it had once stretched not till Assam but till Nepal.
HER CALLER TUNE WAS A pleasing flute melody. It continued to play, but my call went unanswered. I tried once more but didn’t get a response. I paused to check whether I had dialled the correct number. I hadn’t even been able to ask Archana about her conversation with Anasuya.
Anasuya called back. The Truecaller app showed her name as ‘Anasuya Neel’.
The spontaneity of our previous night’s conversation aside, I did not know how to talk to her. Ours was a broken relationship. When siblings or a couple quarrel and don’t talk to each other for a few days, it’s difficult to begin speaking again. Imagine my quandary, for Anasuya and my relationship had ended about a dozen years ago. But then, it wouldn’t be appropriate for me to feel the same for her after so many years either.
‘There’s no news yet.’
‘I will reach in a couple of hours.’
‘If you know someone, please have them call the police. They haven’t even filed an FIR.’ She continued, ‘A few of Rafique’s students had come over. They were talking about going to the police station together.’
She seemed to be speaking to me from an entirely different universe. I had been thinking that Anasuya wouldn’t even have realized she was calling her ex-boyfriend when she phoned me. She just needed help. If there was anyone else who could have helped her, she wouldn’t have reached out to me. She would have called her friends first, and then perhaps with some hesitation, even her enemies. Only when there was no one else she could reach out to would she have thought of me. This was not a call from an old flame. When I learnt that she was married to a teacher, I felt glad for a moment. It meant that her life had been going well before this incident.
‘Reach the police station by ten. I will see you all there,’ I said emphatically. As a postscript, I added, ‘Send me your location on Google Maps, if possible.’
I was reminded that the previous night, Archana had shared my Google Maps location with her Google account, and registered her own location on my phone. She had asked me not to turn off the internet. To me, this was all new – a tool with which one could instantly find out where the other person was.
Two triangles – in red and blue – were painted on the police station’s door. They would have made a rectangle had they been the same colour. The police station itself was massive, perhaps the largest I had seen. The southern end of the town. A lawn spread out over three acres or more, and a two-storeyed building right in the middle, haveli-like and surrounded by a tall wall. It looked like it had been a residence once, before being converted into a police station.
From here, the town looked as if it was far away, and ugly. If one came from Gorakhpur to Noma via Deoria and Salempur, the station appeared like a gateway to the town. But it was, in fact, outside the town. From here, one could see a stretch of buildings begin. A town settled in a long, straight line – the way settlements built along riverbanks usually are. Except, there was no river here, only a road that cut through the town. If someone came here to have fun or to visit, they would most certainly be disappointed.
Perhaps because the police station was outside the town, tempos, vikrams and autorickshaws thronged near it. A tea stall stood beneath a mahua tree. With overcast skies, the weather was perfect for some tea, but none among the twenty-odd people around the stall seemed to have such a thought.
This was the first time in my life that I was at a police station.
It would be incorrect to say I thought of Anasuya immediately after stepping out of the car. She and the trouble she found herself in were on my mind, but I wasn’t able to find any structure for my thoughts. Amidst the jumble of incomplete thoughts, a face would sneak in every now and then, and a name would flash: Anasuya. I kept mouthing her name. Sahadeo had even asked me many times during the ride, ‘Did you say something?’
I wondered whether I would even be able to recognize her. A deep anxiety crouched at my mind’s door like a terrified kitten.
The police station was crowded. Around fifty people seemed to be there, gathered in groups of four or five, standing almost equidistant from each other like trees in an orchard. Nobody spoke loudly, but everybody was saying something. So, the police station, or orchard if you will, was abuzz with voices.
I took a few steps inside and immediately came back out. As I came out, I noticed that there was a guard at the entrance. I returned to the car and asked Sahadeo to accompany me. It seemed as if he didn’t understand me for a moment, but the very next second, he said, ‘Oh! Okay.’ As he got out of the car, he asked, ‘What are you getting me into, mister?’
From what Anasuya had said, I thought there would be more people. But as I walked into the station once more, I saw that there were only four, including her. They stood facing the police station as if it was a temple, with a sense of supplication. Two constables blocked their path at the threshold. One stood with his back against a pillar, head turned up towards the skies and eyes closed. The other sat on the threshold, the folds in his neck shifting as he looked at them in turn. He kept saying he was listening to them, but he was the only one speaking. His legs were spread wide, and he had pressed his lathi – a well-oiled, gleaming bamboo stick, I should add – into the ground between them, as if he wanted to drill to the centre of the earth.
The three men accompanying Anasuya could easily be identified, not just because they were young, but also because they looked agitated. Anasuya had a hand on her hip, as if it was the only way she was able to stand. She wore a faded green salwar-suit with a turquoise dupatta folded twice and meticulously draped around herself.
I was watching this as I came forward. Then something happened that I would never have believed had it not occurred right in front of me.
