Ritu wrenches herself from me with a terrified cry and gets up from the bench. Ram Singh grabs her arm and begins dragging her towards the car park. She cannot even muster the courage to look back at me.
I am left contemplating the reach of her father. If Ram Singh can inspire so much terror, what will being face to face with Jagannath Rai be like? What kind of nasty things will he do to me once he finds out about the naughty things I have done with his daughter? I can only hope that just as the gangsters whose briefcase I have stolen have no clue to my whereabouts, Jagannath Rai will be unable to trace me.
On returning to the temple, I find Champi sitting in her usual place, chatting to a dark-skinned stranger. This is the first time I have seen her chat with anyone in the temple. I approach the gulmohar tree. The man sitting on the bench is the strangestlooking person I have ever seen. He is no more than five feet tall and jet black, like the habshis they show in movies dancing with the heroine in a nightclub in their leopard-skin loincloths, chanting some nonsense like 'Hoogo Boogu' and thrusting their spears in the air.
'Who was that stranger you were talking to?' I ask Champi the next morning.
'He is my friend, and he is staying in the shack next to ours,' says Champi. 'What does he look like, Munna?'
I glance at Champi sharply. There is an expectant look on her face, as though my answer will be a confirmation of what she has already visualized in her mind. I see the same bashful glow on her cheeks as I have seen on Ritu's. With a shock I realize Champi might be falling in love with that tribal. Somehow, because of her ugliness, the possibility has never crossed my mind, and I realize how selfish and insensitive I have been.
'What does he look like?' Champi repeats.
'He is tall and dark and very handsome,' I reply, bringing a smile to Champi's face. No point telling her that her Romeo is a black midget who looks like a clown.
*
The next week is the most agonizing of my life. Ritu does not call me and her mobile appears to be switched off. I am unable to sleep, my mind full of grim portents. And my foreboding seems justified when I get a frantic call on 17 March from Malini, Ritu's friend whom I met in the night club. 'Munna, Ritu needs to see you. With great difficulty I have managed to bring her to my house. Can you come right now to West End?'
I take down the address and rush to her house, a smart villa in a leafy suburb. A distraught Malini receives me and takes me to her room, where I receive the shock of my life. Ritu limps up to me, looking like one of those battered housewives they show on TV. There are bruises on her forehead and chin, welt marks on her cheeks and dark circles under her eyes.
'Who did this to you?' I cry.
'There was a big fight in the house on the day of my birthday. Ram Singh spilled the beans about my affair with you. My father threatened to shoot me. But it was Vicky who actually hit me.'
An incandescent rage begins building inside me. 'How dare he do this to you?' I seethe. 'I will kill him.'
'Now I have been forbidden from leaving the house and my mobile has been confiscated,' Ritu adds. 'Luckily Malini came to meet me today and managed to bring me here. I wanted to warn you to be very careful. Your life could be in danger.'
'But what about your life? The butchers in your house are quite capable of killing you.'
'It is a woman's fate to suffer. But I have taken one courageous decision at least. I have told my father that I will not marry Kunwar Inder Singh, even if he kills me. That alliance was arranged by my father only to further his political agenda. I refuse to become a pawn in his dirty game.'
'Then marry me.'
'My family will never allow me to marry you.' Ritu slowly shakes her head. 'But I have made it clear that I shall not marry anyone else either.'
'Then marry me against your family's wishes. We could go to a temple right now. Once we are legally married, your father won't be able to do a thing. The police will protect us.'
She gives a hollow laugh. 'I have seen how police officers quake on hearing my father's name. They will be the first ones to drag me back to him.'
'Then what are our options, Ritu?'
'None. They say in books that all's fair in love and war. But I have seen with my own eyes, nothing is fair in either, Munna. Our love is a prohibited one.'
'Just because you belong to a high caste and I don't? I do not agree with you,' I challenge her. 'Forty years ago my mother and I were called Untouchables. We wouldn't have been allowed inside the temple. Today she not only works there, she also lives there. And no one dares call us Untouchable.'
