A Burning(5)

Gobind looks at me. A woman like me is never believed.

“What about these cloths soaked in kerosene found at your house?” says Gobind after a while. “Very much like the kerosene-soaked torches that were tossed into the train. What about that?”

“Those were…” I think hard. “Probably my mother’s cleaning cloths. Kerosene to get grease off. I don’t know! I have never seen them.”

They say I helped terrorists set fire to the train. Not only do they have Facebook chat records with a man I now know is a recruiter, there were witnesses at the railway station who saw me walking to the train station with a package in my arms. Must have been kerosene, they say. Must have been rags, or wood for torches. Other witnesses saw me running away from the train, with no package in my arms. Though they saw no men with me, they allege that I guided men, terrorists, enemies of the country, down the unnamed lanes of my slum, to the station where the cursed train would be waiting.

    When I protest my innocence, they point to the seditious statements I posted on Facebook, calling my own government a “terrorist” and showing, so they say, a marked absence of loyalty to the state. Is it a crime to write some words on Facebook?

Gobind points to a document I signed while in police lockup. He tells me I confessed.

“Who believes that?” I charge. “They forced me to sign. They were beating me.”

I turn to the courtroom, wishing for my mother and father to be here, for their soothing hand on my head, at the same time as I wish for them to never see me here. They would not be able to bear it.

Then the judge arrives, and reads a list of charges.

“Crimes against the nation,” he says. “Sedition.”

I hear the words. I raise my hand and gesture no, no, no.

“I was taking a few books, my schoolbooks,” I say. It is the truth, so why does it sound so meager? “That was my package. I was taking my schoolbooks to a person in the slum. Her name is Lovely. Ask her. She will tell you that I was teaching her English for some months.”

From the back, a voice scoffs, “Keep your stories for the papers. A terrorist doing charity! What an A-plus story! The media will eat it up!”

The judge threatens to throw the voice out of the room.

“They made me sign the confession,” I tell the judge later. I lift my tunic to reveal my bruised abdomen, and hear people shift behind me.

    This time the judge listens, his eyebrows raised.

Days later, in a newspaper, I will see an artist’s drawing of me appearing in court that morning. The sketch shows a woman with her hair in a braid. Her hands are cuffed but raised as in prayer or plea. This is a mistake, I think. I was not in cuffs. Was I? The rest of her body is hastily penciled, decaying already.





JIVAN’S MOTHER AND FATHER


NO MORE THAN AN hour after Jivan was arrested, a reporter found the house in the slum and knocked. The door was a sheet of tin, unlatched. It fell open. Jivan’s mother was sitting by Jivan’s father on the raised bed, and fanning him with a folded newspaper.

At the sight of the reporter, Jivan’s mother rose and walked to the door. “Who are you?” she demanded. “Are you police?”

The newsman held a recorder at a respectful distance and said, “Daily Beacon. I am Purnendu Sarkar.” He flipped open his wallet to show her ID, then tucked it into a back pocket. “Do you know why your daughter has been arrested?”

Jivan’s mother said, “They will send a policeman with the information, that is what they told me. Where did they take Jivan?”

This mother was confused, the reporter saw. She did not know anything. He sighed. Then he turned off his recorder, and told her what he knew.

“Mother,” he said in the end, “did you understand what I said?”

    “Why would I not understand,” said she. “I am her mother!”

And to her husband she turned. Jivan’s father, stiff-backed on the bed, knew, had known, something terrible was happening.

“They are saying something about Jivan,” she cried. “Come here and see, what are they saying?”

But her husband only lifted his head, sensing a frightening disturbance in the night. He moved his dry mouth to speak, and stopped. His chin trembled, and his arm, raised from the elbow, hailed somebody for help.

A figure peeled away from the carrom players outside. He was Kalu the neighbor, with his bulging neck tumor. By that time, more reporters had arrived, and a curious crowd had formed outside the house. This crowd made way for him in fear and disgust. Kalu shut the door behind him, and a shout of protest went up from the gathered reporters.

“Mother,” he said, “have you eaten? Then let’s go. These people are saying they know where Jivan is.”

Then he took her, sitting on the back of his motorcycle, her legs dangling like a schoolgirl’s, to the police station the reporters had named. By the time Jivan’s mother stepped off the motorcycle, in her arms nothing but an envelope, much crushed—her daughter’s birth certificate, school-leaving certificate, polio drop receipt, for documents were all she had—the sky was turning from black to blue.

Jivan’s mother made her way to the entrance of the police station, where, she had been told, her daughter was held. There was a crowd of reporters here too. They had lights and cameras. One reporter applied lipstick, while another crushed a cigarette underfoot. At the gate stood two guards, rifles strapped to their backs. Periodically they shouted at the journalists to step back. Otherwise they leaned in the doorway, chatting.