Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line Read online

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  Are Pigeons Terrorists Trained by Pakistan?

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  Is a Bull this Varanasi Sari Shop’s Best Customer?

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  Did a Rasgulla Break Up Actress Veena’s Marriage?

  Ma likes such stories because she and Papa can argue about them for hours.

  My favorite shows are ones that Ma says I’m not old enough to watch, like Police Patrol and Live Crime. Sometimes Ma switches off the TV right in the middle of a murder because she says it’s too sick-making. But sometimes she leaves it on because she likes guessing who the evil people are and telling me how the policemen are sons-of-owls for never spotting criminals as fast as she can.

  Runu-Didi has stopped talking to stretch her hands behind her back. She thinks she’s Usain Bolt, but she’s only on the school’s relay team. Relay isn’t a real sport. That’s why Ma and Papa let her take part though some of the chachas and chachis in our basti say running brings dishonor to girls. Didi says basti-people will shut up once her team wins the inter-district tournament and also the state championships.

  My fingers are going numb in my ears, so I pull them out and wipe them against my cargo pants that are already spattered with ink and mud and grease. All my clothes are dirty like these pants, my uniform too.

  I have been asking Ma to let me wear the new uniform that I got free from school this winter, but Ma keeps it on top of a shelf where I can’t reach it. She says only rich people throw clothes away when there’s still life left in them. If I show her how my brown trousers end well above my ankles, Ma will say even film stars wear ill-fitting clothes because it’s the latest fashion.

  She’s still making up things to trick me like she did when I was smaller than I’m now. She doesn’t know that every morning, Pari and Faiz laugh when they see me and tell me I look like a joss stick but one that smells of fart.

  “Ma, listen, my uniform—” I say and I stop because there’s a scream from outside so loud I think it will squish the walls of our house. Runu-Didi gasps and Ma’s hand brushes against a hot pan by mistake and her face goes all sharp and jagged like bitter-gourd skin.

  I think it’s Papa trying to scare us. He’s always singing old Hindi songs in his hairy voice that rolls down the alleys of our basti like an empty LPG cylinder, waking up stray dogs and babies and making them bawl. But then the scream punches our walls again, and Ma switches off the stove and we run out of the house.

  The cold slithers up my bare feet. Shadows and voices judder across the alley. The smog combs my hair with fingers that are smoky but also damp at the same time. People shout, “What’s happening? Has something happened? Who’s screaming? Did someone scream?” Goats that their owners have dressed in old sweaters and shirts so they won’t catch a chill hide under the charpais on both sides of the alley. The lights in the hi-fi buildings near our basti blink like fireflies and then disappear. The current’s gone off.

  I don’t know where Ma and Runu-Didi are. Women wearing clinking glass bangles hold up mobile-phone torches and kerosene lanterns but their light is wishy-washy in the smog.

  Everyone around me is taller than I am, and their worried hips and elbows knock into my face as they ask each other about the screams. We can tell by now that they are coming from Drunkard Laloo’s house.

  “Something bad is going on over there,” a chacha who lives in our alley says. “Laloo’s wife was running around the basti, asking if anyone had seen her son. She was even at the rubbish ground, calling his name.”

  “That Laloo too, na, all the time beating his wife, beating his children,” a woman says. “Just you wait and see, one day his wife will also disappear. What will that useless fellow do for money then? From where will he get his hooch, haan?”

  I wonder which one of Drunkard Laloo’s sons is missing. The eldest, Bahadur, is a stutterer who is in my class.

  The earth twitches as a metro train rumbles underground somewhere near us. It will worm out of a tunnel, zoom past half-finished buildings, and climb up a bridge to an above-ground station before returning to the city because this is where the Purple Line ends. The metro station is new, and Papa was one of the people who built its sparkly walls. Now he’s making a tower so tall they have to put flashing red lights on top to warn pilots not to fly too low.

  The screams have stopped. I’m cold and my teeth are talking among themselves. Then Runu-Didi’s hand darts out of the darkness, snatches me, and drags me forward. She runs fast, as if she’s competing in a relay race and I’m the baton she’s about to pass to a teammate.

  “Stop,” I say, hitting the brakes. “Where are we going?”

