My Name Is Radha

Mozel

For the first time in four years, Trilochan was looking up at the night sky, and only because anxiety was gnawing at his heart. He had gone up to the terrace at Advani Chambers to clear his mind in the fresh air.

The cloudless sky stretched out like a sprawling canopy over the whole of Bombay. The city lights, dotting the landscape as far as Trilochan could see, appeared like so many fallen stars caught in a maze of tall buildings, glimmering like fireflies in the darkness.

It was an entirely novel experience for him to be out under the open sky at night. He had an overwhelming feeling that he’d been cooped up inside his flat for the last four years, and deprived of one of nature’s great bounties. It must have been around three in the morning. A light, cool breeze was blowing around him, unlike the usual mechanical breeze of the electric fan, which always felt uncomfortably thick and heavy. When he woke up in the morning it was never without the feeling that his body had been thrashed all night long. Now, as every fibre of his being joyously soaked in the fresh morning air, he felt delightfully revived. He had climbed up to the terrace in a feverishly agitated state, but within half an hour it had subsided enough for him to think clearly.

Kirpal Kaur and her entire family lived in a mohalla teeming with Muslim fanatics. Several houses had been torched and many lives lost already. He might have brought them out to safety, but a curfew was on and there was no telling how long it would last — forty-eight hours perhaps. There were Muslims of the awfully dangerous kind everywhere. And to make matters worse, news of Sikhs making short work of Muslims and subjecting them to all manner of atrocities were filtering in from the Punjab. Trilochan felt totally helpless. Any Muslim hand could easily grab Kirpal Kaur’s arm and send her to her death.

Kirpal’s mother was blind and her father disabled. She did have a brother, but Niranjan had been living in the Devlali area for some time now, supervising a construction contract he had recently taken on.

Trilochan found Niranjan’s attitude thoroughly annoying. He read the newspaper regularly and had warned Niranjan a week or so ago about the speed and ferocity with which riots were erupting everywhere. He’d told him quite plainly, ‘Forget about the contract for now. These are treacherous times. And even if you stay with your family, it would still be better if you brought them over to my house. I know it isn’t large enough, but in these days of such uncertainty. . well, we’ll manage somehow.’

But would Niranjan listen! He just stroked his bushy moustache and smiled. ‘Yaar, you’re worrying your head over nothing. Riots. . I’ve seen many such riots here. This is Bombay, not any old place like Amritsar or Lahore. How long since you moved here? Four years, right? Well, I’ve been living here for twelve.’

God knows what Niranjan took Bombay for. Probably a city where, even if riots did break out, they would die down on their own, as if it possessed some magical power to quell them, or was perhaps a fairy-tale castle impervious to calamity. But in the fresh morning air Trilochan could see clearly that the mohalla wasn’t quite as safe as all that. In fact, he wouldn’t be the least bit surprised if he read in the newspaper one of these days that Kirpal and her family had been murdered.

He didn’t much care about her blind mother or her disabled father. As far as he was concerned, it would be fine if she was saved and they were killed, and even better still if her brother was also killed for then there would be nothing standing in his way. Niranjan, especially, was proving to be the biggest hurdle, a khingar, a veritable brick wall in his path. When he and Kirpal Kaur talked, he referred to her brother as ‘Khingar Singh’ instead of his real name ‘Niranjan Singh.’

The morning breeze was stirring gently around him. His head, now bereft of his kes, felt the refreshing coolness. But his mind, that was something else entirely — countless misgivings were colliding there.

Kirpal Kaur had come into his life only recently. Unlike her brother Khingar Singh, who was a burly young man, she was extremely delicate and nimble. Despite growing up in a village and experiencing its pastoral way of life, she displayed none of the coarse masculinity usually found in Sikh girls from rural areas who are accustomed to hard, physical labour. Her features were still evolving and her tiny breasts still needed many more layers of fat to fill out. Her complexion was fair and her body was as smooth as mercerized cotton. She was also very shy.

Although Trilochan was from the same village, he hadn’t spent much time there. After finishing his primary education in the village school, he had left for the city to study in high school and, afterwards, college, and kind of just stayed on there. He returned to the village on many occasions but he never heard of anyone called Kirpal Kaur at any point, perhaps because he was always in a big rush to return to the city.

His college days were long gone. Easily ten years separated the terrace at Advani Chambers from college. During that period, Trilochan’s life was filled with unusual experiences: Burma, Singapore, Hong Kong and, finally, Bombay, where he’d been living for the past four years.

