Raju waited in the dappled shade of an old grove of low-branching mango trees that spread over a patch of Bhangar north-west of the village. From his vantage point, he could see the half paved, half dirt road from the village snaking between the fields to join the road that took you to Sarni. On the farther side of the village towards where the nullah flowed, he could see the houses in the ‘harijan basti’. When he had grown up a little, in class four or five, he remembered he would wince and turn away when an upper-caste mentioned the basti; in his mind a silent rebellion against words of privilege and domination. It was interesting how a word coined by Gandhiji during the freedom struggle to accord respect and bring the people together had got weighed down and irretrievably stuck in a web of patronage and contempt. Dalit was the right word – it encompassed space for activism, fighting for equal rights.

Wheat had yellowed in the fields, the crop weighed down by grains ripe for harvesting. A shroud of dust hung over the village road. It was a bright day, a little cold in the shade of the dark-green trees. Leaning against a scabbed trunk, he lit a cigarette to lighten the uncertain wait; a tractor belonging to one of the biggest landlords of the area, laden with bricks, was driving into the village. Rooms were being added to the house before the landlord’s youngest son’s marriage, planned for June. The landlord was a distant relative of the four accused.

It was nearly ten, a time of relative pause in the village’s everyday routine. The school children would have left early in the morning and their time to return home was around 3 pm.  He wore an oversized army jacket with two large side pockets over jeans and sneakers. As the cigarette burnt out, doubts and misgivings curled in – there were bound to be consequences; would they manage to harm his mother? Then, an inconsolable regret – if only he had accompanied her that evening to fetch dried branches and twigs as he sometimes did. He deliberately turned a page to focus on the task ahead.

In their one-room, ancestral, mud-plastered house, he was bent over his textbook in a corner meticulously underlining the articles on Fundamental Rights enshrined in the Constitution and copying them down neatly in a notebook, when Ma’s stricken face had appeared at the doorway. In class, the teacher would often hold out his notebook for the students to see how carefully he had written down the chapter summary. The only words Ma would utter were Jalpa, as they stumbled through the fields towards the nullah. Once a channel for rain water during the monsoons, it overflowed with sewage from the village’s burgeoning population.  

He had carried Jalpa’s broken body in his arms seething with an ancient rage that throbbed – coalescing uncountable memories of injustice and hurt seared-in since childhood, scars carried forward by generations over many centuries and a bitter helplessness. Mother stumbled along holding Jalpa’s head. Jalpa’s jaw was fractured and her dust-caked body torn and lacerated – they had dragged her over clods of earth and stubble, over spiky nettle growing wild by the foul-smelling nullah; blood had made the mud sticking to her darker. He had covered her with his thick checked shirt; and for a fleeting moment it felt like he was carrying himself. She was strongly built but felt incredibly light.

A scar from many years ago throbbed again; as he had hurried to school one morning, a couple of elder upper-caste boys had called after him that they would be the first to have his sister. There had more such vulgar threats and complaints by mother and father to the boys’ parents and village elders would only result in public scoldings but never any punishment. The centuries-old entitlements remained embedded while words of equality and humanism artistically calligraphed in the nation’s adopted Constitution remained inked inside half-opened pages. Was it that the Constitution never got truly owned by the masses, but remained like an adoption – idealistic and even revered but not organically one with the being, it suddenly occurred to him as he waited. Maybe, more could have been done, could still be done to spread its light.  

They had put her on the one cot near the doorway and slowly fed her water from a large tumbler, waiting for father’s return. His elder sister, who had bounced him in her arms making him experience his first giggly free fall, secure that someone was there to hold him, was curled up like a small child whimpering in pain. They had called father and waited; feeling more wretched as each hour passed. That night the village was eerily quiet, even the dogs did not bark. They had then carried her to the new hospital in Sarni in an auto. The doctors and staff attending Emergency cases took one look and immediately asked for a police report. Hearing of the assault, their demand became more adamant. Except mother, people, including himself, had always kept diminishing in his young eyes.

It was past midnight. The police station was adjoining the hospital, but the SHO was not there. A constable was on duty. By the time a written complaint was registered more than ten hours had elapsed since the attack, and it was early morning; the FIR was registered two days after. But, with the complaint copy, the hospital had admitted Jalpa – only to say after a few hours of cleaning and putting her on IV drip that she needed to be taken to a bigger hospital if they wanted to save her. She was in deep trauma her face and eyes had swollen further, and she was unable to open her eyes; Jalpa died the next day in a hospital in Kanpur giving her statement with great difficulty about what had happened that evening. A local women’s rights group had helped in getting her admitted and contact the city police.