Let me first address the matter of belief. Why wouldn’t I have believed it? Was it because, despite being a writer, I believed in systems and organizations more than in human beings? Or was it because I had so far been spared by this organization known as the police? Why?
That ruffian, sorry, that constable who sat on the threshold, picked up his lathi and poked its lower end, which had some mud stuck to it, against Anasuya’s belly. Twisting it hard, he asked menacingly, ‘How far along?’
All three young men shouted at once, and the two constables were perhaps just waiting for the chance. The thuds of the lathis began to drown out the cacophony of abuses. But what was truly heart-wrenching were the screams that rang out between the blows. Were there two criminals and three human beings, or two policemen and three criminals? How could I watch this? How was the world watching it?
I ran towards the commotion. Sahadeo raced ahead of me, and some others too. But they stopped at a little distance. If I say that the constables stopped beating them because we ran towards the men, it would not just be a lie but also an act of ingratitude. But they stopped. Saha
deo went over to the students while I went to Anasuya. Several others watched her with such timid helplessness, as if they would have done anything for her, if only they could. When I saw that there were a few women among the crowd who would take care of her, I left her side and walked up to the constables.
I tried to remember where else I had witnessed a scene similar to the one I had just seen – of the constable pushing his lathi into Anasuya’s belly. But in that terrifying moment, I couldn’t remember where. I did not know how to talk to the police. I did not even know how to address them. The idea of giving them respect and calling them ‘sir’ was abhorrent. If I said, ‘Good morning,’ they would know I was an outsider. So, I simply joined my hands and said, ‘Namaskar.’
The two sat on the threshold, panting. When they saw me, one of them said, ‘Bark.’
‘Ji, namaskar. My name is Arjun. I am her husband’s friend.’
The act of uttering this sentence alone drenched me in sweat. If there was a mirror in front of me, I would have seen the drops pop out on my forehead. But there was only the grimy wall of the law, and all I could see was fear. In that mirror of fear, all I could see was Anasuya sitting on the ground with her legs splayed out. As for myself, I just felt like I had been shoved into a deep well from the mountain peak that was Delhi.
‘Ji, I am her husband’s friend. I’ve come from Delhi.’
Perhaps it would have been better not to mention Delhi, but it would have inevitably come up sooner or later. Nonetheless, they must have felt I was trying to throw my weight around by bringing up my big-city background right at the beginning. If they didn’t panic, it was well and good. But if they did, they could have hurt us all. So, I changed the topic and reconciled myself to addressing the two criminals as ‘sir’.
‘Sir, I am Rafique’s friend.’
‘Will you say something else?’ The two spoke up at once.
‘Sir, he hasn’t come home for three days.’
‘Are you his lawyer?’
‘Not at all, sir. I am just a friend. I come from Delhi, where I work for a publishing house.’ I tried to keep the mood light, but I didn’t know how long I could continue with this.
‘Are you a writer?’ a third constable who sat a little apart asked, almost shouting out his question. I was so focused on the first two, I wouldn’t even have realized he was present had he not interrupted. This would have been extremely difficult to answer, but fortunately one of the policemen at the threshold asked, ‘Which newspaper?’
I calmly responded, ‘Sir, Niyamgiri is a publishing house. It also has a post called “editor”, which is more like that of a clerk and nowhere near as powerful as that of a newspaper editor. I am an editor with Niyamgiri.’
I was astonished. What had happened to my self-confidence? What about me being a writer? Where did my faith in the power of words go? Why was I afraid? And if I was afraid, then why was that fear spreading through my words?
The third constable walked up to us, taking his time to climb down the two steps just so he could smile.
‘Daroga Babu will come sometime between 3.30 and 5. A Union minister is visiting in a few days and we have to make preparations. Most of us at the station are busy with that. Come back in the afternoon. The matter can be registered only then. Explain this to your friend’s family as well.’ He came right up to me as he said this.
His words came as a relief. I was so glad to get over my agony that I told them I would come back in the afternoon and helped the students get up. Those who saw me may have thought I was helping them because the beating had broken them. But the reality was something else. I couldn’t understand how I would face Anasuya. We were meeting each other after eleven or twelve years. And I still couldn’t make up my mind whether to continue carrying the ghosts of our past, or to start anew, like a friend who had come to provide her succour in her time of trouble. Or should I be like a stranger, trying superficially to soothe her pain? These questions slammed me over and over as if I was stuck inside a broken lift.
I stopped thinking about all this because I still needed to look after Anasuya. I turned around. She sat so still, even a stone could have taken lessons from her. I remembered her eyes, but at this moment they were brimming, like an ocean that one cannot fathom or even gaze into. When she closed her eyes, copious tears streamed out. When she opened them, the teardrops hung from her eyelashes the way raindrops hang from a clothesline. She continued to blink hard, as if she couldn’t decide whether to keep her eyes open or closed. There was no third option, after all.
