A Burning(25)

“Just yesterday I was in Bankura district,” says Bimala Pal, “and you know what is happening there? The midday meal funds for schools are disappearing into the pockets of school administrators. Those children are getting rice full of stones, lentils cooked in a tiny bit of oil. I said…” The story ends with a student’s grandmother crying with gratitude in Bimala Pal’s embrace.

It is when their plates are almost clean that Bimala Pal says, “You must be thinking why I have asked to see you today.”

PT Sir looks at her, and her plate, where she has made a pile of fish bones, curved like miniature swords.

“You see, I have a small hassle on my hands,” she says. “I was thinking, maybe an educated man like yourself can help us with it.”

PT Sir sees, through the open door, a dark figure in the sun, holding a baby. A clerk comes by and says, “Madam, the society of mothers who—”

    “Coming, coming,” says Bimala Pal.

“The engineers are also waiting—”

Bimala Pal nods, and the clerk retreats.

There isn’t much time.

“I will be honored to help you in any way,” PT Sir finds himself saying. “Tell me, what can I do?”



* * *



*

SO IT IS THAT, a few weeks later, PT Sir finds himself at the courthouse. The grand British-era building has received a new coat of brick-red paint. Surrounding the building is a large garden planted with rows of hibiscus and marigold. Even at the early morning hour, the grounds have an air of harried activity. Lawyers in black robes cross the yard. PT Sir lets himself be passed. Under a row of oak trees, typists sit before typewriters, beside them stacks of legal paper. Next to them, tea-samosa sellers, resting kettles and cups on the ground, engage in a brisk trade.

No one pays any attention to PT Sir, so nobody notices that he is sweating excessively, armpit patches spreading under the blazer he has worn. His left thumb twitches, a tremor that he has never had before. He hides the hand in his pocket.

Up he goes into the old courthouse, then down a long balcony, off which he can see, through doors left ajar, a library with ceiling fans turning at the top. He walks by warrens of lawyers’ offices, stuffed with leaning towers of folders. PT Sir retrieves a handkerchief from his trousers’ pocket and mops his damp forehead. Before courtroom A6, he taps a guard at a door, clears his throat, and says, “I am a witness.”

    Then he sits on a hard wooden bench, watching in anxiety as three other cases are swiftly brought before the judge and resolved.

Half an hour later, when PT Sir is called to the front of the courtroom, his throat is parched, and while his left thumb has stopped twitching, his right eyelid has taken up the tendency. He walks slowly, trying to project calm. He stands in a witness box, and a clerk warns him not to lean on the railing. It wobbles.

Before him appears a lawyer wearing a wrinkled robe and summer sandals with chapped edges. PT Sir looks at those feet, then at the room of dozing men awaiting their own hearings.

Now Bimala Pal seems very far away, her influence no more than a gentle memory.

PT Sir wonders in a panic if he can get out of this.

Is there a way? Maybe he can fake a heart attack.

The lawyer asks him: “Habyusinthisparson?”

“Hmm?” says PT Sir. He coughs, and clears his throat.

He has spoken. Can he fake a heart attack now?

The lawyer says it again, and this time PT Sir understands what he is saying: “Have you seen this person?”

The lawyer indicates a man seated at a table in front. The man wears an oversize blue shirt with short sleeves that fall to his blackened elbows. Through his half-open mouth, PT Sir can see that his teeth are stained red.

    PT Sir knows none of these men, not the man with the stained teeth, nor the lawyer, but his job, per Bimala Pal’s assistant’s instructions, is to say: Yes, he has come across that man. He saw that man fleeing after a hardware store near his school was robbed.

PT Sir has never seen this man before, of course, but he knows—he has been told—that this is a man who has robbed and stolen for a living, but never been caught. There has never been evidence, though his neighbors and friends all know the truth. It is true that he also belongs to the wrong religion, the minority religion that encourages the eating of beef, but that is a peripheral matter, according to Bimala Pal’s assistant. The main issue is, a robber has to be stopped. What decent man would object to participating in the execution of justice?

Now PT Sir has to speak, or else faint. He must speak, or else surrender all hope of moving up in life by Bimala Pal’s grace.

So, with his cool, teacher’s diction, his nicely combed hair, his button-down shirt and black blazer, never mind the damp armpits, he stands before that filthy-faced, rotten-toothed criminal, and says, “Him, yes, that man, I saw him there. He was running in a direction away from the hardware store.”

Then, with an exchange between the lawyer and the judge that PT Sir does not follow, the matter is over. The criminal is taken away by a policeman to pay a hefty fine, or else go to jail. It is clear that he does not have the means to pay a fine. When he walks past PT Sir, the man looks at him closely, squinting as if he is missing his spectacles. PT Sir turns away. The clerk calls the case number for the next case; the lawyer vanishes; a different set of people approach the bench.