9

In the life that never will be — no, let me rephrase that: in the life already over — if I’d made it home to Calcutta and resumed my column for the first time in the open, and one day I was interviewed and one of the questions was ‘When did you first feel the urge to take this role?’, I know exactly the moment I would have mentioned.

Shortly after we entered Class X, when I was fifteen, a close friend recommended as a maths tutor for the upcoming ICSE exams an uncle of hers who’d recently retired, for health reasons, as a world-sailing marine engineer. He’s amazing, she promised, and we can go together. I’ve been going to him since before last year’s finals.

Twice a week we studied at Kishore Mesho’s dining table (my friend Anindita was right: no one had ever explained each concept from its foundations with such grasp and clarity; these later became my own guiding ideals as a teacher), and everything was absolutely normal, except for the regular presence of one of his friends, who sat on a sofa a few metres away, never disturbed or even addressed us, and religiously read from a pile of books, magazines and newspapers on the coffee table before him.

After my second visit (when, once more, neither of us went beyond greeting him and saying goodbye), I asked Anindita about Kishore Mesho’s friend, and whether he was also a former marine engineer. I remember teasing, ‘They’re lovers, right?’, and our giggles. Anindita swore me to secrecy before revealing his story, according to which they were school friends, Kishore Mesho and this man, Ghanshyam Uncle, although she too had never conversed with him. But her mother had told her that in college, more than thirty years ago, Ghanshyam Uncle had been in love with a girl of Chinese origin, and his conservative parents had opposed any idea of a marriage. And either they did try to elope, or they didn’t — Anindita’s mother hadn’t been certain — but, immediately after graduating, the Chinese girl and her family migrated to Glasgow, and Ghanshyam Uncle never saw her again. Instead, he continued to live at home within the family that smashed his happiness, and remained single forever.

‘Boss, so romantic,’ I exclaimed, ‘and also such crap! Such a beautiful piece of bullshit to hide the simple truth that your uncle is gay! Do you think I care? Do you think it would bother me? Come on, give me that much respect. Let me spell it out: I am absolutely cool with your uncle’s sexuality. So you can stop …’

It was me who shut up when I saw from her expression that Anindita couldn’t possibly be lying. Shortly after, I was running behind her, apologising, begging, begging, begging for the end of the story.

‘Well, Ma says Ghanshyam Uncle and this woman kept writing to one another, even though she had a family and children in Glasgow. But last year he got a reply from her husband to one of his letters that she’d been killed in a car accident in bad weather. And now, ever since Kishore Mesho’s retirement, every afternoon punctually after lunch Ghanshyam Uncle drives over, and they spend hours together. I’ve never seen them exchange words beyond the bare minimum, at least not in my presence. According to Ma, Kishore Mesho knew the woman as well, which is the main comfort for Ghanshyam Uncle. Apparently, he carried presents and pictures between them on his voyages, and saw her regularly until she died.’

When I think of the origins of my dream of helping other people, these two friends immediately come to mind: my admiration for the role Kishore Mesho was playing, as well as being moved by Ghanshyam Uncle’s undying pain. And, I suppose, my focus on the young came from a wish to be useful when people might need it most: when, at least in a society like ours, the pressures are greatest, and their first loves, or truest selves, are most likely to be lost.

And here I am recalling these beginnings because I’m closer than ever to being able to tangibly help someone vulnerable and powerless, and I realised my dream only by dying. Some irony, that!

In hindsight, I’m certain I was chosen for the Shakti not to further enable any good I had done, but because I was damaged enough to have killed. This was their assessment of each of us — I mean the distributors of these gifts: I had secrets to hide and one I yearned to flee; Arati would do anything to retrieve Tuntuni. I didn’t get a chance to learn the weak spots of Shivani or Inspector Somayya, but judging thereafter from Prashant, Ravi, Jatin, the hip-hop guru or the long-distance runner, every single one of us has a proven threshold for ruthlessness. Such is the army the ruling party is assembling. The haunted and the broken are as useful to them as the rapist and the torturer.

Because each can be lured further into hell by the promise of more power.

Shivani, I’m coming around to your point of view. At least until someone turns up with an explanation or a bill to pay, we really might be better off dead.

Malti — it must be her, although this girl looks undamaged and fifteen — and a boy who seems older slip through the open gate of a grand villa because the security guard isn’t at his post. They run, Malti leading, over the concrete and past the three parked cars, then across a lawn with a family-sized swing at one end, and through some unlocked glass doors into a lavishly decorated living room. I’m only watching, with no idea of what Malti is recalling or who she is with.

She is the bold one, and signs to the boy they can go upstairs, because no one seems to be home, ‘… or should we peek into the kitchen first?’ The boy wants to return: he wasn’t expecting the trespassing to come this far, right into the house. Malti abruptly turns around, as if bored by his pleas, and heads up the carpeted staircase alone. The boy is caught in no-man’s land in the middle of the living room, too frightened to proceed or retreat.

Malti reappears, racing back down: there’s a couple upstairs, she hisses. ‘Quick, they heard me,’ as she dashes past, and on to the lawn once more. The boy in his haste knocks over a brass vase that clatters, and stops to put it right, but Malti beckons to him from outside. Someone is yelling, ‘Arun? Are you home?’ There isn’t a moment to lose.

But the situation has changed at the front gate as well, and the guard has returned to his hut. Hiding behind one of the cars, Malti proposes going around the house in case there’s an exit at the back. She expertly skirts the lawn, using its bordering hedge for cover, but stops at the corner and clutches the boy’s hand, making sure he stays behind her. A most surprising sight: a man in an expensive-looking suit coming down a ladder propped against the back of the house. Meanwhile, the woman’s voice calling to Arun draws closer.

Upon reaching the ground, the man brushes down his suit, picks up a briefcase and (thankfully) heads the other way towards the front of the house. ‘Coming, darling,’ he yells in English. ‘Just checking if that Birju has been drinking again. Bastard didn’t show up at the airport and has turned off his phone.’

Malti grabs her friend’s arm, rushes towards the ladder, and signs to him what she intends to do. He holds the base and she climbs, phone in her right hand, as though determined to learn — and record — what the well-dressed man (Arun?) had been spying on. But the boy wants to escape. He has an alternative suggestion: Let’s use the ladder to get ourselves over this wall.

Who is Malti working for, is what I want to know. What am I seeing here: a memory or a dream? Is this what Malti was made to pay for, the operation that went horribly wrong? Is Prashant the man upstairs that she and ‘Arun’ want to trap? And who’s the guy with her, a weak link or a friend? And if she was imprisoned for years, where might he be now …

At that moment someone knocks on the door and, framed by the hallway lighting behind him, an older but unmistakable version of the boy with Malti enters her present-day hospital room.