7

Bandanadi, Raja and Anjali arrive ten minutes after Ravi leaves. They collected Anjali from Quest Mall as well, after hearing about the panic around nearby Chittaranjan Hospital. Although I imagine Bandanadi, if not Anjali too, knows the truth about the snakes.

I was watching out for them with the TV on. The centre of Calcutta is apparently still under lockdown, but suspicion is growing about how such an ‘accident’ could take place at all, especially with two snakes so far apart. On one news channel, the state government’s Public Works Minister is aggressively pushing this line (from the safety of his house): ‘There is malice behind this incident. It is meant to paralyse the city.’

‘Minister, are you suggesting this could be a terrorist ploy? Are these trained snakes? Will there be more?’

‘Why not? Aren’t they easier to smuggle in than bombs and weapons? Have they not had the same effect?’

‘Sir, in that case, would you label this a kind of “environmentally conscious terrorism”,’ the anchor asks, absolutely straight-faced, to which the harried minister replies, ‘Maybe.’

Meanwhile, on Channel 17, Jogomaya has just announced she is driving with a list of ‘key demands’ to Sonarpur Police Station. ‘Will they launch a search for Arati Bhandari? Will they register her case when they find her? And will they put her house, and family, under protection?’

For one horrible moment, as the Channel 17 car pulls up outside my gate, I fear the network intends to broadcast this ‘coincidence’ — how today’s abductee’s family turns out to know that impostor from yesterday! ‘Bandana Bhandari, another trusting, vulnerable mother duped, or worse, by “Chandra Sir”!??’

But Bandanadi is serene about Arati’s disappearance because she too believes in Manasa. Arati is with Tuntuni, she assures me: ‘From now on she’ll only be here sometimes.’

I notice that Anjali is thinking about the Narendrapur house, which could just be from watching Jogomaya on TV. Ravi shielded himself, but for now hasn’t turned off my Shakti.

Arati is also much younger in her mother’s mind. We’re all sitting around the TV; I’ve served tea, biscuits and Fanta. After about four minutes of being shy and taking tiny sips of his drink, Raja is as jumpy and cheerful as I remember him from other visits. More so than usual: after all, he got picked up early in a big car from school, then they drove through empty streets to get his mum; and now his aunt’s house, where he currently lives, is on TV (we’re watching on its fourth or fifth loop the news of Arati’s almost-locked-room disappearance)! He keeps pointing out familiar things that appear within the camera’s view as Jogomaya goes through the house and around the small garden to underline for her viewers the especial spookiness of Arati’s vanishing.

‘Who’s going to lock the house when these people leave?’ I ask Bandanadi.

‘I’ve left the lock and key with Uma, who lives next door. As soon as this girl is done, she’ll lock the front door.’

I suggest she should make sure Uma’s done it, because this report isn’t live anymore. Jogomaya will already be at Sonarpur Thana.

Bandanadi needles the on-screen reporter as she gets out her phone: ‘You won’t find her, Jogomaya, but it’s not the councillor’s fault.’

‘Dida, look, she’s going into your puja corner,’ Raja calls to his grandma.

I have to admire Jogomaya’s skill in wringing out every drop of drama from the situation. Now she is facing us again, as grave as a political abduction demands.

‘And this is all that remains of a happy family, three brave, united women who had built a life together and this morning sent a six-year-old child to school exactly as usual. Two of them were here until just over an hour ago — you’re all witnesses to that — but now I feel as though I’ve arrived in the aftermath of a great evacuation. A house stands vulnerable and abandoned, still full of the owners’ possessions, still warm from their recent presence, because, like people reacting to rumours of an oncoming tsunami or riot, they had to flee immediately. And all because one of them dared to report a case of multiple rape, which the police refused to hear. In fact that, my viewers, is the better of two possible scenarios! Because the more terrifying alternative is that within minutes of coming to us as a last resort, the victim Arati Bhandari was kidnapped and might now be in grave danger, and if it weren’t for our network’s car and the protection offered by its familiar emblem, her elderly mother might have been taken as well.

‘Until we know more from the local police, as I depart this house so suddenly ravaged by tragedy, I want to leave you with this final image: of these gods and goddesses behind me in whom this family of four put all their belief. The administration and the justice system of this state appear to have failed them; perhaps these deities are all they have left.’