Tonight was the first time he’d looked up at the sky and found the sight agreeable: countless little lamps glimmering in the grey canopy overhead and a light, cool refreshing breeze.

While thinking about Kirpal Kaur his thoughts drifted off to Mozel, the Jewish girl who rented a flat in Advani Chambers. Trilochan had fallen deeply in love with her—‘up to his knees’, as the Sikhs would say. He’d never experienced such crazy love before in all his thirty-five years.

He had bumped into Mozel on the very first day he moved into a second-floor flat in the building, which he’d acquired with the help of a Christian friend of his. His first impression was that she was a mad woman, dangerously mad. She wore her brown hair short and quite dishevelled, and a thick coat of lipstick that was dried up, cracking here and there on her lips, reminding him of a clot of blood. Her lips were not as thick as they appeared. It was the thick, reddish-brown lipstick that made them look beefy. A long tunic hung loosely on her body, its open collar exposing a generous expanse of her bulging breasts with their web of thin, blue veins. Her bare arms were covered with a layer of fine fuzz that gave the impression that she’d just emerged from a beauty parlour with wispy clippings of hair still sticking to her.

Trilochan’s flat was right across from hers with only a narrow corridor in between. Just as he approached his door, Mozel came barging out of hers. The noise of her wooden clogs stopped him. She gaped at him from under her unruly hair and tittered, which threw him off balance. He quickly pulled the key out of his pocket and turned towards his door, but just then one of her clogs slipped on the glossy cement floor and her whole body collided with him.

When he attempted to collect himself, he found her sprawled on top of him with her long loose tunic pushed all the way up and her bare, stout legs on either side of him. He tried to rise, but got even more entangled with her, as if he was a blanket covering her body.

Gasping, he apologized to her profusely. She straightened her dress and smiled. ‘These clogs — they’re atrocious,’ she said as she slipped her big toe and the one next to it into the clog and strode down the hallway.

Trilochan had thought it would be hard to befriend her, but within a short period she herself was drawn to him. She was a very headstrong woman, however, and didn’t show him much regard. She made him take her out to dinner, buy her drinks, take her to movies, and spent whole days with him splashing on the beach at Juhu, but when he tried to go further than just hugging and kissing, she told him to lay off so sternly that all of his fervent desires just crumbled.

He’d never been in love before. Whether in Lahore, Burma or Singapore, whenever he had needed a woman he just picked one up and paid for her services. Not even in his dreams had he ever imagined that he would fall ‘up to the knees’ in love with a wilful Jewish girl soon after arriving in Bombay. She treated him with the utmost indifference and lack of civility. If he invited her for a movie, she would immediately spring to her feet and get ready, but the minute they were seated, she would let her eyes wander. If she spotted an acquaintance, she would wave at him vigorously and, without excusing herself, get up and go sit with the other fellow.

It was no different in restaurants. He would order special dishes for her, but the instant she saw an old friend, she would get up abruptly, abandon her meal and go over to sit by his side, leaving Trilochan to fume by himself.

Her indifference really got to him at times. If he grumbled about it, she would stop seeing him for days, complaining now of a headache, now about her stomach, which Trilochan well knew was solid steel and impervious to any kind of ailment.

The next time they met she told him, ‘You’re a Sikh. How would you understand anything delicate!’

‘What’s delicate about your old lovers?’ Trilochan fired back in a rage.

Standing with arms akimbo and feet apart, she retorted, ‘Why do you keep taunting me? Yes, they are my lovers and I do love them dearly. If that bugs you, so be it. I couldn’t care less.’

‘Well then, how can we carry on like this?’ he said, attempting to reason with her.

She burst out laughing. ‘You really are a Sikh — no doubt about it! And an idiot to boot. Whoever said anything about carrying on with me? If that’s what you’re looking for, go back to your village and find some Sikhni to marry. If you want to hang out with me, this is how it will be.’

In the end Trilochan always capitulated. He couldn’t help it. Mozel had become his greatest weakness. He wanted to be around her at any cost. She often humiliated him, sometimes even in front of ill-bred ‘Kristan’^* boys, but he resolutely suffered all the belittlement because of his heart.

When belittled and humiliated thus, it is revenge that one seeks, but not so Trilochan. He had firmly closed his mind’s eye and plugged his ears. He not only liked her, he was, as he often described his obsession to his friends, ‘up to his knees’ in love. All he could do now was submerge the rest of him in the bog and be done with it.

