13

I arrive home twenty minutes later. I threw Ma out after she said that, then washed the glasses — the ‘bodyguards’ too had used a few — and pushed back into place the sofas they had been lying on. I had grabbed her wrist and dragged her outside, then deposited her on the footpath without one look to see if there was a car waiting. By the time I’d locked up, she was gone. I drove to Lake Gardens without sparing a moment to wonder how.

But how did Ma know I hadn’t met anybody in Bombay (barring of course Shivani)? And, moron that I am, why hadn’t I made more of an effort to do so? The drawing room I’d initially wandered into had been empty, as had been the balcony, the lift and the terrace, even the staircases on the way down and the fifth-floor hallway outside the Srivastavas. Nowhere did I encounter a soul except Shivani: I told myself throughout it was because of the time of night. But not once did I peek to make sure that Ma, or my sister and I, were in fact sleeping in our rooms. I had momentarily wondered if I was being taken around a film set, but didn’t dare to verify the truth.

Which cowardice was why I had nothing to hurl in the face of Ma’s threat, her repugnant blackmail that unless she could come along to destroy my fondest memories, I wouldn’t ever have them back.

And I didn’t stay behind after tossing her out only to complete my chores. I tried closing and opening every single door in my sister’s house in Jodhpur Park to see if one of them would transport me again to Bombay, 1990, exactly in the way of a couple of hours before.

But this time the gift had been turned off.

Somehow I sense Arati’s presence even before I switch on the living-room light. And somehow I believe she isn’t there to kill me.

And I choose to continue believing, although I next learn that I cannot see into her. This is the first person I’m encountering after my mother: I’ve already discovered I cannot return to Bombay at will, and now I can’t read Arati’s mind.

We embrace for a long time. I feel sure she can hear my heart. She’ll think it’s from fear.

‘I’m not here to hurt you.’

‘I never believed you would.’

‘Can you guess what they want of me now?’

I decide to confess that I cannot, even though it exposes me still further. I tell Arati about my mother’s visit — how she’s been turned into an emissary, and was probably carrying details of the task they had for me, but I had thrown her out. Arati knows most of our history.

‘So what’s happening now, as you’re looking at me?’ Arati asks. We’re seated beside one another.

‘Nothing. The Shakti is gone. I’m back to where I was twenty-four hours ago. Can you believe it’s only been that long, for me, I mean? Anyway, this is your chance, Arati, if you want to go ahead. And I want you to do it, if it will return you to Tuntuni.’

My bull-by-the-horns approach seems only to confuse her. Even though I can’t see a thing, killing me appears genuinely not to be on her mind.

‘They’ll come again,’ she says.

‘I don’t think so. They wanted me to do something, and I didn’t even hear them out, so they seem to have immediately snatched everything away. But it’s okay. Tomorrow I wake up free. Did I tell you I have my column back, and a principal has called me about a teaching job?’

Isn’t it interesting how sanguine I appear about the future, as though I believe I’ll be allowed to just slip back into my old life?

So far, it looks like Arati let herself into my house and was waiting in my drawing room. But surely, at four in the morning, she would have first checked my bedroom to wake me up. And noticed a murdered stranger on the floor!

Which, if I can believe the forces that killed Shivani and that I have displeased would be so merciful, could mean that the dead woman has vanished, along with every other illusion of the night. Or else my friend and domestic help of years has cleaned up after me as usual, using her Shakti as a favour. Perhaps she asked Manasa to intercede.

At this thought, I begin to cry. Arati reaches over to hold me. I hope she senses my gratitude.

She says this: ‘I have to accuse my local ward councillor of rape. If I do it, they promise that I’ll immediately learn the truth about Tuntuni. They will give you another chance as well. When I left your sister’s house without having killed you, this was their next command.’

Arati readily shares the name. Alam is from the state ruling party, who are opposed to the Prime Minister’s Hindu nationalist party, which has been trying every possible means to make inroads into Bengal. Alam happens to be a Muslim, which they would exploit to the hilt. Their hope would be to trigger a resignation/arrest followed by a by-election, in which the alleged rape would be their trump card to inflame Hindu feeling.

Arati asks once more, holding my wet face between her hands, ‘Tell me what you see.’

I try hard, hoping against hope, which is so irrational, seeing as I might actually be off the hook. Why would I wish for such an evil thing back, a so-called gift that first makes you kill, before setting the ‘gifted’ on one another to see who will survive?

‘You really can’t see it?’

‘No, it looks like I’m indeed being punished. As has happened often before, my mother brought the good news.’

Then Arati stuns me again by saying her charge against Alam would be true. She has no idea how the demon knew. She hadn’t even told her sister or mother.

