She Will Build Him a City (36 page)

He closes his eyes.

Naked, he enters Kahini, swims inside her womb in butterfly strokes upstream through the amniotic fluid, moves towards the baby and as he gets closer and closer, he can hear her heart above his head, he can hear the baby, too, their baby is screaming now, air rising in bubbles from its mouth, only partly formed. Before they scrape and suck the baby away, he wants to touch it, to wrap himself around it.

Excuse me, sir, can I get you a glass of water, asks the nurse.

He opens his eyes with a start. The cold plastic bag with Kahini’s clothes covers his hardness. No, he says, I don’t need any water, thank you.

Just about half an hour, says the nurse.

~

Dressed in a gown that opens at the back, Kahini is told to lie on a bed, soft inverted V-shaped supports under her knees. Something enters her, probing, cold and sharp, the doctor asks her about her college, which subjects did she take, I have a daughter, too, he says, almost your age, he asks her about her father, which city did you grow up in, how old are you, you are so young, you will have a baby again, take your time, she feels the grey smudge move, she hears the sound of a train hurtling in the dark, then sliding off the tracks, she hears people screaming, the sound of metal twisting and snapping as the train’s coaches crash into each other, move against the black sky like the little heart once did on the screen.

When she wakes up, they give her two wheat crackers and a cup of chilled orange juice. She gulps it down and when she rushes to the bathroom to throw up, she finds she is bleeding.

She washes herself, waits for two hours and returns home, emptied.

‘Thank you,’ he says, when they enter the house. ‘We will do this right the next time.’

She cannot understand what he says because he speaks a language she has never heard.

~

That night, when they lie in bed, the 2 feet of distance between them, stretched tight across the bedsheet, folds over, tears, throwing open a chasm so deep that she falls into it, along with the entire night, and finds herself on the street in the city, carrying a newborn boy, perfectly formed, in a blood-red towel.

They are in an autorickshaw that comes to a stop outside a decrepit building, in front of a giant garbage heap. She can barely read the scrawl on a tin board at the entrance: ‘Little House’.

A dog, black-and-white, looks at her as she walks up, leaves the baby at the doorstep, gets into the rickshaw that drives away. A wind, slight but searing, slaps her in the face, fills her eyes with water.

CHILD

Exit Bhow

Three weeks after David Headley, the Chicago-born alleged terrorist who was picked up by the FBI, reveals plans to target schools in New Delhi and intelligence agencies confirm that the threat does, indeed, have some basis, Mr Rajat Sharma, director of Little House, sends a letter to the Secretary of the Child Welfare Department that after ‘much deliberation and assessment’, he is ‘constrained’ to put on record that Little House is extremely vulnerable to a terrorist attack. And that all arrangements should be made to plug what he calls ‘glaring holes’ in the security of this building.

Times are always tense, it is always the season to play safe. Mr Sharma has gained some attention after the TV episode with Ms Priscilla Thomas – the wall collapse is now history, no one even remembers the name of the boy who has gone missing – so his letter promptly secures him an invitation to a two-day meeting of all security agencies with principals and parent–teacher representatives of the ten largest schools in the city.

Anyone wishing to speak is allowed to do so, the result being that the meeting, initially planned as a two-hour, one-day event, becomes a marathon talkfest that drags on and on into the hours well after midnight, in which speaker after speaker stands up, outlining the threats, wild and fanciful, limited only by the scope of their imagination.

One principal, for example, cites the siege of the school in Beslan, Georgia, by suspected Chechen terrorists and says, perhaps, the time has come for such a storming to happen here, at Shri Ram School, Delhi Public School or Modern School. That’s the way you get eyeballs on TV.

Representatives from the American Embassy School and the British School say their campuses are the most threatened given the international demographics of the student community: sons and daughters of diplomats and expatriates, most of them from countries fighting in Iraq or Afghanistan.

One principal says that all Urdu-medium schools, because they have Muslim students, are the most secure since terrorists would never target children of their own religion.

To which another principal gets up to say, ‘What kind of communal nonsense is that, sir? I have a better idea, why not take all these Muslim students, there are about 25,000 of them, and distribute them all over the city in all the other schools? Because it will serve two objectives. One, these students will get a decent education since Urdu medium schools, we all know, have abysmal facilities and terrible pass percentages. And, two, going by your logic, having a Muslim student in each class in each school in the city will be our insurance against a terror attack.’

Someone laughs nervously, someone applauds.

‘In the heat of all these arguments, we are forgetting the cold light of reason,’ says Mr Sharma, when his turn comes. The brief exposure to national TV has made him watch TED talks for hours to polish his public-speaking skills.

‘Most of you, ladies and gentlemen, are from schools where there’s already very tight security because VVIPs send their sons and daughters there. They will be the first to complain the day they notice something amiss. And so you are safe. In some schools, as we all know, ministers’ guards, special commandos, come to drop off the child and they wait outside during school hours which, by itself, is very reassuring. But that’s not the case with Little House. I know this isn’t a school but we do teach little children. Every child there is an orphan, every child an abandoned child. There will be no angry parents outside your office when terrorists hit Little House. Ladies and gentlemen, listen to me, please, this is the age of TV, this is the age of drama, of tears. The more the drama, the bigger the impact. Why did Mumbai work so well? Because they stormed five-star hotels. Now, imagine storming an orphanage, a home for the destitute and the homeless. Imagine killing one orphan every six hours, a small body being thrown out and no parents to grieve. The orphan has no one in the world except our dedicated staff, of course, but think of the power of that killing. It will strike fear in the hardest of hearts.’

Silence.

