Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line - Deepa Anappara Page 0,21
arm around my shoulders and brings me close to his paint-and-smog smells. “Women, na,” he says. “Getting worried over nothing.”
“It’s not nothing,” I say.
“Jai, the police can’t just start a demolition drive. They have to give us advance warning,” Papa says. “They have to paste notices, talk to our pradhan. Our basti has been here for years. We have identity cards, we have rights. We’re not Bangladeshis.”
“What rights?” Ma asks. “These minister-people only remember us a week before the elections. And how can anyone trust that badmash pradhan? He doesn’t even live here anymore.”
“Is that really true?” I ask. It’s hard to imagine Quarter in a hi-fi flat. He looks like he belongs in jail.
“Madhu, if the police demolish our basti, where will they get bribes from?” Papa says, which is what Pari had said too. “How will their fat wives eat chicken every day?”
Papa pretends his teeth are tearing the meat off a chicken leg. He makes slurpy-hungry noises and licks his fingers.
I laugh but Ma’s lips are turned down and she keeps packing. When she finally finishes, she places the bundle by the door. She has to lift it with both hands because she has stuffed too many things inside. Only Papa will be able to run with it slung over his shoulder.
Afterward, we have dinner.
“If our basti is demolished,” Runu-Didi says, “will you make us live with Dada-Dadi? I won’t go there, okay, I’m telling you right now. I won’t do all this purdah-vurdah nonsense. I’m going to win a medal for India one day.”
“That day a donkey will sing like Geeta Dutt,” I say.
Geeta Dutt is Papa’s favorite singer. She sings in black and white.
“Children,” Papa says, “the worst thing that’s going to happen is that we won’t be able to eat rotis until your very wise, very beautiful mother unpacks her rolling pin. That’s all. Understand?”
He looks at Ma and smiles. Ma doesn’t smile back.
Papa tucks my hair behind my ear with his left hand. “We have been paying the police hafta on time. And now they have got an extra gold chain. Like a second Diwali bonus. They won’t bother us for a while.”
When dinner is done and the washing-up is finished, Ma dries her hands on her sari and tells me I can sleep on the bed tonight. Papa looks startled.
“Why?” he asks. “What did I do?”
“My back’s hurting,” Ma says without looking at him. “Easier to sleep on the floor.”
Didi drags out the mat she and I usually share from under the bed. She does it so quickly that the bags Ma stores there spill out.
“Watch it,” Papa says and angry lines crease his face.
I help Didi put everything back into the bags, a plastic gun and a wooden monkey that I haven’t played with in ages, and the torn clothes Didi and I have outgrown. Together we spread the mat out on the floor. Its edges are permanently curled where they hit the legs of the bed.
Papa switches on the TV. The news doesn’t have anything interesting today. It’s all about politics. I stand at the door, listening to our neighbors argue about police and bribes and whether our basti will be demolished or not.
Once I find Bahadur, people won’t have these silly discussions. Instead they’ll talk about me, Jasoos Jai, the Greatest Detective on Earth.
Tomorrow I’ll ask Faiz to be my assistant. We’ll be like Byomkesh Bakshi and Ajit and we’ll detect in the smog-dark lanes of Bhoot Bazaar. We’ll even have our own secret signal, which will be much better than the one the police constables had.
Papa gets tired of the news and tells me to come to bed. I shut the door and switch off the light. Ma lies down on the mat next to Didi. Papa snores in no time, but I pinch myself so that I’ll stay awake. What if Papa is wrong about JCBs? I draw a map of the basti in my head and think of the quickest escape route we can take.
I turn toward the posters of Lord Shiva and Lord Krishna that Papa has taped to the wall. I can’t see them in the dark but I know they are there. I ask them and all the other gods I can name to help us. I decide to say the same prayer nine times so that the gods know how badly I want this. Ma says nine is the gods’ favorite number.