Five years ago, in a desperate effort to have Tuntuni’s case reopened, she had visited the councillor. This is what Alam had taken in return, several times, but ended up giving her nothing. He claimed he’d made some calls and a sub-inspector had looked into it, but there was no new trace of either Tuntuni or Ramesh to follow up. The councillor strung her along for over a month, then blocked her number and barred Arati from his presence.

On a day full of shocks, there has been nothing bigger. I can’t believe what I’m hearing, especially because I’d known her throughout that period, had imagined we were friends. She’d come to work as usual, carrying all this inside: multiple rape, the cruelest betrayal of her deepest hope.

Incidentally, 2012 was also the year I started ‘Chandra Sir’, because I felt desperate to help more people.

‘So I thought, I’ll come and give your plans a try. Then I can choose the path that seems easier,’ Arati says. She is being impossibly stoic, especially now that she knows I have so much less to offer. I’m the one who cannot stop my tears.

‘We can still do that —’ I want to reassure her— ‘but this is separate. Maybe it’s not the demon who asked you to report this. Couldn’t it be Manasa herself?’

She shakes her head. ‘Manasa would never cause me so much pain on the path to Tuntuni.’

‘But this was a crime, Arati, one which he repeated with impunity, and he’s got away with it for five years. How can it be wrong to bring this to light? Tell me something, do you have any physical evidence?’

Arati answers that the voice had been clear: she should show the police at Sonarpur Station the messages on her old phone, and ask them to dig up the phone records. Alam would mostly summon her to his office at night.

But she’s also been told not to worry about the police reaction. ‘Whatever they say, even if they refuse to register a case, I should listen and go away. Immediately after, I have to phone two people who work for a Bengali channel and a newspaper. I’ll tell them my story, and what the police said.’

I recognise the absurdity of what I am about to advocate — supporting the line, in this one instance, of whoever has been controlling all of us, and going against everything I had suggested to Arati in Didi’s flat just hours ago. I breathe deeply before beginning; I can’t risk our friendship again by clumsily and arrogantly getting this wrong.

‘Arati, I’m still struggling to imagine what you have endured. I’m so ashamed of how much I was caught up in my own life that I never once noticed a thing. Of course I have no right to advise you, but two truths stand out for me. First, and above all, if there’s a chance you could learn about Tuntuni tomorrow, we should put both plans into operation simultaneously. My powers are now gone, so I cannot with any conscience ask you to rely on my idea alone. Unfortunately, Dr Shome will be opaque to me beyond any obvious mistakes or clues.

‘But the other thing I want to say is that exposing Alam isn’t just about following orders to reach Tuntuni, all-important as that is, but about acting for many other women, some our age, some perhaps the age that Tuntuni would now be! This bastard is still a councillor, right, and he believes he fully got away with what he did to you five years ago. Can you imagine how much confidence he gets from each such incident, each time he rapes someone and there is silence afterwards, because the victim is still hopeful of some kind of help he promised, or because of shame and powerlessness? It’s for all their sakes that he must be stopped.

‘So please, let’s do both! You, me, Bhaswati and my friend Tamal will try to trap Dr Shome and Ramesh and hand them over to the police, who will wring out the truth, but you can also follow their instructions to expose Alam.’

Now Arati is crying. ‘The TV people will meet me at my house. They want me to tell the story in front of my neighbours.’

I see their agenda immediately, and all my certainties crumble. Arati is of no importance to them, except to whip up some drama — hopefully, from their perspective, even trigger some violence between Alam’s supporters and their various opponents. Exactly as I believe they used Shivani to do in Bardhaman. This is how they mean to penetrate Bengal, the Hindu nationalists, and anywhere still outside their grip — poison us in a thousand places, with the poison concealed inside these ‘gifts’.

And this is why Arati is here, in case there’s another way to learn about Tuntuni besides enduring a public humiliation. I feel she too has come to mistrust the ever-altering terms of her Shakti: the promise of seeing Tuntuni tomorrow might only be another lure. The ‘demon’ would violate her again and again, just as Alam did. It couldn’t care less about bringing him to justice.

And what is my advice now? What is it I myself want? Less than an hour ago, I threw my mother out and told myself on the way home I was better off without my accursed gift. I didn’t even hear the price that was being demanded. As a result, all I have left to offer Arati is a well-meaning but amateur plan. Bhaswati, Tamal and I would do our best for her, but without any magic on our side, could we promise a lead to Tuntuni?

Perhaps I, for now, am saved. It could be that I got out after something like a twenty-four-hour ‘free trial’, or else I simply failed to make their cut. But that leaves Arati all alone in their clutches.

And which Jaya would be able to do more for the many people she wants to help, beginning with this most valued of friends?

The Jaya who gets out in the nick of time, her virtue intact, or the one who will go further in?

It’s the least rhetorical question I’ve ever asked.