The Year of the Runaways (7 page)

She laughed. ‘No matter.’

Twenty minutes later he parked outside a modern-looking building with ‘Sheetal’s’ embossed across the window in a spiky green diagonal.

‘Wow, that was fast,’ the woman said, throwing aside her magazine.

She gathered up the pleats of her crimson sari and stepped gracefully onto the lumpy tarmac. A sliver of her nut-brown midriff was briefly exposed.

‘Two hours, acha?’

Tochi nodded, and watched as the peon beamed and opened the door, and she swished up the marble steps and hurried inside, away from the heat.

Tochi drove to Kumhrar Road, where he caught a couple of fares: two white-saried widows carrying trays of unlit dia lamps to the Radha Krishna Mandir, and then a father and son who wanted to fly their kites on the ghats. When he got back to Sheetal’s, he still had to wait a full fat hour before the peon opened the door and the woman came down the steps, talking over her shoulder to a friend who followed. They stopped beside the auto, still talking. Something about someone’s kitty party. Tochi couldn’t be sure: their tongue was half English. He wanted to try for a few more fares before the evening grew too thick and he had to go home. He looked at the glassy timer in the centre of his handlebars, and maybe the woman’s friend saw him looking and made some sort of gesture with her eyes, for he heard Madam say, ‘Oh, he’s just a scheduled.’

There was an excruciating silence, and the woman’s friend smiled in a squeamish way and said she’d see Radhika next time, later in the week maybe. Madam waved and reluctantly turned round. She was biting the corner of her lip, like a schoolgirl. She got into the back without once looking at Tochi and asked quietly if he wouldn’t mind going next to St Joseph’s Sacred Heart School. They needed to pick up her son.

The next day, Tochi drove right up to the gate where Madam was waiting for him. Her chin was up, eyes peering down her nose, and she climbed into the back of the auto in a single swift movement. Determined not to speak, it seemed, as if to illustrate the proper relationship between driver and Madam. It didn’t last long. Tochi had only turned onto Ganapathy Drive when she flopped forward, elbows on knees.

‘Acha, I’m sorry. But it’s so hard to know what to say these days. I mean, are you even still called chamaars? Legally? Am I allowed to say that?’

‘You can call me what you like. I only want to drive you and get paid for it.’

‘So what should I call you?’

Tochi said nothing.

She fell back, sighing. ‘I’m not a horrible person, you know. I do feel sorry for you people.’

Through the rear-view mirror he could see her looking out the side, agitated, frowning, as if again her words had come out wrong.

When he returned to pick her up, she appeared at the window, waving far too excitedly, and suddenly the door was thrown open and she was coming down the steps, sari hitched up and six, seven, eight women pushing up behind. They arranged themselves around the auto, beaming at Tochi. Collectively, they gave off a pinkish, fruity scent.

Madam spoke calmly, though there was something strained about her face, as if she were trying to check her delight: ‘Can you fit us all in?’

Tochi asked where they were going.

‘Bakerganj,’ said one.

‘The maidaan,’ said another.

An obese and middle-aged third shunted her friends aside. ‘The Women’s Shelter. I’m patron of their birth-control programme. Actually, I should tell you that we have a real problem with birth control in your caste group. Are you married?’

Tochi twisted the key and the engine puttered up. ‘I’m only allowed to take four.’

All nine forced themselves into the auto, sitting on each other’s laps, standing, singing, as if this was a great adventure.

He skirted potholes and speed humps, avoiding police checkpoints, and as each passenger alighted they gave their address and a time to collect them the following day.

‘Most of us have sold our private cars,’ Madam said. ‘We want to help the poor in society instead.’

It was just her and her son left. The boy bounced about in his white shirt and fire-engine-red tie. Twice his mother pressed upon him his sunglasses, and twice he threw them off. At the compound gate, he jumped out and ran towards a waiting kulfi cart. His mother gathered his satchel into her lap.

‘Same time tomorrow? Or are you too busy now?’

She was smiling, pleased with herself. Tochi just said he’d come tomorrow as normal.

