Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line - Deepa Anappara Page 0,5
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