A Burning(22)

    PT Sir’s wife accepts the USB stick and tucks it in her purse. Outside, the air smells of fried food. A vendor dips lentil balls in a dark wok filled with oil, and sells paper bowls full, alongside a cilantro and green chili chutney. Next to him, a shoe repairman works under the thin light of a bulb, gluing a separated sole.

The sidewalk is cracked and uneven, so PT Sir and his wife keep to the edge of the road, near the dry gutter, as they walk. Headlights of cars approach and swerve by. Often, there is no space to walk side by side.



* * *



*

WHEN THE END CREDITS roll across the TV screen, PT Sir shares his big news of the day.

“Oh, I almost forgot!” he feigns.

His wife looks at him, smiling from the romantic closing of the film, where the hero and the heroine found their way to each other and embraced on an Alpine meadow.

“I got a lunch invitation,” PT Sir says. “Bimala Pal invited me to her house.”

He speaks calmly. But he is aware that his heart is beating a little fast. The sleep has fled his eyes.

“Bimala Pal?” says his wife, surprised. “Lunch at her house? Why, what does she want?”

PT Sir braces himself. His wife will, no doubt, caution him against going. So far, she has said nothing about the school inauguration, for which he took a half day off work, but—

    She laughs. “Look at you,” she says. “First she comes to your school, now this. Maybe she really likes you!”

PT Sir smiles, relieved.

“Remember to take a box of nice sweets,” she tells him, “not those cheap sweets you eat.”





JIVAN


IN THE MIDDLE OF TV hour, when the room is louder with our commentary than television, Uma madam appears, showily eating a pear.

“You.” She points at me with the bitten pear. “Somebody to see you.”

I jump up. My back seizes, a shock traveling up and down my spine. Clutching a hand to it, I make my way to the visiting room, where the lawyer Gobind waits.

“Where did you go?” I demand. “Every time I try to call you, I stand in line for half an hour, pay so much money to call, and then your assistant picks up—”

He holds both hands up. “I have seventy-four cases on my desk,” he says. “I can’t sit around waiting for your call. Anyway, I am doing the work, aren’t I? I contacted the leader of your Lovely’s hijra group. Her name is Arjuni. Do you know her?”

I shake my head.

“She told me that Lovely left,” he says.

“What?”

    “She said that Lovely went to her native village—”

“Where is that?”

“In the north. She doesn’t know exactly.”

I look at him for a long while. He coughs into a fist, and says, “Want to tell me anything?”

“You think I’m lying?” I say. “That leader is lying. You are lying, for all I know! Did you even look for Lovely, or do you think she is an imaginary character I have made up?”

I lower my voice. “I will tell my mother to go find Lovely. I am sure she is here. She never mentioned any village to me. She will come testify if I ask her. She will tell them that I was teaching her, that the parcel I was carrying was books for her.”

“Try,” sighs Gobind.





INTERLUDE


GOBIND VISITS A SPIRITUAL GURU


BY FRIDAY AT LUNCHTIME, my office irritates me. There is no painless way to arrange my belly before my desk. The termite tracks on the wall seem to grow every time I look away. My assistant treats his hoarse cough by smoking cigarettes with greater devotion. When the phone rings, it is my daughter’s school saying my daughter has been suspended for breaking a fellow student’s spectacles. I call her mother. Her mother will pick her up. I have too much work.

Days like this, only one thing helps. I visit my guru. My guru, my spiritual leader, is in her seventies, and lives on the ground floor of a house where the door is always open. Her living room has idols of gods on all surfaces. It smells of morning flowers. She does not eat meat, does not leave her house, does not watch TV. Once, I saw an iPad on her lap, but she put it away. She meditates. Her only bad habit is, she feeds stray dogs.

“I thought you would come today, child,” she says, looking up from petting a tan stray. The dog barks. I hold my arms up as the dog jumps on my knees. I don’t like dogs. My guru calls the dog away, and instantly it settles at her feet and looks at me.

    “I saw some clouds in your life,” my guru says. “But clouds pass.”

A glass of water appears in front of me, and I tell her everything. I even tell her what I was not planning to reveal. My wife is upset with me. She thinks I spend too much money on my guru’s recommendations—an onyx ring one day, a smoky quartz another day. But a garnet worn on the left pinky helped me win my first case. I am sure of it. A white coral, which is in fact red, helped me avoid a deadly accident on my regular route home, when a tree fell on top of a taxi in front of me. I have worn a green tourmaline close to my chest, I have worn a moonstone. The day I began wearing a golden citrine, a frightening medical test came back benign. Don’t tell me there’s nothing here. The world is made up of negativity, problems, hassles—trust me, a lawyer knows—and gemstones bring good energy.