The Year of the Runaways (8 page)

‘It’ll pass,’ Tochi said.

‘This is your first time to Jannat?’

‘I came three months ago. Looking for work.’

‘Did you speak to the thakur?’

Tochi said he did.

‘He’s getting old. Forgetful. But a good master. He gives us no difficulty.’

‘The land is good here. Rich.’

‘We work hard on it. Though not hard enough, it seems. I like your auto.’ His lips thinned into a sly smile, his pinched little face made even more so by the ratty white turban.

Susheel came forward to shake Tochi’s hand and pass him a cup of tea. His hair was parted to the side, the usual quiff flattened down. Despite the cockiness at work, he seemed like a caring boy. A good match.

‘You know my son,’ the old man said.

Tochi nodded. ‘Did you have a date in mind, uncleji?’

‘When would suit you?’

Tochi understood the inference. When would he be in a position to fulfill the dowry? ‘I’ll speak to my parents. I just wanted to ask if you had a date in mind. Or if you had any other demands.’

The father shook his head. ‘I’m sorry if we’re asking for a lot. We’re not greedy people. But he’s my only son. You understand?’

Tochi said he did.

‘And his mother is not well. But I promise you that, if you perform your duty, we will perform ours and your sister will be treated well here. You’ll have nothing to worry about.’

Tochi shook hands with them both and folded back out of the doorway. He was about to drive off when Susheel appeared at his side.

‘Bhaji, I wanted to say I’m sorry if my father offended you. He doesn’t mean to, I promise.’

Tochi nodded.

‘And would you please . . . ?’ Tentatively, smiling embarrassedly, Susheel held up an envelope.

He’d only been home a few minutes when his sister arrived with his food.

‘Quick today,’ he said. He made a plinth of his knees and began mixing the white butter into his sabzi. Palvinder stood there holding his glass of water.

‘You can put it down.’

She did. Still she stood there.

‘You going to stay there all night?’

‘Uff, just give it to me.’

He gave her the letter, asking how they managed to contact each other, but she was skipping up the lane and out of his sight.

*

The Maheshwar Sena were more and more on the city streets. It seemed as if around every corner there was a jeep loaded with men in saffron bandanas. They spoke through megaphones, reminding people of the upcoming day of the pure. Any low castes, or anyone protecting a low caste, would be committing a crime against Hindutva, would be spitting on the burning bodies of their murdered brothers and sisters, would be dealt with. Some shops had already been targeted. A jeweller’s was destroyed, the glass bangles smashed on the road, the cash register launched through the window. And one day Tochi saw a suit-boot man with a briefcase stopped and badgered for his ID. He tried to look imperious as he handed it over, only to receive a wide stinging slap and an instruction to make sure he didn’t leave his house on Navratri.

Radhika Madam asked if he shouldn’t just stay at home until all this madness passed over. He said he couldn’t afford to do that.

‘Well, at least you won’t be working on Navratri.’

Tochi remained silent.

‘Tell me you’re not?’

They’d arrived at Sheetal’s. Madam stepped out, hitching up her sari with one hand.

‘You know, money won’t buy back the dea—’ She caught herself, perhaps thinking how easy it was for her to say that.

For days they all urged him to not work on Navratri. Bimlaji, Jagir Bibi, Saraswati Madam. None of them would be leaving the house – no one would – so what was the point in coming into the city? Didn’t he understand that? Especially now things were getting worse. Rumour was that a poor young man had his hand chopped off for hitting one of these crazy orange-brained dacoits. And now it seemed the Maoists were getting involved.

‘As if one set of murderers wasn’t enough,’ Radhika Madam said.

His mother, too, begged him not to go into the city now. ‘Wait a while, na? Work in the field for a few days. With us. You can make up the money afterwards. I’ll help you.’

But Tochi said it wasn’t the money.

‘What use your pride when we find you dead in the street?’

But it wasn’t pride, either. Or not just pride. It was a desire to be allowed a say in his life. He wondered if this was selfish; whether, in fact, they were right and he should simply recognize his place in this world.

The night before Navratri, on his way home, he stopped outside Kishen’s. His friend was pulling the shutter down.

‘You going into the city tomorrow?’ Kishen asked.

‘Do you think I should?’

