The Curse of That Night (3 page)

Chapter 4

Darsh

He woke up at 4:30 in the morning as all the other children did, took a cold freezing bath with the limited amount of water provided by
Maalik
. He was allowed to wash his clothes twice a week. He then went out of the house at 5:00 with three other boys, leaving his little sister behind and collect all kinds of things that people accidently throw; things that could be recycled like paper, plastic bottles, etc.

They walked miles and miles away from home and climbed on top of smelly dumpsters with loads of trash. Digging through them, they used to get many useful items but at the same time, got sick very often by breathing all the poisonous chemicals that a trashcan contains. His eyes sting and he felt like crying as he dug through the pile of rubbish, holding a sack in the other hand. On the other side of the road, he saw a group of children, all neatly dressed, carrying bags on their shoulders and holding their lunch in one hand.
He wiped away his tears and started working again.

‘I better get back to work or I won’t get any lunch’, he thought
and quickly rushed to find more things. When he got home, he
cleaned all the things he collected and put them into new sacks. When the lunch bell rang, he got into a line and waited for his lunch. But, before he could take his lunch, he had to show
Maalik
what he collected and if he did not get enough, he’d have to skip his lunch and go find some more things. Whoever got the most got an extra cookie with their usual lunch which was usually a bowl of soup and a piece of bread.

After the usual routine of rag-picking, he had to do his chores like getting the wood for the fire, making the beds, cleaning the rooms, washing the bowls and most importantly, looking after his sister.

That was the routine life of ‘Darsh’, an orphan and a rag picker.

Kishan Chand his father, half-blind and half-starved, held in his gnarled hands the reason for his hunger: a tattered card that entitled him to subsidised ration that now served as a symbol of India’s biggest food heist.

Kishan hadn’t got anything from the village shop for 15 months. Yet 20 minutes’ drive from Satnapur, his village, past bone-dry fields and tiny hamlets where children with distended bellies play, a government storage facility five football fields long bulges with wheat and rice. By law, those 57,000 tons of food were meant for Kishan and the 105 other households in Satnapur with ration books. They were meant for some of the 350 million families living below India’s poverty line of Rs. 28 a day.

Instead, as much as $14.5 billion worth of food was looted by corrupt politicians and their criminal syndicates over the past decade in Kishan’s home state Uttar Pradesh alone, according to the data compiled by the officials. The theft blunted the country’s only weapon against widespread starvation – a five-decade-old public distribution system that has failed to deliver record harvests to the plates of India’s hungriest.

This hunger and corruption led to the death of Darsh’s only support, his father. At the age of seven he was left behind as an orphan with a three year old sister to take care of.

He blamed those corrupt politicians for the death of his father and his villages’ poor condition. He wanted them dead, all of them.

But, he forgot that he was living in India. As usual, this scam, like many others (in India) involving politicians, remained unpunished. A state police force beholden to corrupt lawmakers, an underfunded federal anti-graft agency and a sluggish court system resulted in five overlapping investigations over many years and zero convictions. Such a pity.

He had no other option then to take his sister with him and run away from this mess. He stole some money from a government office, took his sister with him and came to Delhi.

He met
Maalik
a contractor for rag pickers and poor in town. And he started a new life, a life which some of us can’t even imagine in our worst dreams...

He was living for his sister, Aarti. He wanted her to get the best of education to lead a happy and prosperous life. From the money he got from
Maalik
, he used to buy books for Aarti. Aarti too loved his brother deeply.

He would curse his life and wanted it to end in one single sip. But, Aarti would console him by saying, “Dada, we are luckier than many other rag pickers because we have been taken by
Maalik,
and now, we have a nice place to stay instead of going and sleeping on the road like others. And Dada, you help the people around you, even if you don’t know it! You separate all the useful material like paper, plastic containers, etc. If there were no rag pickers, we would have much more trash than we have, right?” he just smiled at what she said.

Later on as the years passed, he did more and more work to earn more and more money as he knew
Maalik
would let him go and live on his own in the next few years. He was 18 or so when suddenly a part of his heart said,
‘It’s time to go and start your journey all by yourself and to live without Maalik, in your own house…’

The following days, he could not concentrate on his tasks and finally, on Friday, Aarti could see that something was wrong and she pulled him to the side of the room and gently asked him what was wrong. He divulged all his thoughts, everything that was disturbing him. She said that the first thing that he had to do was to go and talk to
Maalik
about the problem!