With that, Jogomaya turns her back to camera and does a big pronam. ‘Manasa-Ma, Ma Kali, it’s in your hands now to keep Arati Bhandari safe. Today she represents every woman in this state.’

Despite knowing the truth, or at least believing in it so deeply, Bandanadi cannot keep from breaking into applause. Raja looks confused, then follows.

I’m suddenly aware this is an incredibly boring house for a six-year-old to visit, let alone spend a few days in. I need to dig out some of the things my nephew Jimmy played with over the winter and didn’t take home to London. I suggest to Raja that he come on a car ride to Jodhpur Park to choose some toys from my nephew’s collection; he enthusiastically agrees, and a tricycle followed by a little boy in cricket pads and helmet appear in his head. I flip channels to check if anyone else is covering the Bhandari ‘abduction’. But the big story remains the king cobras still at large. I wonder when people will begin to step out again, because those snakes will almost certainly never be found.

When I turn around, Bandanadi is crying. Shome’s clinic and Ramesh’s shop are both on screen. She knows Arati has left to rejoin Tuntuni: did Arati tell her the full truth about her granddaughter’s end?

I’m driving a very excited Raja to Didi’s house and thereafter to bring home some lunch. Anjali and Bandanadi wanted to stay in front of the TV.

I think of the irony of Jogomaya’s impassioned efforts to evoke for her viewers the full scope of Arati’s tragedy being drowned out by the otherwise blanket coverage given to Manasa’s untraceable snakes. Which also means my first YouTube episode will have to be the Alam affair; it will be my duty to keep the councillor’s crimes in public view for the right reasons! Jogomaya and her channel would move on as soon as their masters snapped their fingers, but I could embolden other victims of Alam, or any such predator, to come forward.

Yes, any such predator, regardless of their position or political affiliation. This is what I can do with the opportunity Ravi is offering! Amplify through the web series what I already hope to achieve with my Shakti — to make a difference to the many trapped, threatened people I could never fully reach through my column.

Perhaps this power is being dangled before me by ‘demons’; perhaps it will turn out, from their perspective, to be an administrative error. But it’s up to me what I’m able to create before it’s snatched away and I’m probably wiped out.

I’m entering my sister’s kitchen after leading Raja to Jimmy’s toy cupboard. Arati, I again think, you could have easily finished me with one of those snakes right here last night. The price you paid for your loyalty was the far harder task of confronting Alam. Yet, today, I also saw how your Shakti turned you into a self-appointed executioner.

The Shakti knows us already, Ravi claimed. It chooses you.

I want to meet the Jaya the Shakti believes it knows.

Shivani has turned up again, as if to question the decision I just made.

‘So you believed everything Ravi said? That he knew nothing about my Shakti because he was in Delhi?’

‘No, I didn’t, but I did want him to think that. Didn’t you hear me calling out to you? Tell me the truth, Shivani. Tell me everything I need to know. Now that Arati’s gone, you’re the only one I can trust.’

Raja walks into the kitchen holding a toy Mini in Union Jack colours to ask if this is my house too. I say no: his aunt and I look after it for my sister. I remind him to fill the bag I’ve put out, because next we’re going to get rolls for lunch, or chow mein, whichever he prefers.

‘You know someone else as well,’ says Shivani. ‘Inspector Somayya. But make sure what side she’s on.’

I’m astonished. ‘Does Somayya know about me? What is her Shakti?’

Shivani doesn’t answer that. Instead, heartbreakingly, she confirms my earlier suspicion. ‘I’m sorry about what I did, Aunty, especially for how it impacted on you. But believe me, I was his guinea pig. Just someone to experiment on. That’s why I thought at first Ravi had sent you, to put me through another of their tests.

‘Driving me crazy was killing two birds for him, messing with someone he wanted to be rid of anyway. It was like hooking me on to a drug. If I hadn’t jumped, I would have ended up as their slave.’

Shivani has never shared any of this before. This is the trust I didn’t have the chance to earn while she was alive.

While she was alive? Then what exactly do I believe about her now?

‘Did your mother know?’ I ask.

The thought that Ravi Tarun could have anything to do with a child of mine is more abhorrent than ever. That ‘dream’ was probably a game of theirs, a small nudge of fantasy to keep another guinea pig in line. Remember, the Shakti knows you, Jaya. It knows before you what you’d like to see.

