Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line - Deepa Anappara Page 0,52
care of you.”
A chachi from Ma’s basti-ladies’ network must have seen me at Duttaram’s tea shop and told Ma. I try to free my hand. She lets me go and slaps her forehead. “Hey Bhagwan, why are you testing us like this?” she says.
I keep quiet because she’s talking to God and not me and God has better things to do than answer her questions.
“Ma, tell us what’s wrong,” Runu-Didi says.
“Aanchal,” Ma says, “Aanchal is missing.”
“Who’s that?” I ask but I have already guessed that Aanchal is a brothel-lady. That must be what Shanti-Chachi just told Ma and Papa.
“Aanchal left her home on Saturday and hasn’t come back yet,” Ma says. “Three nights—tonight it will be four—she hasn’t been home.”
Runu-Didi removes the dal from the fire.
“You don’t talk to boys, do you?” Ma asks Didi, who looks too confused to say anything.
“This Aanchal, she has a boyfriend,” Ma says, and then she snaps at me. “Jai, go outside.”
“I have homework,” I say, but I get up. Papa and Ma keep sending me and Didi away for secret reasons. It’s all right in summer but it’s just mean to do that to your children in the rains or on freezy nights like tonight.
The talk outside is very grown up. Ma wouldn’t have wanted me to hear it; serves her right for kicking me out.
“Her boyfriend is as old as her grandfather,” a chachi says. “But worse, he’s Muslim.”
“She told her mother she was going to a movie with a friend. How was that poor woman to know her daughter was running around with a Muslim instead?” a second chachi says.
“Who knows how many boyfriends a girl like that has?” a third chachi says.
Brothel-ladies must be brothel-ladies because they have many boyfriends.
“Muslims kidnap our girls and force them to convert to Islam. Love-jihad they’re doing,” a chacha says. “After bombs, this is how they terrorize us.”
These chachas and chachis wouldn’t have said such things had our Muslim neighbors like Fatima-ben been around.
Shanti-Chachi’s husband warns Papa that girls can’t be trusted. “They tell you one thing, they do something else. You should be stricter with Runu,” he says. “She goes here and there for running races, doesn’t she?”
“Didi only cares about winning inter-district,” I say. “She’ll marry her medal. Papa won’t have to pay a dowry for her.”
“Who told you to come out?” Papa asks.
“Your wife doesn’t want to see my face,” I say.
Papa sighs, then prods me back inside where Runu-Didi has put our books away so that we can have dinner. I wonder who Aanchal’s Muslim grandpa-boyfriend is. There are loads of old Muslim men in our basti, but the only one I know is the TV-repair chacha. He can’t be Aanchal’s boyfriend, can he?
Ma angrily slops dal onto everyone’s plates. She scowls at Runu-Didi like Didi has secret Muslim boyfriends.
“Papa,” I say, “Ma is doing drama-baazi again.”
Ma’s ladle smacks my plate, telling me to shut up.
* * *
By the next afternoon, Pari, Faiz and I know loads about Aanchal, from the words grown-ups let out of their mouths when they forgot we were around, and the stories Faiz’s brothers told him after he gave them his share of subzi at dinner. News about Aanchal came to us; we didn’t have to take the Purple Line to learn about her. Hardly anyone knows Bahadur and Omvir but Aanchal is a world-famous lady in Bhoot Bazaar.
During the midday meal break, we stand in the school playground, keeping an eye on Quarter whose eyes are on the girls around him. Our classmates play games that look like fun, but we can’t join in because Pari and I have a case to solve.
Pari writes a missing-person report for Aanchal based on the instructions I give her. Our final report is as good as any I have seen on Police Patrol. It says:
NAME: AANCHAL
FATHER NAME: KUMAR
AGE: 19–22
IDENTITY MARKS: FEMALE PERSON WITH WHEAT COLOR, FACE TYPE ROUND, BUILD THIN, HEIGHT 5' 5" (5' 3" OR 5' 4") WEARING YELLOW KURTA
LAST SEEN: BHOOT BAZAAR
I pass Pari’s notebook to Faiz, who squints at the report and says, “When did Aanchal become nineteen? People say she’s twenty-three or twenty-four.”
“It looks professional,” I say.
“How is this going to help you find Aanchal?” he asks.
Faiz can’t admit we’re good at anything. But it’s also true that I don’t know how this missing-person report will be useful.
“Let’s make a list of suspects,” Pari says, and snatches her notebook back from Faiz.