Next morning, he went to
Maalik
and talked about this with him and he replied, “Yes, I think it’s time. You are a grown up man now, you can take care of yourself.”

Walking over to Aarti with eyes sparkling and overflowing with tears, wanting to cry but smiling, he gave her a tight hug.

“It’s time Chutki,” he whispered at last. Getting back to her mood as being his ‘sister’, she pulled him away and replied “Go to bed Dada and we will think about what to do next, tomorrow.”

He got a job in a sugar mill and a place to live. But, the salary and the living conditions were not what he had expected. He wanted more money for Aarti to get admission in a decent college. And he was trying hard but in vain, until that night when he saved the life of Abhijeet Raichand and his girlfriend.

He watched the car losing control. When the car came to rest hitting a tree, he ran towards it. He saw a man and a girl drenched in blood. The girl was facing east, staring unconsciously over a spent air bag at what looked like smoke rushing from below the crumpled hood. Her thumb twitched on the seat belt latch.

“Don’t move. Be still,” he shouted. But, none of them was in the position to comprehend.

“Save her. Please,” the man said. His mouth was dry.

In a haze, he could not decipher the face except that it was red, red with blood. He made out a black T-shirt and grabbed at it.

“You are going to be okay, yes? You both are going to be okay?”

He placed one hand, then another, on her neck, and said, “Please, you must be still.”

Nothing made sense to her, except for his voice, calm and unyielding, and those hands that restrained her, and cradled her. For nearly 30 minutes until an ambulance arrived, while nothing indicated a devastating injury, his hands stayed right there.

It was later at the hospital that he realised he had saved ‘The Abhijeet Raichand’ and Malvika Singh, the highest paid lawyers in town.

This one night, this one accident changed his entire life… for good or for bad… time will decide…

Chapter 5

Rohan Raichand

Rohan Raichand walked across the hallway in the house where he and his brother Abhijeet lived, which looked more like a villa. He entered his brother’s room. It was a magnificent room lit by many lamps, but all the light could not eradicate the darkness in his heart. Even at this age, he was feeling so tired and left out. He had always tried to get everything that he wanted but he was feeling as if he was still at the starting point. Walking across the room, he switched off all the lights. He did not want anybody to see him. The fact that his brother was still alive… was disturbing enough.

All these years Rohan had seen his elder brother’s success and yes, he was jealous of him. Rohan used to spend money which rightfully belonged to Abhijeet like anything and when Abhijeet tried to take control, he was made to look like a lonely hopeless man who didn’t know how to live life to the fullest. But, even in those squabbles between them, family values always prevailed. Rohan never went against any decision Abhijeet made. Call it a little amount of respect left for his brother or the fear of being thrown out of the house; he always followed whatever Abhijeet told him to do.

Rohan stood up and went towards the corner of the room where there was a small bar which had an exquisite collection of expensive wines. He always wanted to drink out of it, but was (always) denied permission. He was not old enough to handle the booze, as was told.

He poured red wine in a glass and sat down on a chair. He took the first sip and winced as if he had swallowed knives that were cutting his throat.

Abhijeet had sent him to Singapore to study law and become a lawyer. But, law had never been his piece of cake. He wanted to open his own chain of five star hotels. He even tried to convince Abhijeet to invest some money but in vain. He wanted Abhijeet dead.

‘Once he is dead, all this money will be mine!’ he thought.

He was back in Delhi to finish off the task that he had started long back, at least in his mind.

To kill his brother…

Trinngg…

His phone buzzed.

“Hello,” he picked it up.

“Sir, I want my money,” the caller said.

“What money, you asshole? He survived.”

“I cut the brake wire for it to look like an accident, as per your command. I don’t know from where that poor boy came and saved him,” caller tried to explain.

“Fuck that son of a bitch!” Rohan retaliated.

“What now sir?” asked the caller.

“Nothing, wait for my instructions,” Rohan replied and disconnected.

Now, he had to think of something else. A bigger plan, a bigger conspiracy... to kill his brother or to get all his money some other way…