‘Yes. Ravi assured Mummy I was among the first in the country to be gifted such powers, and all because he was my step-dad. When I was taken to the village in Bardhaman, she thought I was away at training.’

‘And when you died …?’

‘Ravi explained it away as a tragic accident. Without checking with him first, I had overestimated my powers. That’s why she wanted to find out all about them from you, Aunty.’

‘And it also gave her someone to blame,’ I add. Shivani remains quiet, so I swerve to something more important. ‘But did you jump only from despair, or did you know it was an escape?’

Raja comes in to announce this truck won’t fit in the bag so he will carry it in his other hand, and could he have two chicken rolls? I tell him we’ll leave in five minutes, so make sure to pack everything you’d like to take. He rushes off, my phone rings, but I ignore it in the hope Shivani has more to say.

I can’t work out why she won’t answer. I suddenly think Ravi might be outside and she is afraid of being sensed. But there isn’t anyone when I look out the window, so, after more silence, I call back the unknown number on my phone. It’s Raja’s mother, Anjali.

‘Raja wants chicken rolls for lunch, Anjali. What fillings would you two like?’

‘Jayadi, please switch on the TV.’ I can barely understand through her crying. ‘Channel 17.’

‘Why, what’s happened?’ I’m rushing into the drawing room. Raja is in the bedroom to my right. Anjali is still on the line, although sobbing inconsolably.

Jogomaya is standing with a pond behind her. She seems to have succeeded in gathering some personnel from Sonarpur Police Station: two women and a male constable move in and out of shot.

‘That’s our pond!’ I’m startled by Raja’s voice. He’s lugging a full bag behind him, with the large truck in his left hand. ‘It’s at the end of our street.’

‘Anjali, what has happened?’

But it’s Jogomaya who gives me my answer.

‘The very worst we feared has come true. For anyone watching our coverage this morning who may have doubted that Arati Bhandari was telling the truth, here is your answer in the most brutal form. Ten metres behind me, a hundred metres from her own house where I was among the last people to see her alive, she was found minutes ago, stabbed to death. Silenced forever.’

Jogomaya is weeping live on TV. Anjali is crying on the phone. I switch channels because Raja is watching behind me.

But every channel I go to seems to have got wind of this story. No one is looking out for the snakes just now. One network is already talking about local anger, that people in Narendrapur are demanding Alam’s immediate arrest. Another promises that an interview with the state Law Minister is minutes away, and they will ask if this is the new model in West Bengal for responding to criminal allegations against powerful politicians.

I pick up Raja in my arms and sit on the sofa. We’re sobbing together; inside him, I can see only the aunt he knew. There’s no image of her happy with an infant. Were Anjali and Bandanadi prepared for this end? Anjali’s grief and shock seemed utterly genuine; there wasn’t a trace of it earlier in their thoughts.

Nor in Arati’s when she was beside me: not once in the car driving to the sweet shop or at Shome’s clinic had she pictured such a moment! Did she think of this as a victory, that in one morning she has vanquished all her enemies? Or had it been the final demand from her ‘demon’ — to nail Alam in this way for their political ends? My tears are now uncontrollable, and it’s Raja who’s embracing me. Why couldn’t Alam have been disposed of by a snake?

What are we witnessing, Arati? Your triumph or their treachery? Was this sprung upon you after you finished Ramesh: that you would have to give up your entire present life, your body itself, to be allowed a permanent return to Tuntuni?

I suddenly know what I believe, as though I’m belatedly inside Arati’s mind. My friend wasn’t strung along by any demon. She took charge of her Shakti! Nobody could be more clear-sighted than her. She settled every bit of outstanding business she had, while protecting her loved ones to the last. Only then did she make the choice that promised to take her home.

On the way, Arati, you vanquished me as well. You knowingly hid your ultimate destination by feeding me all the expected decoys.

I hope you’re reunited with Tuntuni forever, and that these bastards at least keep their word. You, and Shivani, are gone, but they made no mark on your honour.

If either of you is nearby, I too have a choice to share. Knowing everything I do, and although it’s clear what end awaits me, I’m opting to stay in.

Visit me if you can, or if I ever lose sight of my way.