She bends her head and listens to the message being relayed to her ear phone, then looks up and grimaces. 'We've just received word from inside the courtroom. Vicky Rai has been acquitted for the murder of Ruby Gill.'
A hush falls over the gathering. The warden turns off the TV. 'Heard the judgment? Satisfied?' he says gruffly. 'Chalo, back to your cells now.'
Babloo Tiwari winks at Tirumurti. 'What did I tell you?'
'If he is out, why the hell are we rotting here?' Tirumurti scowls.
'That's because your father is not the Home Minister of Uttar Pradesh,' says Babloo. 'What do you think, Varshney?'
'Things fall apart,' the professor says morosely. 'Cry, the beloved country.'
Mohan feels the ground beneath him shake. He has to grip Babloo's arm to steady himself.
'What do you have to say, Gandhi Baba?' several prisoners ask him at once. He remains silent.
For three days Mohan refuses to eat, refuses to speak, refuses to go out of his cell. He lies in bed all day, staring vacantly at the ceiling.
'Eat something, Gandhi Baba. Ruby Gill will not be avenged by your fasting,' Babloo implores.
'Now there is only one way to avenge Ruby Gill,' he murmurs finally.
'And what is that?'
'Vicky Rai must die,' he says softly.
Babloo inserts a finger in his ear to clear it, thinking something must be wrong with his hearing.
'Vicky Rai must die,' Mohan repeats.
'I find it very strange, hearing this from your lips, Gandhi Baba,' Babloo says.
'But I have always maintained that where there is only a choice between cowardice and violence, I prefer violence. Far better to kill a murderer than allow him to kill again. A person who suffers injustice willingly is as guilty as the person who perpetrates the injustice. So will you do one last job for me?'
'For you I am ready to lay down my life, Gandhi Baba. Just tell me.'
'I want you to kill Vicky Rai.'
'Kill Vicky Rai?' Babloo Tiwari shakes his head slowly. 'There are many causes I am prepared to die for, but none I am prepared to kill for, Gandhi Baba.'
'Don't repeat my own line to me, Babloo.'
'It is not a line. I really believe in it. You have changed me, Bapu.'
'If you can't do it, I will have to do it myself.'
'You cannot be serious.'
'I am deadly serious. Can you teach me how to use a gun?'
'Not a problem. I'll not only teach you, I'll also get you a good gun when you finish your term and get out of Tihar. But won't your anger cool in two months' time?'
'I have no intention of remaining in Tihar till then.'
'What? Don't tell me you are planning to escape. Have you been digging a tunnel at night?'
'No. I don't need tunnels to escape. I will go out through the main gate.'
'So what's your plan, Gandhi Baba?'
'You will see, Babloo, you will see. But first I need you to convene a meeting for me with all the inmates.'
*
Seven days later, a massive non-cooperation movement starts in Tihar. The inmates refuse to cook, to clean, to bathe, demanding better prison conditions, just treatment and an end to extortion by jail officials.
The warden is not amused. 'What is this you have started, Mr Kumar?' he asks Mohan.
'Civil disobedience becomes a sacred duty when the State becomes lawless or corrupt,' Mohan answers.
The warden tries strong-arm tactics but the prisoners refuse to be cowed. The strike enters its tenth day. The garden begins to wilt and the bathrooms stink. Dirt gathers in the courtyard and dust gathers in the classrooms.
Urgent consultations are held between the jail authorities and their superiors. A week later, Mohan Kumar is released from Tihar prematurely. Shanti is waiting for him outside the jail with hundreds of supporters chanting 'Long Live Gandhi Baba!' He is escorted home by a joyous convoy of cars, buses and bicycles, horns blaring, bells tinkling. On reaching his house he delivers a long monologue on the imperative of fighting injustice.
A few days later, a one-eyed man comes to meet him, bearing a parcel. 'Babloo Tiwari has sent me. Can we talk in private?' the stranger asks Mohan.
They go into the garden. The one-eyed man opens the packet and takes out a gleaming pistol. 'It is a Walther PPK .32, top of the line, brand new. Same gun that James Bond uses.'
'How much?'
