Читать книгу Necropolis - Avtar Singh - Страница 7

Girl stories

Delhi isn’t famous for treating its daughters well.

Yet even its well-developed carapace of insensitivity was pierced by the horrors of that year’s early winter. A young schoolgirl, raped and sodomized and then abandoned in a ditch to die, was the ember that grew into a full-grown flame when the latest in a line of women from the Northeast was gang-raped in a moving vehicle close to the supposedly secure cantonment of Delhi.

The facts of the matter were familiar enough to everyone. Indeed, followers of the news would have been able to reconstruct the events from memories of other such outrages. The victim was a late-shift worker in a suburban tele-services office. She was left outside the lane to her modest home by a call-center cab, the driver of which had his own roster of clients to drop off. Hence, he couldn’t see her to her door. The hour was advanced, well into the small hours of the morning. The night was cold, the streets were dark, her assailants waiting, and her companion fought off from the chase. He didn’t even see her assailants’ vehicle. They disappeared, he would say, into the fog. As was later established, the police control room vehicle wasn’t where it should have been either. The victim’s companion, a colleague who lived down the lane from her, wasted precious minutes in a fruitless search for it. Anguished calls resulted in a PCR jeep reaching the site of the abduction a good half-hour later. By which time it was too late for the girl.

It came as no surprise that a task force was formed to combat what one gentleman representative in Parliament called the “growing menace of rape.” Dayal, fresh from his triumph in the search for the finger-stealer, was roped in to head it and was given a free hand in choosing its constituents. Kapoor followed him, as did Smita, on leave from the cyber section of Crime Branch.

“She’s young. And female,” the DCP had explained to his senior commissioner, the one who’d drawn the short straw of having to face the minister, as that good lady cast about for ways to counter the growing ire of her voters and fellow legislators and parliamentarians. The commissioner, having been hung out to dry by his brother officers, was in no mood to argue with the DCP. He’d nodded curtly and told him in so many words not to fuck it up.

“The old lady wants to see you,” he’d said the day after the rape, by which time the tumult over the assault and the task force to address it were both well in place. “She wants to know what you think.” The DCP had raised his eyebrows, the question implicit. “You know. The crime situation: what are we doing about it; will women ever be safe in this city. The usual rubbish.”

“And what should I tell her?”

“What she wants to hear.” The commissioner ostentatiously returned to whatever it was he was doing before the DCP had been shown in, and didn’t raise his eyes again till the door closed behind his junior.

The conversation the DCP had with the lady minister proved the prescience of his superior. She was courteous, motherly, and registered concern and worry without striking a false note. She didn’t forget to fluff his feathers with regard to the successful conclusion of the Angulimala case. In fact, she pointed out what his superior had perhaps forgotten to mention, that she’d specifically asked for him to head the task force. She was pointed in her questions and attentive to his replies and the DCP was left with no illusions as to why he was there.

“You see, Dayal, the city needs closure. Like you provided with that awful finger-snatcher. You do understand, don’t you?”

Dayal had nodded.

“I don’t expect you to end crimes against women in this city. But I want these men caught. Expeditiously. They will be given exemplary sentences. That will help, I imagine?”

Dayal had nodded again, with less conviction.

“Do you not believe that will help?”

“I don’t believe there are too many offenders in this country who’re particularly scared by our criminal justice system.”

“But you’re part of that system, Dayal. And Delhi Police hasn’t shown itself in the best light thus far, has it?”

He had nodded glumly, saluted smartly, and turned on his heel as she went back to the flowerbeds and potted chrysanthemums in her enormous garden in central Delhi, the early winter sun gloriously high, a yellow aureole in the inverted blue bosom of the sky. It occurred to him that she was very resolute for a woman who tended to end her sentences with question marks, and was only mildly surprised when she hailed him.

“Yes ma’am?”

“These felons of yours may not be scared of the system. But I suspect they’re more than a little scared of the police, hmm?”

“What does that mean?” asked Smita later that day.

She and Kapoor were facing the DCP, who lounged with his feet up on a little stool in the well of his desk. His eyes were on the ceiling and very far away and his hands were behind his head. Smita knew that no answer would be forthcoming from him.

“Well?” she repeated anyway.

“It means that she knows we’ll be using traditional methods to track these guys down,” said Kapoor.

Smita still looked quizzical.

“Are you wondering whether the old lady’s aware that traditional methods can make anyone own up to anything?”

Smita nodded.

“I think there’s a strong possibility of that,” allowed Kapoor.

“So?”

“So, you’re thinking that she doesn’t care whether we catch the right guys, we just need to find someone who fits the bill. Right?”

