He’s killed eighteen, so they say.
Sikandar enters a jealous rage.
“Get out,” he yells at them all. “Get out.”
Khushboo is still twirling, laughing.
But when Sikandar starts the beating, it is Prem who screams. Prem, as the gang members flee, being punched in the stomach, kicked in the ribs. Prem grabs, pushes, begs for his life. Deranged Sikandar yells how she’s always the same, she always cheats on him whatever he does. He starts to pummel Prem in the face. “I’ll kill you,” he says. The blood spurts from his broken nose. It’s up to Ajay to intervene. He lifts a dumbbell from the floor and cracks it into the back of Sikandar’s skull.
* * *
—
You’ve killed him.
There is silence, save the broken TV still blasting the music out. Sikandar sprawled above shards of glass. Ajay tosses the dumbbell to the floor.
You’ve killed him.
Bends down to look at him. No.
He’s still alive.
He’s breathing.
He’ll wake in the morning with a sore head.
He fell when he was drunk.
That’s all there is to say.
Ajay drags Sikandar to his mattress, rolls him onto it. Puts a blanket over him, places an empty bottle of whisky in his hand. Pauses a second. A guard passes by. Ajay looks up. “He broke the TV. He passed out drunk. He’s sleeping it off.”
The guard points to Prem, on the floor. “And this one?”
“I’ll clean him up.”
* * *
—
“Who are you?”
Prem is barely conscious. Ajay washes the blood from his face.
“Put your arms round me.”
Ajay prepares the bottleneck.
Gives Prem a hit, though it stings his busted ribs to inhale.
“Hold me,” Prem says.
Ajay puts him on the mattress.
Gives him another hit.
“Hold me,” Prem says again.
* * *
—
He holds him for hours. And in the dark he speaks. “I’m from a village,” Ajay says. “In Eastern UP. I am Dalit. My family were abused. My father was killed by a big man. I was taken to the mountains and sold. I worked on a farm. I was told to say I am Kshatriya.”
He sees himself.
He’s lying with his matchboxes and his wind-up duck toy.
Trying to remember his mother’s face.
Daddy is upstairs, stoking the fire.
He has to make people happy to survive.
* * *
—
“I ran away when I was fourteen,” Prem says as if in a dream. He picks out the words so slowly. “I grew up outside Kanpur. I had a sister and a mother, I loved my mother so much, but she died. My father married again. I cried all the time. His new wife hated me. She caught me sleeping with my mother’s old clothes. I’d kept some hidden when that woman threw everything away. She beat me so hard. I ran to Delhi. I worked in a sweet shop. I made jalebi. I had good hands. But the owner forced me to do things for him. He said if I refused he’d tell the police I was a thief and they’d lock me away. I ran away. I slept on the street, at the train station. I found other jobs. There was always somewhere to work. But there was always someone trying to take something from me.”
* * *
—
“The day I came to Delhi,” Ajay says, “I was beaten by a gang of men. They stole everything from me.”
He falls silent.
“They didn’t steal everything,” Prem says.
Silence.
“I had one place to go. A place I’d been promised work.”
“And?”
“I went.”
“And then?”
“I served.”
* * *
—
To obey. To serve. To be rewarded with protection, purpose, even love in the end. “I’ll take care of you,” Sunny said. It could have been so simple. There could have been a world in which these words rang true, provided succor, gave him sustenance, something to believe. A world where there was only duty, where he hadn’t scratched that itch to find home. How simple it would have been. Loyalty, unquestioned. A desire to please. Sunny would have said, “You’ll take the blame. I’ll take care of you.” And Ajay would have said, “yes, yes, yes.”
* * *
—
But he had to scratch that itch that was always there. What had it been? Watching Neda and Sunny in love? He remembers wading alone into the ocean in Goa, before he was sent away. How many times had he been ready to break? How could he have gone on so long?
* * *
—
Who are you?
The words chase round his head.