Mango Chutney: An Anthology of Tasteful Short Fiction. (25 page)

Munna saw the inert body on the highway and braked immediately. He
jumped out of his tempo and walked towards it gingerly when he noticed
the body was that of a woman. Thankfully she was still breathing as he
turned her around and hauled her onto his shoulders. Munna laid her
carefully at the back of his tempo that was reeking of onions that he had
just delivered at the Mandi.

It was the smell that made Lalita regain her consciousness – that putrid
stench of alcohol, human sweat and rotting onions. Her head had barely
touched the moist sacks lining the floor of the tempo when her eyelids
fluttered open and she saw the bloodshot pair of eyes staring solemnly
at her. It was when she heard a girl’s whimpering that Lalita started to
scream. The screams faded along with her consciousness.

That coquettish bitch led me on the entire evening, giving me those bedroom eyes. Why,
she had even sent her friend off to have me all to herself! But when I took her to my
favourite spot on the Ridge, she starts acting all funny. I am such a fucking idiot not
to have gone for that bitch’s friend, so hungry for attention that she would have gladly
opened her legs wide for me at the snap of my fingers. But no, I had to be adventurous
tonight and try something new and look where that got me!

Sivan was rubbing his sore arm when he felt something in his hands. It
was the hook of her blouse. Sivan had been smart enough to discard her
purse and mobile in a dumpster after he threw her out of his car.

The bitch even had the temerity to cry and act all outraged when he tried to take her
damn blouse off! What was she expecting, me reciting poetry to her as we looked at
the stars, acting like a pansy as I held her in my arms? Women like her who think
they can change their minds anytime they want and expect us to obey them like dutiful
puppies, need to be taught a lesson. She totally deserved that slap. Too bad she lost her
balance and hit her head on the dashboard.

Mahi wanted to make sure she reached home before her Mom. She didn’t
want her to see her in this outfit. The last thing she wanted was a lecture
from her, yet again. Phew, how many girls can claim that their Mom is
a bitch! The stereotypical absent parent; growing up Mahi had had seen
more of her mother on the TV screen than at home. Sarla Maheshwari,
women’s rights activist
.
As she ran towards the elevator of her building,
she almost missed the sight of Gyaneshwar furiously cleaning the fender
of their car.

Dammit, she’s home! Mahi sighed in resignation as she unlockedthe door
of the apartment. Her Mom was seated on the sofa. She ran her eyes up
and down at her dress and spat, “Were you out looking for a husband or a
customer? After all that I do for you and our future, is this how you repay
me? By parading all over the town, dressed like a whore?”

Mr. and Mrs. Bharatan were outside their daughter’s hospital room. They
looked relieved after a talk with the doctor who assured them that her
injuries were superficial and her fracture would take just a few weeks to
heal. Mrs. Bharatan mumbled a silent prayer of thanks to that angel who
had brought their bleeding daughter to the hospital. Had it not been for
him, their only child, the light of their lives would have bled to death.
They said his name was Munna. He couldn’t wait because he had to take
his daughter to a hakim. Prince Dhaba hadn’t suited her either.

The wind was feeling cheated that night; there was no one to enjoy it.
All it saw as it blew from the heavens above were scenes from the hell
below. A few tyre tubes on a mound of burning furniture whispered
suspiciously at Iqbal Chowk, that crossroad where people from all over
the city came to eat
Hareesa
after shopping in Gul Bazaar next door. The
park at Raj Singh Avenue, once resounding with music, seemed ravaged.
Diseased. With nothing but a broken tonga floating in the pond, and
some clothes, must be just clothes, hanging haplessly from a tree under
which many a maestro had practiced their notes.

It was one of those nights in Lahore when you could hear the neigh
-
bour’s heartbeat from across the lane; so quiet the night, so loud the beat
and so narrow the lane. The tiny, ornate windows which once reached
out to each other like the fingertips of clandestine lovers seemed to close
in on existence itself – shuttered, like armoured guards, keeping out and
keeping in, at the same time.