He steadfastly endured this wretched state of affairs for two years. Finally one day, when Mozel seemed to be in a good mood, he gathered her in his arms and asked, ‘Mozel, don’t you love me?’

She pulled away from his tight embrace, sat down in a chair and started staring vacuously at the hem of her tunic. After some time she raised her large Jewish eyes, batted her thick eyelashes and said, ‘Me love a Sikh? No way.’

It was as if someone had shoved red-hot coals inside Trilochan’s turban. His entire body sizzled with rage. ‘Mozel, you always make fun of me,’ he blurted out. ‘But it’s my love that you deride.’

Mozel quickly got up from the chair, toyed with her short brown hair seductively and said, ‘If you shave off your beard and let down your hair, I promise many young men will come on to you. You’re quite handsome, really.’

Trilochan felt as if more burning coals had been shoved into his kes. He took a few steps towards Mozel, dragged her into his arms and pasted his moustachioed lips on her mouth.

She pushed him away. ‘Phew!’ she said. ‘Don’t bother! I already brushed my teeth this morning.’

‘Mozel!’ Trilochan screamed.

She withdrew a small mirror from her bag and started examining her lips where the thick layer of lipstick had cracked. ‘By God, you don’t know how to use your bristles properly. They’re perfect for brushing my navy-blue skirt; just a bit of petrol is needed along with them.’

Trilochan’s anger had risen to the point where it lost all its vehemence. He calmly sat down on the couch. Mozel sat beside him and started to unravel his beard, removing the hairpins one by one and holding them between her teeth.

He really was handsome. Before hair appeared on his face, people had often mistaken him for a beautiful young girl. But this shag of hair had obscured his fine features. And he was aware of it. Being a dutiful young man who held his religion in high regard, he loathed the idea of eliminating any of the things that were an outward expression of his faith.

‘What are you doing?’ he asked, after Mozel had completely undone his beard and left it to hang down over his chest.

She smiled despite the pins clenched in her teeth and said, ‘Your hair is too soft. I was wrong to think it could brush my skirt clean. Triloch, give your hair to me. I’ll make myself an exquisite woven handbag.’

Trilochan was furious. ‘Have I ever made fun of your religion?’ he asked in dead seriousness. ‘Why then do you mock mine? It’s not nice to ridicule a person’s religious feelings. I would never have tolerated it, but I’ve looked the other way because I love you. I love you very much. Don’t you know that?’

She stopped playing with his beard. ‘I know,’ she muttered.

‘So?’ he asked, deftly folding his hair and pulling the pins out of her mouth. ‘You know perfectly well that my love isn’t some kind of claptrap. I want to marry you.’

She got up, shaking her hair softly. ‘I know,’ she said, and looked intently at the picture hanging on the wall. ‘In fact, I’ve nearly made up my mind to marry you.’

‘Do you mean it?’ He jumped up with elation.

Her reddish-brown lips parted in a broad smile and her strong white teeth glimmered for an instant. ‘I do — I really do!’

His beard only half folded, he embraced her passionately and asked, ‘When. . when?’

Mozel pulled away and announced, ‘When you get rid of this mop of hair.’

‘I will, tomorrow,’ he said without thinking. He was so overcome that he would have agreed to anything.

Mozel began to tap-dance. ‘Rubbish, Triloch! You don’t have the spunk!’

This had driven every single thought of religion flying out of his mind. ‘You’ll see.’

‘So I will,’ she said, darting towards him and kissing him on his moustache. Then with another ‘Phew!’ she breezed out.

It would be useless to recount here what all went through his mind that night and the torment Trilochan suffered. The next day he went to a barber in the Fort area and had him cut off his hair and shave off his beard. Trilochan kept his eyes tightly closed and let it happen. After it was over he opened his eyes and contemplated his face in the mirror for the longest time — even the most beautiful woman in Bombay would have found this face irresistible.

Trilochan was now feeling the same eerie chill he had felt when he stepped out of the barbershop. He quickened his steps across the terrace that was crowded with a network of water tanks and pipes. He wanted to avoid the rest of the story but it proved impossible.

He remained in his flat the whole day. The next day he sent his servant with a note for Mozel saying that he wasn’t feeling well. She came to see him. The sight of his head without its shag of hair threw her off for a moment. Then she exclaimed, ‘My darling Triloch!’ and began hugging him and painting his whole face a deep red with her kisses.

