‘I have come to report an illegal workshop employing child labour. When can the SDM see us?’
‘I’m afraid SDM sahib doesn’t come before ten thirty. But you can discuss with me.’
For the next half-hour we patiently explain what we saw inside the workshop, the illegal nature of the operation and the health hazards to the children and the general environment. Lauren has even printed out the pictures she had taken with her cell phone. The clerk gets us to submit a written report and sign various forms. I begin to chafe at all this bureaucracy. Filing a simple complaint seems to require more paperwork than applying for a bank loan.
‘This is a very serious matter,’ Lauren stresses. ‘I hope you will take immediate action to rescue those poor children.’
Keemti Lal nods gravely. ‘Absolutely, madam. But we will have to follow the laid-down procedure in such cases. A notice will need to be served, followed by an enquiry, which can lead to an appeal. All this will take time. However, things can be speeded up if…’
He leaves the sentence hanging, but from the expectant look on his weasel-like face we can gauge his intention. He is asking us for a bribe.
I am aghast. ‘What kind of man are you, trying to enrich yourself at the expense of innocent children?’ I upbraid the clerk.
Lauren, however, simply purses her lips and nods. With a philosophical detachment she opens her wallet and counts out five thousand-rupee notes. ‘Will this be enough?’
‘Oh, madam, you are embarrassing me,’ Keemti Lal says ingratiatingly, even as he accepts the money, stuffing it into his shirt’s top pocket. ‘Rest assured that I will apprise SDM sahib as soon as he comes. Namaste.’ He folds his hands. My hands itch to pummel that smirk off his ugly face.
As we step out of the building, I cannot help remarking to Lauren, ‘I didn’t expect you to grease the palms of that swine so easily.’
‘For me the paramount consideration is saving those children. If it takes a little speed money, I don’t mind.’
‘We seem to have become a nation of bribe givers and bribe takers.’ I shake my head in dismay.
‘If it makes you feel any good, let me tell you there’s bribery in America too.’
‘Really?’
‘Yes. Except we have refined it into a fine art. And we call it lobbying.’
* * *
It is 26 January, India’s Republic Day. For the nation, it marks the birth anniversary of India’s Constitution. But for me and my family it marks Alka’s death anniversary.
Outside, patriotic songs are blaring from loudspeakers. Inside our flat the mood is sombre and contemplative. Today we are all emotional refugees, seeking sanctuary from our collective pain. Ma, steeped in religion, takes shelter in the Bhagwad Gita, the holy scripture. Neha hides behind her MP3 player, ears plugged out to some thumping dance beat. I try to divert myself by reading a book, but it is impossible to concentrate. So I sit in front of the TV, doodling on a paper tissue and watching the live coverage of the Republic Day parade. It is a foggy morning and the sky is grey, yet thousands of spectators are braving the cold to cheer the marching contingents and mechanised columns as they make their way from Raisina Hill to the Red Fort. A succession of tableaux showcase our military might and cultural diversity. There are tanks and missiles, intercut with Sufi traditions of Bihar and festival dances from Sikkim.
‘Why are you wasting your time watching this song and dance?’ a voice reprimands me from the door. I turn around to see Nirmala Ben enter the flat.
Nirmala Ben lives in B-25, three flats removed from ours, on the same floor. She is a thin, diminutive woman, in her early sixties, with quick, darting eyes that take in everything around her at once. Her greying hair is pulled tightly behind her head in a small bun. As usual, she is dressed in a simple white sari, and plain slippers.
Nirmala Ben’s life story mirrors our own struggles. Before marriage she was Nirmala Mukherjee, a Bengali from Kolkata with a passion for Rabindra Sangeet, the songs of Tagore. When she was twenty-four, she fell in love with a Gujarati accountant named Hasmukh Shah. Despite opposition from her family, she married him and moved with him to Surat. They had just one child, a boy named Sumit. Unfortunately, her husband passed away of a sudden heart attack in 1985. After that, all her hopes were centred on her son. Her heart swelled with pride when Sumit joined the Indian Army and got commissioned into the Rajputana Rifles. He was posted in Assam and Delhi before being sent to Kashmir. It was there that he attained martyrdom on 13 June 1999, bravely fighting the enemy on the icy slopes of the Drass sector during the Kargil War.
