Half an hour later, when I arrive home, the 11.30 bulletin on Channel 17 is still leading with its exclusive from Narendrapur, where a local woman has alleged repeated rape by a long-established municipal councillor, yet Sonarpur Police Station earlier this morning refused to register her complaint. Jogomaya, the young reporter interviewing Arati outside her front door, was one of the three holding up a microphone to me yesterday outside FMHS. The big difference from my moment before the cameras is that Arati answers every question with at most a single sentence.
‘Five years ago.’
‘Because my daughter was abducted.’
‘Because I’m a nobody and I still hoped that he would help me.’
‘Because I’ve lost all hope of seeing my daughter again.’
‘I’m here before you to see if I will get justice in this matter at least.’
Meanwhile all the other local channels, the five or six that I have, are leading with a much more sensational developing story: large parts of south and central Calcutta have completely emptied because there are king cobras afoot! Two have been sighted in areas several kilometres apart but remain uncaptured; there are reports of at least two deaths, and much of the heart of the city on a Thursday morning resembles a curfew zone, because no one knows how many snakes are loose. Each network is showing almost the same split screen — the main entrance of Chittaranjan Hospital, which is across the road from Shome’s clinic, alongside a shot of an equally deserted stretch of Vivekananda Road, with Ramesh’s sweet shop visible in the distance. And each has a variation of this impossible caption along the bottom of the screen: ‘Live Cobras in Calcutta’s Heart; Two Known Victims; Remain Indoors’.
I leave the TV on and begin to tidy my room, which has a double bed that Arati’s mother and Anjali can use (I’m also planning to drive them over to Didi’s flat to see if they would feel more comfortable there). After sixteen years of waiting, Arati appointed herself judge and executioner: I knew that urge well with my own father. I think of Ramesh’s twin daughters, and wonder what steps such an instinctively unscrupulous man would have taken with their lives in the future. Has Arati delivered them from fates far scarier than losing your father at the age of ten? Didi and I, for instance, always prayed for such an accident.
Would Arati understand if I visited Ramesh’s family one day to find out how they were coping, and if I chose to remain involved?
‘Like a stolen car, they stripped her for parts. For everything they could sell.’ Will you tell Ramesh’s widow that story, Jaya?
As for Shome, whose family I know nothing about, my only qualm is the lost information the police could have wrung out about numerous other Tuntunis. I’m certain she couldn’t have been an exception. Perhaps I could play my phone recording to Inspector Bhadra and nudge him towards examining Shome’s files?
There goes the doorbell.
But it isn’t Bandanadi and Raja. The one and only Ravi Tarun is paying me a visit!