*

He got to know the city well. All the branching bazaar alleys that hid the frilly-roofed salons and Danish-style tea rooms. After dropping Sarasvati Madam off at Charlie’s Chai Corner, he’d take the newly built flyover and collect Bimlaji from Nalanda University and go from there to Sheetal’s, via Radhika Madam’s compound. That used to make him late delivering Jagir Bibi to the gurdwara, but once Susheel shared with him the tanners’ lane shortcut Tochi could avoid the bulk of the afternoon mandir rush and the old lady would be at the gurdwara well before the ardaas. The late afternoons were busier still, full of school pick-ups and last-minute runs to the market. Over time, passengers began to recommend him to others: an opportunistic friend and his daily visits to a dying ‘oil-in-law’, a father whose driver had taken to drink. It felt as if no sooner had he washed the auto and set off from his village, than the next time he paused and looked up from the road the sun was sinking away, and he’d again forgotten to eat the rotis his sister had packed, and the night was starting its smoky occupation of the sky.

‘I hear you’re doing well,’ Susheel said.

They were at the Drivers’ Dhaba, sipping sweet tea.

‘Maybe you’ll earn as much as me one day.’

Tochi nodded. ‘How old are you?’

Susheel’s face turned serious. He understood. ‘Seventeen, bhaji.’

‘Family?’

‘Just my ma and papa. My ma’s ill.’

Tochi nodded.

His last stop in the city before heading home was always to pay the brothers their share of the day’s takings. They lived in a one-roomed shack under a stairwell, behind a new hotel, with both their families. At least eleven different faces he’d counted over the weeks. He’d duck to enter and the children would huddle off into a corner to give this uncle room to sit. A sister handed him tea and as he drank the brothers liked to hear of his day. Where he’d been, who he’d taken. Afterwards, they’d say that the auto truly was proving much luckier for him.

*

He slept in the back of the auto, as a precaution. One night, Dalbir lay collapsed over the handlebars. He’d been working in the field and, Tochi noticed, had forgotten to wash the mud from behind his ears.

‘We should buy another auto so I can be a driver too,’ Dalbir said.

‘Who’ll work the land?’

Dalbir thought on this. ‘I’ll hire a manager.’

He heard a woman rustling down their lane. It was Palvinder. She brought Tochi a glass of milk – they could afford to drink it themselves now – and collected his dirty bowl and plate.

‘Ma is asking for you,’ she said to Dalbir.

‘Why?’

‘Since when did you start asking “why”?’

‘I have my rights.’

‘Go,’ Tochi said, and, grumbling, Dalbir rose and went slouching up the lane. Tochi gulped at his milk, handed back the glass. ‘Did Ma tell you?’

Palvinder nodded.

‘And you’re happy with the match?’

‘Would it make any difference if I wasn’t?’

Tochi nodded. ‘I’ll see what they say tomorrow.’

She stood the emptied glass upside down in the bowl and followed her younger brother.

The servant showed Tochi through to the breakfast room, where Babuji was sitting at the scoop of a long kidney-shaped table, spooning sugar into his tea. When he glanced up, sunshine seemed to fill his face and he reached for his walking stick.

‘Don’t get up,’ Tochi said, touching the old man’s feet.

Babuji tapped his stick against the nearest chair and Tochi sat down, balancing on the lip of the seat. ‘I came as soon as I returned. But you were away.’

‘Calcutta business,’ the old man said dismissively, because what he really wanted to hear was what Tochi had been up to. Where he’d been and what he’d done and how long he’d been back. Was it true he’d bought an auto? Tochi said it was.

‘Wonderful! Well done! You’re moving in the right direction.’

He’d aged in a grand way. His hair had turned as white as milk and the skin was terrifically lined, making a noble feature of the large loose face that many still said reflected too soft a character. His hands clasped the ivory handle of his stick and the hem of his silver kurta made a valley in his lap. He’d known Tochi’s grandfather. They’d been great friends, Tochi’s mother had said. Babuji had even attended Papaji’s funeral pyre, and as far as anyone in the village could remember that was the first time a landowner had attended the rites of a chamaar. But that was all back when they’d worked for the family, in the years before Tochi’s father had asked Babuji if they might quit their servant jobs and instead rent some land.

‘I wanted to let you know we’ve found a good match for Palvinder.’

Babuji nodded. ‘So I hear.’

‘I’m sorry I didn’t come and ask for your permission first.’

‘Oh, those days are gone, Tarlochan. Is the girl happy with the match?’

‘If the match has your blessing, then the rest of us don’t need to question it. They’re from Jannat.’

‘On the Margiri side? I know the seth who owns the land. They’re a good family.’

‘I’ve no doubt. But he’s the only son and if we can’t pay the full dowry they say they’ll refuse. And she’s already been refused once. She won’t get another chance.’

