Chapter 10: Insaaf Ka Raasta (The Path of Justice)

1983-1985

The network grew the way banyan trees grew — not upward but outward, the roots dropping from branches and becoming trunks and the trunks becoming new trees and the new trees being connected to the original tree by the root-system that was invisible and that was, in its invisibility, the strength.

By 1983, Bharati's network had twelve operatives across four states: Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat, and Karnataka. Twelve women (and Keshav, who was the exception that proved the rule — the rule being: the network was women, the women being the intelligence and the infrastructure and the trust, the trust being the thing that the network ran on and that women provided to other women in a way that men could not provide, the providing being the particular intimacy of shared experience, the experience being: we know what it is to be unsafe in our own homes).

The twelve operatives were: Kaveri in Pune (the retired schoolteacher, the shelter). Parvati in Vidarbha (the farm, the rural hideout). Sunita in Mumbai (a nurse at KEM Hospital, the hospital being the intelligence-source — the nurse who saw the bruises that the women did not report, the bruises being the language that the body spoke when the mouth could not). Jyoti in Bhopal (Bharati's hometown operative, the woman who maintained Bharati's original contacts). And eight others — scattered, connected, the scattering being the safety and the connection being the network.

Leela was seventeen. Seventeen and — Leela was, by 1983, the network's primary intelligence operative. Not by title (the network did not have titles; the network had functions, the functions being the thing you did rather than the thing you were called). By function: Leela gathered intelligence. Leela went to cities. Leela observed families. Leela identified the cases where the danger was imminent and the system had failed. Leela returned to Satpura with the information that Bharati needed to make the decision: extract or not-extract.

The decision was — the decision was always difficult. Bharati made the decision with the particular anguish that Leela could see in Bharati's face every time: the anguish of a woman who was deciding whether to commit a crime (kidnapping) to prevent a greater crime (murder, severe violence, the particular destructions that men like Tushar inflicted on their families). The anguish that was not indecision — Bharati was decisive, Bharati was the most decisive person Leela had ever known — but that was the moral weight, the weight that the decision carried and that Bharati carried and that the carrying was the cost.

"Har baar main sochti hoon: kya main sahi kar rahi hoon?" Bharati said to Leela. 1984. At the camp. The evening — the evening that was the thinking-time, the time when the day's work was done and the fire was burning and the chai was made and the thinking was possible. "Har baar. Ek bacche ko uski maa se alag karna — yeh sahi hai? Yeh zaroori hai? Agar main galat hoon — agar danger utna nahi tha jitna main samjhi — toh maine ek bacche ki zindagi barbaad ki." Every time I think: am I doing the right thing? Every time. Separating a child from their mother — is this right? Is this necessary? If I'm wrong — if the danger wasn't as much as I thought — then I've ruined a child's life.

"Aur agar sahi ho?" Leela asked. And if you're right?

"Agar main sahi hoon, toh maine ek bacche ki jaan bachayi. Lekin — yeh dono saath nahi chal sakte. Sahi hona aur galat hona — dono ka keemat hai." If I'm right, I saved a child's life. But — the two don't balance. Being right and being wrong — both have a cost.

The cost. The cost that Leela understood — not abstractly, not philosophically, but personally. The cost was: Vandana's pohe. The cost was: the mother who made extra peanuts for a daughter who was not there. The cost was: the mental pohe that Leela made every night, the technique that kept the darkness at bay and that was, simultaneously, the reminder that the darkness existed and that the darkness was the distance between a daughter and her mother and that the distance was Bharati's decision and the decision's cost.

*

The missions multiplied. 1983: four extractions. 1984: six extractions. 1985: eight extractions. The multiplication that was — the multiplication was not ambition. The multiplication was need. The need that existed because the violence existed and the violence was not decreasing and the system was not improving and the not-improving was the condition that the network operated in and that the network's growth responded to: more violence, more need, more extractions.

Leela's role expanded. From intelligence-only to intelligence-and-logistics. The expansion that was — the expansion was natural. Leela was good. Leela was, Bharati acknowledged, the best operative the network had produced. The best being: the most perceptive (the seeing that Bharati had trained, the seeing that Leela had taken beyond the training, the seeing that was intuitive now rather than learned), the most invisible (the fifteen-year-old girl who was invisible had become the seventeen-year-old young woman who was invisible — the invisibility of ordinariness, the particular skill of looking like everyone and no one, the looking that said: I am not remarkable, I am not memorable, the not-memorable being the operative's superpower), and the most — Bharati did not have the word. The word was: empathetic. Leela could see the violence not just in the evidence but in the absence of evidence, the particular perception that identified the danger not from the bruises (the bruises being the late evidence, the evidence that arrived after the damage) but from the patterns (the patterns that preceded the bruises: the household's rhythm changing, the children's behaviour shifting, the particular atmospheric change that preceded violence the way atmospheric pressure preceded storms).