All one could hear in Dilshad lane was Shyam Pyari’s bangles hurriedly
tying up a few belongings in a
dupatta
which was used, only a little while
back, to rock her six-week-old daughter to sleep. The infant slept on a
pillow by the empty cupboard, one hand carelessly lying by her head and
the other, the one with the ‘R’ from her name Rano tattooed on her tiny
wrist, held by her brother’s. Raman, that four year old boy, sat by his
sleeping sister as if made of stone. If it weren’t for his eyes, shuttling
between his mother in the room and his father silently digging up a box
of money from a nondescript corner of the courtyard, you would think
he was dead. Already. It was 2:00 am, and they were getting ready to leave.
Why can’t I carry my cycle? Why did papa lock the door from the outside? Ma is
angry all the time. When will we come back home? Where are we going? I don’t want
to go
… and Rano stirred, interrupting his thoughts with a baby snore. He
held on to her finger tighter, alarmed and confused.

The many pairs of feet walking towards house number 57, Dilshad lane,
were still some distance away. But nights so still can play tricks. The foot-
steps beat like drums on Sohan Lal’s ears. How evil they sounded, those
feet on the pot-holed tarmac that had once teemed with children and
their games.
I will not let them get... I will not! They dare not come …
he mum-
bled to himself as he slipped into the room where his family was and
huddled along with them in the corner farthest from the main door in his
two room house. Three trunks, one on top of the other, and a heavy table
were the sentinels at the door. Shyam Pyari, as noiselessly as is possible
when keys turn in locks, started to open the backdoor nervously, shaking
more and more as the sound of footsteps came closer.
I have to get this door
open. Which key was it? One … I already tried that. How many people could they
be? Six, this door was key number six … or was it three?
The boy had turned
ashen, and as fear of something he neither understood nor knew gripped
his heart tight, he tightened his hold on his sister’s finger.

Rano did not just cry. She howled. Louder than she ever had in the few
weeks of her life. And the bored wind found something to do; it gave
wings to her wails, carrying them to dogs that were feasting over some-
thing rotting nearby. They barked back, and within seconds there was
too much noise. Shyam Pyari shoved the keys into Sohan’s hands and
grabbed Rano, as if her girl were a tiny kite about to break free from its
thread only to tear itself in a tree. She pressed her palm over her mouth
to silence the scream. Pressed it hard. The baby squirmed with discom-
fort; the mother hoped she would read her eyes, eyes that were pleading
with her to
sleep my darling, sleep
. The footsteps, sensing commotion, had
quickened pace and were standing purposefully outside the neighbour’s
door, with eyes peeping inside through a hole that a bullet had left there
only yesterday, after leaving 80-year-old Hardeep Singh dead.

While Rano looked tearfully at her mother’s face, her screams drowning
down her throat, the others stared at the door as if expecting it to fly
open. To end this dreadful night, their lives, together.
What is ma doing?
Ma, stop it, please. You are hurting me. Ma, ma … can you hear me … I ... I
can’t breathe … ma …please…
Rano must have pleaded, as she fought back
her mother’s hand covering her mouth, her nose, her face, before she
stopped struggling altogether.

Went limp. Lifeless, as if. In her own mother’s arms.
Shyam Pyari realized it much later, or maybe, she pretended to. She car-
ried Rano carefully in one hand and a bundle of clothes in the other.
They became one with the shadows in the by-lane, where the moon also
appeared to have colluded with the enemy, ready to expose them in big
pools of silver light, or even in tiny patches. Like rats leaving a sinking
ship, the family of four sneaked out through the back door to a truck
filling up about a kilometer away. A truck promising to carry people to
safety across the shadow line we like to call the ‘Border’, to life in another
lane called Freedom.

“No dead bodies allowed in the truck, we need space for the living; no
dead bodies allowed in the truck,” the truck driver walked around speak-
ing in a harsh drone to the gathered crowd. It was only then that Shyam
Pyari left one of the bundles at a doorstep a little away from the truck,
one she seemed almost to choose intuitively. As if someone or something
was guiding her. In the quietest of whispers, she insisted on leaving it
outside that very door, locked with a big brass lock but shielded from the
vagaries of the weather, as well as from all evil eyes.
Sleep my darling, sleep
was all she had time for to say to the girl.

The journey lasted for many hours in a truck so full of people that one
man’s head was at another’s feet and so on. Almost like a food chain of
sorts, except, here there were no hunters. A mass of bodies, breathing
and alive and just thankful to be so. When the heavy black tarpaulin was
finally untied from the back of the truck, the rising sun and green fields
on both sides of the straight road ahead seemed to have Life writ large
all over them.

