Chapter 3: Andhera (Darkness)

The darkness had a texture. Not the metaphorical texture that poets assigned to darkness — the actual texture. The texture of stone walls that Lata's fingers learned by tracing, the tracing that became the twelve-year-old's cartography, the mapping of a space that could not be seen and that could therefore only be known by touch.

The hole was — Lata measured it on the second day (or what she decided was the second day, the deciding being arbitrary because the darkness had no days, the darkness being the particular environment that removed the distinction between day and night and that therefore removed time itself, the removal being the cruelty that Lata did not yet have the vocabulary to name but that she felt in the disorientation, the particular seasickness of a mind without temporal anchors).

The hole was approximately two metres by one and a half metres at the bottom. The walls were stone — not cut stone, natural stone, the stone of a cave or a cellar carved from rock, the stone that was cool and rough and that retained moisture, the moisture that Lata's fingertips found in the crevices and that said: water is near, the water that she heard (the distant running sound) was connected to this place, the place being part of a larger underground system.

The ceiling — the shaft above — was beyond reach. When Lata stood on her toes and stretched (she was twelve and not yet at her full height, the full height that would eventually be 168 centimetres, the height that her mother was and that genetics promised), her fingertips touched air. Just air. The shaft went up. How far up — she did not know. She threw the steel canteen upward — the canteen hit something at approximately three metres and fell back, the falling producing a clang that echoed in the shaft and that told her: three metres, the distance that was too high to climb without holds and that the smooth stone walls did not provide.

Three metres between her and the world.

*

The routine established itself. Not by Lata's choice — by Bharati's schedule. The schedule that was: morning (or what Bharati declared was morning — a voice from above, the voice being the only indicator of time), bucket descends, Lata uses it, bucket ascends. Then: food descends. The food that was — consistent. Parathas (aloo, or gobhi, or plain with achaar — the lime pickle that was sharp and sour and that Lata ate because the eating was the thing and the thing did not require enjoyment). Sometimes: a banana. Sometimes: a steel tiffin with sabzi — aloo gobi, or bhindi, or the particular dal that was not Vandana's dal (nobody's dal was Vandana's dal) but that was — competent. The dal of someone who knew how to cook but who did not cook with love, the cooking being functional rather than devotional, the food being fuel rather than expression.

Water: refilled daily. The canteen that Lata held and that Lata's hands warmed and that was, in the hole's unchanging cold, the thing that Lata held the way other children held stuffed animals — the holding being comfort, the comfort being the canteen's warmth which was her own warmth reflected back, the particular physics of loneliness: the only warmth available is the warmth you generate yourself.

The crying stopped on the third day. Not because the sadness stopped — the sadness did not stop, the sadness was the baseline, the sadness was the atmospheric pressure of the hole, constant and invisible and pressing. The crying stopped because the crying was — unproductive. The crying produced: sore throat, dehydration, exhaustion. The crying did not produce: escape, rescue, mother. And Lata was — Lata was practical. The practicality of a twelve-year-old who had lived with an alcoholic father and who had learned, from the living, that the things you could not change were the things you did not waste energy crying about, the energy being a finite resource and the finite resource requiring allocation.

The allocation was: morning — eat, drink, use the bucket, shout once (the shouting that was not the sobbing-shouting of the first days but the strategic shouting, the single shout that said: I am here, I am alive, I have not surrendered, the shout that was more flag-planting than help-seeking). Afternoon (estimated) — explore the hole, trace the walls, look for weaknesses (there were none; the stone was stone and the stone did not have weaknesses, the stone being the thing that had been stone for millions of years and that was not going to stop being stone because a twelve-year-old was pressing on it). Evening (estimated) — think.

The thinking was the dangerous part. The thinking was where the darkness lived — not the physical darkness, the mental darkness. The thinking that started with: where is my mother? And that spiralled to: does she know I'm alive? And that spiralled to: does she think I'm dead? And that spiralled to: is she looking? And that spiralled to: will she find me? And that spiralled to the place that Lata did not let the spiral go, the place that was the bottom of the spiral, the place where the question was: will anyone find me? And the answer in the darkness was: silence.

Lata learned to stop the spiral. The stopping was a technique — a technique that she invented, that no one taught her, that was born from the particular necessity of a mind that needed to survive its own thinking. The technique was: Vandana's pohe. When the spiral started, Lata would — in her mind, in the darkness, with her eyes open or closed (it did not matter, the darkness was the same) — make Vandana's pohe. Step by step. The flattened rice soaked for four minutes. The oil in the kadhai. The mustard seeds — pop pop pop, the sound in her mind's ear. The curry leaves — the sizzle, the fragrance in her mind's nose. The turmeric, the chillies, the peanuts, the tossing, the sugar, the salt, the coriander, the lemon, the coconut. Each step held in the mind. Each step a room in the mind's house. Each step a wall against the spiral.