'But let her come to our house with your marriage proposal and then see what happens.'
'What will happen? At best your family will say no.'
'Don't be naive, Munna. You know what they did to that poor Muslim boy who dared to marry the daughter of an industrialist in Kolkata. They killed him.'
'But I am not Muslim.'
'Then take a look at this newspaper report.' She produces a crumpled news clipping from her handbag. It is from some Hindi newspaper.
'What does it say?'
'It says that two young lovers were lynched in Uttar Pradesh because they belonged to different castes. Nineteen-year-old Pritam and eighteen-year-old Sonu were hanged one after the other from the roof of a house in their village. He was a high-caste Brahmin, while she was a member of a lower-caste community. Hundreds of people watched as the couple were hanged. What is even more gruesome is the fact that the boy's and the girl's parents not only sanctioned the punishment, but even watched as their children swung from the makeshift gibbet.' She shudders as she reads.
'I don't care if they kill me. I still want to marry you.'
'But I care, Munna, I care. If my brother can do this to me, his own sister, think what he could do to you.'
'You exaggerate unnecessarily.' I wave my hand. 'I am not scared of Vicky Rai.'
At that precise moment my mobile phone trills. This surprises me because the only person other than me who knows this number is Ritu. I press the Talk button and an unknown voice breathes down the line. 'Motherfucker, listen to me carefully. My name is Vicky Rai. And you have dared to raise your eyes to my sister Ritu. Now I will carve you up like a pig, I will break every bone in your body and then I will feed your carcass to my dogs. Get it?'
The line is disconnected and the air inside the room becomes noticeably colder. Ritu doesn't hear the message, but from the expression on my face she guesses the identity of the caller immediately. 'It was my brother, wasn't it?'
'Yes,' I reply, still reeling with shock. 'How did he get my number?'
'He must have taken it from my mobile. What did he say?'
'He threatened to kill me.'
'Oh my God!' she says and buries her face in her hands. There is complete silence in the room for a couple of minutes. Then she raises her head and I see her lips curved into an expression of grim determination. 'Now there is only one option left for us. We have to run away,' she declares.
'I agree,' I say and clutch her hand. 'We must think of our future together.'
'But how will we survive? I don't have any money.'
'I have enough to support both of us.'
'How much?' she asks.
'Much more than you can imagine. I promise that you will not lack anything.'
'Where will we run to?'
'Pick any city you like.'
'I have always wanted to visit Mumbai.'
'So have I. Let's go to the station right now and catch a train.'
'No. If we do that, Malini will be in a lot of trouble.'
'Then when should we go?'
'I know the perfect date. Vicky is having a big party on 23 March to celebrate his acquittal. There will be nearly five hundred people in the house and in that mêlée I will manage to slip out. Wait for me just outside the service entrance of Number Six. It is on the side path perpendicular to the main road. I will come out at exactly eleven p.m. Then we will take a taxi to the railway station and escape
to Mumbai.'
'Excellent. I will get two tickets for Mumbai ready.'
Our pact is made and I know that a new phase of my life is about to begin. The future, which was nebulous till now, appears to be acquiring a definite shape. I am looking forward to living in Mumbai. They say it is the city of dreams. It has made people living on pavements film stars and industrialists overnight. Who knows what it might have in store for me.
I am tempted, on returning to the temple, to go to the sanctum sanctorum and prostrate myself before Lord Shiva. This seems like an appropriate occasion to end my tiff with God and seek his blessings. I even climb up the marble steps. In the face of Ritu's love, the songs of Bollywood have begun to seem real to me. I have begun to believe that there might be justice in this world after all. But a tiny voice in my head continues to hold me back. Where was God when those young lovers were being hanged? Was he powerless to stop the murders? Or was he himself a mute spectator to the atrocity?
I go to the railway booking office and purchase two first-class train tickets for Mumbai. The Punjab Mail will leave Delhi at 05:30 on 24 March and take Ritu and me straight to Mumbai Central.