  “Didn’t you hear what people were saying about Bahadur?”

  “He’s lost?”

  “You don’t want to find out more?”

  Runu-Didi can’t see my face in the smog but I nod. We follow a lantern swinging from someone’s hands, but it’s not bright enough to show us the puddles where washing-up water has collected and we keep stepping into them. The water is icky and I should turn around but I also want to know what happened to Bahadur. Teachers never ask him questions in class because of his stammer. When I was in Standard Two, I tried going ka-ka-ka too, but that only got me a rap on the knuckles with a wooden ruler. Ruler beatings hurt much worse than canings.

  I almost trip over Fatima-ben’s buffalo, who’s lying in the middle of the alley, a giant black smudge that I can’t tell apart from the smog. Ma says the buffalo is like a sage who has been meditating for hundreds and hundreds of years in the sun and the rain and the snow. Faiz and I once pretended to be lions and roared at Buffalo-Baba, and we pelted him with pebbles, but he didn’t even roll his big buffalo eyes or shake his backward-curving horns at us.

  All the lanterns and phone-torches have stopped outside Bahadur’s house. We can’t see anything because of the crowd. I tell Runu-Didi to wait and jostle past trouser-clad, sari-clad, dhoti-clad legs, and hands that smell of kerosene and sweat and food and metal. Bahadur’s ma is sitting on the doorstep, crying, folded in half like a sheet of paper, with my ma on one side and our neighbor Shanti-Chachi on the other. Drunkard Laloo squats next to them, his head bobbling as his red-rivered eyes squint up at our faces.

  I don’t know how Ma got here before me. Shanti-Chachi smooths Bahadur’s ma’s hair, rubs her back, and says things like, “He’s only a child, must be somewhere around here. Can’t have gone that far.”

  Bahadur’s ma doesn’t stop sobbing, but the gaps between her sobs grow longer. That’s because Shanti-Chachi has magic in her hands. Ma says chachi is the best midwife in the world. If a baby is blue and quiet when it’s born, chachi can bring red to its cheeks and screams to its lips just by rubbing its feet.

  Ma sees me in the crowd and asks, “Jai, was Bahadur at school today?”

  “No,” I say. Bahadur’s ma looks so sad that I wish I could remember when I last saw him. Bahadur doesn’t speak much, so no one notices if he’s in the classroom or not. Then Pari sticks her head out of the sea of legs and says, “He hasn’t been coming to school. We saw him last Thursday.”

  Today is Tuesday, so Bahadur has been gone for five days. Pari and Faiz mutter “side-side-side” as if they are waiters carrying wire racks of steaming chai glasses, and people make way for them to pass. Then they stand next to me. Both of them are still wearing our school uniform. Ma has told me to change into home clothes as soon as I enter the house so that my uniform won’t get even more mucky. She’s too strict.

  “Where were you?” Pari asks. “We looked for you everywhere.”

  “Here only,” I say.

  Pari has pinned back her fringe at such a height that it looks like one-half of a mosque’s onion dome. Before I can ask why no one realized Bahadur was missing until today, Pari and Faiz tell me why, because they are my friends and they can see the thoughts in my head.

>   “His mother, na, for a week or so she wasn’t here,” Faiz whispers. “And his father—”

  “—is World-Best Bewda No. 1. If a bandicoot chews off his ears, he won’t know because he’s fultoo drunk all the time,” Pari says loudly as if she wants Drunkard Laloo to hear her. “The chachis next door should have noticed that Bahadur is missing, don’t you think?”

  Pari is always quick to blame others because she thinks she’s perfect.

  “The chachis have been taking care of Bahadur’s brother and sister,” Faiz explains to me. “They thought Bahadur was staying with a friend.”

  I nudge Pari and zoom my eyes toward Omvir, who’s hiding behind grown-ups and twisting a ring on his finger that glows white in the dark. He’s Bahadur’s only friend, though Omvir is in Standard Five and doesn’t come to school often because he has to help his papa, a press-wallah who irons the creases out of hi-fi people’s clothes.

  “Listen, Omvir, you know where Bahadur is?” Pari asks.