She ran her hand over his smooth cheeks, combed her fingers through his hair, now trimmed short in the English style, and kept exclaiming loudly in Arabic. She shouted so much that her nose began to run. When she realized it, she just lifted the hem of her skirt and wiped her nose. Trilochan blushed. He quickly lowered her skirt and admonished her, ‘You should at least wear something underneath.’

Mozel only smiled and said, ‘It bothers me. Makes me feel cooped up, strangely. It’s fine this way.’

Trilochan remembered their first encounter, when the two had collided in the hallway and their bodies had become entangled in a strange way. He smiled and took her in his arms. ‘We’ll marry tomorrow!’

‘Yes, tomorrow,’ she agreed, caressing his smooth chin with the back of her hand.

They chose Puna for the wedding. Since it would be a civil marriage conducted before the court, a fortnight’s notice was required. So Puna seemed quite feasible. Not only was it close, Trilochan also had some friends there. According to the plan, they would leave the next day.

Mozel worked as a salesgirl in one of the Fort area stores. She had asked him to meet her at a taxi stand not far from her workplace. Trilochan arrived at the appointed time and waited a whole hour and a half, but she never came. The next day he heard that she had left for an indefinite stay in Devlali with an old friend who had just bought a new car.

How Trilochan bore his agony is a fairly long story. Briefly, he inured himself to this calamity and eventually got over it. Not long afterwards he met Kirpal Kaur and fell for her. It didn’t take him long to realize that Mozel was a heartless coquette who kept hopping from tree to tree like a bird. The thought that he had been saved from making the terrible mistake of marrying her eased his heart a little. But there were times when the memory of her returned like an old pain. He liked her even though she didn’t much care about people’s feelings. He couldn’t resist wondering now and then about what she might be up to in Devlali with this other man who had bought himself a new car. Was she still with him or had she ditched him for yet another man? Given his knowledge of her true character, Trilochan couldn’t bear the thought of her being with any man other than himself.

He’d spent a fortune on her, quite willingly though. Most of the time Mozel wasn’t hard to please. She frequently went for the cheap stuff. Once, he wanted to buy her a fairly expensive pair of gold earrings, but she was so taken by the sight of some cheap, gaudy ones in the same store that she begged him to buy those instead.

He still hadn’t quite figured her out. What substance was she made of — really? She let him kiss her for hours, spread himself all over her like a blanket, but never anything beyond that. ‘You’re a Sikh — I hate you!’ she would say playfully.

He knew she didn’t mean it. Had she really hated him, she wouldn’t have spent so much time with him. Her impatience wouldn’t have allowed her to put up with him for two full years and would have settled the matter in two minutes flat instead. She didn’t like to wear undergarments because they bothered her. He often tried to knock some sense into her about the necessity for them, to instil some regard for propriety, even tried to appeal to her sense of modesty, but she refused to budge.

Whenever he brought up ‘modesty’ and ‘propriety’ it always raised her hackles. ‘Modesty — what’s that? Just close your eyes if you care so much for it. Name one piece of clothing that can hide a person’s nakedness or that your eyes can’t see through. Spare me such nonsense. You’re Sikh — I know you guys wear some silly shorts under your pants. They are also part of your religious trappings, like your beard and long hair. You should be ashamed of yourself — a grown man who still believes his religion resides in his underpants.’

At first, this sort of talk greatly infuriated him, but later, after he thought about it, he didn’t feel quite so sure about it himself. Perhaps what she said wasn’t completely preposterous after all. In the end, after getting rid of his hair and beard, he was convinced that he’d been carrying this excess baggage all along for no sane reason at all.

Trilochan stopped near a water tank. He uttered the coarsest swear word he could think of for Mozel and put her out of his mind. The life of the virginal Kirpal Kaur whom he loved very much was in danger at that moment. Her mohalla had become the haunt of militant Muslims and had seen a few incidents already. The problem was that it had been placed under a forty-eight-hour curfew, but if these chawl Muslims got it into their heads, they wouldn’t be deterred by a curfew. They could easily dispatch Kirpal Kaur and her parents without anyone so much as catching a whiff of it.

Plagued by such thoughts, Trilochan sat down on a section of the huge pipeline. His kes had grown back some already and, he hoped, would reach its former length within a year. His beard was also growing fast, though he didn’t want it to get too bushy. This barber in the Fort area, he trimmed it so deftly that it didn’t appear as though it had been touched.

