The Light Beyond the Frame

I 

Outside a meshed window on the first floor of a two storied building stands a crooked tree. At night, dark and solitary; filtering the amber light that the street lamp beside it pours into its leaves. It is petite and does not wear too much green on its head; quite like an old woman, frozen in time. And like an old woman, it has witnessed many a shade of humanity. 

Tonight, a shabby haired girl stands at the window, her eyebrows being forced into each other with the intensity of her gaze on the tree. “No, it hasn’t arrived yet.” She turns around to the clock on the wall opposite. It is 1 AM. She has only just stepped over the threshold of her twenties, stepped into a dark room where freedom and convention pull her in two opposite directions. She stands there, one leg turned to the side and bent at the knee as though it had quarreled with the other and would not be the first to apologise, her hands folded. A song is chasing its tail in her mind as she waits her 10 minutes the way she has dutifully done these past few weeks. 

The air is whistling and the crickets are chattering. The night is quiet. It is peaceful like no other time of day has ever been. It has been serene this past half hour. But now a rumble approaches, gets louder and pierces the song in her head. Her leg takes a sharp turn, her nails lodge themselves into the mesh and she falls to a squat, leaving only her head and eye at the window. She cannot be seen. 

She can see nothing beyond what her window permits, and although the image of the neighbourhood area is sharp behind her eyes – and she has had days of luxury to sit under this window and meditate on sounds, where they originated, what caused them and where they were going – she has discovered that sound always deceives the brain with regards the distance of the object from the receiver. She has strained her ears hard enough to have heard vehicles on the highway, the metro trains trumpeting, birds flying across tree tops, cats fighting, dogs growling, drunkards shuffling and mumbling on the streets and yet, today the slowly rising rumbling noise thwarts her one time more than the hundreds it has already done. 

And so it is that she comes to wait a few agonizingly lengthy seconds more, her facial muscles as still as the statue of a meditating Buddha, her heartbeat getting progressively louder than the rumble, till a motorcycle comes to a stop under the tree, letting out the wail of a police siren. Her eyelids snap open of their own accord. A helmet on a stick appears to have driven it here. A slender hand reaches out to the lowest branch of the tree and leaves something on it. She can’t see. The tree is black. The hands go back to the motorcycle handles, the engines rev up and the bike leaves the meshed frame. 

A deep breath; a breath to suck in all the remaining echoes of the noise: she must wait. She cannot be seen. The sirens were a bad idea. She had only been trying too hard to persuade the agents to pass on this suggestion to Miss Andheri every day. But Miss Andheri would not listen. “Well, of course they have to be on dear! It’ll appear to be security patrol. There are enough drunken hooligans throwing their voices around the neighbourhood for us to seem genuine!” she’d said, with a certain pride that almost made her look like an aristocratic lady of Victorian England. The idea was conceived by one of her agents, she’d said. She thought it was ingenious, saved everybody a bagful of anxiety. 

Well, this is Miss Andheri for you: forever shuffling and bustling about, seeing to it that the queerest and most forbidden of ideas comes to fruition as reality. As an assistant professor at the college where Riya had studied, she had been winning the favour of almost all the students for twenty years now. She was merely in her forties, but she had that perfect combination of love and temper that placed her on the grandma’s chair. So what could a poor girl do? 

She could wait for the night to settle back in around the breach created by the motorbike in its belly of peace, fall back heavy onto her neighbours’ eyelids, and turn around to pick up the band on her desk to tie her maenad-like hair. 

Riya – for this is what she is called during the day -- pulled her jacket off the hook on the living room wall and swung it onto her body. Like a shadow she turned the key in the lock and glided out onto the street.

