Kotwal Moinuddin raised the lantern he held in his hand in order to look closely at the face of the woman at the door. Who was she, this woman who had come alone at this hour of the night? Even as he was looking at her, she slid down along the door frame and collapsed on the floor.
Moinuddin lifted her up, laid her down on the bench in the room and sprinkled water on her face.
There was not even a constable in the thana. He had sent everyone away and had been sitting in the same posture alone in his room, his eyes red and swollen from lack of sleep. He had not gone home for days nor eaten a proper meal. He had not gone out in search of Govardhan. Nor had he gone to investigate the affair of the chain of chapattis, he had only sent havildars to look into it. All he had done during this period was attend to the daily routine in the station. Kotwal Moinuddin did not want to give anyone occasion to say he had run away to save his head. When she recovered consciousness, Salma looked at the kotwal and wept. ‘Kotwal babu, save my daughter, my little one! The pandas have kidnapped her, to burn her along with some old man’s body!’
Moinuddin understood at once. There had been so many cases of late. Rebellious Hindus had been registering their protest against the laws the firangis had passed banning sati, while Muslims, not to be outdone, had begun to stone fallen women in their community to death. All of them believed they could register their protest against the white man’s rule by breaking their laws, even if it meant punishing their own women!
‘Don’t worry,’ he consoled her. ‘The foreigners will give up their lives to see that the law is maintained. From the resident downward, they would have gone all out to fulfil their duty. Perhaps they have already rescued her by now.’
No sooner did he say this than the kotwal clicked his tongue. What law was he talking about? Had he forgotten the fate that awaited Govardhan? The fate that might become his?
Moinuddin dismissed all such questions from his mind, returned to his duties and took out the register to record the woman’s complaint.
‘What is the girl’s name?’
‘Mannu.’
‘Her father’s name?’
‘Govardhan.’
The kotwal was devastated. This woman was asking him to find Govardhan’s daughter! Did she know that he had been commissioned to find her husband and have him beheaded? And that if he did not succeed in his task, he himself would be beheaded?
Moinuddin bit his lips, opened the register and wrote the report. Then he took Salma to his quarters, just behind the thana.
He had not been to his quarters in many days. The constable who was in charge of the house was asleep on the veranda. He woke him up and made arrangements for Salma to stay there. Then he lay down on his bed.
He felt as if rain had fallen on the fire that had been burning within him for days. He did not think about the death sentence hanging over his own head and Govardhan’s. All there was in his mind was the image of a small girl whom the pandas wanted to burn alive and her agonized mother. The happiness that had come to him because he had been able to accept another’s pain instead of his own brought him the kind of sleep that had eluded him for days.