Two women helped her up before I could reach her. They too must have come to the station because of some compulsion. I gestured to one of them to step aside and held Anasuya’s arm. That’s when Anasuya looked at me, and I looked at her looking at me. It must not have been more than a few moments, and god knows what she saw, but what I saw was a cobweb of bygone memories. Sahadeo rushed to the car. Anasuya gestured as if to tell me she didn’t need assistance. I was relieved she didn’t push me away. I let go of her arm but motioned to the woman walking by her side to carry on.
I thought I must speak to the constables once more. If they agreed to register an FIR for a bribe, I should pay them. But what if they got riled by my offer? Policemen do not refuse a bribe, I was sure. Why would anyone think otherwise? But if the act of bribing them brought with it the risk of them getting caught, it would aggravate them. When I turned around, I found the third constable standing right in front of me. The two of us were not even a metre apart. If I were a child, I would have wet my pants. He shot off, ‘Are you a writer?’
A black badge on the right of his uniform announced his name: ‘Brijnandan’.
I replied, ‘What are you saying, sir?’ What else could I have said?
He asked once more, his voice insistent this time. ‘Are you?’
I was aware of the pitfalls of such a situation. If the police sensed they needed to be careful about something, it would hurt the matter of Rafique’s investigation one way or another. For this reason, and since I had not written for a while, I simply said: ‘No.’
The car was parked right outside the police station’s gate. I was about a hundred feet away, but I could see Anasuya sitting in the back seat, spent. Once again, I asked myself whether I had ever seen a policeman pushing a lathi against a woman’s stomach before – and if I had, where had I seen it? This was the first time I was engaged with a matter involving the police, so where could I have witnessed such a scene? Was it in a film?
It was clear from the constables’ attitude that they had little interest in looking for Rafique. Perhaps none at all. Was this an indication of imminent misery, or a misgiving buried deep in my subconscious? Or perhaps a general carelessness was behind their lack of interest. After all, they were not even filing Rafique’s disappearance as a case.
Here I must inform you, dear reader, that I do not know how to respond to situations. I have always been in awe of those who can gather their words and emotions, and respond in an appropriate manner. For example, I cannot go to a grieving person and say, ‘I am very sorry for what has happened, but god will help you.’ Since most can do this, I wouldn’t judge my reaction as right or wrong. But I personally feel that even turning up at an event of joy or sorrow and standing by someone when the situation calls for it is a message in itself. The gesture withers as soon as you try to put it in words. But then, the whole world does it, so who’s to say?
The car door opened. Anasuya furrowed her brows at the sound but kept her eyes closed. I asked the three students how they had come. They pointed to their bicycles. Sahadeo motioned for me to take a seat. I sat in the front and cast a glance towards the station. The three constables were staring at us. Sahadeo turned on the engine. I got out of the front seat, walked around the car, opened the back door, and got in. The whole world does it, after all.
WHEN PEOPLE MEET, THEIR COMING together builds on the course of all their previous meetings. But how nice it would be if meetings coul
d be devoid of memories! The degree of familiarity between one human being and another also presents a further complication. If the woman sitting next to me were my wife, sister or mother, would I be so helpless in consoling her? The past should not hurt this bad. Do only human beings have this feeling of unfamiliarity, or do other species feel it too?
I began with a terse question. ‘What happened?’
She tossed her head back and didn’t respond. I was about to ask another question, when it struck me that, try as we might to suppress our memories of others for many years or presume that we have erased them from our minds, we forget that they’re just lurking around the corner, waiting for a signal to reappear. That day, I began to believe that the first human revolutions were built on memories. Because a decades-old phrase, a private code, suddenly came to me and I said, ‘Look ahead.’
She looked at me. The past materialized in front of us like an awful carbon copy. Or like a piece of writing on paper whose ink had begun to fade. I remembered that magicians’ act, where they write on a blank page but no words appear until they hold it up against a lit matchstick.
She has been waiting at Karnal’s Liberty Chowk for a while. She is the daughter of my landlord. Whenever we have to meet outside, she leaves home first, and I leave fifteen or twenty minutes later. She thinks she has had to wait longer. Our plan is to see the entire city of Delhi on my motorcycle. But she is upset, because a girl from our neighbourhood saw me flirting with her and could now play spoilsport by telling on us.
She hops on to the pillion seat. Because she is upset, she doesn’t even lean on my shoulder, let alone hold me by my waist. But she sits right behind me. When I want to get down, she says, ‘Look ahead.’ When I slow down the motorbike and try to tell her something, she says, ‘Look ahead.’ We don’t speak until we reach Sukhdeo’s dhaba. My misery is mounting. We stop for tea. I know she likes hers with milk, but I want to gauge her mood, so I ask, ‘Milk tea?’
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