Of course, Shyam Pyari could barely open her eyes to the bright light.
For nearly a day, unmoved she had sat, staring at her empty hands. As if
her baby girl lay asleep in them.

As if.
***

She was always fond of coming to Rajouri Market. Always. It had been
so many years in Delhi, but this market – a long straight line with shops
flanking it, held a strange charm for her. Was it the prices at which she
could buy anything from locally made
namkeens
and biscuits to designer
suits and saris? Or the chaat at Ashok Chaat Bhandaar that was unmatch-
able in taste or the variety of shoes from Do Bhai that she loved to add
to her burgeoning collection? It had been love at first sight for Raunak
Kaur, when she came here accompanied by her husband to order trays of
dry fruit for Gurpurab. After all, her husband’s was one of the reputed
Sikh families of West Delhi, and gifts needed to match in weight and
value the solitaires her rings shone with.

It was a chance event, them coming here all those years back. Their trust
-
ed Dayal Dry Fruit was closed that year for renovation. And good quality
dry fruit, cashews and raisins and walnuts and almonds were urgently
needed for distribution. And that is how Raunak had found this place
as a much younger woman. However, she liked coming here alone. Of-
ten, she would find herself looking for excuses to leave the comfort of
plush malls behind just to walk down the narrow yet busy lane. When she
could not understand the pull this place had for her, she stopped look-
ing for explanations. If she felt like coming, she would cook up a little
list of groceries or clothes,
juttis
or jewels, and ask her driver to take her
there. Instantly. ‘But madam, there is barely any place to park there. The
cops look at big cars and come looking for bigger tips. They see the four
bangles on the car and come. Why don’t I take you to City Centre Mall
and …’ he would always begin, and she would hand him a crisp note.
That would settle it.

Today was such a day. The driver had been bribed generously, and here
she was driven again, all the way from Punjabi Bagh, for one last time;
for tomorrow Raunak was to fly away to Australia. Her children who had
settled there convinced their mother to shift.
While papa was there we did
not insist, mummy. But it just makes sense to come over here now. Let’s be together! I
know I know you’ll miss your Queen’s life of marble floors and chandeliers and liveried
maids but …
and her daughter had chuckled. Raunak had smiled; a smile
that knew that this relocation made sense. That a change of country
was imminent. That there was no choice left anymore, for some borders
needed to be crossed to step into the future, and for the future.

But can Reason stand its ground and stare down Love? Or attachment?
Or that sense of belonging one comes to feel for a place, like an umbilical
cord that can be cut but never severed? It shakes, ever so slightly, know-
ing full well it can never stand taller than the Love for what one calls
home, and the many-headed monster of turmoil that raises its head when
one is leaving it. A dispossession right down to the soil, to the roots.
In the wee hours of the morning a plane was to carry her to Brisbane.
Raunak was done packing her suitcases, which now stood in a neat row
near the door, quite like army jawans ordered to stand at attention. A
guard was to occupy one room after she left and till the time the house
was sold off. Most rooms of the houses had been locked already, with
furniture covered in huge white sheets - a scene that reminded her of a
morgue and made her feel an uneasy sense of déjà vu she knew not why.
It was the first time this Sardarni’s hands shook while opening the car
door outside Anjlika Bakery.
Why am I here of all places?

Rajouri Market was as it always is, in hail or in heat. With a fancy fruit
shop on one side and an even fancier bakery on the other, it would have
you believe it catered the very best and to the very best. But that wasn’t
true. As one walked down the strip one noticed how all kinds of shops
existed side by side, bound symbiotically, like lovers in hugs – clandestine,
yet brave. She had enjoyed the togetherness the market seemed to sig-
nify for her, cutting across man-made lines of economics, geography and
class. That two-floors of Kamal Jewelers touched shoulders with a tiny
tailoring-alteration shop that sold turban cloths too. How the cocktail
dresses in the huge ‘Bangkok Bazaar’ stood next to a six-by-ten feet shop
selling plastic ware. A man dressed as a clown welcomed you to a chil-
dren’s store with comic gestures and just across the road, an arty looking
woman sat daintily, showcasing her Indo-Western kurtis. And there were
shoppers, all ages, all stages, all kinds, as full of life as the market was
alive.
Lights and sounds and colours in a pretty … what is the word? Um … a lovely
riot, yes, riot, of Life and Living
, she had said to her husband the first time.