“Yes, that makes more sense.” He cleared his throat. “Where is that damn boy with the chai? I bet you he’s shitting again.”
“Don’t mind, sir, no need for you to take the trouble. You must have very important work waiting. And you finished here anyhow, much faster than ASP madam.”
“I did?” He looked down at the folder where he’d written no notes. “Yes, I did.”
TWENTY-TWO
“Since we’re here,” Saloni said as they left the station, “can we stop by the salon? I need to get my arms done.” She presented her forearm, where fine roots of hair disturbed the skin.
“Sure.”
Outside the station, a voice gave Geeta pause. Not because it called to her, but because it was familiar. She turned to see Khushi speaking into her mobile phone. With her free hand, she let her sandals fall to the ground. One landed upside down and she toed it upright before stepping into them. Geeta moved toward her in greeting, but a uniformed man reached Khushi first. He shook his head, pointing at her chappals and then at the road. Khushi nodded absently, bent to collect them and walked past Geeta and Saloni.
“Khushiben?”
“Ji?” She hung up. “Namaste.” Now officially out of the station’s ambit, she donned her shoes. Geeta saw she looked weary, the skin beneath her blue-clouded eyes puckered with fatigue.
“What are you doing here?”
“Ay-ya.” Khushi’s sigh was taxed. “There was a mix-up with a body I collected. I cremated him, but turns out he’s Muslim, so obviously I made a mistake. Which they just love to rub in.”
Geeta balked at the thought of the fallout crashing on Khushi’s head instead of Farah’s. “Samir Vora?”
“Ji. If this place had a proper funeral home, I wouldn’t even deal with Muslim last rites, but where else are they gonna go?”
“We know his wife, er, widow. Let’s go back inside and sort this.”
“I’m not allowed inside,” Khushi said. “I was fine with waiting outside, but that damn lady cop was all, ‘Article 15 this, Article 15 that.’ Then the fat cop kicked me out. Why do I need to be in their drama? But forget it, na? It’s sorted now. I just wanted to pay them and be done, but that damn lady cop was all, ‘bribes are offensive to the badge.’ Going on about how I destroyed evidence in a murder investigation. Bah! What murder? The drunk choked on his own vomit. Smelled worse than a dry latrine, and I would know.”
Saloni aimed to lighten the mood: “One honest cop in all of India and she’s in Kohra. What’re the odds?”
Geeta didn’t laugh. “How is it sorted?”
“Oh, the fat cop was happy to take the bribe.” The left corner of Khushi’s mouth twisted up in a deprecating smile. “I guess my money’s not polluted.”
“Do you need a ride back?”
Saloni coughed. “Shit, but I only have a two-wheeler.” A valid point, but Geeta realized she didn’t know how Saloni, a Brahmin, regarded caste.
Khushi wagged her mobile. “My eldest is on his way. He took the scooter today for his tuitions. He goes to school nearby.”
“Why doesn’t he go to the school at home?” Saloni asked.
Khushi shook her head. “He did once, long time back, but the teacher just had him cleaning toilets. I mean, I sent him to school so he doesn’t have to clean toilets. Ay-ya, I should’ve charged the school for the labor, but he was five—didn’t do a great job. Anyway, let it be. This school is much better—he’s studying to be a dissectionist. A lot fancier than ‘corpse collector,’ na?”
Geeta felt Saloni’s incredulity matching her own. This woman had enough money to buy officers, better teachers and a scooter. Khushi must have known their minds because she smiled. “I meant what I said, about my house being bigger than yours, Geetaben. When you do the ‘dirty work’ no one else wants to, you get to charge whatever the hell you want.” She continued, “Don’t get me wrong. If someone is poor, I only charge what they can afford. Everyone deserves last rites. But others…” She shrugged. “Well, I never forget a face. Even when they’re dead, I can recognize someone straightaway. And when pyre time comes for that fat cop’s mother…” Khushi trailed off, simply rubbing two fingers against her thumb in a universal semiotic indicating paise.
Saloni snorted so loudly, Geeta pinched her. “What?” Saloni whined, rubbing her elbow. “She’s funny.” To Khushi she said, “He deserves it. Gouge the pig, I say.”
A scooter pulled up. Khushi’s son’s feet patted the ground as he slowed. “Mom,” he said.
Khushi rolled her eyes at the women. “？‘Mom,’？” she aped, her face distorted. “Before he studied here, it used to be ‘Ma.’？”
“Joys of motherhood, am I right?” Saloni said.
“Yeah. Rewarding.”
“Mom.” Khushi’s son was more embarrassed than impatient, but as Khushi hefted herself onto the pillion, she said: “I’m coming, I’m coming, give your old mother a break. You didn’t exactly arrive in five minutes either, you know.”
They left in a plume of dust. Saloni backed up her husband’s scooter, curving it out into the road. While Geeta mounted as Khushi had, Saloni pulled on long gloves and wound a scarf across the lower half of her face and over her head like a dacoit.
“Ready?” she asked, her voice muffled.
“Ready,” Geeta said into her friend’s ear. They could talk while driving so long as Geeta kept her head close to Saloni’s and they both shouted.
“Did that happen when we were in school? I don’t remember Dalit kids cleaning toilets. I remember Payal, though.”
“Who?” Saloni turned her head so her words weren’t snatched by the wind. “I remember them in class—they always sat in the back. On those gunny bags, though, not at the desks.”
“Shitty.”
“We weren’t as bad as other places, you know, with the beatings and the shit-eating and stuff. They kept to themselves; we kept to ourselves.”
Grit from the road hit Geeta’s eyes and she closed them as they watered. Wind whisked the moisture away. “That’s our best defense? That we’re ‘not that bad’？”
“Listen, I’m Brahmin and I grew up with way less than Khushi’s sons. And my duffer brothers were so proud. They could’ve died of starvation, but at least they’d have died ‘unpolluted Brahmins.’ Never mind that we ate whatever we could get our hands on, meat, too. ‘Unpolluted’ my left tit! Forget caste, Geeta, money is power. And Khushi has it.”
“They kept her outside the police station, shoeless; how is that power?”
Saloni’s staticky groan was aggrieved, as though Geeta was pouring the fault on her head alone. “What can we do? We can’t even get them to update the census data in our town, and you wanna change two thousand years of ‘tradition’？ Obviously, abusing them is wrong. That’s why it’s just easier to, you know, keep quiet, understand and accept it.”