I kept quiet.
‘Got it? And yes, if the police register an FIR, I will certainly add my brothers’ names. Understand?’
Her exhaustion caused her words to dry up. Her tongue and lips were not working in tandem. Saliva dripped out of her mouth, but she continued to talk. Her last statement did not carry the baggage of her previous outburst, nor was she trying to appease me. There was only a desolate, broken bridge that could have joined the two of us, if at all. There was nothing to do but to look ahead.
‘If your brothers wanted to do something, why would they wait for five or six years?’
‘You waited for seven or eight years too, didn’t you? What harm had I done to you?’
She began to cry inconsolably. She was crying for Rafique. There was no question of crying for me, or over her past. As her sobs overpowered her, she started calling out Rafique’s name. Her mourning was also for the loneliness society had gifted her on her marriage. I remembered an experience of being boycotted by society, though only for a brief period, in my childhood. I could understand that Anasuya had been rendered so alone that she had lost herself as well. She wept so much that the three students came in. I stood, walked up to her and rubbed her forehead. I rubbed her forehead and helped her lie down. Even as she lay down hiccupping, she kept calling out Rafique’s name.
If I had to grab hold of a thread to make sense of the tale I found myself in, I knew it would have to start from her home. I also knew I was out of my depth. My complacence advised me over and over to run away from this conundrum. But the same complacence also dictated that I stay around Anasuya at that moment. It told me that whoever I was within my own shell, that person was different from the self-absorbed man who sat next to the pregnant woman whose Rafique had gone missing. Or rather, had been made to go missing.
Who was this Rafique?
Oh, sorry, who is this Rafique?
Who?
I sent a message to Archana telling her I may have to stay in Noma for a few more days, then kept staring at the screen.
A look outside was enough to tell me the time. The sun blazed. It was very hot, and terribly humid too. Everyone was quiet. I had the landlord, Jagdish, Kushalpal and Mukesh for company. Sahadeo was dozing in his taxi downstairs. When the landlord asked about lunch, I was reminded of another important question. ‘Is there a hotel or lodge here to stay?’
The landlord mentioned Adarsh Hotel.
RADHA CHITRA MANDIR WAS THE only cinema hall in town. On its right was a narrow alley, and the third building in this alley was Adarsh Hotel. We had to go to the police station at 3.30 p.m., and because they were hungry, I had asked the three students to come along with me. If you keep walking down this alley, you will reach the western gate of Swami Devanand Degree College, they told me. I thought about going to the college and talking to Rafique’s colleagues and other students to understand him. But my face-off with the system that day had already exhausted me, and I thought it better to go to the hotel.
The reception was underneath the staircase. There were two big registers on that long table. There wasn’t enough light here either. The boy behind the desk had been sitting so low that when I knocked on the desk, he emerged as if out of the earth’s womb. He held a book, which comforted and confused me. I couldn’t understand this town. Jagdish asked him, ‘When did you start reading, bhai?’ The question boomeranged on him, for Mukesh and Kushalpal countered, ‘How do you know him? Do you come here lots?’ Jagdish did not reply.
The boy at the reception announced that both electricity and the police could arrive here at any time, without warning. I would have to show my identity card. When I said I’d put down my name and address in the register, he grew upset and said doing so would cost me 800 rupees for a room. If I stayed without registering, it would cost me 500 rupees.
The boy came along to show me the room. There was no place for drivers to sleep, but he said several rooms were unoccupied and he could make arrangements for Sahadeo in one of them. Even better – I understood that tea and food would have to be ordered from outside. But what took the cake was when the boy told me I was the first guest at the hotel to come from out of town in the last two years.
At least he gave me a clean bed.
‘What does Rafique teach you?’
‘He mostly takes undergraduate classes. He has taught us Surdas’s devotional poems and Premchand’s stories. He hadn’t been given any postgraduate classes, but ever since Radheshyam Shukla took ill, he was assigned to teach Tulsidas too.’
