Anuradha Roy - Sleeping On Jupiter

Do you know what I thought then, Piku? I would spend my whole life in this hell, that there was no beginning and no end. I had known nothing else since I was seven years old. I would never know any world other than this. Neither would you.

“We’re going to run away. There’s nothing to lose,” Champa whispered. This is what she said to me, Piku.

I said, “You ran away twice. The police brought you right back.”

“This time I won’t go to the police. I know better than that.”

“There’s no place for us outside. We have to stay hidden or they’ll put us in jail.”

“Forget it, they told us lies all these years. If we had run away long ago, nothing would have happened. And jail’s better than this, I can tell you. Anyway, look. .”

Joba came in. Champa and I tried to look as if we had not been speaking. We didn’t know how long she had been out in the corridor or how much she had heard. Joba wrinkled her nose at me and said, “You’re stinking.”

She smiled at the mirror, re-clipped her hair and said, “You smell just like a dog.”

We wouldn’t allow Joba to run away with us. No. Who else would run away with us?

“Don’t be a fool,” Champa said two days later when we got a chance to whisper again to each other. “Nobody else.”

“Piku. I’m not leaving Piku behind.”

“She’ll give everything away. She doesn’t have a brain. She can’t speak properly. All she can do is bang things and yowl.”

That’s what they thought of you, Piku. But I knew better. We had a secret language, you and I, and we had spoken it for five years.

“Piku’s not like that,” I whispered back as vehemently as I could. “She’s just slow and she doesn’t speak, but she understands everything I say. I know how to calm her down.”

“Ssssh! Don’t raise your voice!”

“I’m not going without her. She’ll be finished without me. I’m the only one who knows what she’s saying!” I had tears in my eyes. I didn’t let Champa see them.

“You can come back for her. There’ll be no space in that manure truck. It’s too small. What if she has one of her screechy fits? What if Bhola hears? What then?” She did not need an answer to that question, Piku.

Champa said, “Look, the only reason I’ve even told you about the plan is because I like you. And I need you to get me into that manure truck. But if you try anything funny, I’ll figure out another way of leaving. Remember I’ve run away twice before? Without your help. You can stay with your Piku.”

I went quiet. I could not get out without Champa, I knew nobody in the world outside. Champa was older. Because she had escaped before and been caught she knew what not to do. She said that during her time in the hospital she had found out about a home for girls like us, abandoned or orphaned. They would tell nobody about us, they would look after us.

Now that freedom seemed within reach, Piku, I could not let it go. I began to think our only chance was if I managed to get out. Then I would come back for you.

“I’ve heard they find parents for children at these girls’ homes, rich parents. Parents abroad. It’ll be a different life,” Champa said when we were sitting side by side one evening making garlands from a pile of jasmine. It was almost time for the puja and we had to have all the garlands done and ready in another half hour. My red thread flew in and out of the white jasmine at the ends of fat needles while Champa whispered the details of our escape to me.

I said, “Those adoption things must be for babies. I’m twelve. You’re fifteen. Who’s going to adopt us? We’ll just get caught and have to come back.”

“If you don’t want to come, don’t come. I’ll find another way of leaving.”

*

The manure van used to come from far away a few times a year. I can’t recall how often. I felt as if scarcely a month passed between each delivery of cowdung and sodden leaves. Since Jugnu went, it had been my job to unload the van. I shovelled the manure with a spade into a smaller basin that I carried on my head just as he used to, and tipped it out into a heap by the shed. It took me two days. At about six in the evening on the second day, the driver came to where I was working and stood watching me. “How much longer? She looks like a stick and tries to do the work of a man,” he said. “That bastard Bhola has no brains. I should’ve been out of here hours ago.” He spat a red stream towards the basin I was filling.

He went off to the hut where Bhola and the others were smoking and drinking. “Call someone to help,” he shouted, “I need to get going in an hour.”

This was as Champa had planned. I waited for Bhola to say I could get someone else to help.

In a minute, Bhola’s voice: “Go get someone. Move that skinny ass.”

I shouted, “Is anyone there? Is that you, Champa? Can you come here? I need help.” She had been waiting nearby.

She ran towards the van saying, “What do you want? Don’t expect me to do all the heavy work!”

The two of us scurried about emptying the van. There were still five sacks left to unload. My legs trembled and my arms shook as I struggled back and forth with the basin. Our heads and bodies stank of manure. My hair was crawling with dung beetles.

Before the driver came back, Champa and I hid ourselves under the heap of empty sacks in the back of the van, among the rest of his junk. There was a spare tyre, empty liquor bottles, flower pots meant for delivery to some other place. I was suffocating under the scratchy sacks. They smelled of rotted dung. Bugs and ants crawled over me. I was itching all over, but we had to keep still. It felt days, those minutes of waiting. I thought people would start looking for us at the ashram. There was a desperate moment during the wait when I thought I could run back, fetch you, Piku, and smuggle you into the van as well. There was enough space, and you would have taken up so little. But it was too late: we could hear the driver coming. He came towards the back. Then we heard him lurch off towards the front and get into the seat. The door banged shut. The van jolted forward. Long minutes later it came to a halt. We heard the scraping of metal, the clank of latches and chains. A voice said, “Still here? Want to spend the night or what?”

The driver said, “Nope, I can find better chicks out in the city. More flesh on them.” They tittered and someone thumped the side of the van. It sounded like a bomb blast inside, where we were. You would have started screaming for sure, Piku. You were always scared of loud sounds. The van began to rumble along again. There were jolts and bumps that threw us against each other.

I cried all the way in that van, thinking of the smile on your face the evening before when I stroked your knobbly legs and arms in the way that always soothed you. I kept telling you I would come back for you. Did you understand that? I was the only person who knew what you were trying to say with your whimpers and squeals. That evening you made no sounds at all.

The van stopped after quite a while. I did not know why or for how long it would stop, but Champa poked her face out of the sacks, then stabbed me in the ribs with her fingers and said, “Out. Get out.” The two of us had barely scrambled out from the back when the van started again. It trundled ahead and then it was gone. It took only a few seconds.

My knees felt weak. My eyes were blinded by the beep-beep-beep of horns. A woman’s high-pitched voice was sing ing on a loudspeaker. Bright, white headlights from cars. And people — I had never seen so many people. I didn’t know the world had so many people in it. They didn’t pause for two scrawny children fighting their way down a street.

Champa held my hand and dragged me towards a line of auto-rickshaws. She pushed me in and she told the driver where to go. The auto-rickshaw began to move. Then moved faster. We were breathing open, fresh air. Gas lamps peppered with insects hung over hand-carts selling everything from boiled eggs to hot parathas. And in the distance, all along the road, was a frill of white foam on black cloth — the sea that Jugnu had told us was very close.