Deepti Kapoor - A Bad Character

Aunty is ablaze with the news. She shepherds me into my room. From my window we see the bedroom and a trail of sheets still coming out of it like spilt guts reaching halfway to the ground. She’d made a rope of them but had fallen almost as soon as she’d climbed out. She’d fallen, fallen all the way past the balconies with pot plants, frightening the pigeons — a short intake of air, a scream, and then silence, her brain open on the concrete.

Her father must have found out about the affair, about her boyfriend, about her plans to elope with him. Something must have happened, he must have stopped her from going, maybe he locked her up like Aunty used to say, and the window was her only escape. It made the papers, February 2001. The boyfriend, who had been waiting at the bottom of the tower with tickets and passport in hand, and who had then seen her fall, was arrested on the influence of her father. He spent two months as an undertrial in Tihar Jail.

That same night I drove to him in a daze. I had no one else to turn to. I told him about the girl in the window, what had happened to her, how she’d fallen trying to escape and how she’d died. I was distraught, unreasonably upset. My distress seemed to animate him. A spark was triggered in his eyes. We got drunk and smoked and held one another, talking about the shortness of lives.

The next morning I woke early, hung-over and unsure of myself. I left quietly, and on a whim went shopping. I took an auto to South Extension. Shopping to forget. To be like any other girl.

But I saw her brains on every piece of pavement I stepped on and her blood in the strands of every stranger’s hair. Even so I bought a pair of jeans I liked from the Levi’s store.

She sits with the Businessman in the club. They’ve cordoned off an area in the dark. There are indulgent waiters exclusively for them, segregation created through orbiting bodies of lesser wealth. The music is loud, people know who he is. She is known by association. And even those who don’t know understand they must be very important. People to be reckoned with. She is seen here as a still life, painted in the chiaroscuro of carefully concealed lights that bring out a feature here and there, plunging it back into the velvet dark. In the middle of all of them she looks imperious, and with the coke in her this is how she feels. Yes, to anyone watching this girl she must look cold as moonlight, marble hard. She barely moves, just sits beside him as he talks and drinks and plots, before she goes to the bathroom for another line.

Waking with no memory. Fear from the belly up. Then remembering. Driving the car through red lights, speeding at dark through the fog, a brain overloaded with coke. These mornings alone are the worst. Wrapped up in a ball, trying not to remember myself.

But if there was anything left over in the packet I’d do it right away. And you can’t live without your shades. You can’t live without your blacked-out car. You can’t live without your driver and gun. You can’t live without the five-star rooms, without the guarded compounds. The houses of the rich are sealed compartments, and the houses of the poor are open to the world. Everything you want, anything at all. Delhi is the sound of construction, of vegetable vendors and car horns. Of crows bursting up out of the blackness and diving back down.

I am at his place, back from shopping for my jeans. It’s about midday. For a moment I waver, think to go home, to leave him there, but instead I go inside.

He is sitting in the living room waiting for me. Immediately I know something is wrong. The look on his face has changed, the look of the previous night has gone. Right away he sneers at me, he says, Do you know what I was thinking? That it should have been you who died. At least she had the courage to leave.

I stand looking at him for a while without words, then I walk to the bedroom. But he gets up and follows me, comes into the room, snatches the shopping bag from my hands and says, So what did you buy? He dumps the jeans out on to the bed and with a look of disdain he walks out of the room. Before I know what’s happening he comes back in holding a pair of scissors and he’s taking the jeans and slicing into them, jerking slits all down the legs, stabbing them in a frenzy until the jeans are in shreds.

But that doesn’t satisfy him, so when he’s finished with the jeans he goes to the wardrobe where my things are kept, the clothes he’s bought for me, my books, my keepsakes and souvenirs, and he’s taking the scissors to these, flailing without reason, slicing through anything that’s there, jabbing at them with such violent intent. I try to stop him, I run his way and pull him back, but he’s too strong for me, he turns and throws me to the floor. When he’s done cutting my things, he scoops the remains up into his arms and carries them to the balcony. I run after him in time to see him throw them over the edge. I’m screaming at him, I’m crying, shouting incoherent words, beating with my fists. He’s standing there delighted with his work. Goading me, saying since I won’t leave, he’ll expose me, he’ll show everyone what I am, what I’ve done, he’ll send the photos to my family, he’ll paste them on the college walls.

He looks at me, panting, grinning, laughing out loud, laughing at our entire world, and the scissors are in his hand. He holds the blades up in the air and brings them down to his other hand to cut into his own flesh.

I don’t remember much of what happened next. I know I was trying to pull the scissors away and at the same time he was grabbing me by my wrist, spinning me around, shoving me to the ground. Then he was kicking me over and over in the stomach, the chest, in the legs, my head. Lifting me up by the throat, almost holding me in the air. I’m looking into his eyes and I can’t see anyone I know. The ball of a fist closes, springs forward from the hip. There’s an ocean of white spray, and a body is on the ground, and a hotness that tastes of metal blood.

Scrambling to the door, falling down the stairs, out on to the street, crawling around on my hands and knees, palming the concrete, he’s kicking me as I go. This is where Ali intervenes. He turns up from nowhere, pulls him away, enough for me to stagger to my feet. And Ali is shouting out, Run, madam. Please. Run.

Fumbling for my keys, climbing inside the car, getting the engine started, driving away from him. In the rear-view mirror he’s stripping off his clothes, howling at the sky, dancing naked in the road.

Open your eyes. Open your fucking eyes. He touches my face with his fingers. Kisses my cheek, kisses my temples, kisses my nose— Close your eyes, he says, kissing the lids.

She told the Businessman in the end that she had money trouble, that she needed a job. He said he could put her on the payroll, give her a salary and a position in one of his companies. She didn’t have to turn up; she only had to take care of herself.

The fact of this job she relayed to Aunty and Uncle, and Aunty relayed it to everyone else, and soon everyone was placated when it came to the surface of things.

After he beat me the police came. Ali had run to the outpost and called them before returning to pull him away from me. When they turned up I had already gone, but he was still naked in the street, laughing, beating Ali in my place. He tried to beat them too when they came, he knocked one to the ground before they managed to overpower him. Then they beat him with their lathis until he fell unconscious.