1

It’s the second time I’ll be around cameras in just over twenty-four hours. This new life is nothing if not exciting.

Expecting to talk through the logistics of what will unfold over the morning, I call Jogomaya, the TV journalist Arati was instructed to contact, before we leave for Sonarpur Police Station. She immediately knows the case I’m referring to, asks who I am, turns out to have been present yesterday outside the main gate of FMHS, and is so excited about this coincidence that I have to steer her back towards Arati — her much more important story of this morning. When Arati is on the line, Jogomaya apparently orders her to go straight home from the police thana, no matter how they react to her complaint. She’ll be there to meet Arati with her crew, and will also bring the newspaper reporter.

Oh, and at Sonarpur Station, Arati would have to go in alone to try and register a case. I must keep out of it. ‘This is critical!’

I’m stunned by the extent of Jogomaya’s callousness and arrogance. ‘Arati, please consider once again the implications of what she is asking: exactly how vulnerable this will leave you, not to mention everyone in your family. There are profound misgivings I didn’t express last night, but this vulture-like bitch just confirmed the worst of them. Her plan is the absolute opposite of how such cases should be handled. No victim’s home, or even their face, should be on TV! This will be a bombshell: Alam, his party, his hoodlums, they’re all going to react, and so will people in the neighbourhood. You need to call Jogomaya right now and demand anonymity and a safe place to stay for all four of you, before you agree to speak — without revealing your identity — to a camera. In fact, I don’t even think you should go to the police station until you have these guarantees, because the name of such a plaintiff will almost certainly be leaked to a sitting councillor. Call this creature back, Arati, and demand shelter and security first for your entire family.’

But Arati amazes me by refusing every suggestion. Where I am yelling and pacing, she is seemingly in a trance, determined to follow her orders because, apparently, Manasa is with her right now, promising that on the other side of all this Tuntuni awaits. The reunion isn’t far off.

‘Do you understand what you’re risking? Think about your neighbours and what they’re about to find out through the sudden appearance of cameras! Think about the house you and Bandanadi have built with your savings brick by brick over the past ten years, and how Alam’s thugs might attack it. The cameras will only be there for a few hours, but their effect will poison your lives forever. And think of the others you love, Arati, not just Tuntuni. Your mother is in her mid-sixties and Raja is only six. Your sister’s work at the mall leads her to routinely return after midnight, walking along deserted streets. Arati, I’m standing here and feeling terrified by all the crazy consequences that might follow. This bitch just wants a sensational story, and she’s throwing you to the dogs for it. That can’t be what Manasa wants for you, can it?’

Throughout my speech, Arati visualises every single possibility I describe. She sees people hurling stones at her windows. She sees someone yanking her by the hair. She even sees an auto rickshaw pulling up next to Anjali as she is walking home one night, and two men jump out and shove her inside. To this extent, I know I broke through her trance, but then this is her advice for me.

‘You also better obey. Don’t you remember what happened just a few hours ago? When you obeyed, the body was gone.’

The drive to Sonarpur Police Station takes forty minutes. I ask more than once if Arati is sure of exactly what she wants to say; she turns down further offers to accompany her inside. When I glance at her now, it isn’t the upcoming interview(s) she is focused on. Instead she is with Manasa, who is seated on her throne with Tuntuni on her lap.

If the atmosphere had been different, I would certainly have shared with her the extraordinary vision of the night before — the possibility, however unreal, that there might also be a daughter awaiting me (what Ravi Tarun had to do with this dream was still anybody’s guess). But instead, to lighten the mood, I tell Arati about something else I had been allowed to glimpse just before I awoke.

‘Do you realise that we might have rubbed shoulders years before we first met? It was in a shared auto rickshaw, probably around 2006, because that’s when I returned from finishing college in Bombay. Anyway, I was already in the auto, which was going towards Ballygunge Station from Rashbehari More, and you got on just outside Priya cinema, which meant I was the one in the middle sitting right beside you, and a short while later my stop arrived and you got off to let me out. I was going to visit a childhood friend on Purna Das Road. It was brief but unmistakable: we were seated beside one another four years before we met. And it might have happened more than once, eh? What do you think?’

Arati replies it could well be the case. Then she reminds me not to wait for her outside the police station. She will make her own way home and negotiate the cameras.

Freshly disturbed to the point of outrage, I protest, try to insist, raise my voice, even moralise some more about the impact of these massive unilateral decisions on her mother and sister and little Raja, until I’m the one sounding arrogant and presumptuous to my own ears. I finish by apologising and reminding her that my house is open to all of them as a sanctuary. Just come over if there is any trouble — from the neighbours, from Alam’s hooligans. In fact, lock up your house and come over right after the interview. Ask effing Jogomaya to give you a lift. I’ll drive you later to collect Raja from school, and we’ll call and let Bandanadi and Anjali know.

As I pull up opposite the station, Arati says again not to wait. I restrain myself from requesting her not to boss me around, and instead suggest an idea that’s just come to me. Ask for a police escort to your house; tell them the kind of trouble you anticipate.

She doesn’t reply. She has already left the car when I try one last time. ‘Don’t you see how these people — the media, the Prime Minister’s party — are using you? I now feel certain they want trouble, preferably on live television. They want Alam’s party to be tipped off about your complaint, and for the cameras and van to be noticed outside your house. They want people loyal to Alam to cause a disturbance, to turn violent and to attack your house, because that would perfectly suit their agenda. But don’t you see that in none of this do they for one moment care about you? Not about the rapes, or what you’ll face as a result of taking action in this way; not about your family or your home, or how you’ll live in this neighbourhood afterwards. They’re pure opportunists, using you to score points against the state government with a by-election in mind, in which their candidate might replace Alam. Tomorrow, if your house is torched and you’re in hospital, it’s the outcome they’re hoping for!’

Arati leaves, by now almost a zombie to my eyes. As I watch her cross the road, I fervently pray that Manasa will be with her through everything that is about to unfold. I contemplate remaining there in defiance of her wishes, ready to drive her away at the first sign of trouble, but then start the car. She would never forgive me if somehow her enormous risks and sacrifices of this morning did not lead to Tuntuni.

Suddenly I have nothing to do, and an unexpected free morning lies ahead. Of course the plans to storm Dr Shome’s office are on hold until this blows over or I get the go-ahead from Arati. I must call Tamal to let him know he needn’t take the morning off after all.

After we’ve spoken (he wanted to know when we could see one another again; I replied honestly something very big is on today, and also I might have four guests staying indefinitely, but anyway I’d call him), without really another conscious thought, I put Chittaranjan Hospital into Google Maps.

I know Dr Shome’s chamber is directly opposite. Google also tells me it will open at nine.