“You’re an old cynic, you know that? Stop polluting her mind with your rubbish,” said the DCP from the depths of his reverie.

“Isn’t it true, though?”

“What’s true, Smita, is that this office doesn’t catch the wrong people,” pronounced the DCP.

“Anyway,” snorted Kapoor, “that particular trick won’t work in a court in Delhi. Not with this case. Don’t you worry, we’ll get the right guys. Tracking rapists isn’t rocket science. You know that.”

Smita sighed. The depressing truth of that particular statement had been proved in the previous few days, when the schoolgirl’s assailant had been identified as her nice young cousin who lived next door.

“We’ll run the files,” said Kapoor. “Find accused rapists out on bail, recently released offenders, things like that. Then we’ll lean on them. Something will come to light.”

“Is the victim talking more sense?” asked the DCP.

“She’s doing better,” said Smita. “I’m going by again this afternoon. I’ll take the artist, see if she’s ready.” She looked at her superior officers. “I wanted to thank you,” she added impulsively. “For putting me on this team.”

The DCP and Kapoor nodded silently. Gratitude wasn’t the wrong response from a young career-track policewoman. The profile of the case, the minister’s personal involvement, the strong chance of a quick and decisive conclusion: these were all gilt-edged offerings, to be accepted with grace and humility.

“It’s not just this case,” continued Smita with some urgency. The DCP opened his eyes in surprise.

“I mean, I am grateful for this opportunity,” said Smita. “Don’t get me wrong. But there’s something you should know. I’ve been involved in this before.”

“No you haven’t,” said the DCP involuntarily, before feeling the need to explain. “I’ve looked at your file. You’ve never investigated a rape . . . Nor reported being subjected to one.”

“My best friend in college was a Naga girl. She lived in a hostel near the south campus. It happened to her.”

The two men were silent now, looking carefully at their junior.

“It left a lasting impression on me.”

“Is that why you joined the police?” asked Kapoor.

“It is one reason, sir,” said Smita.

Dayal pursed his lips. “Were her assailants caught?”

“Two of them were. She didn’t recognize either. Beyond a point, she didn’t care anymore. She left Delhi then.”

The three of them sat quietly in the DCP’s room, the rays of the afternoon sun slanting in through the window.

“She told me,” said Smita, as if in a dream, “that one of the men, the first one, was vile, that he shouted threats and insults in her ear as he was on top of her, and she fought and fought till she couldn’t fight anymore.”

And then?

“Then,” said Smita, “came a quiet, gentle one. He lay on top of her and whispered in her ear and stroked her before and after and told her she was beautiful. That’s when she switched off.”

The DCP looked out the window and Kapoor looked at his feet and Smita looked at nothing in particular.

“Is it personal, then?” asked the DCP.

“Of course it is. Sir.” She got up quietly, collected her things, and left.

The day before had started well. She had been reading the papers and savoring a hot cup of tea on the balcony of her parents’ home, enjoying the first pale glimmers of day. While still early in the winter, it was already cold. Her father hadn’t yet left for his morning golf game, her mother hadn’t returned from her walk. Smita wore a cap against the cold and a shawl over the sweats she slept in, and, as she desultorily leafed through the paper, a magpie robin came and sat by her. She chirruped quietly at the interloper, flicking him a bit of biscuit from the plate in front of her. The trees in the park across the house were losing their foliage, a process that had quickened noticeably in the past week. They wouldn’t be bare: they were evergreens, for the most part, and she felt that if she walked under them, she’d still be able to smell the last remnants of the flowering of the Alstonia scholaris. But they were hunkering down for the short, sharp Delhi winter, and Smita applauded their good sense.

This is nice, she’d sighed happily, burrowing deeper under her shawl, her fingers wrapped around her tea, a fresh pot snug under its cozy in front of her. And then the phone rang.

It had been Kapoor, tersely informing her of her temporary promotion and the reason for it. She’d gone inside to her own room, where a small TV guarded the approach to her bed. The outrage of the night before was all over the news channels. She’d showered quickly and reported directly to the address Kapoor had given her in the village that had so precariously sheltered the victim. Rush-hour traffic still howled past the gurdwara on the main road. She passed the cop cars and the inevitable gawkers and made her way purposefully down the quiet alley that ran into the village.