‘I think you should at least leave your licence at home. And anything else with your name on it.’

‘Mera naam he tho hai.’

‘Vho he tho hai mera naam,’ Kishen finished. A schoolyard phrase, about their names being all they owned. The tailor took up his folded newspaper and flicked it twice with the back of his hand. ‘Our brothers-in-arms. The Maoists. They say they’ll fight fire with fire.’

Tochi shoved into gear, driving off. ‘The pyres! The pyres!’

He didn’t go. He stayed at home and went into the field with his brother. They worked all day, hacking, twining, carrying. Every hour he stood and slicked away the sweat from his forehead with the hem of his dhoti. Over the city, the sky was clear. He could see no column of smoke and he could hear no cries. All was silent save for his brother’s scythe a few rows back.

His mother beheaded and cooked a whole chicken for the evening meal and afterwards Tochi returned to the auto, lying on top of the yellow roof with his hands behind his head. The sky was delirious with stars. The air was damp. The rains couldn’t be long. He heard his mother coming down the lane and turned to look. She was holding something; a box, which she placed on the rear wheel arch. She unfurled a long iron key from the end of her chunni and rattled the tin open, lifting it up to Tochi because she didn’t know how to count. He sat up on the roof, legs out in a wide V, and made equal piles of the notes.

‘Two more months,’ he said. ‘Maybe three.’

‘Shall we set a date, then?’

He nodded. ‘I’ll speak to them.’

Three days after Navratri, the rains came, blasting the red earth. Scooters began to lilt in the softened ground and dogs yelped under jeeps. Tochi rushed back from tying down the auto’s rain-covers and stood shivering wet in the doorway, watching the manic fall of water and the sewage running fast beneath his feet. He said tomorrow he was going to the city. He couldn’t wait.

‘So soon?’ his mother asked.

‘This is when we earn.’

He was right. The first day back and he couldn’t go ten metres without some man waving his briefcase at him, a woman calling for him to please stop before her umbrella collapsed on her. People fought over him, proffering double, triple the fare. It was the same the next day, and the one after that, and he motored through the splashy streets while the single black wiper did its squeaky work. Each day he kept a lookout for the Maheshwar Sena, but all he’d seen were two men in orange standing under the dripping awning of a tractor repair shop, waiting for the rain to lessen. Radhika Madam said the weather had forced them off the streets, and, anyway, they’d not achieved anything with their so-called day of the pure. Thank God.

‘I could see them from our window. The whole time they spent getting drunk in their jeeps. Some revolution!’

Tochi knew otherwise. He’d driven through the alleys leading off Gandhi Chowk and seen the burnt-out tanning yard. And he’d heard his passengers talking: it seemed that at least three men had been killed, and maybe even a child.

Palvinder and Susheel were wedded that winter in an open-air ceremony and travelled to Shimla for their honeymoon. Then, not a year married, Susheel called to say he was bringing Palvinder back for the birth of their first child. Tochi’s mother ordered that a new charpoy be bought – one in the double-weaved style – and placed this in the room they’d added to the rear of the house last summer.

‘Tochi must be doing well,’ Palvinder said when she arrived, testing out the bed. ‘And what’s this about using hair gel? You becoming a goondah now?’

‘Doesn’t she look different!’ Dalbir said.

His mother said that of course she looked different. She was carrying a child inside her.

Tochi thought Dalbir meant something else, though, something to do with not looking like a girl any more. Perhaps that was why for the first time ever he’d heard her using his name, to his face.

Outside, a couple of kids were arguing with a passing dhol-player, pestering him for a go on his drum, and somewhere a man was selling hot peanuts and chai.

‘It’s nice to be home,’ Palvinder said, a hand on her belly. She gestured for Dalbir to come sit beside her, saying how tall he’d grown and that she’d heard he was back at school now. No time even to call his old sister?

‘I’m a busy man,’ he said.

She laughed and held his face. ‘Have you started shaving?’

Their mother came back and shooed the boys out. She wanted to speak to her daughter in private.

All month Tochi stopped off by the buffalo on his way home because his mother insisted Palvinder have fresh milk every night. She refused to reheat what was left from the dawnlight milking Dalbir completed before school. One evening, during Navratri, as Tochi drove back with the milk, his mother met him halfway. The baby was coming, she said calmly, so he needed to go find Prakash Kaur from the next village and bring her here. Tochi passed her the bucket of milk and turned his auto around.