The pohe took four minutes to make in reality. In Lata's mind, the pohe took twenty minutes, because each step was savoured, was expanded, was held the way a drowning person holds a rope — not with the grip of strength but with the grip of the last thing between her and the nothing.

*

On the fifth day (Lata's count — the count being the marks she scratched into the stone wall with the edge of the steel canteen, the marks that were the first writing she had done since the kidnapping, the writing that was not words but numbers, the numbers being the only narrative she could create: day 1, day 2, day 3, day 4, day 5, the narrative of survival reduced to its smallest unit), Bharati came and did not leave.

"Lata." From above. The voice that Lata was beginning to know — the voice's patterns, the voice's registers. Bharati's voice had three registers: the business register (the bucket-lowering voice, the food-delivery voice, the voice that was efficient and that said: this is the transaction and the transaction does not include conversation), the soft register (rare — the voice that had said "ghabru nakos" in the van, the voice that contained something that might have been guilt or might have been tenderness, the two being, in a kidnapper's voice, hard to distinguish), and the explaining register (the register that Lata had not yet heard but that was, on the fifth day, activated).

"Lata, mala tuzha-shi bolaycha aahe." I need to talk to you.

"Mala ghari jaaycha aahe." I want to go home. The response that was automatic now — the response that was not a request but a declaration, the declaration that preceded all conversation the way the national anthem preceded all cricket matches: compulsory, formulaic, the thing that had to be said before anything else could be said.

"Mala maahit aahe. Aiku." I know. Listen.

A ladder. A rope ladder, descending through the shaft. The rungs appearing in the darkness — not visible (the darkness was still complete) but audible, the rungs hitting the stone wall as the ladder descended, the sound saying: the world is coming down to you.

"Chadh." Climb.

Lata climbed. The climbing that was — the climbing was the first upward movement in five days, the body that had been horizontal and sitting for five days now going vertical, the vertical that was the direction of escape and that produced, in Lata's chest, the particular acceleration that hope produces: the heartbeat that said: something is changing, the changing might be good, the good is possible.

At the top of the shaft: light. Not sunlight — lamplight. A kerosene lantern, the lantern's flame the first light that Lata had seen in five days, the flame that was — Lata's eyes. The eyes that had been in darkness for five days and that were now confronting light and that did what eyes do when the darkness ends: they wept. Not the crying-weeping. The physiological weeping, the tears that the eyes produced to protect themselves from the light's assault, the tears that were not sadness but biology, the body's response to the returning world.

She was in a room. A cave — no, a cellar. An underground room that was larger than the hole, the room having a stone floor and stone walls but also: a wooden table, two chairs, a kerosene lantern on the table, and Bharati.

Bharati, seen for the first time in light. The angular face — confirmed. The face that Lata had seen in the sodium-yellow streetlight was, in the lantern-light, older than Lata had thought. Not old — late thirties, maybe forty. The face that had lines (the forehead-lines of a person who had been thinking hard for years and whose thinking had left marks) and that had eyes that were — the eyes were the surprise. The eyes were not the kidnapper's eyes. The eyes were tired. The eyes were the eyes of a person who had not slept well in five days and whose not-sleeping was not about the kidnapping's logistics but about the kidnapping's morality, the eyes of a person who was doing something she believed was right and who was not entirely certain that the believing was correct.

Keshav was not in the room. Bharati was alone.

"Baith." Sit. Bharati gestured at the chair.

Lata sat. The chair was — the chair was the first furniture in five days. The sitting-on-a-chair that was so ordinary and that was, after five days of stone floor, extraordinary, the ordinary-made-extraordinary by deprivation, the particular recalibration that captivity performed on the senses: the chair was just a chair and the chair was the most comfortable thing Lata had ever sat on.

"Pani?" Bharati offered. A glass — not a canteen. A glass. With water. The water in a glass was — the water was the second ordinary thing that was extraordinary, the glass being civilization and the canteen being captivity and the distinction being the distinction between the hole and the world.

Lata took the water. Drank. The water was different from the canteen water — fresher, colder, the water that came from a stream or a well rather than from a stored canteen. The water that tasted like — like outside.

"Lata," Bharati said. "Tula aata saangaychay ki aamhi tula ka aanla." I'm going to tell you now why we brought you.

"Kidnap kela." Kidnapped.

"Ha. Kidnap kela." Yes. Kidnapped. Bharati did not flinch from the word. The not-flinching that was — the first honest thing. The first acknowledgment that what had been done was what it was, without the softening that Bharati had attempted in the van ("you haven't been kidnapped") and that Lata had rejected with the particular fury of a child who knew the truth and who was being told the truth was not the truth.