He ran his fingers through his long soft hair and sighed. Just as he was thinking of getting up, the jarring clip-clop of wooden clogs struck his eardrums. Who could that be — he wondered? Quite a few Jewish women lived in the building and they all wore clogs indoors. The sound kept getting closer. Suddenly he saw Mozel. She was clad in the familiar long, loose Jewish tunic and yawning loudly near another water tank, so loudly indeed that for a moment he thought the air around her might shatter.

He stood up, wondering where she had materialized from so suddenly and what she was doing here at this hour.

She yawned again. Trilochan felt as if his bones were about to crack from the sound.

Her large breasts heaved inside her baggy tunic. Several flat, round bluish-black veins swirled before Trilochan’s eyes. He coughed loudly. Mozel turned around and saw him. Her reaction was pretty mild. Dragging her clogs, she walked up to him and gawked at his diminutive beard.

‘Oh, you’ve become a Sikh again, Triloch?’

His beard began to irk him.

She took a step forward, rubbed the back of her hand against his chin and smiled. ‘Perfect, I can clean my navy blue skirt now,’ she said. ‘Too bad, I seem to have left it in Devlali.’

Trilochan remained silent.

She pinched his arm and said, ‘Why don’t you say something, Sardar Sahib?’

He didn’t wish to repeat his earlier mistakes. Still, he looked closely at Mozel’s face in the faint light of the morning. It didn’t show any noticeable change, except that she looked a bit thin. ‘Have you been ill?’ he asked.

‘No.’ She shook her head slightly.

‘But you look a little frail.’

‘I’m dieting.’ She plopped down on the pipe and started to tap the terrace floor with her clogs. ‘So you’re. . you’re becoming a Sikh again?’

‘Yes, I am,’ Trilochan said, rather audaciously.

‘Congratulations!’ She removed one of her clogs and started tapping it on the pipe. ‘Are you in love with some other girl?’

‘Yes,’ he replied softly.

‘Good for you. Someone from this building?’

‘No.’

‘That’s too bad,’ she said, slipping the clogs over her toes and standing. ‘One should always think of one’s neighbours first.’

He remained silent. Mozel touched his beard with all five fingers and asked, ‘Growing this at the girl’s behest?’

He was feeling quite unnerved, as if the hair in his beard had become tangled while being combed. ‘No,’ he said sharply.

Her lipstick looked like a piece of shrivelled meat on her mouth. When she smiled an image of the village butcher in his shop — where jhatka meat was sold — slashing a massive chunk of meat in two with a quick movement of his knife floated in his mind.

She laughed. ‘I swear I’ll marry you if you shave off this beard.’

Trilochan felt like telling Mozel to go to hell. He was in love with a chaste, pure-hearted girl from his village and would marry only her. What was Mozel compared to her? Just a lewd, promiscuous woman, ugly, rude and insensitive. But he wasn’t mean, so he only said, ‘Mozel, I’ve made up my mind to marry this girl from my village. She’s a very simple, religious girl. I’m growing back my hair for her sake.’

Although Mozel wasn’t someone who thought long and hard about anything, she did think for a moment. After a while, swivelling around in a half circle on the heels of her clogs, she said, ‘How on earth do you expect her to marry you if she’s so observant of her religion? Wouldn’t she know you once had your hair cut?’

‘She doesn’t know about that yet. I started growing my beard soon after you took off for Devlali. . to get back at you. I met Kirpal Kaur shortly afterward. But I wrap my turban so cleverly that maybe only one in a hundred people would guess that underneath it my kes is clipped. And in any case, it won’t be long now before it grows back to its former length.’ He started combing his fingers through his soft hair.

She pulled up her tunic and started scratching her fleshy white thigh. ‘That’s wonderful. . Damn these mosquitoes, they’ve even invaded here. Look, how badly it bit me.’

Trilochan looked away. Mozel bent down, moistened her fingertip with a dab of saliva, pressed it over the tiny red spot and then, letting her tunic drop back down, stood up again and asked, ‘So when is the wedding?’

‘Can’t say. . nothing is definite,’ he replied and became pensive.

After a brief silence, sensing his anxiety, she asked in a serious tone, ‘Triloch, is something wrong?’

He desperately needed someone, even Mozel, to empathize with him, to appreciate his predicament. He told her everything.

‘You’re a complete moron.’ She let out a laugh. ‘Go and get her. It’s not that difficult.’

‘Difficult! You don’t seem to understand the precariousness of this situation. . of any situation for that matter. You’re a devil-may-care sort of person — precisely why we couldn’t hit it off together, something that I’ll regret for the rest of my days.’