II 

Far away, a bird shrieked. Riya closed her eyes and stood at the street corner, shivering slightly under the lamp. She was tired; tired of hiding to be free. In the beginning it had all been an exciting game. However, a gloom had been setting in her heart lately, and it would swell each time she heard her upstairs neighbour’s baby cry or watched a lovely couple laughing in the park. She turned the corner with a deep sigh; at least the couple was laughing, thriving and alive. It had been three years since she began. She had handled more than a hundred assignments. Yet, her hand seemed apprehensive, reluctant to stretch itself out onto the old hag of a tree’s lowest branch even now. 

The package was lighter tonight. “A little less work this week, perhaps”, she thought, frowning at it quizzically, albeit momentarily, before looking up at the lights twinkling from the high, rotating construction beam that peeped out from behind the rooftops of a few neat lanes of houses. They had always felt like a brotherly grin. She let the immense calm of the night moisten her resigned eyes for another moment, and then spun on her heels and briskly strode back to her apartment. 

Just two names. Horizontally beside their names were the amount to be delivered and the location. Along with the list was an envelope containing the cannabis, dried and processed, and her pay for the week. But this time, her parchment bore a special task. The names of a couple sat scrawled onto the bottom, a long white expanse of ink-splatters below the names of the weed buyers. And beside their names, scribbled, scratched off and rewritten: Majra, Haryana. Under that, in an even more runaway script, lay a number of words, claustrophobic in what little room there remained. “young regular type left home three days to usual lodge chandni chowk”, it said. She took the envelope and peered into it once again. There was a small photograph of the fortunate pick of the day, the unfortunate couple first struck by the arrow of love and then by the whip lash of the patriarchs of their village. 

The majority of these cases began in villages in Haryana, Punjab, Rajasthan or Uttar Pradesh, where the Indian government, having determined, after much deliberation of the utmost seriousness, that letting the notorious khap panchayats rule was be the best way to preserve “tradition”, had turned the ancient Banyan tree of caste into a functioning Whomping Willow. The khap panchayat ruled by their own set of rigid laws, ones that defined not only women’s behaviour but also the possibilities of matrimonial unions. These villages formed a country of their own; a region where their caste and clan directed them to their spouse and moving towards another was equivalent to treason. The Indian constitution was invisible to them. And yet, under Indian law they existed. The simpler cases were easily redeemed, but at its worst, a case of honour killing was beyond brutal. 

Riya had only faced one such complex case. It had failed. She had reached the designated village to find a charred female body tied to a scarecrow amid a vast sea of green, mimicking Christ on the cross. A freshly made path, carpeted by the felled sugarcane plants, had cut through the field leading from the scarecrow to a wood beginning at the edge of the field. At the tail end of the path a male body beaten to pulp and stabbed had been left dangling, a note belled around his neck with a thread. The note had read: Your karate mistress was a great catch. Don’t worry, we buried her safely. 

It was the job of another agent, one who was much her senior in experience and training, to travel places – villages -- and track down such couples. “What was the cover?” she wondered. A Photographer it was, perhaps. But, she didn’t know, couldn’t know. The imagination can go any number of places. 

History was made by the brutality, by those cases that had concluded with the burning, dismembering or beheading of the young lovers. The saved ones dissolved into the hullaballoo of mundaneness; they faded into the daily business of scrounging for roti-kapda-makaan and the tediousness of protecting the flickering flame of passion and love, goodness and care from being blown out into the commotion of a city crowded with savages drunk on money and power. But this is general knowledge. 

As regards the specific functioning of the organisation, Riya was in the dark. Three years, and yet she knew nothing of the source of the cannabis, nothing of the fates of those she brought back and let diffuse into air. She only knew she had to remove the fleeing couple before the following night bowed and retreated off-stage. 

The usual kind, as was this particular duo, involved a couple having been chased out of their village by knives and guns for having married for love, for having tied an unwanted intermediary knot in the sacred rope of caste or worse, having wrapped themselves in an incestuous intra-clan union. They were smiling in the picture, together. 

This couple – Riya’s subjects – was on the run and hence, the change in location on the sheet in her package. This case was relatively simple, free of third party political involvement; a regular. There were no gundas stationed in their path, no fathers, uncles and brothers chasing them to death. She knew she would be to Majra and back in a jiffy, carving out for herself a few extra days of relaxation. 