'Babloo Bhai said I cannot charge you for this. It is a gift from him.'
'And the bullets?'
'The magazine is fully loaded.'
Mohan takes the gun in his right hand and feels its weight. 'Can I try?'
The man looks around. 'Here, in the garden?' he asks doubtfully.
'Why not?' Mohan removes the safety catch and aims at an empty Coke bottle standing on the wooden railing of the gazebo. He presses the trigger and with a deafening blast the glass bottle shatters and disintegrates. He nods his head approvingly, blows at the smoking barrel, and tucks the gun inside his kurta pyjamas.
Shanti races screaming into the garden. 'What happened? I heard a gunshot. I thought someone had—'
'Shanti, you imagine too much,' Mohan says calmly. 'Death is blessed at any time, but it is twice blessed for a warrior who dies for his cause – that is, truth.'
That same evening a gilt-edged card arrives bearing a commissioned artwork by M. F. Husain on the cover. 'Vicky Rai invites you to a celebratory dinner on 23 March at Number Six' it says inside in cursive black letters.
He reads it and his lips curve into a cunning smile.
9
Love in Mehrauli
THERE ARE only three ways of becoming instantly rich – inheriting a family fortune, robbing a bank or receiving an unexpected windfall. Some receive it in the form of a winning lottery ticket, some as an unbeatable card combination at a poker game. I found mine two days ago in a dustbin.
After retrieving the briefcase from the rubbish bin I caught a bus and headed home to the temple. Mother was in the kitchen and Champi was listening to the TV. I entered my room and tried to find a suitable hiding place for the briefcase. But a small kholi does not afford too many locations for concealment. Eventually I had to push the briefcase underneath the mattress, where it formed a rather bulky outcrop.
Later that night, after Mother and Champi had gone to sleep, I took out the briefcase and began counting the money with the help of a torch held between my legs. There were twenty wads of notes in denominations of one thousand and five hundred. The notes were brand new, fresh from a bank. I opened the first wad and began adding up. One thousand . . . two thousand . . . ten thousand . . . fifteen thousand . . . fifty thousand. My head started spinning with all the zeroes I had never used. By the time I reached the twelfth wad, my fingers had begun to ache, the saliva in my mouth had run dry and my eyes were losing focus. To put it crudely, there was more money inside the briefcase than I could count.
A wave of happiness swept over my body, providing me with a more exhilarating rush than high-grade smack. I had more money in my possession than seven generations of my family would have seen. But even as I was rejoicing at my good fortune, the first doubts crept into my mind. What if someone had seen me take the briefcase and reported it to the police? What if a robber came into our hut and stole the briefcase? Desperate men know no bounds. The adjoining Sanjay Gandhi slum has plenty of hired killers willing to slit a man's throat for just five grand. To get their grubby hands on my briefcase, they would stop at nothing. The rich can sleep easy because they have money in the bank and round-the-clock guards and alarms in the house. But how can a poor man protect his stash of cash? I fretted, I sweated, I stayed up all night.
This is the strange thing about money – too much of it can be as problematic as too little.
When I was studying in the government school, we had a teacher called Hari Prasad Saini who liked to play mind games with the students. Once he asked us, 'What would you do if you suddenly got a hundred thousand rupees each?'
I remember Lallan said he would buy an entire toyshop. Another boy said he would spend it all on chocolates. I said that I would give the money to my mother. But now, when I actually have much more than a hundred thousand rupees, the last thing I am going to do is tell Mother. She is quite capable of dragging me to a police station and making a public announcement: 'Inspector Sahib, please find out where my son has stolen all this money from!'
I had intended to keep the news of my fortune even from Champi, but within two days I knew that was impossible. I never keep secrets from her, and I have to tell someone. So when Mother goes to the temple for her daily chores, I call Champi to my side of the room.
'I have got money for your operation,' I tell her.
'How much?'
'Much more than we need to pay the doctor.'
'I don't want any operation,' Champi says. 'I am happy as I am.'
I know she is lying. She wouldn't mind the operation, if not for her sake then for Mother, who worries constantly about her marriage. 'Who will marry my Champi, the way she looks?' she frets all the time.
