Chain of Custody Page 2

  ‘Satpada,’ he said. ‘And you?’

  ‘Puri,’ I said. That’s my stock answer to anyone from Odisha. I could tell them the truth, that I was from Bolangir, but I don’t remember anything about that part of my life. My family, home, or the place.

  And if someone probed about Puri, I had another answer ready. My house was in one of the lanes by the temple. I imagined the lane. A dirty, smelly narrow strip of land crowded with people and animals, rickshaws and vendors. The thekedar said that was how it was. But no one ever asked me.

  ‘I have been to Lake Chilka,’ I said. It was the truth.

  Once, the thekedar and I drove through the villages of southern Odisha. I don’t know what caught my breath: the landscape of water beds everywhere or the poverty that lined every face and filled every home.

  I touched the thekedar’s elbow then and asked, ‘What happened here? Why are they so poor?’

  He shrugged. ‘Who knows? Floods, cyclones, the mining industry, no education, no leftist party … take your pick!’ And then he smiled wolfishly. ‘Good for us though!’

  I smiled back. It was reassuring to know the well would never run dry.

  I saw a gleam in the boy’s eye. Was it the relief of meeting someone who knew his village? ‘Do you have tickets?’ I asked.

  The boy’s brow furrowed again. But he spoke firmly. ‘Yes, yes.’ He was lying. How easily they gave themselves away. That little hesitation made all the difference.

  ‘Well then, that’s fine. The ticket checker will come in at the next station and the ticketless rats as he calls them will be thrown out onto the platform where the railway police will drag them to jail. A black hole filled with real rats and thrashings thrice a day instead of food. But you don’t have to worry. Since you have your tickets, just stay tight and watch the fun!’ I winked at him.

  I held on to the metal railing and let my face rest against the crook of my arm. I counted under my breath. I needed the security that numbers brought into my life. It probably began at the kiln with the making of bricks. If we made a thousand bricks a day, we were paid eighty rupees. Twenty were mine. And so I learnt to count as we moulded bricks.

  At the count of seven, I heard his low voice. ‘Dada.’

  I shifted my gaze to meet his. ‘Yes,’ I said slowly. My voice took on the sonorous tone of the big brother, for he had anointed me thus.

  ‘We don’t have tickets. What do we do?’

  I frowned. ‘That’s a problem and …’

  Before I could finish, he blurted out, ‘Please help us.’

  I scratched my head thoughtfully. ‘Three of my friends were to have joined me. But their boss didn’t let them travel. So we’ll just pretend that you three are the friends I bought the tickets for.’

  I smiled at them. My best Krishna smile that the thekedar said could light a street, melt ice and open locks. These tribal boys from the middle of nowhere wouldn’t be able to resist it. The tightness around the boys’ mouths dissolved. They would go with me to the end of the world, I knew.

  ‘There is something else you must be prepared for,’ I told them. Their eyes widened.

  I explained what lay ahead. The thekedar had taught me to do so. ‘You are Krishna. In the Mahabharata, he is the charioteer. It’s your dharma to lead and guide so the others know what to expect.’ It made sense then. It made sense now. The thekedar said I had an ancient soul.

  ‘How ancient?’ I asked.

  ‘At least five thousand years old.’ He smiled.

  He said I knew instinctively what others spent a whole lifetime trying to understand.

  ‘You can call me dada, but for all other purposes, we have a thekedar we owe everything to.’

  The boys stared uncomprehendingly. They didn’t know the word and I couldn’t remember the exact equivalent in Odiya for contractor. ‘Jamadar,’ I said suddenly. ‘He is our boss … You must do as I say. I will be able to help only if I have your faith and obedience.’ My voice was firm. The boys nodded. ‘Start with your names,’ I told them. ‘And the names of your parents. Actually, it doesn’t matter. The names of your parents will be what I tell you, and don’t you forget a word of what I am going to tell you now.’

  They made room for me and I huddled with them. Most of the other travellers were asleep, lulled by the rocking of the train and their fatigue. But my boys were wide awake.

  They listened.