Leela saw this because Leela had lived this. The seeing that was experiential — the seeing that started in Sitapur Gali, in the house where the Chetak's parking angle predicted the evening and where the shoes at the door predicted the night, the seeing that was the child's survival-sight adapted for the network's purposes.

But the expansion brought the line closer. The line that Bharati had drawn: observe, report, do not extract. The line that was — the line was moving. Because the network was growing and Bharati and Keshav could not be at every extraction and the extractions were multiplying and the multiplying required more hands and the more-hands were — Leela's hands.

The first time Leela crossed the line was in Indore. 1985. A case that was — the case was urgent. The urgency being: the father (a textile-mill supervisor named Pramod) had beaten his son (Arjun, age nine) badly enough to hospitalise the boy, and the hospital had discharged the boy back to the father (the hospital's decision being: the father was the legal guardian, the legal guardian had the right, the right was the law, the law was the hospital's shield against moral responsibility), and the network's intelligence said: next time, the hospitalisation would not be enough. Next time would be the last time.

Bharati was in Bhopal. Keshav was in Pune. The Indore operative — a woman named Rekha — had the intelligence but not the capability. The capability being: the physical act of extraction, the act that required entering a house and taking a child and leaving with the child and the leaving being the part that required — not strength, exactly, but the particular combination of speed and calm that the extraction demanded.

Leela went. Not with Bharati's permission — with Bharati's implicit acknowledgment, the acknowledgment that was: the network needs this done and you are the one who can do it and the doing is the crossing of the line and the crossing is necessary.

Leela was eighteen. Eighteen and — Leela crossed the line at 2 AM on a Wednesday in Indore, in a textile-workers' colony on the city's eastern edge, in a house that was — a house that was like Sitapur Gali's houses: small, thin-walled, the walls that let the gali hear everything. Leela entered through the back door (the back door that was not locked because the textile-workers' colony did not lock back doors, the not-locking being the particular vulnerability of communities where the crime was internal rather than external, the crime being the father and the father being inside the house and the inside being the place where the locks did not protect).

Arjun was — Arjun was in the back room. The small room. The room that Leela recognised because the room was the room she had been in on Sitapur Gali — the child's room, the room where the child was sent, the room that was supposed to be the bedroom and that was, on the nights when the father was the danger, the room where the danger visited.

"Arjun." Leela's voice — quiet. The quiet that was the not-being-seen applied to sound, the quiet that Keshav had trained. "Mere saath aao. Tumhe koi nahi marega." Come with me. Nobody will hit you.

Arjun looked at Leela. The looking that was — the looking was the looking of a nine-year-old who had been hospitalised and discharged and who was waiting for the next time and whose waiting was the particular terror of a child who knew what was coming and who could not stop what was coming. The looking that said: are you real? Are you the rescue? The rescue that children dream about and that rarely arrives?

"Aao." Come.

Arjun came. The coming that was — the coming was trust. The trust that a nine-year-old gave to an eighteen-year-old woman who appeared in his room at 2 AM and who said "nobody will hit you" and whose saying the boy believed because the saying was said in the voice that the boy's survival-sight recognised: the voice of a person who had been hit and who was not going to hit.

The extraction was — the extraction was smooth. Rekha's car (a Fiat, the Fiat that every middle-class Indian family owned and that was, therefore, the most invisible car in India). The drive to the Satpura hills. Arjun in the backseat, asleep — the sleep of a child who had been afraid and who was now, for the first time, not afraid, the not-afraid producing the particular exhaustion that the absence of fear produced: the body realising that it could stop being vigilant, the body responding to the realisation by shutting down, the shutdown being: sleep.

Leela carried Arjun from the car to the camp. The carrying that was — the carrying was the thing that broke the line. Not the entering or the speaking or the driving. The carrying. The carrying of a sleeping nine-year-old boy from a car to a camp in the Satpura hills — the carrying that was the act of taking responsibility, the responsibility that said: this child is now mine. Not in the ownership sense. In the protection sense. This child is now in my protection and the protection is my job and the job is the line-crossing and the line-crossing is the becoming.

The becoming of Leela into — Leela. Fully. The name that meant play. The name that meant creation. The name that now also meant: protector. The person who entered houses at 2 AM and took children from the danger and carried them to the safety. The person who had been carried (from Sitapur Gali, in a Matador van, by Bharati and Keshav) and who was now the carrier. The cycle that was not the cycle of violence (the cycle that Tushar had inherited from his father and had inflicted on his family) but the cycle of rescue, the cycle that said: I was saved, so I save. The saving being the meaning. The meaning being the name. The name being: Leela.