Babuji sighed. ‘It’s a monstrous business. “I want five motorbikes and ten cows before your daughter can marry my son.” But it’s the way these things work.’

‘I just wanted to check that you think their demands are reasonable.’ He paused, then decided to add, ‘If they insist I’ll of course pay.’

‘I think it’s monstrous, like I said, and I hope one day it changes and we all start practising the religions we preach. Until then . . .’ He opened his hand in a gesture of resignation. ‘If you find you can’t pay, we’ll give them my Contessa. It still drives like a dream.’

‘I didn’t come here to ask—’

‘I know you didn’t.’

Tochi nodded. Somewhere in the house a clock chimed out the hour. He’d be late for his first job. He put on the table the following quarter’s rent. ‘It’s the same as before I left. Aren’t you ever going to increase it?’

‘Can you afford it if I do?’

‘I’ll just have to give them one less motorbike.’

Babuji feigned horror. ‘Not the motorbike. People will think we’re animals if we only give four.’

That afternoon, Radhika Madam asked why he wasn’t going the usual way, via the maidaan, and Tochi explained it was because of the election. There were rallies. This way would be quicker.

‘I’ll be glad when election season is over,’ Madam said, fanning herself with the end of her pallu. ‘And the rains are taking so long, na?’

He took the hairpin turn onto Lohanipur Road and sped towards the bazaar. But it looked like here, too, there was a rally, and he gently braked into the crowd. He tried intimidating his way through, delivering long bursts on the horn.

‘Might be quicker to walk, Madam.’

‘In this heat? And give his mother more reason to complain I’m not fair enough? I’ll wait, thank you very much.’

So he forced his way to the side, parking beside a few other drivers, and switched the engine off.

It was the Maheshwar Sena. And the same white banner Tochi had seen at the maidaan all those weeks ago now hung in a taut smile across the entrance to the bazaar:
Bharat is for the pure of blood and blood we will shed to keep it pure.
Three, four, five people were on the stage, dressed in saffron and passing between them a microphone boxed in an orange collar. Their words boomed – loud and fuzzed with static – through speakers tied to tree trunks all around. They spoke of the need to regain control. That their religion was becoming polluted, the gods were being angered. The land was increasingly infested by achhuts, churehs, chamaars, dalits, adivasis, backwards, scheduleds – whatever new name they decided to try and hide behind. They needed to be put back in their place. Not given land and handouts and government positions.

‘Maybe I will walk and you can go,’ Madam said.

‘If you want.’

Clearly she didn’t, and stayed put. ‘Such backward logh. And how useless is our government that they can’t do anything? Do you know, our maid, Paro, told me that one of these goondeh made her husband get off the bus and walk home?’

Tochi said nothing.

‘They’ve no shame.’

‘Who?’

‘Don’t be clever.’

Though there were shouts of support and one or two tatty saffron flags above the roving mass of heads, mostly the crowd was impatient and kept calling for the swamijis to move their holy backsides out of the way. ‘I’ve got work, bhanchod!’

‘Let there be no doubt,’ the speaker went on, as if someone had turned up the volume. ‘We will fight to keep our country pure. We will shed blood. We will not back down. Let’s put it even more plainly: we will kill.’ The crowd quietened a little. The speaker seemed pleased by this. ‘There will be revenge for the murder of our brothers by the Maoists. There will be a purge. No one can stop it. And it will start at the beginning of Navratri. In respect for our murdered brothers and sisters, on the first day of Navratri we will allow none of the impure to work in the city or be seen about the city. It will be a day for the pure only. So the pure can enjoy the parks and the streets as Ishvar intended. Anyone going against us will be exterminated.’

Anger flamed inside Tochi, and Radhika Madam was tapping his shoulder, urgently. ‘Please, let’s go. This is too awful.’

On his way home he stopped at the village of Jannat. He knew it was one of the houses behind the Hanuman mandir, but it took a schoolboy scoffing toffees on the temple steps to point it out. Tochi knocked and a voice – an old man’s voice – asked who he was. Inside, he took a seat on the low stringy charpoy, pulled down from where it stood against the wall. The house was dark save for the candles and their intimate light. There were just the two rooms, with an empty doorway between them. Tochi could see the mirror in the second room and reflected in the mirror was a woman lying under a blanket. At her side was Susheel, hands on his knees. The old man was busy apologizing for asking Tochi who he was, but there was so much trouble about these days, what with these Sena logh. Only two days ago he’d heard they’d killed a man because he’d refused to take part in their protection racket.