Sunjeev Sahota - The Year of the Runaways

‘It’s nice to be home,’ Palvinder said, a hand on her belly. She gestured for Dalbir to come sit beside her, saying how tall he’d grown and that she’d heard he was back at school now. No time even to call his old sister?

‘I’m a busy man,’ he said.

She laughed and held his face. ‘Have you started shaving?’

Their mother came back and shooed the boys out. She wanted to speak to her daughter in private.

All month Tochi stopped off by the buffalo on his way home because his mother insisted Palvinder have fresh milk every night. She refused to reheat what was left from the dawnlight milking Dalbir completed before school. One evening, during Navratri, as Tochi drove back with the milk, his mother met him halfway. The baby was coming, she said calmly, so he needed to go find Prakash Kaur from the next village and bring her here. Tochi passed her the bucket of milk and turned his auto around.

At the gate to the neighbouring village, two women stood chatting, baskets of winter spinach on their heads. Tochi asked if Prakash Bibi was at home. They said she wasn’t, that she’d been doing seva at the city gurdwara all week. Tochi frowned. He’d been careful all day, after the havoc of last year, and didn’t want to return to the city now, with the night looming.

‘Is there any other midwife?’

They looked at each other and shook their heads.

As he raced off he heard them shouting their blessings for the newborn, perhaps mistaking him for the father.

The city roads were still quiet, too quiet for Navratri. Thankfully, Tochi found Prakash Bibi in the gurdwara canteen, scraping huge steel vats with wire wool. The sleeves of her widow-white kameez were rolled back into the fat of her elbows. When she saw Tochi she seemed to understand immediately and from a knot in the end of her chunni handed him a list of items to fetch from the Vishwanath Medicine Store.

‘It’s near the bus station. Come back here with it all and we’ll bless it before we go.’ She asked him if he needed money. He’d already turned for the door.

He followed the river, past the ghats, where vendors were clearing away their unsold shoes and handbags. Two beggar kids came dancing through the night, excitedly shouting, ‘Khoon kharaba! Khoon kharaba!’ Tochi turned up Tanners’ Alley, engulfed in its sudden dark. The ground was uneven, forcing him to slow-swerve around the dust heaps. A couple of men were slumped against the exit. He thought they were drunks, then noticed one of them clutching his head, blood running down his wrists. There were voices, too, chanting, coming from the centre of the city, near the maidaan. He’d thought this might happen and reversed and went the long way round to the medicine store. But its shutters were down and it didn’t matter how hard Tochi banged, no one opened up. Suddenly, four, six, eight motorbikes roared past, two men on each bike, a third standing at the back. They were whooping, holding aloft makeshift orange flags that cracked in the air. Across the city, fingers of smoke began to rise and spread. He knew of one other large medicine store, near Gandhi Chowk, but when he got to that roundabout some twenty or thirty motorbikes were circling it, revving their engines and pulling wheelies. A crowd watched on. He got nowhere trying to barge through a side gully — it was too narrow, too packed with exhilarated children and anxious adults. He headed back to the chowk, looking for another exit. Then a man ducked into his auto and asked to be taken to the train station.

‘Unless they’ve been scared off by these hooligans, too. They make things so difficult, yaar.’

Tochi asked what had happened and he said it was the damn Maoists. They’d dumped a truckload of Brahmin bodies in the maidaan a few hours ago, all wrapped in an orange sheet painted Happy Day of the Pure Anniversary. But this was only what he’d heard. None of it might be true. The cheers and calls for revenge amplified, and more rioters appeared from the direction of the maidaan, displaying what looked like green petrol canisters.

‘The poor chamaars are going to get it tonight,’ the man said, tutting, and then perhaps he noticed Tochi’s name on the licence card because he held Tochi’s shoulder and told him to go home and look after his family. ‘I’ll walk. You go. Go now and I pray may God be with you.’

Villages burned as he sped out along the city road. Orange flames were thrown up everywhere and great flakes of ash drifted against the windscreen. Parents were dragging their children into the fields. He braked at an abandoned PCO and called Babuji, who said the world was going crazy and that he was on his way in the Contessa. If Tochi got there before him then he was to get his family and come to the big house at once. He’d left the rear gate open for them. Tochi hurried back into the auto and soon saw that his own village was on fire. He drove harder — ‘No, no,’ he kept muttering — and forced his way through the rush at the gate. He found Dalbir shaking at the end of the lane, beside their father in his wheelchair. Tochi told them to get in, then ran up and ducked inside the house. His mother was in the new room padding a wet poultice against Palvinder’s brow.

‘What’s happening? What’s this shor-tamasha?’ his mother asked.

He said they had to go. They rolled Palvinder onto her side and put their shoulders beneath each armpit and hefted her up. They walked like that up the lane, Palvinder counting her breaths and both arms circled low around her huge belly. She sat in the back with her parents while Dalbir jumped in the front, their father’s wheelchair folded on his lap.

Tochi kept the headlights off. All around him huts were ablaze, and from within the burning shacks came screams. He stopped at the fountain, inside which a woman lay dead — she must have tried to douse the flames by rolling in the sand. Beyond her more orange-clad rioters were charging through the arch, banging their canisters together. And amongst it all was Babuji’s silver Contessa, honking, stuck in the crush. Tochi turned round and drove past Kishen’s and past their lane and made for the fields, urging the auto up onto the long dirt road. The track was full of half-submerged rocks and each sharp bump had Palvinder calling out for her mother.

‘Where are you going?’ Tochi’s father asked.

He didn’t reply. He knew the track would eventually lead them to the river but from there he didn’t know what they would do or where they would go. Branches whipped across the roof. He heard his sister say she was scared and his mother said not to be, that it was all going to be fine. He ripped his licence card from the dashboard and threw it outside. Then he looked at his brother: Dalbir was staring straight ahead, his hands gripping the wheelchair.

‘Bhaji?’ Dalbir pointed. There were buffalo, tethered to the trees. And people standing around. Motorbikes, too, and a jeep. Tochi slowed right down. If he turned round he wouldn’t be able to outrace them.

‘Just say God’s name and all will be well,’ Tochi’s mother said.

The men were calling to him, brazen and gesturing with their bottles. He shunted the auto on until they were ten or so metres away. ‘Kapoor,’ he whispered, and left the engine wheezing as he stepped outside. They were six or seven in number, smoking and drinking. Orange sashes were belted through their jeans and they’d dressed the buffalo in big floppy orange bow ties which gave the whole scene a grotesquely comic edge. One of them slid down the bonnet of his jeep and walked with expansive steps out from under the trees. Looped around his wrist, a small stereo crackled jazzily. A Bollywood song: tu cbeez badi bai mast mast. . He asked Tochi where he thought he was going.