She began to hum a tune as she wove it at the tip of her nose; the ghost of a smile shrouded her lips. “Could she save that love?” her mind whispered. “Would their love remain in an alien land? Would she find them strolling in a park some day? Would their arms ache with the weight of a new life one day?” She would never know. She was trained to deal with the subject, not the human. 

Nevertheless, she pulled off the bed cover and turned out the lights again. The next morning demanded another task.

III 

The cannabis was put into the idols and sealed. Both were of the Hindu Lord Ganesha. It was 2PM. The sun glowered down from behind a curtain of pale grey cloudless sky. Riya put on her jacket with a steadfast and practiced grip, embedded a few essential household tools here and there across the clothing on her body, and walked out onto the street. 

“Hello beta! Where are you off to in such a hurry in the middle of the afternoon? Late for meeting someone kya?” a middle-aged lady from one of the apartments in the complex called out as Riya attempted to cross the common yard with large strides. She had said the last line with a particularly sly-sweet smirk, her throat choking with a sugar syrup of extraordinary thickness even at that pitch, her large eyes gleaming with playful mischief and bangles of various colours jingling on her fat arms. Riya chewed charged words brimming impatience and locked them shut in her tiny mouth while she smiled a polite acknowledgement; a smile like the ones all Indian children are taught to give in return to such comments, trained and practiced at the numerous festive family and neighbourhood gatherings that she had been dumped in the middle of as she was growing up; a grin just large, loving and innocent enough to save oneself from ambush by the excessive cheer and friendliness of aunties and uncles. It surprised her how their energy never shrunk one bit when it came to setting her up with an “eligible, handsome young man” simply because she lived alone in an apartment! This one specimen has traditionally been heard engaging every passing person in uncalled for amicable conversation. Rumour has it that she knew more about the vegetable vendor, dhobi and the security guard than did their wives. She was, nevertheless, one of the best artists in the complex and spent her afternoons on the balcony of her ground-floor lodging, reading a book, painting, knitting or, as was the case this afternoon, cross-stitching pandas onto a bed cover. Moreover, she was the most generous person in the complex. Her maid was the only one who didn’t work at any other house! 

She was Mrs. Neel, better known as Archana Ma’am; the maths tutor for all the children in the complex. Riya, too, was well-known and well-liked by the people of the complex. The other Mrs. Neels of the complex, some of her colleagues at a nearby school for the underprivileged where she taught, fawned her to suffocation as though she were a pet Poodle! For, even though her mind spitted out spurious comments, her face and mouth presented her as a very amiable character and her heart always meant well for everybody, whether her brain and eyes liked them or not. To top it all, she was a poor little orphan. 

And was it not just that they doted on her so? She would, when unable to open a new can of jam, run down to the Mrs. Neel who lived below her apartment to seek her help as professional kitchen-mistress. Or when she discovered, in the dead of the night, that she had run out of detergent and had to have it immediately because all her clothes were in the washing basket, sweaty and stinking, she would run downstairs like a gale and on finding her trusted neighbour absent from home she would fly to another on the first floor of the opposite building, begging sheepishly for it. Nonetheless, at the school, she was one of the most professional. 

This school for the underprivileged was one among a chain of such institutions owned by Miss Andheri and her live-in partner. This kind of work had been Riya’s dream and aim, formulated during her days as an undergraduate by her year long stint as a volunteer for another start-up NGO in Delhi working in the same field. Miss Andheri’s faculty were people who knew their subjects and who were good teachers, chosen not on the basis of their qualification, but on their quality. Riya was one such person. 

But this is a story for another time. At the moment she has reached the Metro parking area and found that it is fully occupied. We must follow her there. 

