Sunjeev Sahota - The Year of the Runaways

The bell sounded — shrill, constant — and he packed away his unopened books and moved to the windows of the library, looking down. From all sides of the pillared quad students spilled out of the doors, chattering, filling the square until it was all pigtails and schoolish greys and blues. Jaytha was at the centre of her group of girlfriends, head thrown back, neck lushly exposed, laughing. He watched until she vanished out of the quad. Then he returned to his room to pick up his suitcase.

He went home every weekend. It was only an hour on the local Sutlej bus but by the time he alighted and dragged the wheels of his battered suitcase over the rocky ground, darkness had fallen like a shutter. He got into the nearest auto and asked for the government flats in Madhya Marg.

‘DIT side?’ the driver asked, turning the thing around.

‘Sector side, please.’

At Building 3B on Santa Cruz Drive, the resident chowkidar in his old peacock hat saluted and opened the door. Randeep took the lift and outside flat 188 he removed his shoes because the sound of footsteps in the hall had once made his father panic terribly.

That night, as he was watching TV with Lakhpreet, she asked him if he knew any boys who’d gone abroad. How easy was it?

‘How would I know?’ he said.

‘But is it expensive?’

He shrugged. ‘Who wants to go abroad?’

She shook her head. ‘No one. A friend.’

‘Tell her it won’t be all shopping and playing in the park.’

He flicked through to the news and then to a yoga class.

‘Has Daddy done his exercises this week?’

She nodded.

‘How’s he been?’

‘Same same.’

‘I wish I was here more to help,’ he said, but he knew he didn’t mean it, and her silence told him that she knew it too.

On Saturdays, the twins had their classical dance lesson followed by violin practice — or maybe it was piano these days — so when Randeep emerged showered and dressed from the bathroom they were kissing their father goodbye and disappearing out of the door. Then Lakhpreet said she was going — off to meet friends. The door slammed to a close and it was just Randeep and his parents in the light-filled room. The only sound was the hum of the squat grey fridge.

‘A long time you spent in the bathroom,’ his father said, not looking up from the newspaper laid out flat on the coffee table. ‘Avoiding us?’

‘Of course not,’ he said, and as if to prove this came and sat beside his father.

He was a long, thin man, made to appear even taller in his white kurta robes. People spoke of him as being noble, intelligent, with sharp, questioning eyes. Nothing got past Sanghera Sahib. He was starting to grey and, reading his paper with deliberate slowness, looked exactly how people expected a senior government manager to look on a lazy summer morning. He’d shaved, too, Randeep noticed, which was a good sign. Mrs Sanghera darted about the kitchen. Cleaning, wiping, washing the steel and plastic cutlery, wondering out loud why-oh-why they didn’t have a maid. She asked Randeep if he preferred eggs or paratha and he said he’d have some Tiger Flakes later. Then she placed two chalky pink pills and a steel tumbler of water beside her husband’s elbow and left for the bedroom.

‘How’s school?’

‘College. Good. The board exams are soon.’

His father nodded. ‘NIT would be good.’

‘If I get the ranking.’

‘Isn’t that why we pay the fees?’ His father closed the paper, folded it twice, then picked it up and slapped it back down on the table again. ‘These right-wing loons are taking over the country.’

His mother reappeared, dressed hastily in a white-and-yellow salwaar kameez. Her eyes went to the pills, still untouched. Then: ‘Will you come with me? You’re expected.’

‘Next time. Take Randeep.’

‘But I want to stay with you,’ Randeep said.

‘You mean you’re too scared to leave me on my own for a few hours?’ He wiped his hand across the table, palming up the pills, and dropped them into his mouth. He drank the water. ‘There. I feel better already. Don’t I look better?’

Mrs Sanghera said she’d be back by lunchtime — it was an akhand paat — but he had their number and there were two vegetable patties in the fridge if they got hungry. Then she kissed Randeep’s forehead and picked up a gold box of mithai from on top of the fridge.

Later, while his father napped, Randeep took a textbook into the shade of the balcony. He set aside his mother’s plant pots and sat against the whitewashed wall and made a lectern of his lap. With a faint groan, he began to read — absent-mindedly, half-heartedly — and soon the benzene rings on the smudged paper of his chemistry textbook dissolved and reconstituted themselves into images of Jaytha. He wondered what to say to her when they next met — on the way to morning assembly, most likely, as long as this time he remembered that she walked via the mural on Mondays. And he should definitely ask after her bhabhi. As if on the breeze, a feeling of shame came over him. He didn’t know why he was like this. He wished he could be more easy-going about these things. Less calculating. Less like one of those crazed stalkies.

‘Shall we go for a walk?’

Startled, Randeep looked up: his father, in trousers and clean half-sleeved shirt, hair combed. ‘Daddy?’

‘I feel like going for a walk.’

Randeep pocketed the apartment keys as they exited the lift. The old chowkidar saluted — ‘Good morning, Sanghera Sahib’ — and opened the big glass door for them. Beyond the compound gates, they started down the chunky pink pavement of Santa Cruz Drive. The road was measured in trees, one following the other, orange blossoming through the leafgreen.

‘Are you sure you won’t be cold?’

His father didn’t reply, just kept on ahead, chin tilted up to the day.

They passed under the bramble archway of Zakir Garden, which was no more than a flat expanse of shrubs — mostly roses — with a fenced-off pond in the middle. North of the pond, at the sunken bandstand, some sort of trumpet group seemed to be rehearsing. Randeep suggested they go back but his father said not to be silly, that there was a lovely quiet enclosure right by the eastern gate.

Mr Sanghera was right. A short walk up the path, a gap in the hedgerow revealed a secluded little garden: primrose, thistle, yellow jacobinia, more roses, and, in large clay pots guarded by bees, virgin-white rajanigandha twined with ice plants of the most intimate pink. At the centre of it all was a cheap and bow-legged red plastic bench.

‘Let’s sit,’ his father said.

Though the hedges were high, the sun had risen and Randeep removed his sandals and wriggled his toes in the warmth. They used to do this all the time. Spending hours together. They’d talk about music or God or the state of the country. Mostly, his father did the talking. He was a great fan of Urdu poetry and would recite lines from Bahu or Bulleh Shah, testing Randeep to see if he’d understood the meaning. No, the deeper meaning, son. Always search for the deeper meaning. There was one that Randeep had especially liked, about wafa and khata. Loyalty and error and how one followed the other. How did it go? He couldn’t remember. Perhaps now would be a good time to ask.

‘Your mother and I would come here. We’d listen to the Christian Harmony String Quartet playing Schubert at the bandstand and then we’d come here.’

‘Explains our balcony. Mamma must be trying to replicate this garden.’

‘I wonder if they’re still playing.’

‘The band?’

His father nodded. His legs were crossed at the knees, hands clasped loosely in his lap. ‘How is school?’

‘It’s still college and you asked me that already.’