She banged the pipe forcefully with her clog in dismay. ‘To hell with your regret. Idiot, you should be thinking about how to get your — what’s her name? — out to safety. Instead, here you are, moaning about our affair. We would never have made it. You’re a silly fool. . a coward. . I want a man, a fearless man. But there’s no time for idle talk. Come on, let’s go and get her.’

She grabbed his arm.

A befuddled Trilochan asked, ‘Where to?’

‘Where she is — where else? I know every last brick of that mohalla. Come on, let’s get going.’

‘But listen. . there’s a curfew.’

‘Not for Mozel. . Now come on.’

She dragged him towards the door that led to the stairs. She opened it and was about to go down when she stopped and looked at his beard.

‘What’s the matter?’ he asked.

‘This. . your beard,’ she said. ‘Well, okay. It isn’t too long. If you walk bareheaded, no one will take you for a Sikh.’

‘Bareheaded?’ He was a bit fazed. ‘I’m not going there bareheaded.’

‘Why?’ she asked, naively.

‘You don’t understand,’ he said, pushing a lock of hair to the back of his head. ‘It isn’t right for me to go there without my turban.’

‘Why not?’

‘Try to understand. She’s never seen me bareheaded. She thinks I have kes; I don’t want her to know my secret.’

‘You really are a nut, a first-rate nut. You stupid ass.’ She stomped her clog on the threshold of the door. ‘It’s a question of her life — what’s her name, this Kaur you love?’

‘Mozel, she’s a religious kind of person.’ Trilochan tried to impress it upon her. ‘If she saw me without my turban, she would start hating me.’

Mozel was pissed off. ‘To hell with your love. Tell me, are all Sikhs as stupid as you? Her life is in danger, and what do we have here: you, dead set on wearing your turban and maybe even those underpants that look like shorts.’

‘I wear those all the time,’ he said.

‘Good for you. But now, do some thinking. She lives in a neighbourhood which is crawling with miyan bhais,^* each more ferocious than the other. If you walked in with your turban on, they would make mincemeat out of you in no time.’

He gave a quick answer, ‘I don’t care. If I go there with you, it will be in my turban. I can’t risk my love.’

Mozel became irritated; her body quivered with anger, so much so that her breasts shook inside the bodice of her tunic. ‘You ass, where will your love be when you’re not here, your — what’s that dumdum’s name — when she’s not there, her family isn’t there? By God, you are a Sikh. A first-rate idiot Sikh. No doubt about it.’

That was the last straw. ‘Shut up!’ he screamed.

She burst into laughter and flung her fuzz-covered arms around his neck. Turning a bit she said, ‘All right, darling, as you wish. Go, don your pagri. I’ll wait for you downstairs in the bazaar.’

She started to go down but Trilochan stopped her. ‘Aren’t you going to change your clothes?’

She shook her head. ‘This will work fine.’

And she went down clip-clopping in her clogs. He could hear them all the way down to the lowest steps of the stairs. He gathered his hair at the back of his head and went to his flat to quickly change his clothes. The turban was already furled so he fixed it on his head neatly, locked the door behind him and went downstairs.

He found Mozel standing on the pavement, her feet wide apart, smoking a cigarette, just like a man. When he neared her, she filled her mouth with the smoke and released it on his face mischievously.

‘You’re really very mean,’ he blurted out in anger.

‘That’s nothing new.’ She smiled. ‘Haven’t I heard that many times before? She looked at his turban. ‘Nice job! It does give the impression that you have kes.’

The bazaar was deathly still; there was not a soul anywhere. The only sound was the breeze, which blew softly as if it too was afraid of the curfew. The lights were on, but they gave off a sickly glow. Usually trams started running by this hour and one could see a lot of activity with people moving about in the street. But now it seemed as though no one had ever walked here nor ever would.

Mozel walked ahead of him, her clogs clicking on the pavement, shattering the pervading silence with their sharp noise. Trilochan damned her silently for not putting on something better than these godforsaken clogs. He felt like telling her to get rid of them and walk barefoot, but he knew she would never listen to him. Better not stir up a fuss.

He was deathly afraid — even the slightest rustle of a leaf made his heart skip a beat. She, on the other hand, walked along fearlessly, leisurely blowing smoke as if she was taking the air along a garden promenade.

As the two of them approached an intersection, a policeman hailed them, ‘Hey, you — where are you going?’