  ‘Bangalore is not the city you think it is …’ I began. I saw the fear in their eyes, in their clenched fists, in the tautness of their bodies. Fear was good. Fear allowed me to take control. Fear allowed me to rule.

  Rekha couldn’t decide what she was going to tell her parents. No parent believed in the myth of ‘combined study’ any more. And it was not just her parents she needed to convince. Suraj, her brother, would be just as difficult. ‘Wat do I say @ home?’ she texted Sid.

  ‘Try cmbnd study!’ The phone lit up. Rekha glanced at it as she ran a kohl pencil along the edge of her upper eyelid.

  On their first date, Sid had suggested that she keep her phone on silent mode at home. ‘You don’t want your folks wondering who is texting you all the time,’ he had said, turning to look at her with a slow embarrassed grin.

  She had felt herself melt into him. How could anyone be so considerate? She had marvelled at it. He had placed his hand on the small of her back when they crossed the road. He had offered her his bandana to wrap around her neck when they set out on his bike. He had adjusted the rearview mirror so he could look at her as they spoke. He was hers, hers alone. Like she was his, his alone.

  ‘De won’t buy it.’ Her fingers raced over the touchscreen.

  Her eyes sparkled seeing the reply. ‘Gender studies sem @ NLS.’

  That would work. The National Law School was some distance away. She would say she was sleeping over at Priya’s and slip away with Sid for a long cosy date. Priya would understand and her parents wouldn’t mind either, as long as Sid dropped her back by about eleven. And the next morning, if Suraj picked her up from Priya’s house, nobody would suspect a thing. She smiled at the thought.

  ‘Why are you smiling at the wall?’ Suraj said from the doorway.

  ‘Su, I need a favour. I need to go for a seminar at NLS tomorrow,’ she said on a whim.

  ‘Who are you going with?’

  ‘Priya, a few of my classmates and some seniors.’

  ‘So what’s the problem?’ he asked, turning to leave.

  ‘Wait, Su, it’s in the evening, so I’ll need to stay back at Priya’s. But I’m not sure if the parents will agree. Will you persuade them?’

  Suraj gave her a long look. ‘You are not involved with some idiot, are you?’

  Rekha made a face. ‘Do you want to speak to Priya?’ She tossed a question back, holding her phone out to him.

  Suraj backed off as she had known he would. Suraj had a crush on Priya and the thought of speaking to her was as daunting a prospect as, say, piercing his ear. He was a wonderful brother but a boring one. Not like her Sid, she thought. For a while, she had had a crush on Suraj’s friend Roshan. But Sid had soon cured her of that.

  She pulled on a pair of black leggings and a long tunic-like green kurta with white paisleys, and went looking for her mother, who was counting a stack of rotis on a plate. ‘Are you ready to eat?’ her mother asked.

  Rekha nodded. ‘Amma, I have a seminar tomorrow evening.’

  Her mother frowned. She didn’t like the sound of it.

  ‘It’s at NLS. I was wondering if I could stay at Priya’s after the seminar. It would be better than coming back late.’

  Her mother shook her head. ‘I don’t know if your father will agree …’

  ‘But it’s important I go,’ Rekha said as she took a plate and helped herself to a roti. She wasn’t hungry but her mother wouldn’t let her go to college on an empty stomach.

  ‘Is that all?’ her mother demanded. ‘Shall I pack you a lunchbox?’

  Rekha shook her head. ‘I�
�ll be home soon.’

  In the end, it was Suraj who settled it for her. He told their parents that he would pick her up at 6.30 the morning after and, besides, Priya had been Rekha’s friend since Class VI.

  Her mother eyed her clothes. ‘I like this top,’ she said. ‘It’s smart and decent. Some of the clothes these young girls wear make me want to grab a bedsheet and swaddle them in it.’

  Rekha hid a smile. In her bag was a little red top with a deep neckline and a cropped waist. Once she stepped out of the college gates, Sid would take her to a mall and she would change there.

  Sid had said that was part of the game: ‘You just look sexy and good enough to eat. These guys can’t get it up, so you don’t have to worry. And you are going to get paid serious bucks just to chit-chat. C’mon, Rex, no harm done. Would I ask you to if I thought it involved any touchy-feely? You know how possessive I am.’

