Ajay dreams of a burning pyre, he dreams about his name. Sometimes in the night, he wakes with a start, from a cage, from a lonely room, from headlights on the road, and through the Mandrax haze, pressed against Sikandar’s flesh, Prem looks at him and he looks at Prem and they watch each other, Prem’s desperate, pleading, broken eyes, and Ajay’s hard black pools of pain.
“Why don’t you do it to me,” Prem says, “like they do?”
Ajay watches snoring Sikandar for a sign of wakefulness, but he’s dead drunk.
“I’m not like them.”
“You have nightmares,” Prem says. “I watch you crying in your dreams.”
Ajay rolls on his back, looks away.
“You’re a killer.”
Nothing.
“Would you kill me?”
Nothing.
“If I asked you?”
“You should have fought the Sissodia men,” Ajay finally says. “You should have fought them even if they beat you. You should have fought them with everything you had, instead of running away. Then you wouldn’t be this way.”
“I’ve always been this way.”
* * *
—
It turns out Bablu was the snitch. Satya Acharya passes the word. Bablu’s throat is cut in the corridor as they walk back from the yard. Sikandar does it himself.
* * *
—
Now he has a problem. Who will handle the Mandrax? That was Bablu’s job. There’s a meeting of the inner circle. Sikandar roars at them. He can’t trust a single one. He can’t trust them to do anything right. Maybe they knew about Bablu all along. Maybe they’re snitches too. He’ll have to do it himself. Ajay speaks up from his spot against the wall. I’ll do it.
* * *
—
Who is Sikandar to say no to a VIP? It’s a simple enough job. He is to go to the prison doctor. The doctor prescribes certain legal pills, the warden signs off on the requisition form, Ajay collects the Mandrax in boxes from the pharmacy, carries them back to the cell, handing out Gandhis to the guards along the way. Then he does his rounds, deals the Mandrax out.
* * *
—
Ajay is happy here. Happily numb. Happy not to be preyed upon.
He’s a killer anyway. He has nothing to lose.
Better to be like this than Prem.
He looks on Prem with . . .
Disgust.
Or something else.
Loathing, deflected from the self.
* * *
—
Sikandar sends Prem out on “errands” to his friends. He sends Prem out to whoever pays. A good wife does what her husband says. Members of their gang. Other gangs. Different Sissodia men. The three Sissodia boys from the yard, Pradeep, Ram Chandra, Prakash Singh, they pay a very good price, they pay extra to put cigarettes out on Khushboo’s skin. Prem feels Prem is slipping away, vanishing between men, behind the Mandrax and the pain, behind the obedience and the fear and the psychological strain.
* * *
—
He smokes whatever he can get.
He’ll do anything for a lungful that will send shards of forgetting into his brain.
Sometimes at the end of it, he can barely walk.
Ajay discovers Prem collapsed in the hallway, laughing to himself.
He stares down at him.
Pity, horror.
Prem reaches out, grabs Ajay by the legs.
Ajay tries to pull away, but he can’t bring himself to be so unkind.
He crouches down.
“Prem,” he says.
Prem stares at Ajay with moist eyes.
“Prem is dead.”
* * *
—
When Sikandar drinks, Khushboo drinks by his side. Black Label. Sikandar is onto the second bottle for the night.
Now chicken and roti.
And fifteen men crowded into the cell, watching TV.
The movie Khalnayak is on.
Acharya members, some Sissodias too.
They’re watching so eagerly.
Fifteen men, and Ajay, and Prem.
Waiting for the song.
The song comes on.
“Choli Ke Peeche Kya Hai?”
“Turn it up,” Sikandar roars.
* * *
—
It’s miraculous, how Khushboo raises herself for the song. Like a marionette lifted from a drunken slump. Transfixed by the song. Eyes soaked with tears. Stands in front of the TV, takes on Madhuri’s role. Smiles as if there’s nothing in the world. Sikandar shouts at her, throws chicken bones. She’s in such anguish. But she begins to dance. A soul transformed. The men delight, they begin to cheer. She moves around the cell with such grace. Dancing. Dancing away the pain. She dances up to Sikandar and she twirls and twirls.
The men cheer.
Sikandar is enjoying his show.
“See how my wife dances for me?!”
“You should see how she dances for Karan!” one of the Sissodia men cries in reply.
Sikandar’s face changes in a heartbeat. He picks up an empty whisky bottle and hurls it at the TV. Knocks it over and cracks the screen.
“Karan?” he roars.
The song still plays, Khushboo still twirls and mimes, lost in a trance.
“You dance for Karan?”
Karan Mehta. A young man from a rich business family. An anomaly in this world. Handsome, soft-spoken. A downy beard, shoulder-length hair, soulful eyes.
He gave up his studies to join the Sissodias.
A sharpshooter.
He’s killed eighteen, so they say.
Sikandar enters a jealous rage.
“Get out,” he yells at them all. “Get out.”
Khushboo is still twirling, laughing.
But when Sikandar starts the beating, it is Prem who screams. Prem, as the gang members flee, being punched in the stomach, kicked in the ribs. Prem grabs, pushes, begs for his life. Deranged Sikandar yells how she’s always the same, she always cheats on him whatever he does. He starts to pummel Prem in the face. “I’ll kill you,” he says. The blood spurts from his broken nose. It’s up to Ajay to intervene. He lifts a dumbbell from the floor and cracks it into the back of Sikandar’s skull.
* * *
—
You’ve killed him.
There is silence, save the broken TV still blasting the music out. Sikandar sprawled above shards of glass. Ajay tosses the dumbbell to the floor.
You’ve killed him.
Bends down to look at him. No.
He’s still alive.
He’s breathing.
He’ll wake in the morning with a sore head.
He fell when he was drunk.
That’s all there is to say.
Ajay drags Sikandar to his mattress, rolls him onto it. Puts a blanket over him, places an empty bottle of whisky in his hand. Pauses a second. A guard passes by. Ajay looks up. “He broke the TV. He passed out drunk. He’s sleeping it off.”
The guard points to Prem, on the floor. “And this one?”
“I’ll clean him up.”
* * *
—
“Who are you?”
Prem is barely conscious. Ajay washes the blood from his face.
“Put your arms round me.”
Ajay prepares the bottleneck.
Gives Prem a hit, though it stings his busted ribs to inhale.
“Hold me,” Prem says.
Ajay puts him on the mattress.
Gives him another hit.
“Hold me,” Prem says again.
* * *