A Burning(35)

JIVAN


BEHIND THE MAIN PRISON building there is a long gutter, green with growth. Running above it is a crooked water pipe with a dozen faucets. Here I kneel every other morning, and wash clothes for Americandi.

One morning, I am kneeling and scrubbing, I am beating the kameez and salwar against the ground, watching a circle of foam spread, when I feel somebody behind me. It is a guard, who says, “Your lawyer is here. Leave that and come.”

Is it so easy? Don’t I know that Americandi will punish me for leaving her clothes unwashed?

Rapidly I rinse and wring, putting my weight into my arms, the wrung clothes releasing ropes of water. I flap the clothes in the air, a gentle rain falling back toward me, and hang them up to dry on a clothesline inside my cell. When I walk, finally, to the visiting room, with each step my back aches like its hinges need oiling.



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    I HAVE NEVER SEEN Gobind smile so wide.

“Lovely is here,” he says, standing up when he sees me, “you are right. The message has been delivered.”

“I know,” I tell him. “My mother found her, when you couldn’t!”

“She has promised she will testify,” he says, as if he can’t hear me. “A win for us!”

A few days later, in the papers, I see stories which claim Gobind did extensive on-the-ground investigation, endless nights of detective work, to track down the elusive hijra, Lovely.



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WHEN I SPEAK ABOUT PT Sir, Purnendu raises his eyebrows.

“What?” I say. “Do you know him?”

“Is this the man who has been seen with Bimala Pal?” Purnendu says. “The new member of Jana Kalyan Party?”

“No, no,” I tell him. “He was just my PT teacher at S. D. Ghosh School.”



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ONE DAY, AFTER A CLASS during which the sun made me feel faint, PT Sir called me. What was wrong now? I wondered. My hem fraying, my shoelaces soiled? But he said, in a scolding tone so as not to embarrass me, “Are you eating properly?”

I tried to smile, as if it was a silly concern. “It was too hot, sir, that’s why I felt weak.”

    He looked at me for a while, and I waited to be punished. When teachers called me, that was usually what happened.

But PT Sir took me up to the staff room, and handed me a tiffin box from his bag. Inside, there were several pieces of ruti folded in triangles, and vegetables.

“Sit and eat it,” he said. I did, all those pipes in me clamoring for food, their need louder than my embarrassment. My mother always cooked food for us, but that month, my father needed an injection which cost us our grocery money. I had only eaten some rice and salt for breakfast.

After that, PT Sir kept an eye on me. He slipped me some bread and jam, or a banana. I, in turn, participated enthusiastically in his class. I jogged in place—“High knee! Low!”—and bounced a basketball with vigor. I jumped toward the new hoops. I raced with my elbows slicing the air and my thighs pumping. I thought of all the times I had stayed home to look after my father, and now, my sweat shined on my limbs.

PT Sir, with his balding head ringed by a patch of combed hair, stood in the sun class after class, a whistle ready at his lips. He smiled at me and told me, “Well done!”

Once, he asked me if I was interested in going to a cricket camp.

I wondered sometimes if he paid attention to me because he felt like an outsider too. He was a father, I imagined, and all the other teachers were mothers. When the principal spoke about morals at the morning assembly, and the microphone began to screech, the ladies looked around for PT Sir. Such was his place in the school, a little apart from everybody else.



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THEN TWO THINGS HAPPENED.

One, I went to a classmate’s birthday party. Priya’s mother took us home in a bus, and paid for my bus fare. I stood on the uneven wooden planks, this time in shoes, reaching high for the bar that ran along the ceiling. A lady was eating chocolate wafers, and had a full bag in her lap. I looked at the chocolates, sitting ignored, nobody wanting them.

In Priya’s room, she had a desk for working and a special lamp just for the desk, which curved downward to put light on the book but not in her eyes. I had never seen a lamp like it. I still covet it.

In the kitchen, Priya crushed biscuits and chocolate sauce to make a sweet dish that her mother scolded her for making, as it would spoil our appetite for the dinner. But I ate spoonfuls of it, and then ate my fill at dinner. I had never seen such a spread. There was luchi, dal, chicken, but also Chinese noodles from the cart at the bus stop, in case we did not find the home-cooked food delicious. When I left, Priya’s mother gave me a tiffin box full of food for my mother and father. Was Priya a millionaire? No, she was only middle class.

    It made me proud. Look at me, Ma, with my middle-class friend. That’s what I thought. One day I would be middle class too.



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THE SECOND EVENT HAPPENED one night, when I was woken by my mother shouting. It was dark, and I rose in a panic.

“Look how they scratched me, those savages,” my mother was saying, holding out a bare forearm. And they had, whoever they were. I climbed off the bed, my breath catching, and held her arm tenderly, as if my touch could soothe. A small circle of potential customers stood around, bereft of breakfast, agitated by the event they had stumbled upon.