“Mr. Khanna?”
“My husband doesn’t need your money,” she said scornfully. “Your sad-faced friend. I wondered why you sent him. I could tell he was unreliable with just a glance.”
I felt punched in the gut. My legs became unsteady. “Why would you lie?” I cried hoarsely.
“What kind of company are you keeping? You’ve forgotten everything I taught you.” She’d risen to her feet despite my admonition. She held out her hands in a wordless demand to be untied. She was commanding me, just as she always had, from the day we met in her flat to the last time she farmed me out as her bull.
I stood staring at her open-mouthed. I should have known she’d efficiently neutralize my threats. Cornered and defeated, I raised my knife to slash her ropes, but just then, a sharp knock on the front door startled us both.
“Sarika,” a gruff, familiar voice called out. “Open the door. Are you alone?”
For a moment I thought time itself had unwound — a strange, sick sensation.
“Good work, Mukesh,” Sarika said. “Did you alert him before coming?” But there was a false note in her bravado now.
“What is he doing here?” I hissed, as the knocking changed into banging. The room was beginning to spin.
“He must have posted his man outside. Did you think of that when you made your plan?”
The pounding grew insistent. Bibiji groaned. Mr. Khanna was making loud threats that he’d break the front door down, that no barrier could keep Sarika from him. The bolt on the door, though strong, couldn’t hold him out indefinitely.
“What should I do?” I asked, my gut in my throat. I was completely in her hands once again.
We heard the cracking of wood and metal. But instead of panicking, Sarika grew thoughtful. Slowly, her face took on an expression of perverse satisfaction, like those moments when she would examine her love bruises. “Stab me,” she whispered, like an endearment.
I looked at her in fear and disbelief.
“You have to,” she said calmly. “Remember, the ropes won’t convince him.”
“I couldn’t,” I said, trembling like a man with convulsions.
“Do it,” she ordered. “Now! Quick.” And she smiled the most chilling smile I have ever seen. “Bring it here, I’ll help you.”
I ran back to Paharganj. I kept waiting for shouts from behind me, a crowd chasing me down. Instead, people backed away when they saw the blood on my shirt. A foreigner with matted hair, wearing a torn shirt and lungi, said, “Man, are you okay?” but I brushed past him. When I got to Johnny’s, my luggage was lying outside his door. My clothes were there but the money was gone from my suitcase. The lock on the door had been changed. I peered inside through a crack in the courtyard-side window. The room was empty. I pulled out a fresh shirt. My fingers were so rigid, my hands shook so hard, unfastening and fastening buttons took an eternity.
I abandoned my luggage and went to the cemetery. The workers grinned and told me Johnny Sahib had already left on a holiday. I came out in the bright, hot street and wanted to find a place to lay my head. There was so much time till nightfall. I stopped by an open gutter and heaved. Sarika didn’t have to help me in the end; the knife had slipped into her side with effortless satisfaction. “It feels like heaven,” she’d said, her fair face twisted in pain. She had fallen in an awful corkscrew motion, on her knees then her hands. “First-class first,” she’d said, before she closed her eyes. Did she know it felt good to me too? Hell was the look on Mr. Khanna’s face as we passed each other in the living room, my bloody knife in my hand.
I wandered through the alleys and byways of Paharganj for hours. I ventured by New Delhi Station but there were too many police cars. Eventually, it was dark. I knew I had to run but first I needed to rest. I scoped the cemetery perimeter until I found a place I could clamber over. With difficulty I scaled the wall and jumped inside. I found a freshly dug grave and crawled in. The earth was cool as I lay on my back. I stared at the inky sky and waited for dawn’s unforgiving light.
Hostel
by Siddharth Chowdhury
Delhi University, North Campus
The first time I saw Zorawar Singh Shokeen was through the small gap between the doors connecting my room in Shokeen Niwas to the adjoining one. He sat astride a large, naked Punjabi woman in her late thirties who had buttocks that even film star Asha Parekh would be proud of. She was on her knees, at the edge of Jishnu Sharma’s cot. Jishnu da (MA, Previous, English, Ramjas), meanwhile, was in my room looking as usual philosophical and tragic. His left hand was buried in his loose, discolored Tweety Pie Bermuda shorts which he never washed. In fact the shorts were so stiff with profligacy that the story went that once during an argument in the hostel over who was supposed to pay for the Old Monk khamba that Friday night, Jishnu da in anger had taken off his shorts and thrown them in Farid Ashraf’s face. Though Farid managed to turn his head in time, he cut his fingers on the razor-sharp edges of Jishnu da’s shorts. The next day Farid (third-year History Honors, KMC) had to get a tetanus shot.
So right now, with his left hand Jishnu da was “making baingan bharta,” in his own immortal words. Eight or ten boys from the neighboring rooms were clustered in mine, their faces shining with barely repressed lust, the air dank with sweat and Navy Cut smoke. It was 2 o’clock in the afternoon on a hot July day in 1992 and I had just returned to my room after my first day at Zakir Husain College. A week earlier I and my friend Pranjal Sinha had arrived in Delhi from Patna and landed up at Shokeen Niwas. Pranjal had taken admission in Hindu College reading Economics while I got English at Zakir.
“He has taken her once in the chut, then in her mouth, now he is doing her ass,” Pranjal informed me in a cool matter-of-fact way, after taking a long drag from his cigarette. He added as an afterthought, “Jishnu da too is on his third shot.” Then he bowed and beckoned me to the slightly ajar door.
Zorawar Singh was holding onto both of “Madam’s” breasts with their large purplish nipples for balance, and was anally fucking her with much gusto. Her real name was Mrs. Midha and she was a section officer at Delhi University but everybody called her “Madam” because a few weeks back, Jishnu da, along with Farid Ashraf and Ramanuj Ghosh (second-year BA, Pass, Ramjas), was standing outside Shokeen Niwas when Zorawar Singh drove up with Mrs. Midha in his white Gypsy.
Zorawar had stopped the car and asked Jishnu da whether he had gotten admission for one of his candidates in Ramjas College, which he had asked him to follow up on.
“Uncle, you don’t worry. The boy will be taken in through the sports quota after the third list. I have spoken to the teacher in charge. He was being uncooperative at first but I ‘convinced’ him in the end.”
“Very good. Keep following it up though. These Ramjas people are bastards. Remember, this is for the Kaana.”
“Uncle, it looks like it will rain tonight. We are all feeling a bit chilly.” Jishnu smiled ingratiatingly and pointed to Farid and Ramanuj.
“Toh, madam ki le le.” (“Here, screw the madam.”) Zorawar Singh had pointed toward Mrs. Midha, who was looking stonily out of the other window through her white plastic — framed sunglasses. To emphasize his point, Uncle gestured with his fist, moving it back and forth rapidly. Jishnu and the boys didn’t know where to look. Then Zorawar Singh, laughing at their discomfort, had taken out two hundred-rupee notes from his shirt pocket and given them to Jishnu da. “Buy a bottle of Old Monk rum. You know what rum is, don’t you? Regular Use Medicine. It will take care of the chill.”
So from then on, Mrs. Midha was universally known as “Madam” in Shokeen Niwas.