After Sumit’s death, Nirmala Ben moved to Delhi. Her flat is a shrine to her son, full of framed pictures of the dashing officer who was posthumously awarded the Maha Vir Chakra, the nation’s second highest wartime gallantry award. But, alongside mementoes of her son, you can also see miniature spinning wheels and busts of Mahatma Gandhi. One bookcase is full of Gandhi’s Collected Works, running into ninety volumes. ‘I was completely devastated by Sumit’s death,’ she told me once. ‘I grieved for almost two years, till I discovered Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi. I started reading everything that he had written. It was Bapu who opened my eyes to the true meaning of truth, nonviolence and self-sacrifice.’ Since then, Nirmala Ben has devoted her life to Gandhi and the advancement of his principles. From communal harmony to cow protection, she is there to lend her voice and her helping hands to every public campaign.
Every now and then the residents of the colony are treated to little sermons by her on fighting injustice, loving your enemies and overcoming evil with good. She is antiwar, she is antiglobalisation, but most of all she is anticorruption. ‘My son was not killed by the enemy’s bullets,’ she never tires of saying. ‘He was killed by corruption. The guns they gave him were defective, his bulletproof vest was substandard, and, when he died, they even made money on his coffin. I tell you, corruption is the cancer eating our country from within.’
Throughout the day she maintains a cacophony of insults, invectives and admonitions directed at India’s political class. But behind that crusty exterior lies a heart of gold. Ben means sister in Gujarati and she is truly the colony’s elder sister, kind, selfless and generous to a fault. We’ve lost count of the number of times we’ve been treated to delicious khandvi, dhokla and rasagullas from her kitchen.
It was almost destined that, of all the people in the colony, Nirmala Ben would forge the closest bond with Susheela Sinha, my mother. Both share the traumatic experience of losing their husbands and a child. The Gandhian’s headstrong ways and sharp tongue are a perfect foil for Ma’s soft demeanour and earthy common sense.
A by-product of this poignant friendship is that Nirmala Ben has more or less adopted me as her daughter, always making sure I’m eating healthily, not overexerting, and getting enough sleep.
She sits down next to me, takes off her round glasses and begins polishing them with the pallu of her sari. ‘I was also watching TV in my flat, but it became too depressing,’ she says.
‘How can you find the Republic Day parade depressing?’
‘I was not watching the parade, but the news. It was only about corruption: the 2G scam in telecom, mining scam in Karnataka, land scam in U.P., sugar scam in Kerala. And if that’s not enough you have doctors striking in Patna, Naxals killing ten security men in Chhattisgarh, and onions hitting fifty rupees a kilo. What is happening to our country?’
‘That is why I’ve stopped watching the news,’ I say in a lighter vein.
‘That is the real problem in our country. Youngsters like you just don’t want to engage with the nation. Arrey, you have to take the bull by the horns. Then only will we be able to get to the bottom of all these scams.’
‘Hasn’t the government already appointed committees to look into them?’
‘Hmph!’ she snorts. ‘That is the only thing the government does, appoint a committee, which gives its report after five years. By then fifteen other scams take place. We don’t need co
mmittees: we need courage. Courage to expose the real people behind these scams. Courage to unmask Atlas.’
I know what Nirmala Ben is referring to. The news these days is full of stories about Atlas Investments, a front company that is alleged to be behind most scams in the country. Except no one seems to know the real identity behind Atlas. And the government claims it has no easy way of finding out.
‘Anyway, let’s not spoil our mood by talking about scams,’ I say, to divert her.
