The Girl with the Golden Parasol

THIRTY-FOUR

The story after this becomes very brief for the reason that it’s not something that took place once upon a time, long, long ago. The story is, in fact, just a fraction of a larger narrative that is still taking place, even today. It’s a work in progress, a tale that’s under construction, a report of what just happened one second ago in a life very much still being lived.

Anjali came to Rahul’s room three more times over the next month in the same manner: under the radar, clawing her way through the thicket, stumbling over rocky ridges, with a broken sandal, banged-up body, torn clothing, and a sunburned, exhausted-looking face huffing and puffing away. This was the condition of Anjali Joshi, daughter of the cabinet minister, billionaire builder, and Brahmin by caste L. K. Joshi.

Were these two trapped inside a clichéd Bollywood screenplay, waiting for the shoe to drop, like in the formulaic tragedies popular in the ’60s of poor boy — rich girl romance?

During that month, the police came at night and conducted a cordon-and-search operation. Half a dozen rooms were searched. Kartikeya Kajle, Masood, Praveen, Madhusudan, D. Gopal Rajulu, and Akhilesh Ranjan were taken by the police. Luckily, Rahul’s room had not been raided; maybe he’d been spared since Pratap Parihar’s uncle was a police officer.

Two days later, Praveen, Gopal Rajulu, and Madhusudan returned to the hostel. The police had beaten them and let them go, while Kartikeya, Masood, and Akhilesh Ranjan remained under arrest.

The oversized headline on page one of Janvani screamed, “Stockpile of Weapons and Contraband Recovered from Student Hostel: Three Arrested.” Praveen reported that first the police, then Lacchu Guru, beat up Kartikeya until he was in sad shape. They broke Masood’s kneecaps. The policed brandished the fake evidence they’d planted; meanwhile, they’d failed to find the pistol that was actually hidden in Pratap’s room.

Madhusudan said that Kartikeya had cried his eyes dry. He’d been preparing to take the civil service exam; now his entire future was ruined. The head of the municipality, Lakkhu Bhaiya, and the state cabinet minister Joshi were behind the whole thing. It was only after the VC had given his blessing that the police entered the university hostel. They were kept in custody, and, not only were they charged with selling narcotics and possession of illegal weapons, but the crimes they were charged with were additionally subject to counterterrorism laws.

The same day, an English-language newspaper published a front-page photo of a young Sikh who had been a victim of police harassment standing in front of the Supreme Court in Delhi. He had poured gasoline over his body and had set fire to himself. In the photograph, both of his arms were raised in the air as the flames engulfed him. There was a small crowd of spectators watching nearby. In the background was the highest court of this country.

A seminar had been organized in the Hindi department during that time. The topic of the first session was “Instances of Mannerism in Contemporary Poetry” and the topic of the second, “The Question of the Autonomy of Literature.” Dr. Jarihar Dwivedi, Dr. Sohan Lal Chaturvedi, Dr. Marudhar Pandey, Professor Ajayab Aggrawal, and K. L. Vajpayee came from Delhi to attend. In addition, some dozen poets arrived in the state capital cities like Lucknow, Patna, and Bhopal. Save one or two, all of the poets’ names ended with caste surnames like Shukla, Tiwari, Pandey, Joshi, “Aal-Waal,” and Sharma.

They were given fare for air-conditioned passage, travel allowance and expense allowance, a bouquet of flowers, and, on top of that, a 7,000-rupee honorarium. The Hindi department, in cooperation with the state ministry for culture, made all the arrangements and ran up a total bill of some 500,000 rupees.

The letter of invitation to the seminar, the lovely program of events, and the participants’ souvenir were all printed by the Janvani printing press.