Free City of Ghosts by Bali Rai Page A

replied, pleased that Udham remembered him.
    â€˜And perhaps you’d like some food?’ Mata Devi added. ‘I’ve just made
aloo gobi
.’
    Udham nodded as Jeevan brought him some tea. ‘Thank you,
bhai
.’
    Jeevan stood for a moment before remembering that he had arranged to meet some friends. ‘May I go out now, Mata-ji?’ he asked.
    The old woman asked him if his chores were complete.
    â€˜Oh, let the boy alone!’ Sohan told her. ‘He has done enough chores for five young men.’
    Mata Devi sighed. ‘Be careful,
beteh
,’ she warned. ‘There is danger in the air nowadays.’
    â€˜I won’t be long, Mata-ji,’ replied Jeevan.
    â€˜See you around,’ Udham said to him.
    â€˜You too,
bhai-ji
.’
    Gurdial was busy chasing after Gulbaru Singh’s daughter so Jeevan made his way to the railway bridge to meet some other friends. He arrived well before time, and wary of the army patrols stationed at each end of the bridge, he found a patch of grass and sat down,careful not to stare at the soldiers. The grass was slightly damp and smelled of the rain. Jeevan turned to face the tracks and wondered whether he would see a train pass by on its way to the station. To his left were tall poles carrying the telegraph wires that allowed the British to make contact with each other. And across the tracks, outside the old city, was the British quarter; and beyond this, the heavily defended fort.
    The houses in the British quarter were much larger than those in the old city and the roads and lanes around them much wider. Each house had its own walled compound, the walls painted in pastel shades of yellow, blue and pink. A large variety of trees and bushes filled the gardens. From where he was sitting, Jeevan could make out the trailing bougainvillea hanging from some of the compound walls, the flowers cream, purple, pink and crimson. Wild caper bushes with thick, sharp spines grew from cracks in the ground, and teak trees stood tall, their whitish-grey bark shimmering like silver in the sunshine.
    The caper bushes took him back to his own childhood, to the days before his mother had been killed. Her scent, a mixture of lychees and ripened sugar cane, seemed to reach out to him across the years, and he could picture her smile. He thought back to all the stories she used to tell him at bedtime, to the
mooliwale paratha
she’d make each Sunday morning before they visited the village
gurdwara
. As a widow with no other family, she had lived a hard life but she hadnever let her troubles discolour his day, not even once.
    And then he saw himself cowering in the corner of the room they had called home as the blood began to thud in his veins, making them bulge. The bandits had come during the cold of a winter’s night, seven of them, carrying rifles and machetes. They had thick facial hair and none had any semblance of light or life in their eyes. They were soulless and evil and they carried with them the stench of carrion. While he’d looked on helplessly, those animals had used his mother, one after the other.
    â€˜Don’t look,’ his mother had begged him. ‘Please turn away!’
    But Jeevan had frozen, his eyes wide with shock. The last of the bandits, once satisfied, had turned to him.
    â€˜Now you are all alone,’ he’d sneered before cutting Jeevan’s mother’s throat from ear to ear.
    The bandits raped and killed four women in the village and murdered several men before night gave way to dawn, but only one of them had mattered to Jeevan. And she had been taken away from him. Had he been blessed with a father, with a gang of strong elder brothers, his life would have turned out so differently. But there had been no one to help him save his mother; no one to defend her from men who had the hearts of jackals.
    Now, as he sat alone watching the railway tracks, Jeevan wondered how it might feel to have a family. Mata Devi