  Omvir hunches into his maroon sweater, but Bahadur’s ma’s ears have already picked up the question. “He doesn’t know,” she says. “He was the first person I asked.”

  Pari points her onion-fringe at Drunkard Laloo and says, “All this must be his fault.”

  Every day we see Drunkard Laloo stumbling around the basti, drool dripping from his mouth, doing nothing but eating air. He’s a beggy-type fellow who sometimes asks even Pari and me if we have coins to spare so that he can buy a glass of kadak chai. It’s Bahadur’s ma who makes money by working as a nanny and maid for a family in one of the hi-fi buildings near our basti. Ma and lots of chachis in the basti also work for the hi-fi people who live up there.

  I turn to look at the buildings that have fancy names like Palm Springs and Mayfair and Golden Gate and Athena. They are close to our basti but seem far because of the rubbish ground in between, and also a tall brick wall with barbed wire on top that Ma says is not tall enough to keep out the stink from the rubbish mounds. There are many grown-ups behind me but through the spaces between their monkey caps I can see that the hi-fi buildings have light now. It must be because they have diesel generators. Our basti is still dark.

  “Why did I go?” Bahadur’s ma asks Shanti-Chachi. “I should have never left them alone.”

  “The hi-fi family went to Neemrana, and they took Bahadur’s ma with them. To look after their babies,” Pari tells me.

  “What’s Neemrana?” I ask.

  “It’s a fort-palace in Rajasthan,” Pari says. “On top of a hill.”

  “Bahadur could be with his nana-nani,” someone tells Bahadur’s ma. “Or one of his chacha-chachis.”

  “I called them,” Bahadur’s ma says. “He isn’t with any of them.”

  Drunkard Laloo tries to stand, one hand pressing the ground. Someone helps him up and, swinging from side to side, he hobbles toward us. “Where is Bahadur?” he asks. “You play with him, don’t you?”

  We step backward, bumping into people. Omvir and his maroon sweater vanish into the crowd. Drunkard Laloo kneels down in front of us, nearly toppling over, but he manages to level his old-man eyes with my child-eyes. Then he catches me by my shoulders and shakes me back and forth as if I’m a soda bottle and he wants to make me fizz. I try to wriggle out of his grip. Instead of saving me, Pari and Faiz scoot off.

  “You know where my son is, don’t you?” Drunkard Laloo asks.

  I guess I could help him find Bahadur because I know loads about detectiving, but his smelly breath is rushing into my face and all I want to do is run away.

  “Leave that boy alone,” someone shouts.

  I don’t think Drunkard Laloo will listen, but he ruffles my hair and mutters, “Okay, okay.” Then he lets go of me.

  * * *

  Papa always leaves for work early, when I’m still sleeping, but the next morning I wake up to the smell of turpentine on his shirt, and his rough hands grazing my cheeks.

  “Be careful. You walk with Runu to school and back, you hear me?” he says.

  I scrunch up my nose. Papa treats me like a small child though I’m nine years old.

  “After class, come straight home,” he says. “No wandering around Bhoot Bazaar by yourself.” He kisses me on the forehead, and says again, “You’ll be careful?”

  I wonder what he imagines has happened to Bahadur. Does he think a djinn snatched him? But Papa doesn’t believe in djinns.

  I go outside to say okay-tata-bye to him, then I brush my teeth. Men who are Papa’s age soap their faces, and cough and spit as if they hope the insides of their throats will jump out of them into the ground. I want to see how far my frothy-white spit can go, so I let my mouth make boom-boom explosions.

  “Stop that right now, Jai,” I hear Ma say. She and Runu-Didi are carrying the pots and jerrycans of water they have collected from the one tap in our basti that works, but only between six and eight in the morning and sometimes for an hour in the evening. Didi opens the lids of the two water barrels standing on either side of our door, and Ma empties the pots and jerrycans into them, splashing water all over herself in her hurry.

  I finish tooth-brushing. “Why are you still here?” Ma snaps at me. “You want to be late for school again?”

  It’s actually Ma who’s late for work, so she runs off while also fixing her hair, which has come loose from the knot at the back of her head. The hi-fi madam whose flat Ma cleans is a mean lady who has already put two strikes against Ma’s name for being late. One night when I was pretending to sleep, Ma told Papa that the madam had threatened to chop her into tiny-tiny pieces and chuck slices of her over the balcony for the kites circling the building to catch.