‘Not was assigned, has been assigned.’
‘I’m sorry, has been assigned.’
I was annoyed with myself – at my ridiculous questions and the equally ridiculous answers. What did I want to know? Where is Rafique? Then why wasn’t I asking directly? But who could I ask?
I spoke to the three of them again: ‘What do you guys think? Did Rafique go somewhere on his own? Or has he met with a mishap? Did he have any enemies?’
All three started to reply at the same time, but Kushalpal’s voice was louder so the others stopped. ‘He can’t possibly have any enemies. Our Rafique Sir is an artist. He wasn’t planning to go anywhere. We have a performance in four days, he is the director…’
He hadn’t even finished when a ruckus from the road outside the hotel sucked out every sound from the room. All of us rushed down and saw an elderly man yelling at Sahadeo. The parked taxi had virtually blocked the alley. I did not wish for any more trouble, so I apologized to the man and requested Sahadeo to park the taxi along the main road. I would call him when we had to go somewhere.
I had been surrounded by people since morning, and now I yearned for solitude. Solitude to let me think about what to do next. Solitude so that I could look at myself in a mirror and ask whether my spineless act of bending over for the policemen could be considered human. I did not know I was such a coward. As a matter of fact, I was certainly not as cowardly when it came to my own safety. But in the world of my beliefs, there was no place to scare or be scared.
I looked into the mirror.
It was quite clear that the habit of taking shortcuts and cutting corners to get the job done had eroded my personality. And I had been encouraging this erosion by calling it politeness. The result was that I ended up grovelling in places where I needed to be an equal.
This thought also troubled me because my unholy submission in front of the constables would affect Anasuya’s morale, and the morale of those three students who were supposed to be warriors of the future.
Water dripped on to the bed as soon as I opened the yellow plastic bag that had Rafique’s diary, his notebook and other papers. The diary’s cover had also swelled up. It was from the year 2013. It was brown and carried an image of two hands joined together. When I tried to pry it open, two wet pages fell out. The ink had run all over the pages, but it was possible to read the writing towards the top. The page was dated 17 April 2015. I realized Rafique had used an old diary by writing a new date on it. I had done this too, but only when there were too many diaries and if one had been used sparingly in the year it was meant for. I used them to make notes.
Two sentences were missing from Rafique’s writing where the ink had been washed out. It was difficult to infer whether they had gone for a test from the hospital. The words and letters that I could understand were:
17/4/15
The doctor has said no more rickshaws. I have also said no to that. I don’t want her to ride even an autorickshaw. The doctor says that, for the next two months, Anasuya should not ride any vehicle that does not have shock absorbers. The next test recommended by Doctor Madam can only be done in Deoria or Gorakhpur. She has a misgiving that the foetus – Why should I call it a foetus? It may be a foetus for the doctor, but for me it is my child – is not showing enough activity ********* Before Anasuya assumes surveillance mode, on my way to college tomorrow I will have to remind Madhusudan from R.K. Agency about the money they owe me.
I put aside the
soaked and tattered diary and saw that it was already 2 p.m. I waded through my entire phonebook. Looking for some relief, I dug out the names of a few people I could talk to about the problems here and ask for help. But before I could call anyone, the owner of the publishing house where I worked called me. I told him everything without hesitation. There was no need to conceal the fact that I had been Anasuya’s friend, and that I had to submit myself in front of the policemen this morning. In fact, I emphasized this. I repeated it twice. The third time, I told him the act was utterly unacceptable to me, no matter what anyone else thought.
He heard me out, then asked for Rafique’s name, the name of his college, Noma’s name, Deoria’s name, and Gorakhpur’s name – twice. After listening to everything, he assured me, ‘Someone will call you.’ Then he said, ‘If there is any problem, Arjun, inform me right away.’
I had criticized him in the past for using his political connections, but perhaps they would prove useful for me today.
