Sunjeev Sahota - The Year of the Runaways

Tochi said he did.

‘And his mother is not well. But I promise you that, if you perform your duty, we will perform ours and your sister will be treated well here. You’ll have nothing to worry about.’

Tochi shook hands with them both and folded back out of the doorway. He was about to drive off when Susheel appeared at his side.

‘Bhaji, I wanted to say I’m sorry if my father offended you. He doesn’t mean to, I promise.’

Tochi nodded.

‘And would you please. .?’ Tentatively, smiling embarrassedly, Susheel held up an envelope.

He’d only been home a few minutes when his sister arrived with his food.

‘Quick today,’ he said. He made a plinth of his knees and began mixing the white butter into his sabzi. Palvinder stood there holding his glass of water.

‘You can put it down.’

She did. Still she stood there.

‘You going to stay there all night?’

‘Uff, just give it to me.’

He gave her the letter, asking how they managed to contact each other, but she was skipping up the lane and out of his sight.

*

The Maheshwar Sena were more and more on the city streets. It seemed as if around every corner there was a jeep loaded with men in saffron bandanas. They spoke through megaphones, reminding people of the upcoming day of the pure. Any low castes, or anyone protecting a low caste, would be committing a crime against Hindutva, would be spitting on the burning bodies of their murdered brothers and sisters, would be dealt with. Some shops had already been targeted. A jeweller’s was destroyed, the glass bangles smashed on the road, the cash register launched through the window. And one day Tochi saw a suit-boot man with a briefcase stopped and badgered for his ID. He tried to look imperious as he handed it over, only to receive a wide stinging slap and an instruction to make sure he didn’t leave his house on Navratri.

Radhika Madam asked if he shouldn’t just stay at home until all this madness passed over. He said he couldn’t afford to do that.

‘Well, at least you won’t be working on Navratri.’

Tochi remained silent.

‘Tell me you’re not?’

They’d arrived at Sheetal’s. Madam stepped out, hitching up her sari with one hand.

‘You know, money won’t buy back the dea—’ She caught herself, perhaps thinking how easy it was for her to say that.

For days they all urged him to not work on Navratri. Bimlaji, Jagir Bibi, Saraswati Madam. None of them would be leaving the house — no one would — so what was the point in coming into the city? Didn’t he understand that? Especially now things were getting worse. Rumour was that a poor young man had his hand chopped off for hitting one of these crazy orange-brained dacoits. And now it seemed the Maoists were getting involved.

‘As if one set of murderers wasn’t enough,’ Radhika Madam said.

His mother, too, begged him not to go into the city now. ‘Wait a while, na? Work in the field for a few days. With us. You can make up the money afterwards. I’ll help you.’

But Tochi said it wasn’t the money.

‘What use your pride when we find you dead in the street?’

But it wasn’t pride, either. Or not just pride. It was a desire to be allowed a say in his life. He wondered if this was selfish; whether, in fact, they were right and he should simply recognize his place in this world.

The night before Navratri, on his way home, he stopped outside Kishen’s. His friend was pulling the shutter down.

‘You going into the city tomorrow?’ Kishen asked.

‘Do you think I should?’

‘I think you should at least leave your licence at home. And anything else with your name on it.’

‘Mera naam he tho hai.’

‘Vho he tho hai mera naam,’ Kishen finished. A schoolyard phrase, about their names being all they owned. The tailor took up his folded newspaper and flicked it twice with the back of his hand. ‘Our brothers-in-arms. The Maoists. They say they’ll fight fire with fire.’

Tochi shoved into gear, driving off. ‘The pyres! The pyres!’

He didn’t go. He stayed at home and went into the field with his brother. They worked all day, hacking, twining, carrying. Every hour he stood and slicked away the sweat from his forehead with the hem of his dhoti. Over the city, the sky was clear. He could see no column of smoke and he could hear no cries. All was silent save for his brother’s scythe a few rows back.

His mother beheaded and cooked a whole chicken for the evening meal and afterwards Tochi returned to the auto, lying on top of the yellow roof with his hands behind his head. The sky was delirious with stars. The air was damp. The rains couldn’t be long. He heard his mother coming down the lane and turned to look. She was holding something; a box, which she placed on the rear wheel arch. She unfurled a long iron key from the end of her chunni and rattled the tin open, lifting it up to Tochi because she didn’t know how to count. He sat up on the roof, legs out in a wide V, and made equal piles of the notes.

‘Two more months,’ he said. ‘Maybe three.’

‘Shall we set a date, then?’

He nodded. ‘I’ll speak to them.’

Three days after Navratri, the rains came, blasting the red earth. Scooters began to lilt in the softened ground and dogs yelped under jeeps. Tochi rushed back from tying down the auto’s rain-covers and stood shivering wet in the doorway, watching the manic fall of water and the sewage running fast beneath his feet. He said tomorrow he was going to the city. He couldn’t wait.

‘So soon?’ his mother asked.

‘This is when we earn.’

He was right. The first day back and he couldn’t go ten metres without some man waving his briefcase at him, a woman calling for him to please stop before her umbrella collapsed on her. People fought over him, proffering double, triple the fare. It was the same the next day, and the one after that, and he motored through the splashy streets while the single black wiper did its squeaky work. Each day he kept a lookout for the Maheshwar Sena, but all he’d seen were two men in orange standing under the dripping awning of a tractor repair shop, waiting for the rain to lessen. Radhika Madam said the weather had forced them off the streets, and, anyway, they’d not achieved anything with their so-called day of the pure. Thank God.

‘I could see them from our window. The whole time they spent getting drunk in their jeeps. Some revolution!’

Tochi knew otherwise. He’d driven through the alleys leading off Gandhi Chowk and seen the burnt-out tanning yard. And he’d heard his passengers talking: it seemed that at least three men had been killed, and maybe even a child.

Palvinder and Susheel were wedded that winter in an open-air ceremony and travelled to Shimla for their honeymoon. Then, not a year married, Susheel called to say he was bringing Palvinder back for the birth of their first child. Tochi’s mother ordered that a new charpoy be bought — one in the double-weaved style — and placed this in the room they’d added to the rear of the house last summer.

‘Tochi must be doing well,’ Palvinder said when she arrived, testing out the bed. ‘And what’s this about using hair gel? You becoming a goondah now?’

‘Doesn’t she look different!’ Dalbir said.

His mother said that of course she looked different. She was carrying a child inside her.

Tochi thought Dalbir meant something else, though, something to do with not looking like a girl any more. Perhaps that was why for the first time ever he’d heard her using his name, to his face.

Outside, a couple of kids were arguing with a passing dhol-player, pestering him for a go on his drum, and somewhere a man was selling hot peanuts and chai.