NOBODY LIGHTS A CANDLE
Anjali Deshpande
11
It wasn’t jhilak milak or sparkling, that Jhilmil colony. Narrow lanes, overflowing sewage drains. Large potholes competed with open manholes as risk factors. Just a few metres from main roads the city has enclaves like neglected small towns thought Adhirath. Most of the populace lives in such areas where the rains bring cholera, where the organisms that cause epidemics find nutrition and keep learning and experimenting with the principles of live and let live. This is the only example of tolerance, the principle of live and let live is just a useless saying among humans.
A constable could have been sent. He could have been asked to report to the police station. But Nitesh wanted to make a trip to Jhilmil colony.
“That is where Dalchand lives, doesn’t he? Let us meet him,” he had said to Adhirath. Well, he should have by now gone back to his police station. At night he could have asked the man to come to the thana and questioned him at leisure. Those they wanted to question only cursorily had been met.
“Everyone speaks only when kicked around, but there are people you can’t kick, it boomerangs, You can break your own legs,” Adhirath used to say. That is why cases in which the poor are suspects are cracked so easily. Who can endure the interrogation techniques of the police and keep denying involvement in a crime? You raise a hand and the confession is out the next minute.
“The bloody courts have spoiled it all. Had it been left to the police alone so many crimes would have been controlled by now, isn’t it so?” asked Nitesh. “Should we go to Dalchand’s first?”
Adhirath felt annoyed. He did not want to meet Dalchand. Everyone was bent upon reminding him of the one thing he wanted to forget. At home and outside too.
“No use, what can he do?” Adhirath said with some asperity.
“Yaar, you put the noose around your neck for him. He will do something. Even if he gets his lawyer to talk to us it will be something. Now the enquiry will be held soon.”
“In the morning you said you had no news about it, you keep changing your account,” Adhirath said. His anger distended the features of his tense face and climbed onto his voice.
“That is true, I have no news but it has been over a year. How long can it be postponed?”
Adhirath kept quiet. The steering wheel of the jeep was in Nitesh’s hands. Even Pushpa has been saying the same thing, go talk to the guy for whom you risked your job. It was not as if Adhirath had not spoken to him. That very day Dalchand had come to him and remarked, “What have you done Janab.”
Truly, what had he done? He was sitting at home, he should have continued to remain there. Why did he rush back to help a subordinate? He was a responsible individual. It should have been obvious that he would have defended himself. Or else he would have paid for his actions. Adhirath’s head used to begin spinning whenever he thought that he would have pay for Dalchand’s actions. What a system! Nobody stands up for you. Pushpa is right, the police may be a huge institution but everyone inside it is alone and even among them ‘people like us’ are definitely are alone. Nobody will defend us. Nobody will promote us on schedule. Nobody will give us a good posting. And if you do find something good in the gamble everyone will try to pull you down.
Dalchand’s house was right in front of them but they had to find parking space first and could have to park some two kms away. After taking three rounds of the market Nitesh edged the front wheels of the Gypsy on two Kota stones covering a drain and thus precariously parking his jeep he got down cursing the place loudly. All around were small kiosks selling plastic flowers, and children’s party frocks made of nylon and netting. As they walked up the lane a paranda caressed Nitesh’s face. It was draped on a rope slung across two ends of the kiosk. Shoving it away Nitesh stopped in his tracks and stared at this length of black threads ending in bright tassels that young women wove in their plaits to make them look longer and more luscious with naughty tassels at the bottom to fling around while flirting with men.
“Yaar, look, they still have such things,” he said truly surprised.
“I have also seen it after years, had completely forgotten there was such a thing !”
Dalchand was at home. He was lying on a cot in a baniyan and lungi with a remote in one hand. Nowadays, no man who is home does anything but watch TV. He leapt to his feet when he saw the two enter and grabbing a shirt hanging on a nail from behind the door put it on and hastily muttering a Namaste went back to sit on the cot. By the time his wife got them tea Dalchand was at ease.