Whether it’s the reason underpinning Mr Sharma’s argument or the emotion that he invokes from the number of times he uses the word ‘orphan’ it isn’t clear, but one thing is: no less a person than the Chief Minister herself is persuaded.

‘Your point is noted, Mr Sharma, thank you very much,’ she says. ‘I don’t do such a thing, I’m not authorised to do this but, at this moment itself, I am making an exception and clearing a metal detector and a security guard right away for Little House. The metal detector may take time but the guard should be there any day. Please work out the estimate and I am granting prior sanction. I am asking the ministers concerned to expedite the process.’

‘Thank you, Madam Chief Minister. Tonight, the orphans will sleep safe because in you they have found a parent,’ says Mr Sharma. ‘Just one more point, Madam CM. In front of Little House is a garbage heap that hasn’t been cleared for days, months, years. It is a security threat to the building since it chokes our entrance, it may be used as a hiding place for explosives, I will be extremely grateful if something is done about it.’

‘That’s strange,’ says the Chief Minister. ‘What are our friends in the municipal corporation doing? Are they not clearing your garbage hoping that the stench will scare the terrorists away?’

Everyone laughs extra hard, to break the thick sombre mood created by Mr Sharma’s scare speech.

~

Three days later, as a first step in the security upgrade, two bulldozers and a dump-truck, along with a dog-catcher squad, raze an illegal wall near Little House, clear the garbage dump, pick up Bhow to take her to a place from where she cannot return.

Their job done late in the evening, as the convoy of these vehicles stops near a traffic light, Bhow twists and turns, the lasso around her neck loosens, she wriggles out, squeezes herself through a chink in the door of the cage in which they have trapped her, grows flesh-coloured wings and flies away into the sky, towards the moon. The roads are crowded with angry and impatient drivers, so except for a few who have the time to look up at the evening sky, no one notices Bhow flying away into the night.

No one notices Bhow looking down one last time to see the lights of The Mall below, as she wags her tail, safe and happy in the realisation that she has found Orphan his home in New City.

MEANWHILE

Hulking Black Mitsubishi Pajero at the Leela

Her name is Nidhi, she is twenty years old, she is hiding, she hears them at the door.

~

Whore, Lover Girl, motherfucker, dry cunt, tear you right through, open your mouth, you, you want to love, you? They gulp their words before they throw them up, covered in the slime of a thousand years.

Number One says, we will slice your breasts, cut cut cut. We will make eight out of two. We will set them in two rows of four each, staple them to your skin on the chest, running from base of neck to waist. Just like a dog has. Row of teats.

Number Two says, bitch is hungry, bitch wants bone. You wait, we will show you. We have a bone for you, says Number Three.

There are six of them.

~

Number One is clearly the leader of the group, the way he walks he talks he laughs he frowns, the way each one of the others looks at him, looks up to him. He is the one whose brother she dares to fall in love with, dares to brainwash him into believing that he loves her too. They have to be stopped.

First, this girl.

Then, he will take care of his brother, teach him how not to put himself into such dirty, lower-caste cunt.

There are seven if you count the driver who got them here, eight if you count the driver’s attendant who sat on the floor of the Mitsubishi Pajero, in front, at their feet. Driver is also the man whose job is to clean up afterwards.

Number One tells Driver, you will not touch her, all right? Use water, use soap, use hot water, cold water. You listen to me, he says, you can’t even watch us, you stay out, this isn’t a cinema show for free, you clean up when I tell you. You won’t get to fuck, you know that, you know why?

Driver doesn’t reply.

Because you are old, laughs Number One.

OK, says Driver.

~

They break down the door, walk in, Nidhi doesn’t stand a chance.

How can she? How can she when there are eight men, youngest fifteen (Driver’s Attendant), oldest forty-six (father of three)? How can she when six of them walk in, four already hard. How can she when Number Five and Number Seven hold her down, Number Three pees on her face, Number Two kicks her in the stomach, once, twice, thrice, four times, five, six? Driver’s Attendant, the kid, the youngest of them all, counts this in his head.

Number Four and Number Five tear her clothes off, shirt, skirt, underwear one, underwear two? She wears a skirt, they say, she is The English Whore. Number Six is the first to rape her. Going right in, he says, right in, all the way in, cunt is dry but cunt is clear, like the highway.

Number Five splashes water between her legs, I can’t go in just now, he says, I need to clean her first.

Go in, stay in, says Number One, go in, stay in, that will teach her a lesson, each one enters her except Driver and Driver’s Attendant.

They gag her, make her throw up what she has had for dinner that evening. This mixes with the blood.

Driver, Driver? Where are you? Number One shouts.

Here, sir.

Stay right there, there is lots of work to do, hope you are ready, hope you got everything with you.

If she gets pregnant, Number Four asks, whose child will it be? They laugh. Not my brother’s any more, says Number One.

Then they get together to hammer her face in, make her eyes meet her ears, her lips slide down her neck, her nose fall into a hole.

Driver, it’s your job now, says Number One.

Driver has large plastic bags from Big Bazaar, Shoppers Stop, The Home Store. He layers them, one inside the other, so that they can take the weight of all that’s strewn on the floor, her clothes, blood, theirs and hers. He scrubs, washes, scrubs, washes, dries up with towels, red and white and white that turns red.

‘Is the whore dead?’ Number One asks him, standing outside, impatient, ready to go.

Driver looks at her, she looks at him.

Her eyes are open, she is awake. He can see her breathe. She is trying to tell him something. ‘Stay here until the police come,’ Driver whispers to Nidhi. And then walks out to tell them, ‘Her eyes are closed, she is dead.’

~

She will pull through, Driver hopes, as he drives them down the highway past The Mall, into The Leela, where guards in black suits check their car, open its doors for them to step out.