WE COULD CALL HIM ‘DAROGA’ for our own convenience, but what he had been appointed to was the magical post of ‘circle officer’. One could get a sense of his imposing height even as he sat on his chair. And when he got up in an attempt to welcome us, it became clear that he was at least six and a half feet tall. He wore a half-sleeved shirt that fit him snugly. He had a polite way of speaking, and one could say that he was good looks personified. His name was Shalabh Shrinet.
The sun continued to beat down relentlessly.
When I entered the front yard of the station, my cowardly behaviour from the morning began to play before my eyes, scene by scene, as if I was watching a rerun. Everything unfolded once more – the people, the conversations, even the breeze in the air and the proportion of light and shade. I did not wish to see those three constables again when I entered the station. Just my luck, though – all three of them sat right there. We exchanged looks, but even they pretended as if the morning’s events had never happened, as if we had never met, as if they had never shoved the lathi against Anasuya’s stomach, as if I had never grovelled in front of them, as if such things were not even possible. But the last link in this series of as-ifs – as if Rafique had never gone missing – was absent.
There was a platform under a peepul tree, on which was written: ‘Wednesday, weekly issue-settlement day.’ Four policemen sat there with a young Sikh man. They seemed to be having a laugh about something. It didn’t look like the Sikh man was an outsider. Rafique’s students smiled when they saw him. He raised a hand in return. Kushalpal went up to greet him and returned after a momentary exchange of pleasantries.
We were around ten or eleven people, including Anasuya. She was asked to sit on the chair across from the daroga, but she sat on a bench to the side. Five students had come along this time. There were three of Rafique’s colleagues, the landlord, and me. Rafique’s colleagues introduced themselves. They had come upon the insistence of the students. Two of them, Arvind Srivastava and Rohitashva, taught Hindi, while the third gentleman, Sadanand Mishra, was from the mathematics department. There wasn’t enough space for all of us to sit. The daroga insisted several times that I sit, but I respectfully declined.
The conversation had to start from somewhere, so he began, ‘Can you believe it? Such a big author is in our city and nobody knows about it?’ Not getting the enthusiastic reaction he had perhaps expected, he rallied again, ‘We must get you felicitated,’ in a manner indicating that the teachers should join him.
This was preposterous. In the literary world, the act of felicitation was always spoken of in the third person. ‘So-and-so has been felicitated by so-and-so.’ Today, however, the condescending statement had been thrown at me. I knew he was a daroga. He knew he was one too. But just so that he didn’t doubt I was aware of whether he was a daroga or not, I thought it was the perfect time to respond to his niceties and his attempts at breaking the ice. ‘Sir, please find Rafique. That by itself would be felicitation enough for all of us. Look at this woman. She is seven months along and is running from pillar to post just to get an FIR registered.’
He seemed to have heard just one word from my monologue: ‘sir’.
‘Please don’t call me “sir”,’ he said.
I didn’t let him finish, and raising my tone by a little so that everybody could hear me, albeit remaining respectful and polite, I said, ‘Sir, you deserve to be called “sir”, that’s why I am calling you “sir”. The police are society’s armour. You work for the nation as much as the army does on our borders. The tales of your bravery and struggles can be found in folklore and books.’ I had no idea what I was saying.
He interrupted me. ‘Don’t call our struggles “tales”, mister. They’re the truth. Writing tales is what you people do.’ I thought my monologue had backfired, but he laughed it away. I could have gone on and on, but between glances at a file, he asked Anasuya, ‘Do you also know Janaki?’
Anasuya looked at everyone one by one, as if to ascertain whether what just happened had really happened or not. Then she said, ‘Yes.’
‘That girl’s father had also filed a missing-person report yesterday. Your husband – what do you people call a husband, “shauhar”, right? – since when has he not come home?’
‘I came to the police station thrice yesterday. I spent almost the whole day here.’
‘Since when has he not come home?’
‘Saturday.’