Trilochan cringed, but she walked over to the cop, fluffed up her hair a little, and said, ‘Oh, it’s you! Don’t you recognize me. . Mozel.’ Then pointing to an alley, ‘That way. My sister lives there. She’s ill. I’m taking the doctor to see her.’

The cop was still struggling to recognize her when she pulled out a pack of cigarettes from God knows where. ‘Here, have a cigarette.’

The cop took one. ‘Light?’ She held out the cigarette still smouldering between her lips.

The cop took a long drag on his cigarette. She winked at him with her right eye and at Trilochan with her left and then clip-clopped towards the alley leading to Kirpal Kaur’s mohalla.

Trilochan was silent. He could sense the strange joy Mozel was feeling in defying the curfew. She had always liked to play dangerously. Every time they visited the Juhu beach, she would fight her way through the humongous waves, swimming quite far into the sea, and leaving him petrified with the fear that she might drown. When she returned her body was always full of cuts and bruises, but she didn’t seem to care.

Every now and then Trilochan looked around furtively, afraid that some knife-swinging fellow might materialize from somewhere. Mozel halted. When he caught up with her, she tried to reason with him. ‘Triloch dear, don’t panic. If you do, something awful will surely happen. Believe me, I know.’

He kept quiet.

A few steps into the alley leading up to Kirpal Kaur’s mohalla, Mozel stopped abruptly. Up ahead a Marwari’s shop was being pillaged piece by piece. She studied the situation for a second and said calmly, ‘It’s all right. Let’s keep going.’

They started moving. Suddenly a man with a big platter on his head bumped into Trilochan, knocking the platter to the ground. He looked at Trilochan closely. That he was a Sikh was written all over him. The man quickly reached for the knife tucked into his waistband, but Mozel came tripping over as if dead drunk and pushed him away. ‘Hey, are you crazy? Killing your own brother? I’m going to marry this man.’ She then turned to Trilochan, ‘Karim, pick up the platter and put it back on his head.’

The man quickly withdrew his hand from his waistband, looked lustily at Mozel and touched her boobs with his elbow. ‘Go on, saali, have fun!’ He moved on, balancing the platter on his head.

‘Bastard, what an atrocious thing to do,’ Trilochan mumbled in disgust.

She touched her breasts. ‘Atrocious — not at all. It works. Let’s go!’

She started walking briskly. Trilochan tried to keep pace. They came to the end of the alley and entered Kirpal Kaur’s mohalla.

‘Which street?’ she asked.

‘The third. That building on the corner,’ he said in a hushed voice.

She turned in that direction. Despite being densely populated, the whole area was enveloped in an eerie silence; not even the sound of a child crying could be heard anywhere.

When they came closer, they saw signs of some surreptitious movement. A man darted out of one building and ran into another. Minutes later, three men came out of one building, looked around and dashed into the next. Mozel stopped short. She gestured to Trilochan to get into the cover of the darkness and whispered, ‘Triloch, dear, take off your turban.’

‘Never!’ he answered resolutely. ‘I won’t, no matter what.’

She was annoyed. ‘As you wish. But don’t you see what’s going on?’

Something awful and very mysterious was indeed going on and both of them could sense it. When two men emerged from the building on the right with gunnysacks on their backs, Mozel’s whole body shuddered for a moment. Something resembling a viscous fluid was dripping from the gunnysacks. Mozel chewed her lips nervously. Perhaps she was thinking of some plan. When the two men disappeared at the end of the street she turned to Trilochan. ‘Look, here’s what we’ll do: I’ll run to the corner building and you come after me, fast, like you’re chasing me. Got it? But all this has to be done in a split second.’

Without waiting for his answer, she took off towards the building, her clogs clip-clopping noisily on the cobblestones. Trilochan ran after her, fast. Within a few seconds they were inside the building, at the foot of the stairs. Trilochan was out of breath, but she seemed fine. ‘Which floor?’ she asked.

‘Second,’ he replied, wetting his parched lips.

‘Come on, let’s go.’ She started to climb up the stairs. Trilochan followed her. The steps were stained with big splotches of blood and gore. He blanched.

Trilochan walked part way down the corridor on the second floor until he came to a door. He knocked softly while Mozel stood some distance away, by the staircase.

He tapped on the door again, stuck his face up to it and called, ‘Maha Singhji! Maha Singhji!’

‘Who is it?’ someone asked in a feeble voice.

‘It’s Trilochan.’

