Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line - Deepa Anappara Page 0,7
they joke with each other about how long it will take them to realize that one of their own children is missing. Hours-days-weeks-months?
A chacha says that even if he notices he won’t bring it up. “I have eight children. What difference will one less or one more make?” he says, and everyone laughs. The smog is worrying their eyes too, so they are also crying at the same time.
I get to the front of the queue, pay the caretaker, and do my business quickly. I wonder if Bahadur has run off to some place with nice-clean toilets and bathrooms that smell of jasmine. If I had a bathroom like that, I would have taken bucket-baths every day.
* * *
Back at home, Didi gives me chai and rusk for breakfast. The rusk is hard and tastes of nothing, but I obediently chew it up. I won’t get any other food till afternoon. Then I change into my uniform and we leave for school.
Though Papa told me not to, I plan to give Runu-Didi the slip as soon as I can. But there’s a swarm of people around Buffalo-Baba, some standing on plastic chairs and charpais and craning their necks to get a good look. They are blocking our way. I hear a voice I recognize from last night. “Find my son, baba, find my son for me. I won’t move from here until my Bahadur is found,” Drunkard Laloo cries.
“Accha, now you can’t live without your son?” a woman exclaims. “You didn’t think of that when you were hitting him?”
“Only the police can help us,” another woman says. “Six nights he hasn’t been home. That’s too long.” I think that’s Bahadur’s ma talking.
“We’re going to be so late,” Runu-Didi says. She holds her school bag in front of her and uses it to slam into people so that they will move, and I do the same. By the time we are out of the crowd, our hair is messy and our uniforms crumply.
Runu-Didi straightens her kameez. Before she can stop me, I jump over a gutter, and sprint past cows and hens and dogs, and goats wearing better sweaters than I am, past a woman sweeping the alley while listening to loud music on her mobile with earphones, and a white-haired grandmother stringing beans. My school bag knocks into an old man sitting on a plastic chair, one of its legs shorter than the others, the difference in height made up with bricks. The chair topples over and the man lands on the ground with his backside in the mud. I rub my left knee, which hurts a bit, then I run off again and the man’s curses chase me all the way to another alley that smells of chole-bhature.
Here Pari and Faiz are waiting for me, outside a store that sells Tau jee and Chulbule and other salty, masala-coated snacks. The bright reds and greens and blues of the namkeen wrappers look dreary in the smog today, and the husband and wife who run the shop are sitting behind the counter with mufflers wrapped over their faces. The smog doesn’t bother me as much, probably because I’m strong.
“This Faiz, na,” Pari says as soon as I join them, “is an idiot.” Her minaret fringe looks like it will collapse any second.
“You’re the idiot,” Faiz says.
“You saw?” I ask. “Drunkard Laloo is praying to Buffalo-Baba, like baba is an actual god.”
“Bahadur’s ma was saying she’ll go to the police,” Pari says.
“She’s ekdum-mad,” Faiz says.
“The police will kick us out if we complain,” I say. “They’re always threatening to send bulldozers to demolish our basti.”
“They can’t do anything. We have got ration cards,” Pari says. “Also, we pay them a hafta. If they throw us out, who will they extort money from?”
“Loads of people,” I say. “India has more people than any other country in the world. Except China.” There’s rusk stuck between my teeth and I pry it out with my tongue.
“Faiz thinks Bahadur is dead,” Pari says.
“Bahadur is our age. We aren’t old enough to die.”
“I didn’t say he died,” Faiz protests, and then he coughs. He hawks up spit and wipes his mouth with his hands.
“Maybe what’s happened is that Bahadur’s asthma went bad because of the smog, and he fell into a ditch and couldn’t get out,” Pari says. “Remember how he couldn’t breathe this one time we were in Standard Two?”