Next day, Rajdeep Singh’s men come round to remind Ajay’s mother what is owed. The goons surround Ajay’s sister, pass lewd comments, suggest what she might do. Ajay watches hidden and mute among the stalks of the neighboring field. There’s a cockroach in the cracked earth beneath his feet. He covers his ears to block the cries and stamps the cockroach into the dust. And then he runs. When he returns two hours later, his sister is sobbing in a corner of the hut and his mother is stoking the fire.
A few hours later, the thekedar—the local contractor—turns up. He offers his condolences and, knowing their parlous state, suggests he pay off their debt in full himself. They can pay him back in one simple, honorable way.
3.
Ajay doesn’t get a say. The next morning before light, he is loaded into the back of a Tempo carrying eight boys he’s never met. It’s an old vehicle with a battered cabin and a greasy cage fitted behind that has a roof open to the stars so its human cargo can see but dare not risk escape. Ajay has nothing to show for himself save his old clothes and a soiled blanket. His mother and sister stand at a distance, then turn and walk away. The engine idles on the dirt track beside the gully. Then the contractor climbs in and the assistant climbs in and they drive from the crawling light along a potholed track toward a black horizon pierced by stars. Ajay sits catatonic among the sullen and shivering boys. A patchwork of blankets barely keeps them warm. They huddle together on the cab side of the cage, facing east, watching their homes recede, waiting for dawn.
They stop at a busy dhaba just before sunrise to piss. A mindless tube light gathers yearning moths. Steam escapes resting truckers’ mouths. In minutes the sky has turned pale and the landscape grows distinct. Vehicles trundle down the highway. Wheat fields stretch in the mist on either side. The contractor’s assistant, a wiry, dark, pockmarked man with a twisted mustache and a long face and narrow eyes, opens the back of the cage. He warns them not to run as he leads them to the trench to piss, and to make certain of this, he stands behind them toying with his knife. The fog sweeps in more heavily, the sun briefly appears as a pale silvery disk, then vanishes. Locked back inside the truck, the boys are given roti and chai as the thekedar and his assistant sit at one of the plastic tables in front and order aloo paratha.
This is the moment.
One of the caged boys, pigeon chested with curled hair, once passive, leaps up and scales the cage, throws himself down. He’s running along the earth before anyone can react, down and running toward the backside of the dhaba, hands reaching out instinctively to grab him, but the boy slips through and leaps over piles of garbage, then over the stinking ditch into the shrouded field. The thekedar’s assistant is quick on his feet, his plastic chair falling as he gives chase—running alongside the toilets, jumping over the ditch himself, pulling his knife. And then both boy and man are gone. The truckers, the dhaba workers, the boys, all watch expectantly in the direction of the escape, peering into the gray expanse, cocking their eyes to hear. Only the thekedar, a man of great experience, sits calmly sipping his chai.
Five minutes pass with no sign.
Normal life resumes.
Then there’s a paralyzing scream, an outrageous howl somewhere in the fog. All the stray dogs begin to bark.
When the assistant comes back panting, alone, his white undershirt is flecked with blood. He spits on the ground and sits without a word.
No one dares meet his eye.
He finishes his chai, eats his paratha.
The moment is seared into Ajay’s brain.
The mist in the fields rises and fades.
They drive all day and the sun grows sharp, burns captive the whole world through its towns with dusty junctions of trucks and vegetable stalls. Some of the boys begin to stir as if waking from drugged sleep, whispering among themselves, trying to shield themselves from the glare of the sun and the dust and wind. Ajay squints and talks with no one; he tries to remember his father’s face, his sister’s face, his mother’s face. He tries to remember the road home. In the afternoon he wakes without realizing he’d fallen asleep and sees a city with wide boulevards and grand buildings and gardens of bright blooming flowers, a world he thinks is a dream.
When he wakes once more, it’s nearly sunset and they are on a narrow road rising into a mountain range, with a tumbling bank of scree at the right and rolling hills behind.
He looks at the eyes of the other boys and finally speaks.
“Where are we?” he says.
“Punjab.”
“Where are we going?”
One nods above. “Up there.”