Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line - Deepa Anappara Page 0,72
Durga-Mata hanging by the door and found the rolled-up twenty-rupee note that Nana had given her for her birthday when he visited them. He had told her to keep the money a secret. Ma and Papa would only take it from her and use it for something good like buying vegetables. Nana wanted Chandni to spend it on something not-so-good like buddi ka baal. That name alone put a bubble of laughter in her tummy. A cloud of pink sugar spun around a stick looked nothing like old-lady hair.
Outside it was dark. Chandni slipped out and walked quickly. No one called her back. She hopped to the bazaar, where some shops were shut and some weren’t. She wondered what time it was. No one had taught her to read a clock.
The candyfloss man was gone, and she felt a bit sad but then she saw a shop that sold gujiyas and gulab-jamuns was still open. She gave the sweets-shop man her twenty-rupee note and pointed at the gulab-jamuns drowning in a tray of sugary syrup, inside a glass case. The man scooped the gulab-jamuns into a plastic bag and leaned over the counter to drop it into her hands. He didn’t give her back any of her money. But that was all right. The gulab-jamuns were going to do jantar mantar jadu mantar to Didi’s bad mood. Just a small bite of the sweet and happiness would coat Didi’s tongue and polish her eyes.
The lane was almost empty. The night made rattle-tattle sounds and clitter-clatter sounds and clip-clop sounds and stomping sounds. Some sounds could have been left over from the day, when too many people talked inside shops and all the voices didn’t get a chance to be heard. Now they were coming out of cobwebbed ceilings and from behind doors and from under humming fridges and were as loud as they could be.
Chandni didn’t like the sounds, which wriggled into her ears like worms and were also scratchy like blankets.
Then she had a good idea. She cluck-clucked like a hen and bow-wowed like a dog and meow-meowed like a cat so that the sounds chasing after her in the dark wouldn’t know if she was a hen or a girl or a dog or a cat. This way the sounds would get confused and leave her alone. She skipped and jumped, her cat-tail puffing up, her chicken-beak pecking the ground, her dog-tongue licking the sticky syrup from the plastic bag splish-splashing onto her paws.
She was almost home.
THE HINDU SAMAJ DEMONSTRATION IS LONG—
—gone but there are signs of it everywhere. Walking home from school, our shoes step on leaflets that hold the faces of the missing. I pick one up. The photo of Bahadur on the leaflet is the same as the one his ma had given us, but this poster is black and white, so you can’t tell his shirt is red. Omvir’s hair is neatly combed away from his forehead, and he’s grinning into the camera. Aanchal is wearing a salwar-kameez with a dupatta over her head; she looks not at all like a brothel-lady. Chandni’s face is small and grainy. Under the photos are the words: Release Our Children Now.
“Did they see a Muslim snatch a child that they’re going around doing”—Pari’s fingers jab the leaflet I’m holding—“this nonsense?”
“Byomkesh Bakshi would have laughed at them,” I say.
“We should go to Chandni’s house,” Pari says. “Maybe we’ll see someone or something suspicious. We can’t let the Samaj keep blaming good people for evil things.”
She’s trying to make Faiz feel better because his mood is off.
Pari asks a woman sitting on the roadside, surrounded by sacks full of spices, if she knows where Chandni’s house is. The spice vendor points us to the left or the right, I’m not sure exactly, but Pari seems to have understood.
We go past the TV-repair chacha’s shop, which is shut, just like every Muslim’s shop in Bhoot Bazaar. If I were a Muslim, I wouldn’t keep my shop open either while Quarter and his gang shouted threats outside.
“Faiz, why don’t you go home?” Pari says, glancing at the padlocked shutters. “That might be safer.”
“Will you just shut up?” Faiz says.
The alley ends in a clearing the size of three of our houses, bordered by piles of rubbish on one side that have been there for so long, everything has hardened like rocks. Goats try to find things to eat inside torn, ancient plastic bags. On the other side of the