* * *
—
She remembers her father. She was seven years old, it was her first time out in their new car, an Ambassador. Her father let her ride in front. She’d never sat up front with him before. They went on a tour of Lutyens’ Delhi. On the way he said something she’s never forgotten: Whatever you do, whatever happens, however much you love dogs, however much you care, never stop or swerve for a stray dog on the road, just drive on through it, there are too many of them, and it’s just not worth the pain. Even if it breaks your heart.
* * *
—
There’s a streak of burned rubber on the road. The tracer red of a brake light. The Mercedes swerves, veers toward the curb, pops up in the night air. The men and women are sleeping just ahead. That image is fixed. Then it lands.
If only Gautam had as much compassion for Sunny as he did for a stray dog. My memory is dark after that. It comes in pieces. I’m outside on the road on my hands and knees screaming into the pavement. I’m covered in someone else’s blood. I’m cradling the girl who is dying. I can see that she is pregnant. I can feel her hand pressed in mine. I still feel it. Sometimes I wake up and think I’m holding it. I wake up sometimes and I think she’s standing by my bed looking down at me, but that’s only my conscience. On the road, I look down and she has died. The baby could still be saved. Sunny is behind me, and he’s looking down on us all. I stand. I stagger away from him. I see Gautam unconscious in his Mercedes. I think he’s dead too. I can keep telling you what I see and feel, but what difference does it make now? And I don’t even feel it myself. It isn’t happening to me, it’s happening to someone else. I tell Sunny to call an ambulance. I try to pull his phone from his pocket. Mine is still in my bag in the car, I must have left it there. He pushes me away. I cry at him. What the fuck are you doing? Call an ambulance. Call an ambulance. Call somebody. Do something. I’m back where I’ve been before. He turns to Ajay instead and orders him to take something from the car, it’s a Polaroid camera, the one I saw in Goa. He takes a photo of Gautam in the car, then he orders Ajay to pull Gautam out. I think they are going to put him on the roadside. But they take him out and carry him between them and place him into the back of the SUV and I think is this really happening, is this how it happens? I get up and stumble after them. Ajay and Sunny face one another in the road. Sunny has taken a bottle of whisky from the back of the SUV. He keeps a bottle there. He guides Ajay over to the Mercedes. They speak. Ajay hands over his gun and takes the whisky in its place. Then he climbs into the Mercedes and starts to drink, he drinks the bottle until it’s done. And when he’s done, Sunny takes the butt of the gun and smashes it into Ajay’s face. When I cry, Ajay and Sunny both look at me. Then Sunny steps toward me. Nothing in his eyes. I am afraid of him. He closes his fist. He raises his hand.
The next thing I knew, I was in a room. A white little room, clean, bright, with a garden outside and little birds singing. It was midmorning and I was in bed, looking at a man who was a stranger but who I know now as Chandra. There was a small TV mounted on the wall, an electric kettle, a bedside table with a phone. A government guesthouse. That’s how it felt. He’s sitting in an armchair. I think we’ve been talking but I don’t know what about, it occurs to me I don’t know where I am, I can’t remember how I got there. I’m wearing pajamas and my face is sore and bruised but otherwise I’m clean. This is what I remember. He had exceptional manners. He was soothing. He was laying it out for me. He was saying: there’s nothing you could have done, and there’s no profit from dwelling on it. It’s done, my dear. Decisions were made in the heat of the moment and none of them were yours and for that you can be grateful. And rest assured, the decisions that were made were in the interests of everyone. I stared at him blank-eyed. I didn’t have a thought in my head. Then I remembered. He must have noticed. He said: it was a bad night for everyone. I must have expressed a desire to go home because he told me I couldn’t go home just yet. Why not? He told me I was in Amritsar. He said I had driven to Amritsar with friends on a whim in the night. We had wanted to see the border at dawn and eat chole kulcha for breakfast. Such is the life of a carefree young Indian. He handed me the phone and warned me not to complicate my parents’ lives, knowing how sick my father had been. I found it surprisingly easy to lie when my mother came on the phone. I didn’t betray a shred of fear or grief. Just the exhaustion of a young girl who drives to Amritsar on a whim. After the call to my parents, he told me to call in sick at work, to keep it brief. I did as I was told. Then he gave me a glass of nimbu pani. I drank it all and it must have been laced with sedatives.