The Girl with the Golden Parasol

NINETEEN

Sapam’s body still lay atop a slab of ice in the mortuary of Mahatma Gandhi Hospital waiting for either his father to retrieve him or to be shipped back home. The day of the month when the goondas normally attacked was drawing near. What a time it was.

Gopal Dwivedi said that S. N. Mishra, the senior professor of the Hindi department, was angry. He had said to Gopal he’d been wrong to secure admission for a certain student who had no business being there. The student was stirring up caste issues. Dr. Rajendra Trivedi and Dr. Loknath Tripathi said they always weed out such bad apples.

Parch them dry with not one drop, we’ll hit and strike till dead they drop!

Rahul was face-to-face with a darkness that was closing in on him. But somewhere, far in the distance, he could make out the fluttering of a yellow butterfly. So even amid this anxiety, Rahul’s lips were quick to trace the outline of a smile, and he fell asleep.

The eighth and ninth of September came and went. Meanwhile, Sapam’s body had been shipped to Imphal by train. Kartikeya, Madhusudan, Pratap, Masood, Praveen, O.P., and some twenty-five students, among them girls, too, presented Vice-Chancellor Agnihotri with a petition in which they demanded Sapam’s body be returned to Imphal by airplane and that the culprits responsible for robbing and beating him be arrested.

Regarding the latter demand, the vice-chancellor gave the students the assurance that he would liaise with the police, but as far as sending the body back to Manipur by air, he continued, there simply was not enough money in the University Welfare Fund.

During the same period, a meeting of the SMTF was held in Praveen’s room. The core committee member students of the Special Militant Task Force from the four hostels (Arbind, Raman, Tagore, and Desai) decided to link the hostels by a restricted frequency radio transmission. The total expenditure was only 800 rupees, which, through donations, was collected in under three hours. Hemant, Madhusudan, and Praveen teamed up to install speakers in designated rooms in each of the four hostels. Pratap, Kartikeya, and Rahul procured three microphones. It took three run-throughs to ensure that when the time came the students would be ready for action in less than ten minutes. They also collected data on which students expected money orders or had received them, and for how much, for all four hostels. These were the students the goondas usually targeted — those who were receiving the most money.

D. Gopal Rajulu, Akhilesh Ranjan, and Naukant Jha — these three students topped the list. Winter was approaching, and their families had sent them additional funds to buy warm clothing. Gopal Rajulu’s brother was a doctor. For years Rajulu had wanted to buy a camera. He was going on a bus tour to Calcutta, and before he left his brother in Virginia wanted him to have 20,000 rupees.

At the top of the hit list was D. Gopal Rajulu. Number two: Akhilesh Ranjan. Number three: Naukant Jha. Three students, one from Andhra Pradesh and two from Bihar.

But during this period of time Anjali was everywhere, too!