Mother is right. Who will marry Champi? She is a walking disaster. The nicest girl in the world, she is also the ugliest. She has a harelip which makes the lower half of her face a grotesque caricature. Her left arm is completely wasted, and she has pockmarks all over her cheeks. The good thing is she cannot see her ugliness. She is as blind as a bat. Yet she is more famous than anyone in our locality. They often put her picture in magazines and newspapers and she has even been featured on CNN.
Champi is known all over the world as the Face of Bhopal. There was a big industrial disaster in Bhopal more than twenty years ago. Poisonous methyl isocyanate gas leaked out from the Union Carbide plant and all those who inhaled it died, or went blind or became mad. Champi's mother Fatima Bee was living in Bhopal at the time. She too was affected by the gas, although she didn't know it then. She gave birth to Champi five years later. When the doctors saw the newborn baby, they told Fatima Bee that the gas had caused the blindness and all the deformities. It still intrigues me how the gas was locked up in Fatima Bee's body for five years and did nothing to her, yet pounced on poor Champi the moment she was born.
The people affected by the gas were promised some money by the government, but it didn't cover people like Fatima Bee who were affected later. So she joined an organization called Crusaders for Bhopal which has been fighting for compensation. As happens in our country, the case has been dragging on for over twenty years with no resolution in sight. Every three months Fatima Bee would come to Delhi, do the rounds of the Supreme Court, participate in a couple of rallies, and go back to Bhopal. Ten years ago she decided to move to Delhi permanently, along with her husband Anwar Mian and Champi. They lived in the Sanjay Gandhi slum in Mehrauli, which is full of Bangladeshi refugees. Anwar Mian found work in a cement factory in Mahipalpur. I am told he was a grim, taciturn man who drank like a fish, smoked twenty beedis a day and hardly ever spoke to anyone. One fine day, he went to work as usual, returned home in the evening as usual, and dropped dead during the night. Bole toh, heart failure.
It was a big blow to Fatima Bee, who now had to support Champi all alone. She was forced to start sewing clothes for a living. That is how she came into contact with Mother, who got a couple of my shirts stitched by her. She was a superb tailor. The shirts she made me fitted me more perfectly than anything I have worn since. Unfortunately, Fatima Bee also fought a running battle with illness. Three years ago she passed away of tuberculosis, leaving Champi all alone. That is when the Crusaders for Bhopal people came to the temple. They sought a volunteer family which would be prepared to take care of Champi's upkeep in return for three hundred rupees (subsequently increased to four hundred) per month. There were no takers for their offer, till Mother showed up. She is the queen of all do-gooders, ready to feed even a sick snake. Mother took one look at Champi and embraced her like her own daughter. There was some grumbling from the temple management. The slimy priest, who makes a tidy profit from the daily offerings, objected to a Muslim girl being given refuge inside the precincts of a Hindu temple. But Mother had made up her mind. 'What kind of priest are you? Does humanity have a religion?' she rebuked him, silencing his protest. Since then Champi has lived with Mother and me in our house at the back of the temple. I suppose I could call her a sister of sorts. Crusaders for Bhopal pay Mother the regular monthly stipend and take Champi away for just one day each year – 3 December, which they call Bhopal Action Day. They try to raise awareness of the disaster by going on a huge rally, often with volunteers in outrageous costumes. Last year they had people dressed as skeletons. But the star of the show is always Champi, who doesn't need any make-up to remind people of the horrors of Bhopal.
When Champi first came to live with us, Mother promised her that we would get her face set right. We even showed her to a plastic surgeon. He told us that the surgery would cost the astronomical sum of three hundred thousand rupees. Since that reality check we stopped having conversations about Champi's face. She accepted our helplessness just as we accepted her grotesqueness.
Now I am trying to rekindle that old hope, but Champi remains adamant.
'I don't want to benefit from gangsters' money,' she declares after I recount the full saga of how I acquired the briefcase.
'How do you know it belongs to gangsters?' I counter.
'Who else would leave it in a dustbin? And what if they trace it to you?'
