Rupal Bhosle lived in a two-story house at one end of the village. If the house didn’t give away his status as the richest man in Vithalgaon, the deference shown to him by his many employees did. A servant had run into the big house to inform Rupal of Smita and Mohan’s arrival, and he had come out to meet them in his compound. As they stood chatting, Rupal gave a sudden kick to the young boy who was washing one of his two cars. “Saala, chutiya, keep your eyes on your work,” Rupal said. The boy bobbed his head and beamed, as if Rupal had paid him a compliment. “Yes, boss. Sorry, boss,” he said.
Rupal led them to the back veranda. A large swing hung from the rafters, but he motioned them toward some rattan chairs. The house was surrounded by sugarcane fields, and Smita could see bare-chested men working in the distance. In the fierce heat of the day, their blackened skin made them look like silhouettes against the blue of the sky. Rupal lowered his lanky frame into a chair across from Smita and blocked her view.
He was a tall man with a lush mustache and a long, dolorous face. His light-brown eyes were framed by thick, dark eyelashes. Smita thought that he would have been handsome except for the twist of his lips that gave him an expression of cruelty. Every few seconds, he glanced at Mohan, who had chosen to wander away and was standing a few feet away.
“Will you take something?” Rupal asked expansively. “Chai, coffee, Coca-Cola?”
“No thanks,” Smita said. “We just had tea at Govind’s place.”
“Ah, Govind. He’s a good boy. Good boy.” He yawned a prodigious yawn. “So, you say that girl, Shannon, has her wicket down? For how long?”
“Excuse me?”
“Arre, baba. For how long will she be out of commission?”
“Oh. I’m not sure.” Smita cleared her throat. “In any case . . . As I explained, I’m hoping to write a story about when the verdict comes in. And I thought I should interview you. Because Meena said you . . .”
“Ah, Meena. I tried warning that foolish girl to not step into that den of temptation. But did she listen? No. And so, everything happened just as I had predicted.”
“You predicted that she would be burned alive?” Smita tried, but failed, to keep the sarcasm out of her voice.
Rupal looked deeply into her eyes. “I can see backwards and forwards in time, miss,” he said. “From the beginning of the world until the end of time. I am having that power.”
“And when was that?” said Mohan, walking back toward them. “The beginning of the world?”
Not again, Smita thought, feeling her stomach muscles tense. Don’t fuck this up for me, Mohan.
But Rupal seemed oblivious to the challenge in Mohan’s query. “Easy question, sir,” he said. “The universe was created about two hundred years ago. Around the time the demon Ravana and the god-prince Rama were living on Earth.”
Mohan’s lips twitched. “Accha? And you can see all the way back two hundred years? Wow.”
“Hah.” Rupal nodded, puffing out his chest. “But to predict what end this girl Meena would meet, I didn’t even need to go back so far. I just told her brothers the truth—stitching those Western clothes, working beside people from unknown castes and creeds, would corrupt her morals. That is exact-to-exact what happened.” Rupal gave a triumphant smile. “And that’s why I told them how to end their problem.”
“End their problem?”
“Yes. With her falling under the spell of that worshipper of Muhammad.” Rupal turned his gaze toward Smita. “What to do, miss? In the old days, we could count on the police to help. A few slaps at the police station, and bas, the fellow would have come to his senses. But these days.” He sighed dramatically. “These days, even the police and the politicians are too afraid of these terrorists who create trouble wherever they go. They do the same mischief in your country, also, isn’t it? With that 9/11 tamasha? So it falls upon honest citizens to take matters into their own hands.”
“You advised the brothers to . . . ?”
“Of course. As the village head, it is my job to protect the morals of our village, isn’t it? And that means, first and foremost, protecting the virtue of our women. I advised Govind to go at night with a can of kerosene and teach that fellow a lesson nobody in his community would ever forget.”
Was this detail in the stories Shannon had written about the case? Smita tried to remember. If the man was confessing to her so nonchalantly, surely he had done the same with Shannon? “Did you tell the police this? About your role?”
The man stared at her for a long moment and then let out a loud guffaw. “Arre, the area police chief is my cousin-brother, miss. My mother’s sister’s son. Of course I told him. Gave him the date and time we were planning on doing this. So that they could ignore the phone calls.”
Smita went pale. She cast a quick glance at Mohan, who was standing with his hands thrust deep into the pockets of his jeans. “The police knew?” she asked.
“Yes, of course. We are law-abiding citizens. Not like those dogs.”
“When? When did you give Govind this advice? After Meena informed him she was pregnant?”
“Yes,” Rupal said. “But all of this could’ve been avoided if he’d listened to me earlier. Govind came to me when he found out that she was whoring herself to that Abdul. At that time, I told him to beat Meena and forbid her from leaving the house. That good-for-nothing Arvind is home all day anyway, na? He can watch his sister. I told Govind to take some boys from our village to meet Abdul on his way home from work and give him a good-proper thrashing. Leave him bleeding by the side of the road like the dog that he is. Bas, that would’ve cooled his taste for Hindu flesh. Automatically, he would’ve gone thanda.”
“Thanda?”
“Cold,” Mohan said quietly. “He means, Abdul would’ve given up.”
“Exactly. But that chutiya Arvind gets so drunk that the girl manages to run away while he is sleeping. The younger sister swears that Meena insisted that she help her get to Birwad. Next thing we hear, Meena is married. Never in our history has such a thing happened in our village. Still, Govind decided to do nothing to avenge this insult, the bloody eunuch.”
Rupal removed a paan leaf from a tin can, placed some tobacco and supari inside it, folded it into a triangle, and inserted it into his cheek. Remembering his manners, he offered a leaf to Mohan, who declined. “What else you want to know?” he asked, chewing on the betel leaf, his mouth turning scarlet.
“I’m confused,” Smita said, even while she marveled at the man’s audacity, the nonchalant manner in which he was incriminating himself. “You said the burning was your idea?”
“Hah. After they came to Govind’s house when Meena was with child, he came to see me again. The poor boy was almost mad with shame and worry. Thank God that by then he had managed to get the younger sister married off to that cripple from out of town. Radha was lucky. No boy from our village would’ve married her, despite her beauty. But Govind must also think about making the marriage for his younger brother, no? Tell me, which decent family will allow their daughter to marry a boy who is having a Muslim niece or nephew? So I says to him, the only way to restore his family name is to burn it all down.”
“I see,” Smita said.