  She had snuggled deeper into his side and said, ‘Mmm.’ They had been in a multiplex. But watching the movie was mostly about canoodling under a dupatta while his hands played with her breasts and he coaxed her to touch his erection.

  Sid and she would be together till about 7.00 p.m. Then three hours of chit-chat with the client, who had a late flight to catch and nothing to do between seven and ten. Sid had promised to sit somewhere in the lounge or restaurant to keep an eye on her and make sure she was safe.

  Rekha ate her roti quietly. Was she making a mistake? A cloud of yellow butterflies fluttered their wings in the pit of her belly, which suddenly felt hollow.

  Moina stared at the ceiling and thought of the sky that lay beyond it. She didn’t know what was above – the sky or another floor. But she chose to imagine a vast blue sky, for only that would allow her to believe that one day this would end. The alternative, an eternity condemned to this hell with no hope of escape, would make her scream and pound her fists and kick her client’s shins. The guards wouldn’t like that. And their punishment went beyond a mere thrashing. So she lay there, seeing in her mind a sky in which a sun blazed. She had forgotten what the sun looked like. Or the clouds. Or the trees. Or the feel of a breeze.

  The client was drunk. That was all she could smell. The stale smell of alcohol and his foetid breath; a body drying from within. It cut through the all-pervasive odour that hung around her, above her and wafted from her – sex, sweat, filth and hopelessness.

  When had she last had a bath? She couldn’t remember. Was it three days or five? They gave her a small bucket of water to clean herself with. It was left in the corner of the cubicle. There was also the perfume spray she was asked to douse herself with. And a tin of talc. ‘The clients don’t care what your face looks like when they fuck you. But each one comes here thinking he is having you first … so don’t let them smell a man on you,’ the big guard Daulat Ali said. He spoke some Bengali, and so it was he who told her what she must and mustn’t do.

  Client. Her eyes widened. Five men had fucked her one after the other the first day in the trade. Who or what was a client?

  ‘What?’ he asked, seeing her look puzzled.

  ‘Gaard, who is a client?’ Moina asked.

  ‘Mokkel,’ he said, using the Bengali word. ‘All the men who fuck you. It doesn’t matter who he is. Black or fair, tall or short, fat or thin … they are all clients and you address them if you must as bava.’

  ‘Bava?’

  ‘Lover, husband, man, I don’t know what … does it matter?’ Daulat Ali snarled at her, reaching across and slapping her hard so she fell against the wall. End of conversation.

  Moina had huddled in her cubicle, too afraid to speak. What did it matter, as the guard had said. She would call them whatever she was asked to. Bava. Shah Rukh Khan. Sachin Tendulkar.

  Daulat Ali and two other guards she had never seen again had dealt with her in those first days when she had been brought in. They had starved her, beaten her and tortured her in so many ways that she would have done anything to be left alone. The solution was laid out in front of her. She would have to become a khanki. A slut. A whore.

  The memory of those horrific days made her freeze. On top of her, the client felt the muscles clench around him. He grunted as he collapsed on her, flooding her with a wetness that she had stopped sensing except as a stickiness in the insides of her thighs.

  The client rose, fumbled with his clothes and left. She lay there on her back for a while, cradling her head on an arm. With the other she reached for a rag that was beneath the bed and wiped herself dry. Then she turned on her side and curled into a ball. She sucked on her thumb slowly. Ma, she said. Ma, where are you?

  There was a scuffling sound outside the plywood partition that was hers. Another client was on the way. A scream grew within her. Most days, she had as many as seven or eight. On Saturdays the number would go up and on festive days she stopped counting.

  Daulat Ali pulled aside the cloth that served as a curtain.

  ‘What time is it?’ she asked.

  He frowned. ‘Why? Won’t you fuck if it’s two in the afernoon?’

  There was a knock on the partition. In five minutes a man would appear. The smaller of the guards, Muniraju, was a local man. He spoke some Hindi and wouldn’t meet her eye. It was he who kept the ledger. A long notebook in which he meticulously kept accounts. The clients’ names, the time spent and the amount received.