At the gate to the neighbouring village, two women stood chatting, baskets of winter spinach on their heads. Tochi asked if Prakash Bibi was at home. They said she wasn’t, that she’d been doing seva at the city gurdwara all week. Tochi frowned. He’d been careful all day, after the havoc of last year, and didn’t want to return to the city now, with the night looming.

‘Is there any other midwife?’

They looked at each other and shook their heads.

As he raced off he heard them shouting their blessings for the newborn, perhaps mistaking him for the father.

The city roads were still quiet, too quiet for Navratri. Thankfully, Tochi found Prakash Bibi in the gurdwara canteen, scraping huge steel vats with wire wool. The sleeves of her widow-white kameez were rolled back into the fat of her elbows. When she saw Tochi she seemed to understand immediately and from a knot in the end of her chunni handed him a list of items to fetch from the Vishwanath Medicine Store.

‘It’s near the bus station. Come back here with it all and we’ll bless it before we go.’ She asked him if he needed money. He’d already turned for the door.

He followed the river, past the ghats, where vendors were clearing away their unsold shoes and handbags. Two beggar kids came dancing through the night, excitedly shouting, ‘Khoon kharaba! Khoon kharaba!’ Tochi turned up Tanners’ Alley, engulfed in its sudden dark. The ground was uneven, forcing him to slow-swerve around the dust heaps. A couple of men were slumped against the exit. He thought they were drunks, then noticed one of them clutching his head, blood running down his wrists. There were voices, too, chanting, coming from the centre of the city, near the maidaan. He’d thought this might happen and reversed and went the long way round to the medicine store. But its shutters were down and it didn’t matter how hard Tochi banged, no one opened up. Suddenly, four, six, eight motorbikes roared past, two men on each bike, a third standing at the back. They were whooping, holding aloft makeshift orange flags that cracked in the air. Across the city, fingers of smoke began to rise and spread. He knew of one other large medicine store, near Gandhi Chowk, but when he got to that roundabout some twenty or thirty motorbikes were circling it, revving their engines and pulling wheelies. A crowd watched on. He got nowhere trying to barge through a side gully – it was too narrow, too packed with exhilarated children and anxious adults. He headed back to the chowk, looking for another exit. Then a man ducked into his auto and asked to be taken to the train station.

‘Unless they’ve been scared off by these hooligans, too. They make things so difficult, yaar.’

Tochi asked what had happened and he said it was the damn Maoists. They’d dumped a truckload of Brahmin bodies in the maidaan a few hours ago, all wrapped in an orange sheet painted
Happy Day of the Pure Anniversary.
But this was only what he’d heard. None of it might be true. The cheers and calls for revenge amplified, and more rioters appeared from the direction of the maidaan, displaying what looked like green petrol canisters.

‘The poor chamaars are going to get it tonight,’ the man said, tutting, and then perhaps he noticed Tochi’s name on the licence card because he held Tochi’s shoulder and told him to go home and look after his family. ‘I’ll walk. You go. Go now and I pray may God be with you.’

Villages burned as he sped out along the city road. Orange flames were thrown up everywhere and great flakes of ash drifted against the windscreen. Parents were dragging their children into the fields. He braked at an abandoned PCO and called Babuji, who said the world was going crazy and that he was on his way in the Contessa. If Tochi got there before him then he was to get his family and come to the big house at once. He’d left the rear gate open for them. Tochi hurried back into the auto and soon saw that his own village was on fire. He drove harder – ‘No, no,’ he kept muttering – and forced his way through the rush at the gate. He found Dalbir shaking at the end of the lane, beside their father in his wheelchair. Tochi told them to get in, then ran up and ducked inside the house. His mother was in the new room padding a wet poultice against Palvinder’s brow.

‘What’s happening? What’s this shor-tamasha?’ his mother asked.

He said they had to go. They rolled Palvinder onto her side and put their shoulders beneath each armpit and hefted her up. They walked like that up the lane, Palvinder counting her breaths and both arms circled low around her huge belly. She sat in the back with her parents while Dalbir jumped in the front, their father’s wheelchair folded on his lap.