He nodded.
“Hey, Mohan? If they don’t allow women to sign here, what did Shannon and Nandini do when they stayed here?”
He shrugged. “Shannon’s an American. Different rules, I’m sure. And even then . . . If she’d come with a man, they would’ve asked for his signature.”
She shook her head.
“This is not Mumbai, Smita. It’s a small, isolated place. You saw. Nothing much around.”
“It’s like they’re living fifty years in the past.”
Something flickered in Mohan’s eyes. “Fifty?” he said. “Wait till we go to Birwad. It’s more like two hundred years behind.”
Book Two
Chapter Nine
At night, I see my husband burn.
In my dreams, I smell the gasoline and see the fire climb like a vine over his body. Over and over again, I watch him turn into smoke before my unfortunate eyes, flames leaping from his hair like from the head of the god Agni.
My husband’s name was Abdul. It is a Muslim name meaning “servant.” And all his life that’s what he did, serve someone. Why did Ammi not name her son after a king? Then, maybe Abdul could have been rich and powerful, like Rupal, the chief of my old village. Rupal is a magic man, strong as a bull, with dark powers. People in my village still remember how Rupal once pulled a live snake out of a woman’s mouth and turned it into a bird. With my own eyes, I have seen him walk on hot coals and not burn his feet. No, the burning is reserved for poor people like us.
In the First Information Report, made while Ammi was burying her oldest son and I was still fighting for my life in the hospital, the police wrote Unknown Persons, even though everybody knew who killed Abdul. But I demanded that the police register a fresh report and name my brothers as the suspects. In those dark days, Anjali was the only one who insisted that justice must be served.
Anjali was the one who came to the hospital to give me the news that Abdul was dead. She was the one who ran to get the doctor when I screamed and tried to pull the IV out of my arm. She was the one who raised the money to pay for my three surgeries so that I can now speak and hold a spoon in my melted hand. She was the one who told me she would take my case for free to show the world that I belonged to myself and not to my brothers. And Anjali was the first and last person who said that loving Abdul was not a sin that I should be punished for.
But I will tell you the truth—I was scared. I had never before entered the police chowki. I had never sat across from the big police inspector–sahib, much less looked at his face. The custom in my village says that inferiors must always sit at a level below their superiors—low-caste people must sit below the high caste, the young must always sit below the old, and women must sit below the men. At home, if my brothers rested on the bed, my younger sister, Radha, and I would squat on the floor. It was always thus. But at the police chowki, Anjali insisted that I sit on a chair across from the inspector.
Everyone was against reopening the case. My mother-in-law asked hadn’t I already brought enough misfortune on her head by marrying her son? My Muslim neighbors complained that I was inviting more danger upon our little village. All of them agreed that my Hindu brothers were correct for avenging the dishonor I had brought to my family by marrying Abdul. Even Abdul’s old neighbors and friends, those who loved him, felt he had committed an unnatural act, bringing a Hindu bride into his home. In Birwad, we have a saying: “A mongoose cannot lay down next to a snake.” Thus it is between the Hindu and the Muslim. Besides, my neighbors said, how could I win against my brothers when nature had made it so that no woman can prevail against the might of a man?
Rupal himself sent word that God had visited him and warned that I would be reincarnated one thousand and one times in lesser forms if I went ahead with the complaint against my brothers. That in my next life, I would come back as a lowly worm to be stepped upon by men. This is the Hindu law of reincarnation and karma, he said. If I stayed on this wicked path, I would endlessly repeat the cycles of life, being born as lower and lower life forms. It was my karmic duty to forgive my brothers and repent for my sins. He warned me to not listen to Anjali. She was a creation of the devil, sent to corrupt me.
When Rupal’s messenger told me this, I knew exactly what I must do: Listen to Anjali’s advice. Because had I not been stepped upon by men all my life? Had I not already been treated like a worm? Even if God Himself put His foot on my head, how could He crush me lower than I already was?
Also, there was the little seed growing in my belly. What would I say to my child when she asked me what I had done to honor her father and avenge his death? It was for the sake of my little Abru that I kept going with Anjali to the police chowki and asking that they name my brothers as the killers. And Anjali was very shrewd. She took my story to Shannon, the woman with the red hair, who looked like fire. When the police heard that a foreign white woman was asking questions about their bogus investigations, bas, they began to get nervous.