  Once, just once, on the second day, when Moina still had some fight left in her, she had padded her way to the open space beyond the four plywood partitions, all empty apart from hers, and fumbled at the ledger. The script was beyond her comprehension but she could read the numbers. She had been fucked by seven men until then and each fuck cost a thousand rupees. On top of each page was a squiggle. She recognized it as something she had seen outside temples in Faridpur.

  Daulat Ali had slapped her hard for it and allowed her no food. ‘That’s our thekedar’s book of accounts. How dare you touch it?’ He had dragged her by her hair to her little hole and hurled her into it. Then he had taken his belt to her. ‘You will not step outside this room unless I tell you that you can,’ he had said, slashing her skin with the belt, making sure the buckle left its mark. Later he gave her some ointment to put on the welts.

  She knew from the sounds that two more girls had arrived. Then she heard a low husky voice. That must be the thekedar, she realized from the note of deference in Daulat Ali’s voice. Then two more male voices she didn’t recognize.

  The second knock. That was Muniraju telling her to get ready. A client was here.

  Her mouth was stale and her gudh was painful and sore. Until she got here, she had not once thought about her vagina. But now it was all she could think about. The soreness, the spasms of pain, the violation of her insides. She sat up and hooked the clasp of the bra at her back. Then she went to the bucket on the floor and squatted. She cupped some water in her palm and washed herself. The water felt cold and soothed the stinging ache. She pulled the ends of the lehenga down to her ankles and adjusted her blouse. She reached for the deodorant and sprayed herself again.

  Did she have time for a pee? It was excruciatingly painful each time she needed to go, and her body would clench in protest. Only when she could coax her body to relax did the urine trickle out, and then each second felt as if a million razor blades had slashed the passage through which it flowed. All of this took time, and clients couldn’t be kept waiting.

  The phone rang almost as soon as the tea-stall owner, Shastri, handed it over to the middle-aged man who had come for it. It was a little past four in the afternoon.

  One of Shastri’s usual customers had come in, accompanied by another man, an hour ago. They were both taking the bus to Tumkur, the man had said, as Shastri offered them plastic cups of tea.

  The other man had kept looking for someone, his eyes scanning the crowds at the Majestic bus stand.

  ‘Any problem, sir?’ Shastri had asked.

  ‘My brother-in-law was supposed to meet me here,’ the man said with a worried e
xpression. ‘Can you do me a favour?’

  ‘What?’ Shastri stiffened, a little wary of what might come next.

  ‘Nothing for you to look so worried about.’ His customer laughed. ‘I’ll text my brother-in-law to come here. You just need to give this to him,’ he said, proffering a small packet.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘It’s a phone. I can show it to you,’ the man said, opening the plastic wrapper.

  ‘No, no, it’s all right,’ he said. ‘It’s just that one has to be careful these days.’

  The man nodded. He slipped a fifty-rupee note into Shastri’s hand. ‘My brother-in-law’s name is Shankar. And my name is Ramesh. He’ll refer to my name so you know it’s him.’

  Shastri smiled. The tea had cost eight rupees. Fifty rupees for handing over a phone was a windfall! ‘Sure. Don’t worry!’ he called out as the two men left.

  The brother-in-law had taken an hour to get there. ‘Traffic jam,’ he said as he asked for the phone. ‘And give me a cup of tea,’ he added.

  Shastri handed over the phone and was pouring out the tea when the phone began to ring.

  ‘Yes,’ the man called Shankar said into the phone.

  Shastri pretended to be busy even as he listened.

  ‘My client is a very important man,’ Shankar said. ‘So we are looking for someone very special too. Good … Seven in the evening … What’s your name again? Siddharth? I’ll text you the name of the hotel. It’s a little boutique hotel near the airport. Just Google it.’

  Shastri couldn’t believe his luck when the man finished his call and left a fifty-rupee note on the table. He watched the man type something into the phone. He pretended to not see him open the back of the phone and remove the sim card within. He looked away pointedly and walked to the entrance of his little booth. He was quite sure that some strange nefarious deal had been transacted in the past few minutes. And yet it had all seemed quite innocuous.

  He saw the man snap the sim card and drop it as he walked away.