Riya stood at the head of her motorbike and looked around to make sure she was being given the least attention. A few street food sellers were serving a number of customers a little distance away and the ticket-man was very conveniently not at his station in the parking lot. She draped a scarf around her head to imprison her wild hair, which was in love with the wind and sun, and set off on the long journey. 

She paused briefly at two departmental stores in the city to drop off the idols – for, these shops became festering wounds in the cityscape, selling weed and drugs by nightfall -- and at 4 pm, having only just burst out of a traffic logjam on the highway on its southern outskirts, she breathed in a bucketful of air, pushed her scooter into a steady acceleration till it reached a speed of 120km/hr and flew into her world of fantasy. This was the best part of the job, the part that never got old. This was her unlimited time to look back at her journey through the city and giggle over the moments when she had slowed down or stopped among cars and bikes driven by men, been stared at with a variety of expressions – confusion, shock, outrage, admiration – and had had the pleasure of smiling back with a secret knowledge of the hidden weapons on her body. 

She was not worried, she knew the routine. She knew that nothing would hinder her movement and nothing did. She spent the evening scouring the village for her subjects, slithering from house to house, gliding down the streets. And all the while her rusty and dilapidated looking scooter stood camouflaged behind an automobile repair shed on the highway at the very threshold of the village. 

It was nearing twilight and birds had begun to call out to each other. And on the canvas of an orange-red sky, still humming the previous night’s tune, she spotted her couple. They had taken off at a stroll down the street after having shared a plate of rajma chawal at a small dhaba near the highway. The stroll was an excuse. It gave them time to survey their surroundings, spot the origins of the stares that were being shot at them. They were quiet, stiff with both fear and caution; their hearts glowing like those of escaping convicts who, in the fervour of their act, had believed they were gallantly doing their bit towards the progress of society, but moments later had found their lives dearer than ideology. The woman had wrapped a portion of her saree around her head and the man was carrying a large green bag on his shoulder. Under the cover of simplicity and relaxation, they managed to meander their way out of the village into solitude. 

Riya trailed them until the night settled in, trying to put them into names. She finally settled on Deep and Jay. They had retreated to a half-built brick building. It seemed to be abandoned, for the night at least, and was placed a little distance away from the last hovel on that street. She followed them to the shelter and melted into a wall beside the entrance. 

Deep morosely lit a candle to reveal Jay aggressively unrolling two thick woolen sheets. Pulling out some more clothing from their bag, he bundled them into pillows and prepared to sleep. Not a word had passed between them. Their repeatedly rehearsed plan filled the space. It was all they could do to make this monotonous, frightful wait shorter. 

Deep sat down on her makeshift bed and smiled her mixed feelings at him. She let her saree down and began to comb her hair. He watched. They were small people; appeared to be in their early twenties. She had a slender face and the golden glow of the candle flame formed a halo around her thick eyebrows, round button-like nose and full lips. His stubbles, in the candle-light, seemed to have a glimmer of their own as they sat on a stubborn chin raised to his woman; his large eyes unreadable as they fixed on his beloved. He was lying on his side, head supported by a palm, the other skinny hand lightly laid out on the side of his body that looked up to the ceiling. 

All of a sudden, with no warning from the flickering flame towards which she had lowered her bitter-sweet eyes, the woman found her man kissing her full on the lips, his hands tightly gripping the back of her neck. She dug her comb into his greasy, black hair. But just then, from a corner, a dispassionate voice blew out the candle saying, “hello. You’re going to Delhi to be free.”

IV 

Riya was on the highway now, the couple sitting stiff behind her, unconscious and fastened to her back with a long leather leash. The wind rushed past her on all sides, gushing into her ears and buzzing tunes. Her nose too seemed to enjoy the chill nesting on its tip, reddening it to a cherry. These road trips enlivened her soul, made her feel holistic; almost becoming the only hours of the week when some sort of peace and lightness of spirit alighted on her heart. Nevertheless, all was not cheerful. 