I consider what to do with Champi and Mother. Champi appears to be completely smitten by that tribal. Every day I catch her sitting on the bench, chatting to him animatedly. And for the first time I actually hear her full-throated laugh. I don't grudge her that small happiness. And I feel it is time I informed Mother of my plan.
'Three days from now I am going to Mumbai,' I tell her.
'So suddenly?' she asks. 'Is it because of your work?'
'No. To tell you the truth, I'm getting married.'
'Oh! And who is the girl, if I may ask?'
'Her name is Ritu.'
'And does she live in Mumbai?'
'No, she lives in Delhi. In Mehrauli, in fact.'
'So is she one of the maids from the Sanjay Gandhi slum?'
'They are worthless trash, Mother, that I wouldn't even dream of marrying. Your prospective daughter-in-law belongs to one of the richest and most powerful families in the country.'
'You dream too much, Munna.'
'No, Mother. This is real. Ritu and I are getting married and moving to Mumbai. As soon as we get settled there I will send for both of you. Then Champi can have her operation. And you can finally take some well-deserved rest.'
Mother becomes instantly suspicious. 'Why are you going to Mumbai if the girl is from Delhi? Are you two eloping?'
'Sort of.'
'Look, you had better tell me all about this Ritu. Who is her father? What is her family?'
'Her father is Jagannath Rai, the Home Minister of Uttar Pradesh. Her brother is the industrialist Vicky Rai.'
Mother's hand flies to her mouth. 'No. . . . no . . . no,' she murmurs.
'You always said that we are poor because of our deeds in a previous life. Well, I have managed to escape the fate that the bad karma in my previous life prescribed for me, in this life itself,' I brag, but Mother is not listening to me. She is already in conversation with her gods. 'How could you play such a cruel joke, Ishvar?' she addresses the calendars on the wall.
'What joke? What are you saying, Mother?' I demand.
'You don't know, son,' she replies in an anguished voice. 'This Vicky Rai is the one who killed your father. Mowed him down while he was sleeping on the pavement.'
I feel the ground shift beneath my feet. 'What? Are you sure?'
'A wife can never forget her husband's death. Like a film, that scene has been playing in my mind for the past fifteen years.'
'Yet you kept it a secret from me? He was my father, after all.'
'I was sworn to silence by Jagannath Rai. He gave me money for this house, for your education, in return for not implicating Vicky.'
The past has the nasty habit of catching up with you at unexpected moments. I had suspected all along that Father's death had resulted in a pay-off to Mother from the errant driver. But I had been blissfully unaware of the identity of the driver. Or perhaps I had deliberately not tried to probe too deeply into the matter. I had conveniently rationalized that we had to move on with our lives, and Father was not going to come back from the dead. But now he had. And he had detonated a small bomb in my life, throwing everything into disarray. A medley of emotions whirls through my mind, from sadness to anger to bafflement.
'Perhaps this was pre-ordained, Mother,' I say, after brooding for a while.
'What do you mean, Munna?'
'Don't you see, this is God's way of exacting revenge? Many years ago, Vicky Rai snatched something from us. Now we are going to snatch something from him.'
'So you are still going to marry his sister?'
'Ritu hates her family as much as you do. And Ritu and I love each other very much. Even Father would have approved of my decision to marry her.'
'Don't you dare bring your father into this. Or God,' Mother lashes at me. 'I will go to Vicky Rai's house myself and stop this wedding.'
I bar her way. 'You will do nothing of the sort. If Vicky Rai finds out about our plan he will kill Ritu and then he will kill me. Do you want us both dead?'
Mother glares at me for a while and then bursts into tears.
*
An uneasy calm prevails in the house. None of us has dinner that night. Mother sulks in her corner and is comforted by Champi. I lie down in bed and try not to think of anything. Sleep comes much later, and is invaded by multiple dreams. I dream of Father lying in a pool of blood and Vicky Rai grinning over his dead body. I dream of Ritu lying inert on a cold marble floor wrapped in a white shroud. I dream of Lallan being whipped in a police lockup. I dream of someone pulling my hair, making me scream in pain. I open my eyes and find three men inside the room, surrounding me. I don't know how they managed to raise the latch and enter my room, but I know that this is not a dream.