  Runu-Didi and I go to the toilet complex near the rubbish ground, carrying buckets into which we have thrown soaps, towels and mugs. The black smog is still sulking above us. It pricks my eyes and plashes tears onto my cheeks. Didi teases me by saying that I must be missing Bahadur.

  “You’re crying for your dost?” she asks, and I would tell her to shut up, but there are long queues for the toilets even though it costs two rupees to go, and I have to focus on shifting my weight from one leg to another so that my backside won’t burst.

  The caretaker, who sits behind a desk at the main entrance of the toilets where it divides into Ladies and Gents, is taking ages to collect the money and let people through. He’s supposed to work from five in the morning till eleven in the night, but he locks up the complex whenever he wants and leaves. Then we have to go in the rubbish ground. It’s free, but anyone can see our backsides there, our classmates and pigs and dogs and cows as old as Nana-Nani that will eat our clothes off us if they can.

  Runu-Didi stands in the ladies’ queue, I stand in the gents’. Didi says men keep trying to peep into the Ladies. Probably to see if their toilets and bathrooms are cleaner.

  The people in my queue are chatting about Bahadur. “That boy must be hiding somewhere,” a chacha says, “waiting for his mother to kick his father out.” Everyone murmurs in agreement. They decide Bahadur will come home once he tires of brawling with stray dogs for an old roti in a pile of rubbish.

  The men talk about how loudly Bahadur’s ma screamed last night, loud enough to scare the ghosts that live in Bhoot Bazaar, and they joke with each other about how long it will take them to realize that one of their own children is missing. Hours-days-weeks-months?

  A chacha says that even if he notices he won’t bring it up. “I have eight children. What difference will one less or one more make?” he says, and everyone laughs. The smog is worrying their eyes too, so they are also crying at the same time.

  I get to the front of the queue, pay the caretaker, and do my business quickly. I wonder if Bahadur has run off to some place with nice-clean toilets and bathrooms that smell of jasmine. If I had a bathroom like that, I would have taken bucket-baths every day.

  * *
*

  Back at home, Didi gives me chai and rusk for breakfast. The rusk is hard and tastes of nothing, but I obediently chew it up. I won’t get any other food till afternoon. Then I change into my uniform and we leave for school.

  Though Papa told me not to, I plan to give Runu-Didi the slip as soon as I can. But there’s a swarm of people around Buffalo-Baba, some standing on plastic chairs and charpais and craning their necks to get a good look. They are blocking our way. I hear a voice I recognize from last night. “Find my son, baba, find my son for me. I won’t move from here until my Bahadur is found,” Drunkard Laloo cries.

  “Accha, now you can’t live without your son?” a woman exclaims. “You didn’t think of that when you were hitting him?”

  “Only the police can help us,” another woman says. “Six nights he hasn’t been home. That’s too long.” I think that’s Bahadur’s ma talking.

  “We’re going to be so late,” Runu-Didi says. She holds her school bag in front of her and uses it to slam into people so that they will move, and I do the same. By the time we are out of the crowd, our hair is messy and our uniforms crumply.

  Runu-Didi straightens her kameez. Before she can stop me, I jump over a gutter, and sprint past cows and hens and dogs, and goats wearing better sweaters than I am, past a woman sweeping the alley while listening to loud music on her mobile with earphones, and a white-haired grandmother stringing beans. My school bag knocks into an old man sitting on a plastic chair, one of its legs shorter than the others, the difference in height made up with bricks. The chair topples over and the man lands on the ground with his backside in the mud. I rub my left knee, which hurts a bit, then I run off again and the man’s curses chase me all the way to another alley that smells of chole-bhature.

  Here Pari and Faiz are waiting for me, outside a store that sells Tau jee and Chulbule and other salty, masala-coated snacks. The bright reds and greens and blues of the namkeen wrappers look dreary in the smog today, and the husband and wife who run the shop are sitting behind the counter with mufflers wrapped over their faces. The smog doesn’t bother me as much, probably because I’m strong.