Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line - Deepa Anappara Page 0,67
isn’t even—” Tara says but Didi shushes her. “Bye-bye,” Didi says to me.
If she gets kidnapped, it will be her fault. I did my best. At the gate, I tell the lie Didi asked me to tell. Pari’s ma says okay in between sniffles.
We walk home, in a row, ignoring the curses of rickshaw drivers who are angry we are blocking their way. Faiz leaves for the kirana store and doesn’t let Pari’s ma stop him. He tells her if he doesn’t work, his family won’t be able to eat, which is a half-lie. Pari’s ma believes him.
The alleys are full of men and women pointing their fingers at the sky (are the gods sleeping?) or in the direction of the highway where the police station is (when will those sons-of-donkeys wake up? ). “Let’s gherao the superintendent of police, teach him a lesson,” someone says. “I heard he’s in Singapore,” someone else says.
Pari’s ma ushers us forward, not stopping to chit-chat, not letting us ask questions. When we reach her house, she says, “I have to leave Pari with the neighbor-chachi and go back to work.”
I guess she doesn’t care if I get kidnapped. But then I see that Shanti-Chachi is standing there, talking to Pari’s neighbor-chachi. Ma must have told her to bring me home from Pari’s house. Our basti has turned into a prison. Guards are watching us everywhere.
Shanti-Chachi asks me where Runu-Didi is. I repeat Didi’s lie.
After chachi drops me home, I take my EVS textbook out of my satchel and stand on our doorstep without changing out of my uniform. I listen to Shanti-Chachi talking to other chachis. I learn:
the missing child’s name is Chandni;
she’s five and doesn’t go to school;
Chandni’s eldest sister is twelve and stays at home to look after her brothers and sisters;
Chandni is the fourth of the five children in their house. The youngest is Chandni’s brother, who’s only a nine-month-old baby;
that’s four almost-children—Aanchal isn’t a child because she’s sixteen—who have disappeared from our basti. Who’s taking them? Is it a criminal or do we have a hungry, bad djinn in our midst?
Pari would have written all this down in her notebook.
I don’t know for how long I keep listening. Runu-Didi comes home, puts her bag down and squats by the barrel to wash her face. When she finishes, I shift to the side so that she can go inside.
“Why is the kidnapper stealing so many children?” I ask.
“Maybe he likes eating them,” Runu-Didi says. She half-shuts the door so that she can change behind it. I can’t see her, but she keeps talking. “There are people who like eating human flesh. The same way you like eating rasgullas and mutton.”
“Liar.”
“Where do you think the children who disappeared are right now?” Didi asks. “In someone’s belly.”
“A child won’t fit in a man’s tummy. And Aanchal? No way. A snatcher will sell the children he snatched for money, not eat them.”
If djinns haven’t caught them and locked them up in dungeons, Omvir and Bahadur must be cleaning rich people’s toilets right now. Or they must be carrying heavy bricks on their backs, and their eyes and faces must be reddened by brick-dust and tears.
Runu-Didi finishes changing and opens the door fully and goes out to talk to her basti-friends. I walk in and lie down on the bed with the textbook on my chest. I look at our roof, at the small wall-fan that we haven’t used since Diwali, and the lizard sitting still next to it, pretending it’s a part of the wall. I pray: Please God, don’t let me be kidnapped or murdered or djinned.
I remember the railway-station boys and how Guru said gods are too busy to listen to everyone. I wish I could pray to Mental instead.
I think of every name I know, in case that’s Mental’s name. Abilash and Ahmed and Ankit, and Badal and Badri and Bhairav, Chand and Changez and Chetan, I’m finding it hard to think of names alphabetically, so I let them come to my head in whichever order they want, Sachin Tendulkar, Dilip Kumar, Mohammed Rafi, Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru…
* * *
The sound of mustard seeds screaming in hot oil wakes me up. I must have fallen asleep chanting names. I hear Ma and Runu-Didi whispering about the missing girl.
“Runu, you have to be careful too,” Ma says. “Whoever it is, they’re not just kidnapping children. Aanchal is nineteen or twenty, don’t forget that.”