'Wake up, you bastard,' I hear a voice say as one of the men pulls my hair again with rough hands. I sit up, and someone flicks the light on, dazzling my eyes. I can now take a good look at the three intruders. The first is a bald man with a bulging neck dressed in tight jeans and a white Reebok T-shirt. The second is a very short man in a shimmering cream shirt, and the third man is tall and wiry with curly hair and a square jaw, wearing black trousers and shirt. There is an air of danger about them.
'Is your name Munna Mobile?' the bald man addresses me. He was the one pulling my hair.
'Why do you ask?' I counter-question.
The baldy turns to the tall, wiry man. 'Tell him, Brijesh.'
'You stole the mobile phone from my car.' Brijesh looks at me accusingly and recognition dawns on me slowly. He is indeed the guy from whose Maruti Esteem I took the Nokia. The past has caught up with me again.
The bald man smiles menacingly. 'You have something which belongs to us.'
I try to bluff my way through. 'You are mistaken. What could a poor man like me have?'
The bald man snaps his fingers and his two assistants begin scouring the room. They take in the posters on the wall, the metal torch on the small wooden desk, and their eyes come to rest on the mattress. The little bump where the briefcase lies is plainly visible. 'Get up,' the short man orders. I stand up; he catches the mattress by a corner and lifts it in one movement. The briefcase is revealed, looking like a black island in a sea of dust.
'What do we have here?' the bald man whistles. He reaches down and picks up the briefcase. A pistol appears magically in Brijesh's hand.
At that very moment Mother enters through the wooden partition in her faded yellow sari and maroon blouse.
'Who are you people? What are you doing in my house?' she demands.
In response the bald man shoves her rudely aside. 'Don't ask questions, budhiya.'
Mother is not one to give up easily. 'I will teach you ruffians a lesson,' she snaps. She picks up the torch from my desk and whacks the bald man on his buttocks with it, knocking the briefcase out of his hands. Despite his bulk, the man whirls around on the
balls of his feet, quick as a cat. In one seamless motion he snatches the torch from Mother's hand and swings his fist at her face, sending her sprawling on the floor. Mother raises her head and whimpers. I can see that she is bleeding from her mouth. She tries to stand up and that is when Brijesh clubs her on the head with the butt of the pistol. I cry out in horror as Mother crashes down, knocked senseless, which is just as well because she wouldn't have been able to bear what happened subsequently.
The bald man regains the briefcase and clicks open the two latches. He raises the lid and examines the contents. 'Hmmm . . . It looks like most of the cash is still here. Only a couple of wads are missing. This might just have saved your life, Munna Mobile. But you will still have to pay the price of stealing from us.'
'What . . . what do you intend to do?' I ask, backing into the wall, my voice sounding hoarse and unnatural.
'Something that will ensure you never steal another mobile phone.' The bald man grins and snaps his fingers again.
Brijesh hands the pistol to the bald man and suddenly grips both my arms. I squirm, try to break free, but he is too strong. The short man raises his hand to hit me when a mobile phone rings in the room. The three ruffians look at one another quizzically before the bald man takes out a Motorola from the pocket of his jeans and checks the display. 'Yes boss?' he says, putting the mobile against his ear and moving off towards the door. I hear snatches of his conversation. 'We found the briefcase . . . looks to be reasonably intact . . . Right now? . . . OK, OK . . . I will leave Brijesh and Natu behind . . . Wait for me. I am coming.'
'That was the boss,' the bald man informs his lieutenants. 'He wants me to come with the briefcase right now. You two finish what you have to. We will meet tomorrow.' He cocks the pistol at me and fires an imaginary bullet, opens the door and steps outside. A little while later I hear a motorcycle being gunned into life. Brijesh still has me pinioned in a vice-like grip. But it is Natu, the short one, who fills me with dread. 'Have you seen the film Sholay?' he asks me, bringing his face close to mine. I can feel his fetid breath on the skin of my neck.