‘On the contrary, we must only talk about scams. That is how the public will get educated to fight against corruption. I have been reading up on the subject, making notes. See how much research I’ve done on Atlas.’ She produces a notebook, its pages filled in pencil with her dense handwriting. The pencil itself is on its last legs, sharpened so much that it is now just a stump, an inch long. But Nirmala Ben is like that, reluctant to waste or throw away even the smallest thing. Her apartment is cluttered with all kinds of knick-knacks. Except most of them don’t belong to her. On occasion I have discovered our own spoons and forks in her kitchen. She has this weird habit of picking up little items from homes and shops that she visits – a nail cutter here, a pen there. Even things that she has no use for, like a cricket ball or a cigarette lighter. In the colony, we speak in hushed whispers about her condition. In psychological parlance, it is called kleptomania – the irresistible urge to steal items that you don’t really need and that usually have little value. Nirmala Ben is quite possibly the world’s only Gandhian kleptomaniac.
As we continue chatting, it is obvious that she is sorely exercised about the matter of the elusive Atlas. ‘One day we are told that Atlas is based in Switzerland; the next day we are told it is in Monaco; the third day it is supposed to be in Mauritius; and the fourth day in Cyprus. Arrey, do we need an atlas to locate this Atlas?’ she asks with a rhetorical sneer.
‘But what can we ordinary citizens do?’
‘We have to launch a fight. Corruption must be stopped. What this country needs is a second Gandhian revolution.’
‘And how do we launch that revolution?’
‘I don’t know. Bapu will show me the way. He always does.’ She looks up at the wall clock and reluctantly gets up. ‘I must be getting back now. It is time for my noon prayer.’
Only after she has left do I discover that my ballpoint pen, the one I was doodling with, has vanished!
* * *
At 6 p.m. the doorbell rings and Neha tells me that there are two strangers at the door, wanting to see me.
I meet them in the drawing room. They are both in their mid-thirties. One is a short, swarthy, clean-shaven man wearing a woollen knitted cap. He has the shifty look of a fixer outside a government office. The other is a totally bald guy, taller and beefier, with the dangerous air of a seasoned convict who has just stepped out of Tihar jail.
‘Are you Sapna Sinha?’ the short guy asks.
I nod. ‘What is this all about?’
‘It is about the complaint that you and your American friend lodged against Mirza Metal Works two days ago.’
‘Are you Anees Mirza’s men?’
‘Yes and no. We are simply trying to resolve the situation.’ He leans forward, adopting the conciliatory tone of a hostage negotiator. ‘Madam, we have come to request you to withdraw the complaint.’
‘And allow those poor children to suffer?’
‘Who says those children are suffering? Look, this is not bonded labour. The children come to us voluntarily. And we pay them a good wage.’
‘But employment of children under fourteen is illegal.’
‘Forget the law. Look at reality. If these children don’t work for us, they will work somewhere else. If they don’t make locks they will make bricks or carpets or bangles. Worse, they will steal or beg. At least we provide them an honourable livelihood, allow them to eat izzat ki roti.’
‘I find nothing honourable in making children work twelve hours a day in hazardous conditions. They should be in school instead.’
‘They don’t want to go to school. They want to earn, to help their families.’
‘That’s because no one has given them the chance.’
‘So will you give them a chance, adopt all of them?’
‘My friend Lauren will. She runs a charity called RMT Asha Foundation.’
‘I will say once again, with folded hands, please reconsider your decision. You have picked the wrong person to tangle with. Anees Bhai is not an unreasonable man, but he can be quite vindictive.’
‘Are you threatening me?’
‘No, no. We don’t threaten decent citizens like you. Consider this a friendly piece of advice. Achha, we shall go now.’
The short man gets up, his thick lips parted in a leery grin. The bald man continues to sit, reluctant to leave. ‘Come on, Joginder,’ his partner says. ‘We shouldn’t overstay our welcome.’
Joginder eases his bulk off the sofa. He stands up and flexes his biceps, as though giving a bodybuilding demonstration. Then he passes a hand over his bald pate and throws me a vicious glare. My fingers tighten into clenched fists as I watch the duo exit the door. Together they make a perfect team of determined bullies, one guy the talker, the other the enforcer.
I find that my entire body is shaking, from anger or from fear I don’t know. Perhaps it is a combination of both. Right now it is difficult to think past the bitter taste of bile in the back of my throat.
Ma and Neha emerge from behind the bead curtain and surround me. It appears they were surreptitiously listening to the entire conversation. Mother is already hysterical. ‘Beti, go right now and withdraw that complaint. Otherwise yet another calamity will befall our family,’ she frets with a mother’s instinctive premonition of the future.