The heinous crime had made the culprits fearful, more so when news about it spread across the country and protests and vigils were held in cities. But gradually, as time passed, the local networks and system reassured them in various ways that they would be eventually protected. Their community, initially in shock, was more-or-less with them after a few months – already alternate versions floated. The best-paid lawyers of the area were with them; the police had issued a couple of statements that indirectly favoured them. Interrogation sessions by the police were routine and not pointed enough to push them in a corner – there was an air of conspiratorial accommodation that increasingly prevailed. Family and caste loyalties were living realities, and all around they saw ways and means to get around the law. So, the swagger started returning even before three of them were out on bail. When they got back to the village after bail, no one could say that they had been charged with such a terrible crime and there had been a national outcry. In that corner of India, they were powerful again.

He checked the safety catch, pointing the pistol towards the ground pushing it forward and back thrice. Then one more time. He had practiced it a thousand times; the scars in his thumb binding naturally with the tiny ridges; he reminded himself to remove the catch as soon as he sighted them. The previous night in his PG room he could not sleep. The pink and blue neon light from a damaged billboard on the other side of the street had flickered incessantly. He had drawn the curtain across the window, but a bluish hue still played on the blanket.

As he braced himself and pulled the trigger, there was nothing. A wave of panic and embarrassment washed over; his palms were wet with sweat … holding the gun in the left hand, as he vigorously rubbed his right hand on his jeans, he realized that he had not pushed the safety catch forward. But it would not budge. Even his deliberately scarred thumb kept slipping over it. The three were sniggering …, he sat up to breathe and then slumped back on the hostel bed. It would be easier to forget what was done to Jalpa and just live. His mother had said so a hundred times.

A shiver ran down his spine and he felt a fever taking hold. Was this revenge not justified? What happened that evening was certainly the gravest of crime against one being he loved the most. Did the planned vengeance have a value beyond him – more than personal hurt and his ego? Jalpa’s pain had been real, so had been father’s torment and resignation, and mother’s eternal sadness and withdrawing from life. That pain was so much greater in its vastness, than his plan for retribution. It was his community’s pain, his country’s even. The vengeance increasingly seemed mechanical – a task to execute. Could he do it differently? Maybe, not kill all three of them? Leave one of them alive to recount? But wouldn’t he distort the end – show himself as not cringing in fear but brave? His own story would get muddied.

A mango leaf fluttered down and came to rest on the ground next to him. It reminded of Malati, who helped her mother in the PG hostel kitchen. Her mother worked as a cook and she helped her with simple chores. He remembered his college friend Sunny, who had connected him to Ramesh who worked at a readymade garments shop and had helped procure the pistol and a magazine with ten rounds from Burhanpur. The many hours spent cleaning it meticulously every two weeks and the one-time firing practice in the nearby forest. A few days later Malati’s mother would tell her that he had shot dead three men who had raped and killed his sister; her mother talked about it as they were going to sleep in their one-room rented house. She would keep awake most of the night thinking how it would have been. When her mother had gone to work the next day, she opened the page where a flattened semi-dried purple blossom rested.

He saw the three walking down the road – arguing over something. Looking at them, it seemed as if nothing had happened – a young girl had not been brutalized and murdered, and a shattered father had not died within a year of his daughter’s death. He had seen his family destroyed since that evening with no hope of justice in sight; silently carrying alone the burden of injustice on their heads. He remembered to unlock the security catch and put on a mask before striding towards the road. He put up his collar and a cap as he started walking towards the village keeping his head down. They vaguely recognized him when he was just a few feet away walking towards them and exclaimed. He shot them twice each from repetitive memory, his mind in a haze. It seemed easier than in his dreams, only it was much bloodier – the stains spreading rapidly across their shirt fronts.

On the outskirts of Sarni, a little away from the road was a giant gnarled neem tree. In a hollow, he placed the handgun after wiping it. Once in town, he got his head and face shaved on the other side of town and put on a Gandhi cap that he had purchased earlier. He had been inspired by the Constitution, by Baba Saheb and Gandhi but the burden of injustice weighed heavier with each passing day and the value of non-violence stood eroded in his eyes. Raju drove out of town towards Kanpur. His mother was sitting on a slope by the roadside her back facing the road. As he got off the bike, she turned around – dark fear receding as she saw him alive; a curtain lifted across her gaunt face and then another wave of dark terror washed in. Supporting her stand up, he told her with some pride – teenon ko maar diye. They drove through narrow country roads towards Kanpur and then Jhansi. He had offered to leave her with her younger sister in a nearby town but she desperately wanted to be with him.

The next day waiting for his first customer, the barber opened the local paper and read the news about the three indicted rapists shot dead; one of their friends was in jail, otherwise he too would be dead the reporter said. It was on the first page. A realization dawned and the odd conversation from yesterday evening came rushing back:

Shaving S’s head, B: Did something happen?

S:   Yes, some people I knew are no more.

B: Family members?

S: No, not family … others.

B: Ohhh … travelling long?

S: Yes, friend.

B: Ishwar sab ka bhala kare.

***