She walked past little knots of locals wearing the look of people everywhere who have been touched, however ephemerally, by infamy. They were confused, delighted to be in the limelight, and hoping to be asked what they thought by a wandering reporter, but saddened that their fifteen minutes were to be forever so tainted. She could feel their eyes on her, measuring her calm poise and her businesslike attire. She wasn’t interested in them, wasn’t clutching a microphone or a digital recorder, clearly wasn’t a reporter. But then what was she? They knew she didn’t live here, even though other women her age, who dressed and walked like her—as if they didn’t care that their asses were on display, tight in their trousers and propped up on short heels—lived in this village too. She asked a young Sikh boy where the house she was looking for was. He pointed down a street, said she wouldn’t miss it with all the dogs hanging around. Smita smiled to herself. She found the house hedged about by policemen as advertised, and ran up the narrow airless stairwell.

The DCP and Kapoor were inside the modest little flat that the victim had shared with three other women like her. Two bedrooms, two girls to a room. A small hall that functioned as dining room, living room, and entrance foyer, a modest bathroom that the two bedrooms shared, and a kitchen. What natural light there was entered from one big window each in the living room and one of the bedrooms. Colorful drapes in front of these windows were kept drawn at all times, so that the women could find a modicum of privacy at least inside their own home.

Smita ran her eye quickly around the room she was in. A small TV, a bookcase with a radio on it and photographs, a few occasional stools, and a mattress with some cushions against the wall. A little table stood by the wall nearest the kitchen. Bright posters, a cross, and a colorful handwoven shawl hung on the walls. Fluorescent lights up high, table lamps closer to the ground. Two Northeastern girls were sitting quietly on the mattress, their arms around their knees. Smita could see the third one making tea in the little kitchen. Kapoor and the DCP cursorily acknowledged Smita’s presence, letting her make her own judgments, allowing her to introduce herself.

The two girls on the mattress barely looked at her. The last one came out of the kitchen, a little tray with steaming mugs of tea in her hands. Her eyes were downcast when she stopped before Smita, who took a mug with a smile and a word of thanks that the other woman seemed not to notice. So the young policewoman went and sat down next to the girls on the mattress, who quietly made room for her. She leaned across and shook hands with each one, smiled at them with her eyes as well, and made sure the girl with the tea was settled on a stool next to them. Only then did she look at her seniors, who looked back, on the DCP’s part, with quiet approval, and on Kapoor’s, with something of the phlegmatic calm of a pedicurist considering a customer’s foot.

Our colleague, indicated the DCP. The girls acknowledged his more formal introduction with a wary nod toward him and smiles for Smita who, not for the first time, was brought face-to-face with the fact of the ordinary Indian’s alienation from their ostensible protectors, even from one as seemingly amiable and approachable as the DCP. Kapoor and the DCP knew it too and, making their excuses and thanking the girls for their tea, left quietly.

The facts were quickly established. None of them had studied in Delhi, though one of them had been working here for four years now. The others had come, one by one, looking for employment. They were all from the far east of the country, over on the border with Myanmar. They had known each other before they came, but only became friends after they were roommates. One was a senior shop girl in a foreign luxury brand’s outlet in a spiffy mall. Another managed a restaurant, while the third worked at a development NGO. They had been in this house for almost a year.

The victim was known to be hardworking, diligent in her job and her duties at home. A good cook, said one of them quietly. They all nodded. She was religious, sang in a church choir, neither smoked nor drank.

“Really?” prompted Smita gently.

“Yes,” said one of them urgently. “I smoke. We all like a beer, occasionally. But not her. She didn’t have a boyfriend either. Her mother’s active in the church back home. She’s a believer.”

“Are you?”

“Well,” laughed one of them embarrassedly, “we all are. To some extent. But living out here . . . The boys come by, the local students. We have a house of our own. It’s nice.”

“A little slice of home here in Delhi.”

“Exactly.” All three of them nodded eagerly. Smita could see the scene. A quiet evening of semi-innocent fun, a few beers, perhaps a smoke or two, one of the more daring boys firing up a joint, the stares and remarks the morning after on the stairwell and down the lane. The stations of the harlot’s progress, the final scene—a battered young woman lying in a recovery room in a government hospital in a cold alien city.

“I don’t know if we can stay here after this.”

“Will the landlord throw you out?”

“Even if he doesn’t, why would we stay?”

Smita drank her tea and considered this. “What’s he like?” she inquired of the landlord.

Quiet enough, was the answer. A Punjabi, not from the village. Bought this building a few years ago, according to those neighbors who deigned to speak to them. Not great with complaints, but not overly concerned with rent payments either. And he never just walked in.

“The people around here?”

There was an old couple who lived on the floor below. The ground floor was kept shut. The owner used it as some sort of storage space.

“And upstairs?”

The girls kept quiet, looking at each other.

“Well?” prodded Smita.

“It’s a whorehouse.”