Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line - Deepa Anappara Page 0,63

the mall, finding spaces in the stairwells where they hoped CCTV cameras couldn’t see them kiss. Suraj said he had to mend a rip in an expensive sweater bought at a sale from Gap, so they left the mall and drove to the part of Bhoot Bazaar where a slew of tailors sat in a row, measuring tapes wound around their necks like scarves, their feet at the ready on the pedals of their sewing machines, their signboards promising both sewing and dry-cleaning “without smell” in a matter of hours.

She was shivering in the cold by then. Suraj offered to lend her his jacket but she refused. While they waited for his sweater to be mended, they had masala chai and dal-chawal at a stall where everyone gawked at the two of them feeding each other without shame and maybe a bit of pride.

When his sweater was done, and it was time for him to start his shift, Suraj drove her to the turning off the highway; from there, she could walk to her house in under a minute. He looked exhausted but also sad to leave her company. He said he would wait until she reached her home and called him. She insisted it was unnecessary. Though the dhaba was closed, the autorickshaw stand still had two or three drivers sleeping in the passenger seats of their autos, their legs sticking out, feet encased in holey socks.

Suraj’s phone rang again. He didn’t answer it, but he took a laminated lanyard out of his pocket, hung it around his neck, and told her to call him as soon as she entered her room. In his voice were flecks of an American twang, as if he was already in his office.

As she walked home, a dog barked at her, but its heart was not in it. The air creaked as if made of wood. She turned around, hearing something, the dog’s loud breaths, stones being crushed underfoot. A hand reached for her in the darkness and she jumped and said Suraj, but of course, he was on the road right now, probably going faster than the speed limit. Be careful, she told him in her head.

But then the same voice she recognized from before asked her to stop. She wondered if he had been stalking her all day.

Leave me alone, she screamed at him. Do you want me to wake up the whole basti?

He stood in front of her with his arms crossed against his chest, as if to tell her to try it. The shimmer of a golden sunbeam caught her eye as he moved, but then it was snapped up by the dark.

I’M WAITING IN A TWISTY QUEUE—

—to use the toilet, waving at Faiz who’s standing ahead of me with his brothers, when I spot Bahadur’s ma in the ladies’ line. There’s an empty space of two feet in front of her and also behind her though all the other women and girls are jostling against each other.

She sees me and gives up her prime position to walk in my direction. Maybe she knows we went into her house without her permission and got Samosa to sniff Bahadur’s notebook.

“You couldn’t find my son, na?” Bahadur’s ma says.

The constantly farting man ahead of me holds in his farts so that he can hear her clearly.

Bahadur’s ma pats my head and my skull jumps under the touch of her fingers. “You did well,” she says. “You and that little girl. Only the two of you wanted to help me.”

“We put the photo back,” I whisper.

“I saw.”

“Chachi, do you want to stand here?” Runu-Didi calls out from her line, stepping back and making space for Bahadur’s ma because her earlier spot, though marked with the mug she had brought with her, has been claimed by another woman. Bahadur’s ma nods. She squeezes my shoulder and I avoid her eyes because she’s making me feel guilty, like I was the one who stole Bahadur. Then she leaves.

“What did you do for her?” the farting-chacha asks.

“Nothing,” I say.

The other chachas in my queue talk about how awful it is to have to go from morgue to morgue, to check if your child is lying underneath a white bedsheet. That’s what all the parents of the missing have been doing. “There’s no greater misfortune than to outlive your child,” a chacha says.

I feel like crying. Two monkeys on the toilet-complex roof lean forward and bare their teeth at us. The smog is less