Her sides itched with the friction of the edges of the belts, but it was her mind she wanted to claw out for replaying the kissing scene out to her. She remembered her first night on such a mission. She hadn’t been alone. She had been training. She had learnt, on that night, how to hold the slumbering bodies in a manner allowing movement with maximum smoothness. She had understood that although this appeared to be unfair to the couple, it was, more often than not, the only course of action against instant death. And learning to carry them well was one of the few tricks she would, definitely, have to master before she began. This, as well as putting people to sleep without a spot on their skin, she had accepted as major education at the organisation. 

For, you see, even to be able to yell one’s way out of a disturbed mind one requires a certain amount of seclusion. Further, to hold a reasonable dialogue one needs composure and time. At the village a mob would have gathered, forcing Riya to merge once again into the shadows, and when the villagers discovered the couple’s cause for being where they were, they would have been beaten or better, held hostage to be fed to their family like cattle to a tiger. 

Thus, her actions as an agent, their cause and their consequence, Riya held just. Whether the organization’s experiment had been successful or not she could only guess. Human beings are complex creatures and her own reactions to being a subject cannot be considered representative of all those kidnapped for the sake of their freedom. Although, of course, she had been a different kind of subject. The day she had run to Miss Andheri’s lodgings and fallen at her feet, the skin around her eyes crimson with the heat of dryness from an incessant flow of tears, she had been banished from the only place she had called home. Miss Andheri was kind and righteous; the most compassionate and open minded person Riya knew. She had taken her in, nursed her and given her a job as a teacher at her NGO to enable her to pay her way through the remaining year as an undergraduate. 

The night before the day she resigned her fate to Miss Andheri, she had returned home -- with torn dress, bleeding lip, burning vagina, a swollen arm and a sprained knee – shaken to the bone, her mother’s soft bosom her only thought, to find a neighbourhood family in their living room. They had come, ceremoniously, with a marriage proposal. It was late and her orthodox father had already suffered a massive embarrassment due to the unbecoming delay in her arrival. “What happened beta? Where were you?” he had enquired, in a gruff and scalding tone. When she had stared back in stupefaction, he had come closer and smelled her whiskey breath. She was no more their model daughter; the door to that house had thudded shut behind her. She had sat frozen on the street, hurting from the sharp pain that was stabbing her heart, her limbs numb with disbelief. She had looked into the dense darkness and seen emptiness, she had smelled fear in the passing breeze, realised the warmth of a tree’s shelter and felt the anger bleeding out of her heart. 

But tonight was a different night. The pain was lost. She let out a loud sigh. Once again, the roaring wind became audible. It was a new moon in March. Perhaps her father had done good ousting her. He had set her free. 

She drove back to a damp and cramped old room above a narrow lane in Chandni Chowk and left her couple there to be welcomed by a putrid stench of garbage and jalebis which would drift in from a network of paltry streets, resembling a thicket of snake vines, when they woke up to a gray, polluted sky rising with the dawn of a fresh start. 

Sometime before the next morning runs out a masked entity will arrive and take as long as it needs to explain to them what they’re going through. Eventually, but before the week runs out, they will be removed from that apartment and be allocated a job in a shop while being assessed to determine where they’re most comfortable working: at a shop, as a cab driver, as a teacher or anywhere else. They will be given new names, new clothes and hair, and trained in the martial arts by night. Then they’ll be put into the drug trade: their disappearance complete. 

And I mean “put”. A simple drug delivery duty was their only price for freedom. They were free. Riya was free. Although, she would never forget: she had made three friends when she joined the organisation. A year ago two of them went missing. Four months later, one of the missing was found murdered in a park very close to where she now lives and five months after that the third one forsook her friendship. 

Riya yawned as she approached the wooden granny outside her apartment window. A golden light flickering from her lowest arm caught her eye. She walked over. A broken shard from a mirror tied to a bundle of cannabis was wedged at the point where the branch emerged from the trunk. There was no accompanying note. 

For the first time in three years, Riya began to wonder what her future looked like.