‘Why do you always have to behave like Rani of Jhansi, didi?’ Neha says, her voice thick with insinuation. ‘You know I have to go to Mumbai to participate in the contest. Nothing is more important for our family’s future. Yet you start meddling in other people’s business.’
‘How can you be so selfish, Neha?’ I let it rip. ‘You have no concern for those thirty children working like bonded labour?’
‘No, I don’t,’ she insists. ‘It’s a job for the police, not respectable girls like us.’
‘Neha is absolutely right, beti,’ Ma chimes in. ‘Do whatever it takes, but I don’t want these goondas entering our house again.’
‘It’s pointless talking with both of you.’ I throw up my hands and storm out of the house.
I have always had a pathological, visceral hatred of bullies, people who use their power, authority or size to pick on those weaker and smaller. Most bullies think they are strong but they are actually sick, gutless wimps who will back down if confronted forcefully enough. I learnt this important lesson early on in my life.
There was a time when I was being bullied by a group of classmates in St Theresa’s. They called themselves the Spice Girls, even though their names were Amrita, Brinda and Chavi, and the only music they were capable of was cruelty and abuse. They were my nemesis, my oppressors. They were bigger than me in size but much weaker in intellect. They bullied me all through Grade 5 and the first six months of Grade 6. My only crime was that I invariably topped the class and I was independent, unlike the other girls, who all had their coteries and cliques. They would torment and tease me incessantly, in the corridors, in the playground, during breaks. Being ridiculed became part of my daily life, making me feel as small as humanly possible. My textbooks were stolen, my exercise books defaced. Chairs were pulled out from under me as I was about to sit down, and doors were slammed in my face. I was once locked out in the toilet; on another occasion my hair was almost set on fire.
It made me loathe myself, gave me a victim mentality. I began flirting with the idea of self-harm, planning my suicide every weekend, fantasising about my death. Till one day I decided to end it all. I made up my mind. I would kill myself, but before that I would kill my three tormentors.
/> That day I went to school with a kitchen knife in my satchel. During the lunch break I made my way to a deserted classroom on the third floor, where the Spice Girls were bound to ambush me. Sure enough, they followed me into the room and began calling me ugly names. I listened quietly to their verbal tirade for a minute, and then whipped out the kitchen knife from my skirt pocket. ‘Enough, bitches,’ I growled, baring my teeth, rolling my eyes and making my voice as raspy and inhuman as that of Linda Blair in The Exorcist. ‘One more word and I will cut out your tongues.’
Then, like a panther springing upon its prey, I caught Amrita, the leader of the gang, by the throat, my fingers digging hard into her voice box, almost choking her. The other two girls held their breaths as, slowly and deliberately, I began sawing off a lock of her hair with the knife in my free hand, impelled by some atavistic force buried deep inside me. Not a squeak emerged from any of them. The only sound I could hear was of the adrenaline pumping through my veins, the blood singing through my muscles, sounding like the stirring hum of battle. It was as exhilarating as it was terrifying.
Just then the school bell rang, announcing the end of the lunch break. It was as if a spell had been broken. The three girls screamed in unison and bolted out of the classroom as if it were on fire, leaving me stranded with a knife in one hand and a clump of hair in the other. I knew they would rush straight to Sister Agnes. I expected the tyrannical principal to march in any minute to announce that she was rusticating me from school. I would give her a mocking smile, and then plunge the knife into my abdomen, hara-kiri style, a violent suicide in tranquil Nainital.
I waited for a long time, but no one came, neither the principal nor any teacher. Slowly, I returned the knife to my skirt pocket and walked back to class, where the history period was about to begin. The Spice Girls shrank into their seats the moment I entered the classroom, and pretended to look elsewhere. I learnt later that they did not make any complaint against me. They nicknamed me ‘Psycho’, but I was never bullied after that.
The encounter with Anees Mirza’s goons has brought that long-lost memory rushing back to me, generating those same emotions. I am still heaving with fury when I bump into Karan on the ground floor.