'They won't. Now this money is mine. And I am bloody well going to enjoy it.'
'Ill-gotten gains can never lead to enjoyment. You have to think of the consequences.'
'Life is too short to worry about the future.'
'It may be for you, but not for me and Mother. She worries about you all the time.'
'You can tell her to stop worrying. From tomorrow she need not even work. I have enough to feed all three of us for a hundred years.'
'Don't let your head swell,' Champi cautions me. 'Better to lie low for a while before making your grand plans.'
Her advice is sound. 'You are right, Champi,' I nod. 'No one must know about this briefcase. I will not touch it for another week. And if no one comes looking for it by then, we can breathe easy, start spending some of the dough, get your operation done.'
'I don't want a penny of your loot,' Champi says firmly. 'But before doing anything, won't you take the blessings of Lord Shiva? Go and bow your head before your God at least today.'
'What did God have to do with that briefcase? I don't need to offer Him any thanks.' I dismiss the suggestion with a wave of my hand.
Champi sighs. 'I shall intercede for you with Allah, the Forgiver of Sin, the Bestower of Favours. La ilaha illa huwa, to Him is the final return,' she says with both hands raised to her face.
I shake my head. Considering what has happened to her eyes and face, Champi's faith in God is even more remarkable.
'Don't breathe a word about the briefcase to Mother,' I instruct her and saunter out towards the main gate.
It is a Monday, Lord Shiva's day, and the temple is already filling up with worshippers. By noon there will be a half-kilometrelong queue for the darshan.
The Bhole Nath Temple of Mehrauli is a recent construction, no more than twenty years old. It was probably built for the same purpose that most temples in the city are built – to grab land. But its fame spread quickly and it has now become a place of pilgrimage. Devotees believe it has wish-fulfilling properties and they can be seen thronging the massive marble hall at all times of the day, sitting on the floor meditating or chanting. This is also where Mother can be found in the mornings, diligently mopping the floor, scrubbing the tiles, rinsing the side drains of any obstruction.
Several useful activities can be conducted on the temple premises, but the only one which interests me is girl-watching. Because Shiva is considered to be the granter of good spouses, there is a constant stream of unmarried maidens and young brides entering the temple to pray for a suitable husband or a
harmonious family life. If only the chicks could be made to realize that an excellent groom is lurking just round the corner, in Kholi Number One!
The temple has been a part of my existence since I was six. I have been a witness to its growth and expansion. I have seen the garden bloom and trees populate the compound. I have grown up watching the increasing prices of flowers and sweets and the widening girths of sweet-makers and priests.
Some of the temple's luck has also rubbed off on us. Before Mother started working here, we lived in the Sanjay Gandhi slum, in a makeshift hut made with corrugated-metal sheets. We had no electricity and no water. Mother cooked with cow-dung patties on a mud hearth which used to fill the entire hut with smoke and make my eyes water. Now we have a pukka one-and-a-half-room house, with a paved brick fireplace, a ceiling fan and even cable TV (which I have siphoned off the temple's connection). Of course, it is still extremely cramped for three people. We have divided the main room into two parts, separated by a wooden partition. I have one side, with my mattress and a small wooden table, and Mother and Champi have the other side. I have decorated the walls on my side with posters of Salim Ilyasi and Shabnam Saxena, though they are mostly obscured by my trousers and shirts draped over the wall-mounted hanger. Mother has some faded old calendars with gods and goddesses on her walls. She also has an aluminium trunk containing some of her clothes. Its top serves as a mantle for a framed black-and-white picture of Father, garlanded with brittle roses. It is Mother's most prized possession. She sees her husband in that photograph, but I see a martyr.
Mother never talks about it, but I have learnt that my father was killed in a road accident. Even though I was only six years old at the time, I still remember Father's dead body lying outside our hut, wrapped in a white sheet, and Mother breaking her bangles and bashing her head repeatedly against the wall. A week later a heavy-set man wearing white kurta pyjamas came to meet Mother with folded hands. He shed a few crocodile tears and gave Mother twenty-five thousand rupees. He also got her the job in the temple and this house. Father gave us in death what he couldn't give us in life.