Slowly the door opened. Trilochan beckoned to Mozel and they went inside. Mozel saw a wisp of a girl standing to the side, petrified, and only had a few moments to look at her closely. The girl had delicate features and a beautifully crafted nose, now red from a cold. Mozel hugged the girl to her enormous bosom and wiped her own runny nose with the hem of her loose-fitting tunic.

Trilochan’s face flushed.

‘Don’t be afraid,’ she said to the girl lovingly. ‘Trilochan has come to take you out of here.’

Kirpal Kaur disengaged herself from Mozel’s arms and looked at Trilochan with frightened eyes.

‘Please ask Sardar Sahib to get ready fast, and your mother too. . quickly.’

Just then screams and the sound of scuffles erupted on the floor above them.

‘They got him!’ A muffled scream escaped from Kirpal Kaur’s throat.

‘Who?’ Trilochan asked.

Before Kirpal Kaur could answer, Mozel grabbed her arm and pushed her into a corner. ‘Good, they got him. Now take off these clothes.’

Kirpal Kaur barely had time to react before Mozel quickly stripped her of her shirt. A terrified Kirpal Kaur tried to cover her nakedness with her arms. Trilochan turned his face away. Mozel removed her loose tunic and slipped it over Kirpal Kaur’s body. Now she herself was stark naked. Quickly loosening the waist cord, she pulled the girl’s shalwar down and ordered Trilochan, ‘Go! Get her out of here. . Wait. .’ She hurriedly untied the girl’s hair, and said, ‘Now go, get out of here as fast as you can, both of you!’

‘Come on,’ Trilochan gestured to the girl. Halfway to the door he suddenly stopped, turned around, and looked back at the stark-naked Mozel. The soft fuzz on her arms was standing upright in the cold.

‘Why don’t you leave?’ she shrieked, obviously irritated.

‘What about her parents?’ he said, softly.

‘They can go to hell. You take her and get out of here!’

‘And you?’

‘I’m coming.’

All of a sudden the stairs rang out with the sound of hastily descending feet. Several men banged on the door so violently it seemed they would knock it down.

Kirpal Kaur’s blind mother and handicapped father were moaning in the other room.

Mozel reflected for a moment, jerked her hair slightly, and said to Trilochan, ‘Listen, I can only think of one thing now: I’m going to open the door.’

Kirpal Kaur stifled a scream in her dry throat. ‘The door!’

‘I’ll open the door and run up the stairs. You follow me. These people will forget everything and come after us. .’

‘And then?’ he asked.

‘This will give your, what’s her name, a chance to escape. No one will bother her in this tunic.’

Trilochan quickly explained the situation to Kirpal Kaur.

Mozel raised a frightening scream, threw open the door and rushed out, tripping over the men outside who had no time to react and made way for her. She righted herself and ran up the stairs, with Trilochan close on her heels.

Mozel was climbing the stairs blindly, still in her clogs. The men who’d been trying to break down the door ran after the two of them. Suddenly her foot slipped and she tumbled down the stairs all the way to the stone landing, her body knocking against the steps and the wrought-iron balustrade.

Trilochan rushed down the stairs only to find her lying there, blood oozing out of her nose, mouth, even her ears. The men who had stormed the door quickly gathered around. Someone asked what happened. They were looking silently at her fair-skinned, naked body covered with bruises.

Trilochan shook her arm and called out, ‘Mozel! Mozel!’

She opened her large Jewish eyes, now blood red, and smiled.

Trilochan quickly removed his turban, undid it, and spread it out over her naked body. She smiled again and winked at him. Spewing tiny red bubbles from her mouth, she said, ‘Go. . see whether my underwear is still there. . I mean. .’

Trilochan got her drift, but he didn’t want to leave her. Which angered her. ‘Damn it, you’re a Sikh after all. Go and see.’

He rose and went to Kirpal Kaur’s flat. Through her dimmed eyes Mozel looked at the men gathered around her and said, ‘He’s a miyan bhai. . so crazy that I always call him a Sikh. .’

Meanwhile, Trilochan returned. He let her know with his eyes that Kirpal Kaur had made her escape. She sighed in relief, but more blood bubbled out of her mouth from the effort. ‘Damn it,’ she said, wiping it on her arm. Then she said to Trilochan, ‘All right, darling, bye-bye!’

He wanted to say something, but choked on his words.

Mozel pushed his turban cloth off her body. ‘Take this with you. . this scrap of your religion,’ she said, as her arm fell limp over her plump, round breasts.