Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line - Deepa Anappara Page 0,51

now Samosa is sniffing another dog’s backside, I can’t even look.

The other children open their sacks, to show the badshah what they found. They don’t answer my questions about Bahadur and Omvir.

Bottle-Badshah returns the helicopter to the scavenger girl. “You need a toy too,” he says.

She grins. I guess Bottle-Badshah is a good boss-man like Mental.

Faiz asks the girl if she has seen anyone wandering in the dark, trying to catch children. I think he means djinns.

“We sleep in the open,” the girl tells Faiz, “because we don’t have parents or homes. There’s always some idiot trying to snatch us, but we fight them off.”

She must be lying; she’s so small, she wouldn’t scare an ant.

The light has swerved quickly from yellow to brown to black. Evening noises drift out of houses, TVs shouting and women coughing as wood fires scratch their throats. Ma will be home soon.

“Why do you think Samosa brought us here?” I ask Faiz.

“Because he’s stupid?”

I call Samosa. His nose is now poking through the rubbish.

“Leave it, yaar,” Faiz says. “That dog must be hungry.”

I don’t tell Faiz that Samosa just ate an entire nankhatai that would have made my belly happy and quiet.

The scavenger girl runs ahead of us, making chop-chop noises as she pilots her helicopter with her left hand, her now-empty sack swinging in her right hand. Faiz and I run behind her. At first we are her passengers, but then we spread out our hands so that it looks like we are flying too. We go high up into the sky, above the hi-fi buildings and the smog, and we honk-honk so that we won’t crash into each other.

Flying is the best feeling ever.

RUNU-DIDI AND I ARE DOING OUR HOMEWORK—

—when Shanti-Chachi taps on our door and gestures with her eyes and eyebrows that Ma and Papa should step outside. Chachi warns us with the strict expression on her face that we shouldn’t get up, but she also gives us a smile that seems painted-on like a clown’s. She makes her face work too hard. Then the grown-ups huddle outside, whispering with their hands over their mouths.

Maybe Bahadur and Omvir are back. It’s been two days since Faiz and I followed Samosa to the rubbish ground and found nothing. So far, my whole detective mission has been a big failure. I have no clues, and my only suspect, Quarter, hasn’t done anything that can be considered suspicious. If my story were to come on TV, newsreaders would say Missing-Children Probe at Dead End, Child-Detective Admits.

Outside, Papa tries to speak softly like Ma and chachi but doesn’t have much luck with it. Runu-Didi and I hear him say a bad word: randi. Didi shakes her head disapprovingly. At my school, randi is the worst type of swear word for a girl; it means she’s like the women in the kothas of Bhoot Bazaar.

I have never been to the kotha-alley but I have seen brothel-ladies around the bazaar, buying chow mein and chaat, their faces so thick with makeup that even their sweat lines look like scars. They make kissy noises at young men. “Oye chikna,” they chirp, “come here and show us what you’re hiding in those trousers of yours.”

Once I asked Ma about kothas and she said the women there have no shame. She made me God-promise I wouldn’t go to the bad parts of the bazaar, and I don’t, but only because there are loads of other places to explore.

Runu-Didi gets up to stir the dal on the stove. I wish we had some meat to put in the dal. Meat gives you muscles. When I’m grown up and rich, Samosa and I will eat mutton for breakfast, lunch and dinner, and we’ll solve cases that baffle the police because our brains will be twice as smart. I wonder what Samosa is having for dinner tonight.

Ma comes back inside. She sits down next to Runu-Didi, picks up a small ball of atta, and flattens it into a roti. Didi tucks the edge of Ma’s sari into her underskirt because it’s too close to the stove’s flame.

“What happened, Ma?” Didi asks.

I notice only then that Ma’s eyes are full of tears. Maybe she knows about the money I stole from her Parachute tub. I want to throw up and also do No. 2.

I crawl toward Ma. “What’s it?” I ask.

“You,” Ma says, grabbing my wrist too-tight. “When will you stop wandering here and there? People will think there’s no one to take