"Tuza baba — Tushar — to ya week-end la parat yenaar hota." Your father — Tushar — was coming back this weekend.

"Mala maahit aahe ki to gela." I know he left.

"To gela nahi. Tuzya aai-ne tyala kadhla." He didn't leave. Your mother threw him out.

"Mala maahit aahe." I know.

"Tula maahit nahi ki to ka parat yenaar hota." You don't know why he was coming back. Bharati paused. The pause of a woman who was about to tell a twelve-year-old something that a twelve-year-old should not need to hear. "Tushar cha plan hota. Ghari parat yaycha. Vandana-tai-shi bhandan karaycha. Bhandan — violent bhandan. Aamchya network la — aamchya lokan-na — tyacha plan kalla. Plan mhanaje — plan mhanaje worst-case." Tushar had a plan. Come back to the house. Fight with Vandana. A violent fight. Our network — our people — learned about his plan. The plan was — worst-case.

"Worst-case?" Lata's voice. Small. The voice of a twelve-year-old who was beginning to understand something that she did not want to understand.

"Worst-case mhanaje — Lata, tuzya baba-la plan hota ki tumha doghinna — tula aani tuzya aai-la — tyala asa vatla ki tyachi family tyachya-shivay rahata yenaar nahi." Worst-case means — Lata, your father planned to — he believed his family couldn't exist without him.

The sentence. The sentence that was not complete because the completing would be too much for the lantern-lit cellar and the twelve-year-old in the chair and the water in the glass. The sentence that Lata completed herself — in her mind, in the darkness that was no longer the hole's darkness but the knowledge's darkness, the particular darkness that understanding produced: her father had planned to kill them. Her father had planned to return and to do the thing that men like her father did when the expulsion produced the rage and the rage produced the plan.

"Aamhi tula tithe-un kadhla karan police kahi karnaar navhte." We took you from there because the police weren't going to do anything. Bharati's voice — the explaining register, steady, the steadiness of a person who had given this explanation before, to other children, in other cellars, the explanation that was the justification and the justification being: we are not the criminals. The system is the criminal. The system that does not protect. The system that leaves the protecting to us.

"Aani Aai?" Lata whispered. And Mama?

"Tuzhi aai surakshit aahe." Your mother is safe. Bharati's voice — the soft register now. "Aamchya lokan-ni tuzya aai-la halvalya. Dusrya thikani. Tushar-la nahi sapdat. Police-na kharach kalal ki Tushar dangerous aahe. Tyanna tyala pakadla." Our people moved your mother. To another place. Where Tushar can't find her. The police finally realised Tushar was dangerous. They arrested him.

"Police-ni Baba-la pakadla?" The police arrested Papa?

"Ho. Tuzya aai-ne complaint file keli — case. Police-ni tyala pakadla. To custody-madhe aahe." Yes. Your mother filed a complaint — a case. The police arrested him. He's in custody.

Lata sat in the chair. The glass of water in her hands. The water that tasted like outside. The information that tasted like — the information did not have a taste. The information had a weight. The weight of a twelve-year-old understanding that her father had planned to kill her and her mother and that a stranger had kidnapped her to prevent the killing and that the kidnapping was the saving and the saving was the kidnapping and the two being the same thing was the thing that the twelve-year-old's mind could not resolve because the mind was twelve and the resolution required a maturity that twelve did not have.

"Mala ghari jaaycha aahe," Lata said. For the last time. The sentence that was the same sentence and that was also, this time, different. The sentence that was not the demand of a captive but the request of a child who had just learned that home was not the home she remembered and that the gali was not the gali she knew and that the safety she had thought existed was a safety that had been built on the edge of a violence that she had not fully understood.

"Lata," Bharati said. "Ghar aata safe nahi aahe. Tushar custody-madhe aahe, pan custody kayamchi nahi. To baher yeil. Aani to tula shodhel."

Home isn't safe yet. Tushar is in custody, but custody isn't permanent. He'll get out. And he'll look for you.

The lantern flickered. The flame that was the first light in five days, the flame that was showing Lata a world that was not the world she had left, the world being rearranged by information, the information being: everything you knew is changed. The father who was mean when he drank is a man who planned to kill you. The mother who made pohe is a woman who filed a police case. The house on Sitapur Gali is a house you cannot return to. The gali that knew everything did not know enough to save you.

But someone did. Someone who knocked three times at 11:47 PM. Someone who put a cloth over your face and took you to a hole and fed you parathas and now sits across a table in a lantern-lit cellar telling you the truth.

The truth that was: you were saved. The truth that was also: you were taken. The two being the same. The two being irreconcilable. The two being the thing that Lata Jadhav, twelve years old, was now required to live with.

She drank the water. The water that tasted like outside.