The daroga looked at the third constable and said, ‘And today is Monday.’ He then addressed me, ‘Sir, the police have been doing their work.’ Then he addressed us all, ‘Kindly write an application.’ He then turned back to the third constable. ‘Brijnandan-ji, kindly do the “receiving”.’ Turning towards Anasuya, he said, ‘The police will do its job, but do you suspect anyone?’ Then he asked me, ‘How do you know her?’
Without waiting for anyone’s reply, he then told Anasuya, ‘Our initial investigations have found that your family, especially your two brothers, were opposed to your marriage and you came here to escape their ire.’ He walked up to me and motioned to join him outside as he went out into the garden.
Three chairs had been placed outside. The daroga – Shalabh – faced the garden. As he was talking to me, he smiled back at every passer-by’s greetings. I could see inside the station from where I sat. The people who had accompanied us were slowly starting to come out. I could see them getting busy with their phones or talking to each other. I could also see that Anasuya was still sitting on the same bench but trying to lean as far as possible in order to be able to look outside. Her eyes were just like I remembered them.
‘What do you think? Where could this man have disappeared?’ the daroga asked me.
‘Sir, this is exactly what I want to know from you. What can remain hidden from the police…’
‘You writers are always displeased with the police.’
‘I don’t believe in such generalizations.’
‘You may have spoken to Rafique’s neighbours, his wife?’ He didn’t pause for my reply and continued, ‘Both of them are brave. Otherwise, who marries outside of their religion?’
To respond to this would have forced the conversation to take an absurd turn, so I didn’t.
He returned to his earlier question: ‘How do you know them?’
‘Anasuya is my friend.’
‘But hadn’t you said this morning that you were friends with her – what do these people call it – shauhar?’
I heard someone greeting him with a salute and a ‘Jai Hind, sir’ from behind us. Must be a policeman, I thought, and turned around to see that it was the second constable from the morning. The same one I had grovelled before. ‘Tea and snacks are ready to be served whenever you say, sir,’ he said. Hearing the daroga say ‘quickly’, he turned right back.
The daroga continued, ‘If a thread connects the disappearances of both Rafique and Janaki, your presence here could be misconstrued.’
I caught his drift. I smiled and asked him patiently, ‘
Were you only told what I had said this morning?’
‘Did something else happen as well?’
‘Will an FIR be registered or not?’ I asked again.
He didn’t wish to appear weak. ‘We will find him before any kind of paperwork, mister!’ he said and stood up. ‘Join us for dinner tonight.’
I didn’t know what else to do but agree. On the other hand, I wondered what the point of having FIRs was if the police refused to register one. The intervention from my boss seemed to be working and not working at the same time. Or perhaps there was no reason for inviting me to dinner besides the fact that I was in a new and unknown place.
As we were about to leave, a constable handed a copy of our application to Anasuya. It was stamped and had two signatures scribbled on it.
THE SILENCE IN THE HOTEL made me realize I was the only guest. The same boy sat at the reception, busy on his cell phone. I felt like asking for his name but let it be. The stairs were just the right amount of dark for being alone. It was difficult to unlock the door. I kept trying the key, which turned ineffectually, as if its teeth could not grip the ridges inside the lock. Once the door opened, it was equally difficult to lock it.
Among the intertwined pages of Rafique’s diary, with the dates all mixed up, were what seemed to be parts of a script or a play. One page had an artistic sentence on it. I call it ‘artistic’ because a note below the sentence said that the play must have a line of dialogue in this form. The sentence was: ‘Jagdish said that Prem said that Kushalpal said that Govind didn’t really want to but was saying that the Malviya family perhaps wouldn’t want to, so Rajshekhar was saying that we would have to meet Surendra Pratap Malviya-ji to seek permission to perform this play at the Dol Mela, and this meeting would be on the instructions of Chairman Shriramraghav Singh.’ The page was dated 7 July 2015.
The second page read:
Legal Fiction Page 4