—
Perhaps aware that she had become the center of attention, or perhaps because she was frightened, the quiet baby finally wailed. A woman picked her up. (Later, about her it was said that she was tall, she was short, she was black, she was white, she was beautiful, she was not, she was old, she was young, she was a stranger, she was often seen at Jantar Mantar.) A piece of paper folded many times into a small square pellet, taped down along one edge, was threaded on to the thick black string tied around the baby’s waist. The woman (who was beautiful, who was not, who was tall, who was short) untaped it and handed it to someone to read. The message was written in English and was unambiguous: I cannot look after this child. So I am leaving her here.
—
Eventually, after a lot of murmured consultation, hesitantly, sadly, rather reluctantly, the people decided that the baby was a matter for the police.
—
Before Saddam could stop her, Anjum stood up and began to walk fast towards what seemed to have become a spontaneously constituted Baby Welfare Committee. She was a head taller than most people, so it wasn’t hard to follow her. As she walked through the crowd, the bells on her anklets, not visible below her loose salwar, went chhann-chhann-chhann. To Saddam, suddenly terrified, each chhann-chhann sounded like a gunshot. The blue street light lit up the faint shadow of white stubble on Anjum’s dark, pitted skin, shiny now with sweat. Her nose-pin flashed on her magnificent nose that curved downwards like the beak of a bird of prey. There was something unleashed about her, something uncalibrated and yet absolutely certain—a sense of destiny perhaps.
“Police? We’re going to give her to the police?” Anjum said in both her voices, separate, yet joined, one rasping, one deep, distinct. Her white tusk shone out from between her betel-nut-red stumps.
The solidarity of her “We” was an embrace. Predictably, it was met with an immediate insult.
A wit from the crowd said, “Why? What will you do with her? You can’t turn her into one of you, can you? Modern technology has made great advances, but it hasn’t got that far yet…” He was referring to the widely held belief that Hijras kidnapped male babies and castrated them. His waggishness earned him an eddy of spineless laughter.
Anjum didn’t balk at the vulgarity of the comment. She spoke with an intensity that was as clear and as urgent as hunger.
“She’s a gift from God. Give her to me. I can give her the love she needs. The police will just throw her in a government orphanage. She’ll die there.”
Sometimes a single person’s clarity can unnerve a muddled crowd. On this occasion, Anjum’s did. Those who could understand what she was saying were a little intimidated by the refinement of her Urdu. It was at odds with the class they assumed she came from.
“Her mother must have left her here thinking as I did, that this place is today’s Karbala, where the battle for justice, the battle of good against evil, is being fought. She must have thought, ‘These people are fighters, the best in the world, one of them will look after the child that I cannot’—and you want to call the police?” Though she was angry and though she was six feet tall and had broad, powerful shoulders, her manner was inflected with the exaggerated coquetry and the fluttering hand gestures of a 1930s Lucknow courtesan.
Saddam Hussain braced himself for a brawl. Ishrat and Ustad Hameed arrived to do what they could.
“Who gave these Hijras permission to sit here? Which of these Struggles do they belong to?”
Mr. Aggarwal, a slim, middle-aged man with a clipped mustache, wearing a safari shirt, terry cotton trousers and a printed Gandhi cap that said I am against Corruption are You? had the curt, authoritative air of a bureaucrat, which was indeed what he had been until recently. He had spent most of his working life in the Revenue Department, until one day, on a whim, sickened by his ringside view of the rot in the system, he had resigned his government job to “serve the nation.” He had been tinkering on the periphery of good works and social service for a few years, but now, as the tubby Gandhian’s chief lieutenant, he had shot to prominence and his picture was in the papers every day. Many believed (correctly) that the real power lay with him, and that the old man was just a charismatic mascot, a hireling who fitted the job-profile and had now begun to exceed his brief. The conspiracy theorists, who huddled on the edges of all political movements, whispered that the old man was deliberately being encouraged to promote himself, to paint himself into a corner, so that his own hubris would not allow a retreat. If the old man died of hunger publicly, on live TV, the rumor went, the Movement would have a martyr and that would kick-start the political career of Mr. Aggarwal in a way nothing else could. The rumor was unkind and untrue. Mr. Aggarwal was the man behind the Movement, but even he had been taken aback at the frenzy the old Gandhian evoked, and he was riding the tide, not plotting a stage-managed suicide. In a few months he would jettison his mascot and go on to become a mainstream politician—a veritable treasure house of many of the qualities he had once denounced—and a formidable opponent of Gujarat ka Lalla.
—
Mr. Aggarwal’s singular advantage as an emerging politician was his unsingular looks. He looked like many people. Everything about him, the way he dressed, the way he spoke, the way he thought, was neat and tidy, clipped and groomed. He had a high voice and an understated, matter-of-fact manner, except when he stood before a microphone. Then he was transformed into a raging, almost uncontrollable, tornado of terrifying righteousness. By intervening in the matter of the baby, he hoped to deflect another public spat (like the one between the Kashmiri Mothers and the Spitting Brigade) that could distract media attention away from what he thought of as the Real Issues. “This is our Second Freedom Struggle. Our country is on the brink of a Revolution,” he said portentously to the quickly growing audience. “Thousands have gathered here because corrupt politicians have made our lives unbearable. If we solve the problem of corruption we can take our country to new heights, right to the top of the world. This is a space for serious politics, not a circus ring.” He addressed Anjum without looking at her: “Do you have police permission to be here? Everybody must have permission to be here.” She towered over him. His refusal to meet her eye meant he was squarely addressing her breasts.
Mr. Aggarwal had misread the temperature, misjudged the situation completely. The people who had gathered were not wholly sympathetic to him. Many resented the way his “Freedom Struggle” had grabbed all the media attention and undermined everybody else. Anjum, for her part, was oblivious to the crowd. It didn’t matter to her in which direction its sympathies lay. Something had lit up inside her and filled her with resolute courage.
“Police permission?” Never could two words have been pronounced with more contempt. “This is a child, not some illegal encroachment on your father’s property. You apply to the police, Sahib. The rest of us will take the shorter route and apply straight to the Almighty.” Saddam had just enough time to whisper a small prayer of gratitude that the word she used for the Almighty was the generic Khuda and not specifically Allah mian before the battle lines were drawn.
The adversaries squared off.
Anjum and the Accountant.
What a confrontation it was.