The next instalment of Esha Ex, a novel-length work of new fiction, updated daily. For more details click here.
“Stoning!” I shouted, too shocked to be afraid. “For a bit of tat off the back of a lorry?”
“Stoning!” I shouted, too shocked to be afraid. “For a bit of tat off the back of a lorry?”
I carried on, not even aware of what I was saying. The cheering crowd backed off to reveal what looked like a ditch, freshly dug. They had known this would be the verdict all along. A nice stoning to start the day and morally cleanse the parade – a human sacrifice. My vision was whirling and I tried to hold my arms up, to plead with the ladies, but I couldn’t focus on any one of them.
People began to push me towards the ditch. I dug my heels into the road. But it didn’t stop them, it only made my feet bleed. The edge of the ditch oozed wetly inside with layers of raw red clay. My feet were off the ground – the boy-men, despite being as thin as rails, were strong. The people closest to me held stones in their hands. Not rocks, but not pebbles either.
There was a loud honking from the end of the street and, just as the men were about to throw me into the ditch, there were yells from far back in the crowd. A convoy of wooden-backed trucks was blasting through, bearing down on us, grinding out smog and dirt, horns blaring.
We broke apart, pulled back, and the men lost their grip on me as one truck then two more pushed through, barely slowing. There was a sharp tap on my shoulder, then a clinking sound. Something rolled by my foot – a grenade, I thought immediately - and popped open. Grey gas flooded out, slow and thick, hissing. The people around me stopped, looked at it quizzically. The gas rose like a magic mist. Then it hit our faces and began to burn. It was teargas.
The crowd reeled, choking, bent double, eyes burning, blinded with tears. I tried to run too but there was a scrawny grip fast around my wrist. It pulled me back, away from the fizzing silver canister, which was being kicked back and forth in the panic, spreading its acrid smog everywhere.
“Silly girl!” It was Adal, wallet, straw bag, waistcoat, bun, shawl and all. She was holding the clip of the teargas canister. “Don’t you know, if anyone tells you to get into a hole, don’t go.”
She dropped the canister clip into her bag.
“I wasn’t going out of curiosity! I didn’t have a choice! I’ve been in prison all night,”
“Where I’m from there wouldn’t even be a nice prison stopgap, you’d be lynched from a tree if you were even suspected of doing something wrong. This is a very soft place.”
She took off her shawl, threw it over my head and guided me to the far end of the street, where the lorries had gone. My eyes were streaming, a sour taste coating the inside of my mouth. We continued until the noise of the crowd was behind us and the air smelt clearer. Adal took the shawl off me. I saw that we were back at the main road. On the other side, just about visible, were the superstores on the industrial estate.
I fell onto Adal’s neck and sobbed for a few moments with relief and gratitude while she rubbed my back.
“How did you know where I was?”
“I didn’t. I was coming in for work as normal, on the bus. But the drivers’ protests are still going on. When I was quite close to here, the driver stopped and told us he was fed up driving in such hard conditions for so little pay and he didn’t like seeing his fellow drivers being strung up for minor offences like accidental deaths because people were so stupid they were hanging off the bus steps in their dozens, and he wasn’t going to work today unless we all paid a little tariff on top of the usual tariff. We all refused. I got off the bus and I got on the other bus that comes here and there was Kannan.”
“Kannan?”
“The tiffin man. On his way to the Jollipur kitchens to pack your lunches. Don’t tell the ladies but the Jollipur kitchens recently moved to new premises on the estate. Large-scale kitchen and full odour-ventilation capability. He told me everything.”
“Who told him?”
“His lady friend from the courthouse.”
“I didn’t steal the box.”
“If you say so.”
Adal was looking up and down the road, which was crowded with commuter buses, bicycles and entire families on motos, babies sitting in toddlers’ laps. I rubbed my head and face, which burned.
“How did you get that canister?” I asked.
“I picked it up yesterday morning during the demonstrations after those two deaths. The police threw them into the crowd. That one rolled by my foot, and it didn’t burst open. So I put it in my bag. Thought it might be useful.”
She walked me into the road while moto-rickshaws swerved and bicycles wobbled into the path of oncoming lorries to avoid us.
“You find something, take it, use it. Don’t let it pass out of your hands except in a trade for something else,” she said.
“You lost your can of riot gas.”
“No, I exchanged it for you. That’s not a bad trade.”
Adal was holding her bag tight to her side like a shield against road death.
“If you want to get out of here, go somewhere you can work your way up instead of being turned inside out with exhaustion in the arse-end of nowhere.”
Somehow we had established ourselves in middle of the road and oncoming vehicles moved acceptingly around us as if we were a tree or a broken down car.
“You know the trucks that mowed through us? They’re on their way to the Family’s summer villa. They invite all their friends for a big party. First, they taunt a boar. Then they roast the boar. Then, they eat the boar. They celebrate all night. Those trucks are carrying supplies and casual workers. They won’t question one more head. The trucks use the parade as a shortcut because the routes around the estate are too busy at dawn and they don’t want to get stuck going through all these roundabouts.”
Three of the lorries turned onto the main road. The riot gas must have cleared by the now, the crowd dispersed. I wondered whose job it was to refill and level the hole that had been dug for my stoning. Or would they leave it open, like a vacant motel room, for the next thief?
The trucks grew closer. My nerves prickled with anticipation. Adal took a good hold of my shoulder.
“Leap up. And hang on” she said. “Keep hanging on until you get there.”
“Thank you, thank you so much for everything,” I gabbled.
The trucks were bearing down on us – I could see the knuckles of the first driver behind the dusty windshield, the flower garland swinging from his rear view mirror. A truck whipped past and I leapt onto the back, foot on the long exhaust, hands grabbing the slatted wooden sides, pushed up by Adal. Spread eagled, stuck to the back of the truck, I sailed away from her.
With every swerve and pothole dip my body slammed against the truck. I wouldn’t be able to stay on for long, and if I fell off I’d be mown down by the traffic behind us. The sight of street kids catching lifts on the back of big vehicles was so common that I didn’t get beeped by other drivers. Maybe there was some sympathy for people desperate enough to risk our lives to do that.
We came to a stop at a junction. My arms ached, the tendons were stretched, my chest felt as if it was tearing in two across the bone. I kicked out the padlock pinning the back flap of the truck together. The hook it was attached to and the small metal plate attaching the hook to the truck fell off onto the road. We moved on. At the next junction I pushed up the back flap and threw myself inside.
The truck was stacked with bolts of cloth. I crawled in amongst them and peered out through the slats of wood. We were on the motorway, leaving the suburb behind us. I wondered if we’d be near the home and prayed not. It was unlikely, anyway: the Family would choose somewhere luscious and green, not bare and yellow and sandy, to have their summer villa. The cars around us were of a rich type, family saloons with tinted windows, clans and business dynasties escaping the summer heat.
I dropped off to sleep, leaning against one of the bolts of cloth, awoke when the truck braked hard. Bright, country light was coming through the slats. I could see the smoothly plastered white walls of a villa and a large set of gates entwined with garlands of pink and orange flowers. We’d arrived.