“You advised the brothers to . . . ?”
“Of course. As the village head, it is my job to protect the morals of our village, isn’t it? And that means, first and foremost, protecting the virtue of our women. I advised Govind to go at night with a can of kerosene and teach that fellow a lesson nobody in his community would ever forget.”
Was this detail in the stories Shannon had written about the case? Smita tried to remember. If the man was confessing to her so nonchalantly, surely he had done the same with Shannon? “Did you tell the police this? About your role?”
The man stared at her for a long moment and then let out a loud guffaw. “Arre, the area police chief is my cousin-brother, miss. My mother’s sister’s son. Of course I told him. Gave him the date and time we were planning on doing this. So that they could ignore the phone calls.”
Smita went pale. She cast a quick glance at Mohan, who was standing with his hands thrust deep into the pockets of his jeans. “The police knew?” she asked.
“Yes, of course. We are law-abiding citizens. Not like those dogs.”
“When? When did you give Govind this advice? After Meena informed him she was pregnant?”
“Yes,” Rupal said. “But all of this could’ve been avoided if he’d listened to me earlier. Govind came to me when he found out that she was whoring herself to that Abdul. At that time, I told him to beat Meena and forbid her from leaving the house. That good-for-nothing Arvind is home all day anyway, na? He can watch his sister. I told Govind to take some boys from our village to meet Abdul on his way home from work and give him a good-proper thrashing. Leave him bleeding by the side of the road like the dog that he is. Bas, that would’ve cooled his taste for Hindu flesh. Automatically, he would’ve gone thanda.”
“Thanda?”
“Cold,” Mohan said quietly. “He means, Abdul would’ve given up.”
“Exactly. But that chutiya Arvind gets so drunk that the girl manages to run away while he is sleeping. The younger sister swears that Meena insisted that she help her get to Birwad. Next thing we hear, Meena is married. Never in our history has such a thing happened in our village. Still, Govind decided to do nothing to avenge this insult, the bloody eunuch.”
Rupal removed a paan leaf from a tin can, placed some tobacco and supari inside it, folded it into a triangle, and inserted it into his cheek. Remembering his manners, he offered a leaf to Mohan, who declined. “What else you want to know?” he asked, chewing on the betel leaf, his mouth turning scarlet.
“I’m confused,” Smita said, even while she marveled at the man’s audacity, the nonchalant manner in which he was incriminating himself. “You said the burning was your idea?”
“Hah. After they came to Govind’s house when Meena was with child, he came to see me again. The poor boy was almost mad with shame and worry. Thank God that by then he had managed to get the younger sister married off to that cripple from out of town. Radha was lucky. No boy from our village would’ve married her, despite her beauty. But Govind must also think about making the marriage for his younger brother, no? Tell me, which decent family will allow their daughter to marry a boy who is having a Muslim niece or nephew? So I says to him, the only way to restore his family name is to burn it all down.”
“I see,” Smita said.
But she didn’t. In Mumbai, there were shopping malls and fancy French and sushi restaurants springing up everywhere. The Indian economy was growing at twice the American rate. The entire affect was that of a city and a country on the rise. Coming to Vithalgaon was like going back in time, to life from two centuries ago, a place where the rivers of communal hatred and religious enmity still flowed unabated. What struck her most about Rupal was his matter-of-factness. Not only was he implicating Govind, he was also describing an upside-down world where wrong was right and men like him were unaware of the brazenness of their claims and how convoluted their thinking was. She had seen it in other places, of course, this righteousness that people felt about their beliefs. However, she had usually witnessed this cognitive distortion on a larger scale, sweeping over places like Syria or Sudan. Almost always, behind the religious or ideological rhetoric, lay a strategy for economic gain—land grabs, claims to water and other natural resources. In her reporting, she had typically followed the money. But this manufactured enmity with Abdul seemed to have no financial basis.
A thought struck her, and she sat up, remembering what Mohan had accused Govind of earlier that day. The money. Of course. “Was Govind upset about the lack of income, after Meena left?”