“Why are you crying? Shhhhh. . shhhhhhh. Someone might hear.” Anjali couldn’t understand why Rahul was crying. She kept repeating, “You are a real clown! Johnny Joker. My crazy boy.”
Finally she guessed why Rahul was crying and began to kiss his forehead. “Listen! I really do love you, you know. No one can separate us, I promise. Now please calm down.”
“Please, calm down!” Anjali said more loudly, teasing him, without caring that her voice was a girl’s voice that could carry outside, a voice that had never been heard coming from a room in this hostel.
Rahul became frightened. He kissed Anjali and began to laugh. A laugh on a helpless face covered in tears, anguish, and regret.
That Thursday, until four o’clock in the afternoon, Rahul and Anjali made love two more times with impatience and longing to be united with one another, as if they were two little fish swimming toward one another in a choppy sea. A pure, primal, ancient, eternal, natural impatience.
THIRTY-FOUR
The story after this becomes very brief for the reason that it’s not something that took place once upon a time, long, long ago. The story is, in fact, just a fraction of a larger narrative that is still taking place, even today. It’s a work in progress, a tale that’s under construction, a report of what just happened one second ago in a life very much still being lived.
Anjali came to Rahul’s room three more times over the next month in the same manner: under the radar, clawing her way through the thicket, stumbling over rocky ridges, with a broken sandal, banged-up body, torn clothing, and a sunburned, exhausted-looking face huffing and puffing away. This was the condition of Anjali Joshi, daughter of the cabinet minister, billionaire builder, and Brahmin by caste L. K. Joshi.
Were these two trapped inside a clichéd Bollywood screenplay, waiting for the shoe to drop, like in the formulaic tragedies popular in the ’60s of poor boy — rich girl romance?
During that month, the police came at night and conducted a cordon-and-search operation. Half a dozen rooms were searched. Kartikeya Kajle, Masood, Praveen, Madhusudan, D. Gopal Rajulu, and Akhilesh Ranjan were taken by the police. Luckily, Rahul’s room had not been raided; maybe he’d been spared since Pratap Parihar’s uncle was a police officer.
Two days later, Praveen, Gopal Rajulu, and Madhusudan returned to the hostel. The police had beaten them and let them go, while Kartikeya, Masood, and Akhilesh Ranjan remained under arrest.
The oversized headline on page one of Janvani screamed, “Stockpile of Weapons and Contraband Recovered from Student Hosteclass="underline" Three Arrested.” Praveen reported that first the police, then Lacchu Guru, beat up Kartikeya until he was in sad shape. They broke Masood’s kneecaps. The policed brandished the fake evidence they’d planted; meanwhile, they’d failed to find the pistol that was actually hidden in Pratap’s room.
Madhusudan said that Kartikeya had cried his eyes dry. He’d been preparing to take the civil service exam; now his entire future was ruined. The head of the municipality, Lakkhu Bhaiya, and the state cabinet minister Joshi were behind the whole thing. It was only after the VC had given his blessing that the police entered the university hostel. They were kept in custody, and, not only were they charged with selling narcotics and possession of illegal weapons, but the crimes they were charged with were additionally subject to counterterrorism laws.
The same day, an English-language newspaper published a front-page photo of a young Sikh who had been a victim of police harassment standing in front of the Supreme Court in Delhi. He had poured gasoline over his body and had set fire to himself. In the photograph, both of his arms were raised in the air as the flames engulfed him. There was a small crowd of spectators watching nearby. In the background was the highest court of this country.
A seminar had been organized in the Hindi department during that time. The topic of the first session was “Instances of Mannerism in Contemporary Poetry” and the topic of the second, “The Question of the Autonomy of Literature.” Dr. Jarihar Dwivedi, Dr. Sohan Lal Chaturvedi, Dr. Marudhar Pandey, Professor Ajayab Aggrawal, and K. L. Vajpayee came from Delhi to attend. In addition, some dozen poets arrived in the state capital cities like Lucknow, Patna, and Bhopal. Save one or two, all of the poets’ names ended with caste surnames like Shukla, Tiwari, Pandey, Joshi, “Aal-Waal,” and Sharma.
They were given fare for air-conditioned passage, travel allowance and expense allowance, a bouquet of flowers, and, on top of that, a 7,000-rupee honorarium. The Hindi department, in cooperation with the state ministry for culture, made all the arrangements and ran up a total bill of some 500,000 rupees.
The letter of invitation to the seminar, the lovely program of events, and the participants’ souvenir were all printed by the Janvani printing press.
THIRTY-FIVE
When Anjali visited Room 252 of Tagore hostel for the fourth time, after O.P. had padlocked the room until four o’clock and left singing in his special camel-like style, as Rahul took Anjali’s hand into his, and their fingers became entangled, until both of their bodies were enveloped by an electromagnetic storm, or swept up in a twister, or tossed by big waves in an unsettled sea in which they’d shed their clothing, and as they were beginning to swim like two tiny fish crashing into one another in an attempt to pierce one another through and through, just then. .
. . there was a knocking noise. Anjali and Rajul froze and looked up.
In the ventilation space above the door were two faces. One of the faces belonged to hostel warden Chandramani Upadhyay’s servant, and the other to Gopal Dwivedi. It was the same Gopal Dwivedi who had spoken with Acharya S. N. Mishra and secured Rahul’s admission to the Hindi department. “Esteemed brother,” he had called him. Rahul shuddered. These were the very eyes underneath which was the nose that sheltered the infamous black moth of a moustache made notorious during the 1930s and ’40s. It was frightening, like an evil omen.
The two covered themselves with the bedsheet.
The faces vanished from the ventilation space.
The worst of it was nothing could be done: the door was padlocked from the outside. O.P. had locked it, and wouldn’t be back until four o’clock.
Sometime around two-thirty the sound of footsteps was heard somewhere outside; it was the sound of feet marching closer, until they stopped in front of the door. The key turned in the lock; it snapped open; the sound of the latch handle squeaking. The door opened.
The six-foot-three ostrich stood outside; his face was drained of color. His heron-like neck was totally rigid with fear. His lips were quivering. Five others were with him: warden Dr. Chandramani Upadhyay, Anjali’s brother D. K. Joshi, and three unknown individuals — massive, flat-faced characters.
“Come.” Anjali’s brother flatly issued this directive in a voice like cold iron.
Anjali grabbed her bag from the table and quietly exited. Rahul stood in the middle of the room.
The others escorted Anjali away. Her brother D. K. Joshi and O.P. remained standing in the doorway. Looking at Rahul with eyes at once cold and penetrating to his very core, the former said: “I don’t want to ‘create’ a ‘scene.’ This is a question of honor. But you’d better think twice before making a move. Keep your mouth shut. If you try to do anything nasty, you’ll end up as a corpse in the city hospital waiting for a postmortem in the same place as that little monkey motherfucker Sapam.”