“Only yesterday, janaab, yesterday I had a hearing. Till now there have been eight,” he said. He handed the cups of tea to them. “What can I say Sir, I feel terrible. Till yesterday I used to take cirminals to court and today I stand in their place. They call out my name, I go in, mark my attendance and come back. Nothing else has happened till now. Only attendance. Appearance. The lawyer says it is good. The more time it takes for the trial to begin the greater the chance that the memory of the witnesses will weaken. What do you say, janab, do you think I will be acquitted? Nobody from the department has even come to enquire about it or find out if I am alive or dead.”
The financial condition of Dalchand seemed dire. “Mrs has joined as an ayah in a school, somehow we are making do,” Dalchand said when he saw them scan the room with open curiosity. Both of them were taken aback and lowered their eyes. On top of it he had to pay the lawyer’s fees and shoulder the other expenses in court. Has the spine of his wife too grown stiff with arrogance, wondered Adhirath and immediately kicked himself for thinking such thoughts.
“Tell me something janab, I rescued the whole area from that goon. Was it a crime?”
“Look, Dalchand, there is a system in place. By the way, why did you do it?”Nitesh asked. “Tell us the truth. What is there to hide from friends.”
“I lost my head, what else,” said Dalchand but his eyes were glued to the flooring.
They knew, both of them, that it was not so simple. It did not happen out of the blue, whatever happened that day. Dalchand still remembers that day. It was just such a day. It was a few days after Holi. The sun blazed. When even the shadow huddles around the feet. That day it happened in a blind alley. Who knows why such lanes are called blind alleys in which thousands of eyes are glued to even the cracks in the walls of buildings raised on weak foundations on both sides of the lanes to watch everything? How the windows had closed almost immediately after the shots rang out. Windows with soiled and torn curtains, with newspapers rustling over the panes, windows with old rotting wooden planks for panes, all sorts of windows shut one by one. This was proof of the presence of all those eyes that had seen everything and had pushed the tongue behind their teeth and clenched them. The same eyes that used to see everything earlier, used to tremble at the idea of speaking up and had practiced the skill of keeping their lips sealed. Dalchand has not forgotten. Now he depends on the mercy of those people. There is no need to tell anyone anything. The lawyer has told him to not talk to anyone, not tell anyone anything.
“You know…if we can be witnesses and of any help, let us know,” Adhirath said. Nitesh had truly got him into a nice mess now.
“You do know that there is an enquiry pending against him,” Nitesh said pointing to Adhir.
“Hasn’t happened till now? Who knows the delay may do you good,” said Dalchand.
“Listen Dalchand they will ask you also,” Adhir said. “If you can only side with me yaar…that is all we had come to say.”
Dalchand remained silent. There are very few who will come rushing to the rescue of a subordinate. So long as he had worked with Adhirath he had found him quite decent. Well he could not bring himself to respect the softness of Adhirath’s heart, truly, like everybody in the thana said, the man had little manhood in him, but he had a little sympathy for him. The man was not bad, only that he was not suited to the force.
“Will have to ask the lawyer,” said Dalchand.
“Ask,” said Nitesh promptly, “Here take my phone and ask.”
Dalchand said that he would not talk on the phone.
“So let us go to meet him,” Nitesh said. “Listen yaar, we all belong to the same comoonity. We have to stand by each other. He also did what he did with the same intention, to help one’s own. Here, give me the number, I will call the lawyer.”
Adhirath was moved to tears. He suddenly felt light. How lucky that he had gone to meet Nitesh. But Dalchand hesitated a little. He even said that the lawyer may not be in his office.
“The court must have closed by now,” Nitesh said.
“You know, court closes only when the judge wants it to,” said Dalchand trying to get rid of them.
But the mobile phone of Nitesh did not return to his pocket, it kept waving before his eyes like a challenge to do something for the officer who had rushed to his help. At last Dalchand opened a diary and read out a number.
The lawyer turned out to be sitting in his office. “I had told you, remember, Sir, about the officer who had tried to help me, had I not? They are here to meet me. They want to meet you,” Dalchand said to the lawyer.
The lawyer asked them to come ‘at this time’ three days later.
email: anjalides@gmail.com
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