Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line - Deepa Anappara Page 0,28
to the bazaar and come back with packets of chow mein for everyone. Heart of gold my son has.”
“He’s the best,” Pari says, which is another lie.
“If he had run away, like those policemen said, wouldn’t he have taken something with him, money, food? Nothing’s gone from the house. His clothes are here, his school bag too. Why would he run off in his uniform?”
Bahadur’s ma looks above us, at something on the wall maybe, a fixed point where her eyes focus before misting over. She rocks back and forth. I check the floor to see if it’s moving. But under my feet the ground is solid and stock-still. Behind us, Drunkard Laloo burps.
“No one has asked you for anything, no, chachi?” Pari asks. “Like money to give Bahadur back?”
“You think someone has snatched him?” Bahadur’s ma asks. “That baba, Baba Bengali, he said…”
“Chachi,” Pari says, “even babas can be wrong sometimes. My ma says so.”
“No one has called me for money,” Bahadur’s ma says.
“I’m sure Bahadur will come back,” Pari says.
“Who knows if he has eaten anything?” Bahadur’s ma says. “He must be hungry.” Then she lurches toward the bed on which Drunkard Laloo is sitting. He shifts his legs to make space for her.
Pari opens her mouth to talk more but I shout, “Okay-tata-bye, we’re going.” Then I run out as fast as I can because inside that house sadness sticks to me like a shirt damp with sweat on a hot summer’s day.
WE HAVE ENOUGH TIME BEFORE—
—it gets too dark to go to Bhoot Bazaar and look for Hakim from Hakim’s TV-repair shop. My legs don’t want to walk with me anymore. I have to keep dragging them forward.
The bazaar seems to be growing bigger and bigger. I pass alleys I have never been to. Pari is tired too and our pace is tortoise-slow.
“When will we study?” she asks. Just like her to worry about silly things.
I prepare a list of questions in my head so that Pari can’t pretend she’s in charge again. But when we meet Hakim, the TV-repair chacha, he talks about Bahadur without any prompting from us.
“I saw him on Friday, maybe even on Saturday, but definitely I didn’t see him on Sunday,” he says, stroking his pointy beard that’s henna-orange at the bottom and white at the top, just like his hair. “That was two whole days after his own brother and sister saw him, I found out later. He was wearing his uniform the whole time. I assumed he was avoiding school because of the bullies—you must have seen them teasing Bahadur? Poor child. Shall I get you a cup of tea? You’re doing a good job, looking for him. You deserve a reward.”
Before we can say yes or no, he calls for cardamom tea from a stall nearby, and it comes in tall glasses, frothy-bubbly at the top. It tastes expensive, this tea. Puffs of pricey steam warm our cheeks as we drink.
“Bahadur isn’t here, at the basti or the bazaar,” the TV-repair chacha tells us. “If he were, he would have come to see me by now.”
I believe him because chacha is the nicest person I have ever met. He even takes our investigations seriously. He tells us that Bahadur:
never got into a fight with anyone, even the children who made fun of his stutter;
hasn’t taken anything from the shop;
had no plans to run off to Mumbai-Manali.
I ask the TV-repair chacha if Quarter was one of the people who bullied Bahadur, but the chacha doesn’t know Quarter, only the pradhan. “That man,” the chacha says, wrinkling his nose like something is stinking, “he’ll do anything for money.”
“Snatch children too?” I ask.
The chacha looks puzzled. Pari glares at me from behind the cardamom-scented steam.
“Could a djinn have taken Bahadur?” I ask.
“There are bad djinns,” the chacha says, “who will possess your soul. Very rarely do they abduct children. You can’t put it past them, certainly. Some djinns are big troublemakers.”
Then a commotion in the alley distracts him. It’s two beggars I have seen before, but they are special because one is in a wheelchair and the other is his bow-legged friend who shuffles behind, pushing the chair. The recorded voice of a woman jets out of a loudspeaker fitted to the back of the wheelchair. We’re both ill of leg, she says. Please help us by giving us money. We’re both ill of leg, she goes on. Please…She never gets tired.