Sunjeev Sahota - The Year of the Runaways

He was at the maidaan not long after sunrise and already the place was filling: shoeshine boys setting up for the day, office men strolling to work, nuns on their morning constitutional. He couldn’t see the man anywhere. His eyes moved to a tidy saffron crowd gathered in the shade of an apple tree. They were sitting around a man who kept pointing to a piece of paper in his hand. Some sort of protest, maybe. Tochi looked up at the clock tower. He wished they’d agreed on a specific time.

He was woken by someone shaking his shoulder, and rushed to his feet.

‘Where’s the auto?’

‘Come with me.’

As they walked, they could hear the man under the tree: ‘We need a strategy to install Hindutva! They can’t keep holding us down!’ A bright white banner twisted itself across the brambles: Bharat is for the pure of blood and blood we will shed to keep it pure.

The auto man fluttered his hand by his side, indicating that Tochi keep his distance from the crowd. ‘These Maheshwar Sena people,’ he said.

Tochi waited, hoping for something further, but the man left it at that and they carried on over the maidaan and through the iron gates.

The auto was a broken, paint-peeled thing, the yellow roof bevelled with dents. Tochi pointed to the ruptured front tyre. ‘Is there a spare?’

‘Under the seat.’

Walking round the vehicle, he noticed Om stickers plastered to the rear grille-window and pictures of Sai Baba. ‘How much?’

The man turned his head, calling, ‘Bhaiya?’

Tochi hadn’t spotted the man sitting inside the auto, hidden by the deep grime of the window. His brother, Tochi remembered, as the man shuffled to the side and with some effort levered himself out. For balance, he kept one hand on the doorframe. He looked ill, and his voice, when it came, was the voice of a man decades older.

‘Whatever you can afford, bhaiya.’

‘I can’t afford anything. I’ll pay you from what I earn each day.’

The first man shook his head. ‘Do you think we’re stupid?’

‘Now, now, nikku,’ the brother said.

‘You’ll never see him again, I promise you that.’

The ill man looked at Tochi. Tochi said nothing. He just stood there in his stiff river-washed trousers and mouldy white shirt.

‘We’ll see,’ the man said.

‘You’re crazy!’

The ill man smiled. ‘Please excuse my brother-in-law. But the auto’s yours if you would like it.’

They agreed on the time and place Tochi would come each evening to make good on his payment, and then the man held out the keys and licence, and a list of regular pick-ups.

‘I hope it brings you better luck than it did me,’ he said.

Tochi lay in the auto, at the end of the slim gully that led to his house. He kept the keys in his fist and his fist hidden inside his armpit. He’d felt almost criminal driving home, as if he’d expected someone to halt him and point out how ridiculous it was for his family to own such a thing. Children throwing marbles into the fountain had stopped and stared. Even Kishen had looked up from his tailoring, tape measure clamped between his teeth, and asked if Tochi had taken to robbing banks.

Lovingly, Tochi ran his hand over the handlebars, the leather old and bristly against his palm. He heard something, and saw that it was Dalbir stepping out of the dark lane. He was carrying a steel bowl with a spoonful of dhal, and a single roti. He handed this to Tochi.

‘I’ll bring your tea later,’ Dalbir said, climbing in beside him. His wide eyes made a slow tour of the vehicle, neck arching as though he was inside some huge temple.

‘I can’t remember the last time Ma was so happy.’

‘Who’s asking you to?’

‘I’m asking myself.’

‘Don’t.’ Tochi passed him half of his roti.

‘I’ve eaten.’

‘Eat some more.’

At dawn, he filled a bucket with water from the pump and bought on credit a bar of crumbling strawberry soap from Bicky’s Friendship Store. He started at the back, scrubbing off the stickers, slowly working his way round. At some point, Dalbir came and asked for the spare rag.

It was far into the morning when the last of the polish had been applied. Tochi went back to the house and wrapped a shawl around his father’s torso. Then he helped him outside and sat him on a chair in front of the auto. Tochi’s mother and sister followed, heads covered and holding a bowl of yoghurt and a saucer of holy water Palvinder had fetched that morning from the gurdwara. She dipped her fingertips in the water and went round the auto splashing drops. Then his mother fed Tochi a spoonful of the buttery yoghurt. Tochi touched her feet and she asked God to bless her son with success.

He drove into Pankaj Flats Colony, joining the squiggle of autos already parked by the gated compound, and climbed out into the hot afternoon. He’d never been to this quiet corner of the city before. A chowkidar sat dozing in his chair, thumbs hooked into his belt-loops, and on the other side of the gate, where the sun burst across the apartment blocks, Tochi could hear children playing. The other drivers were hunkered down in the shade of the wall, reading a paper or listening to the cricket. Tochi crouched down too, on the flats of his feet, rounding his back closely over his knees and threading fingers together tight across his shins, curling himself up into as small a target as possible for the sun. He wasn’t sure when the woman was going to come out. Any time between two and three, the list had said. Someone offered him a beedi, which he declined.

‘So you’ve taken Ashok Bhai’s auto?’

‘Bought.’

The man smiled. ‘That’s what I meant.’

His name was Susheel, he said. From Jannat. That was his auto over there, the one with the lucky red ribbons tied to the grille. He seemed younger than Tochi — the softness of his beard, a certain confidence.

‘If you need anything, just ask for me. Everyone knows who I am.’

Tochi nodded, thanked him, but perhaps he hadn’t seemed sufficiently impressed.

‘Ask anyone. Susheel. That’s me.’

There was a loud banging on the metal gate and a call for it to be opened. The chowkidar rolled up onto his feet, leisurely, stretching. He said he was coming, madam, coming. The drivers all stood up too, but when the gate flushed open to reveal the woman, most of them sat back down. She stepped forward, her hand a shield against the sun. Tochi didn’t know if this was her, and he didn’t want to approach and ask — it might look like he was in the business of stealing someone else’s pick-up. But then Susheel confirmed that this was his ride, or one of Ashok Bhai’s old ones, at least. Tochi walked to the woman, salaamed, and explained that he’d bought Ashok Bhai’s auto and if she would permit him to lead her to his vehicle he’d take her wherever she needed to go. There was a sudden silence, and Tochi could feel the drivers staring at him. The woman nodded and said, ‘Of course. Please, after you.’

He waited for her to be seated before rousing the engine and reversing out of the compound. ‘You should have brought the auto to me,’ the woman said.

Tochi nodded. He’d worked out as much already. ‘Sorry, madam.’

She laughed. ‘No matter.’

Twenty minutes later he parked outside a modern-looking building with ‘Sheetal’s’ embossed across the window in a spiky green diagonal.

‘Wow, that was fast,’ the woman said, throwing aside her magazine.

She gathered up the pleats of her crimson sari and stepped gracefully onto the lumpy tarmac. A sliver of her nut-brown midriff was briefly exposed.

‘Two hours, acha?’

Tochi nodded, and watched as the peon beamed and opened the door, and she swished up the marble steps and hurried inside, away from the heat.