But during this period something else was happening — something as beautiful, cool, and pure as drops of morning dew falling from a leaf.
As Rahul emerged from the classroom into the corridor, someone snuck up from behind and bumped into him. Rahul turned around to look — it was Anjali, with her laugh.
In the library, Rahul was hunched over a desk, taking some notes, when suddenly someone blew into his ear—pffffff! — so intense it sent shivers up his spine. It was Anjali.
Rahul was taking a walk when a cold, pointy thing jabbed him in the neck. He turned around. Anjali was standing there, laughing, holding the closed parasol, the tip pointed at him — en garde! — trying to frighten him.
Back in the library, looking at books in the narrow space between the shelves, someone’s shoulder gave him a little shove. It was Anjali’s.
Rahul was on his way to the canteen with Shailendra George and Shaligaram. Anjali was coming the other way with Chandra, Shuba Mishra, and Sharmishtha. The infamous gang of no-good locals stood just a few feet away, on the side of the road. With them was Lakkhu, the one who’d thrown a rock that day first at Rahul and then at Abha. “Your mother!” Rahul was afraid one of them might start something again. “O hero! If we get ahold of you, we’ll turn you from Rahul Rai into Anupam Kher, not a blade of hair left on your head!” Anjali had peeled off from her group and was coming in toward Rahul, eyes on him. The same smiling eyes transformed into two tiny shining fish, at once swimming in his bloodstream.
As the two groups crossed paths, Anjali suddenly tripped and stumbled to the side. It seemed the heel of her sandal had caught a rock and she’d slipped, but her stumble was quite fake and deliberate; in the middle of it she managed a quick pinch of Rahul’s back, holding it for a moment. An “ouch!” came from Rahul’s mouth. In his ear he heard the word “bee.”
A clever bird had played her own little trick before the cunning eyes of a gang of hunting hawks. She returned to her own group, now laughing at something else.
Oh! You are so brilliant. This is why I love you. I’m just a dumb donkey, but you, madam, one day you can hop on my back and I’ll carry you to the moon. I promise! Have you ever heard a donkey sing?
My heart cries out
From choppy seas
Hear me, love!
Hear me, please!
If Hemant Barua, Kartikeya, or O.P. had been there, they would’ve guessed immediately that “something” had happened. But Rahul was with his two first-year Hindi MA friends. Shaligaram said, “Rahul-ji, you’ve really got a lovely voice, and you sing so well.”
“Oh! Please, it was nothing, it just came out,” Rahul said, blushing.
Anjali was on the lookout these days for any excuse to touch Rahul. And Rahul was taking part in the same plot.
Anjali was coming out of class to go to lunch with the other girls. Rahul stealthily managed to squeeze her pinkie. The first time in the library he gave her ponytail a little tug, the second time he pinched her ear, the third time he lightly placed his hand on her waist, and the fourth time, for a few seconds, her took her hand in his.
This was a new language, which Rahul and Anjali were being exposed to for the first time. Sentences in this language were different, its syntax unique. Each day they slowly learned something new about its particular grammar. The lessons were full of such wonder, eagerness, joy, and an impatience that took their breath away, that each one left them speechless, drained, numb. The experience cloaked their sense of self with a kind of sorcery that made them feel as if in all of creation, they two were alone.
There were words in this language that weren’t articulated with sound. They had no need for an alphabet, or even letters to write. This was the kind of language that functioned by electricity and magnetic waves. Electromagnetic current. It was possible to express anything in this language merely by touching one another. And when they did their bodies became paralyzed, caught in a whirlwind, a whitewater of enchanted energy, like blades of grass blown in the wind, helpless.
That day in the library, for example, in the tiny, narrow space between the bookshelves, surrounded by dank and dusty smells, Rahul took Anjali’s hand in his, which sparked a turbulent electromagnetic storm inside his body and radiated such an eruption of feeling, that, without a word being spoken, Rahul could see how it heated Anjali’s fair-colored face to a hot dirty copper. Her eyes seemed filled with submissiveness, and it seemed she might faint onto the floor. He himself felt that the blood in his veins had abandoned its molten form and changed to vapor or raw energy, and Anjali’s hand in an instant drank him up. His knees were shaking. He’d become void of power, quivering like a weak plant in a violent storm.
Could there really be something to “Reiki,” which Rahul had never believed in? The Japanese therapy of touch, which is said to have to have been brought to Japan from India centuries ago by Buddhist monks. He who loves becomes a Buddhist monk. And whoever he touches is cured of all that ails. Someday I’ll heal you and someday you too can heal me — if you please! Because you too are a Buddhist she-monk. Right?
How strange was that moment, when in less than thirty seconds a butterfly, through a singular act of magic, assumed the form of a parasol, and now the butterfly, casting a spell over the whole world, had brought Rahul’s sense of his own existence under its wing.
And during that time, the greedy, potbellied, gluttonous, rich, lustful, corrupt, depraved, fat man was present still, armed with his marketplace and his power. And even those awful “critters” had smeared blood on every tract of reality with their violence, plunder, immorality, and transgression.
The worrying thing was that a frighteningly large number of “critters” were also present within another language, the language that Rahul, after dropping anthropology, had hitched his star to, and, what’s more, a language they’ve seized control of. Namely, Hindi.
TWENTY-ONE
The night of September the twelfth. Ten thirteen and twenty-three seconds.
Kartikeya Kajle’s voice echoed over the speakers in the rooms in the four boys’ hostels where the core committee members of the SMTF lived. “Hello! Hello! Get ready. Quick. The jeep’s in the gate of C. V. Raman Hostel. Get hold of everything you have! Okay — wait for the next call. Okay. Over and out.”
As fast as they could, Niketan, Praveen, Masood, Madhusudan, Kannan, O.P., Ravi, Dinesh, Imroz, Parvez, Hemant Barua, Dinamani, Ramesh Ataluri, Gulab Kesavani, and the rest of the twenty-five boys from the four hostels armed themselves with hockey sticks, iron rods, knives, dandas, Rampuri knives, switchblades, chains, and homemade pistols. Other students ran back and forth as fast as they could from one end of the hostel to the other to spread the information to the other students. Some scaled to the roof of C. V. Raman Hostel carrying Molotov cocktails, bricks, stones, and hand grenades. The goondas’ jeep was idling below.
D. Gopal Rajulu: Room 112. Naukant Jha: Room 148. These two students, from Andhra Pradesh and Bihar, living in C. V. Raman Hostel, were on the top of the hit list. Rajulu had received a money order for 20,000 rupees and Naukant Jha one for 8,500.
The bald, shrewd, decrepit postman, growing old, had spied again, greedy for commission. But the difference this time was the students had intercepted his information and were ready before the criminals could make their move.
Twenty minutes later, the SMTF swung into action.
Bang, bang, bang!
The door of Room 112 was kicked in and a group of boys barged into Rajulu’s room like a whirlwind. At that very instant, the main circuit breaker was thrown and all four hostels were plunged into darkness.