A Burning(52)

All of that is true, Bimala Pal reminds him, a gentle smile on her face.

Afterward, PT Sir walks down the road, feeling the protective wing of the party sheltering him. He opens his mouth and gulps air until a beggar looks at him strangely. The Muslim man’s family perished, nobody is denying that, but he himself will be all right. Maybe that is all that can be salvaged.

At home, when he parks himself in front of the TV—he has taken a sick day from school—his mind wanders while his eyes remain captive. When late afternoon comes, with its hint of darkening, he surrenders to heavy sleep which anchors him to his bed till he is running late for school the next morning.

    For days, the matter eats away at him. His wife asks, meanly, “Have you fallen in love with a teacher at your school or what? Your head is somewhere else these days.”

How he wants to tell her. One night, he climbs into bed beside her and smooths the rolled cotton inside the blanket cover for something to do with his hands. After a long while he says, “Are you listening?”

His wife, watching a recipe video on her phone, jumps, and laughs. “I was so absorbed in this pasta, four different kinds of cheese, look, I forgot you were—”

PT Sir makes such an effort to put together a smile. He does. But he cannot knit one together.

“Who died?” she teases. “That teacher you are always dreaming of?”

PT Sir looks down into his lap then. If he looks her in the eye he may cry. A grown man.

“Something has happened,” he says. “It’s bad.”

This gets his wife’s full attention. She casts her phone to the side of the pillow.

When she holds his hands in her own, he begins to speak. He tells her everything.





JIVAN


AFTER THE COURT’S RULING, the prison newly encloses me, the walls more solid than they used to be. Americandi watches me return to my mat. She watches me take off the blue sari, my mother’s sari, memory of its gifting removed from it. She watches me lie down, a storm in my mind so dark it pulls all light from my eyes. She chews popcorn with her mouth open, and spits unpopped kernels in the corner, which I will later clean.

Then a skinny young woman appears and begins giving Americandi a foot massage, wrapping her soft arms around the smelly soles, calling her aunty. I have not seen this woman before. She is new. I watch from my mat, the weave of straw pressing itself into my knees and palms. My mind screams and quiets itself, screams and quiets itself.

Americandi leans back on her mattress, resting her neck on the wall. She asks no questions. She knows already, or she does not care.

She closes her eyes and says, “Ah, yes,” and the new prisoner sways with her whole body in the task.



* * *



*

“YOU COME WITH ME NOW,” Uma madam says one day, after breakfast. She has come prepared. A male guard comes forward and grabs my arm.

“Where?” I say, wrenching free. He lets go. “Stop it! I need to talk to Gobind about the appeals.”

“You walk or he will drag you,” says Uma madam in reply.

Back in my cell, I gather my sleeping mat, my other salwar kameez, slip my feet into the rubber slippers, then look around for anything else that is mine. Nothing is.

Uma madam pulls my dupatta off my neck. When I grab at it, she clicks her tongue.

“What use is modesty for you anymore?” she says.

We walk down the corridor, the three of us, and a few women look up from inside their cells. The corridor is so dim they are no more than movement, shapes, smells, a belch. Perhaps sensing my fear, Uma madam finds it in her heart to explain. “You can’t have a dupatta in this place where you are going. Not allowed. What if you decide to hang yourself, what then? It has happened before.” After a pause, she says, “Nobody’s coming to see you, don’t worry about looking nice.”

Uma madam unlocks a door at the far end of the corridor, which opens onto a staircase I have never seen. Though the day is dry and sunny, there is a puddle of water on the top step.

“Go down,” she says.

    When I don’t move, she insists, “Go! Don’t look so afraid, we don’t keep tigers down there.”

I climb down, my slippers slapping the steps. When I touch the wall, it is cold and damp. On the floor below, there is another corridor, a shadow of the one above. This corridor looks like nobody has set foot in it for months. A bat flaps around, panicked, near the ceiling. It doesn’t know how to get out of this place.

Uma madam looks upward, her eyes too slow for the winged rat. “This is the problem,” she says to the male guard, who follows us, “do you see? I told them keep her upstairs, otherwise I have to go up and down, up and down. Can my knees take it, at this age?”

The guard looks at his feet and gives a dry laugh. I can tell he is laughing not at her knees but at something else.

Then Uma madam unlocks a barred room. The guard, who has hovered behind my shoulder all this while, steps back.

Here it is, a special cell for the soon to be dead. A room under the ground for the ones who will be soil.



* * *



*

BUT THEY CANNOT KILL me before they kill me.

Since my ruling was handed down by the highest court, I have only a mercy petition left. For this too I need Gobind’s help. There is no time for me to study the law books myself.