Chapter 11: Mumbai Mein Samaira (Samaira in Mumbai)

Mumbai, 1985

Seven years. Seven years since Samaira Apte had opened the manila file labelled JADHAV, LATA. MISSING. NAGPUR. Seven years since the file had entered the ACTIVE drawer. Seven years since the drawer had held the file and the file had held Samaira and the holding was the obsession that had not loosened.

The office on Lamington Road was the same. The transistor-radio shop downstairs had added a television repair section (the television being the 1980s' upgrade from the transistor, the upgrade that was changing India's entertainment infrastructure the way the Green Revolution had changed India's agricultural infrastructure: slowly, unevenly, with the particular Indian combination of ambition and improvisation). The twelve-station hum had become a twelve-station-plus-television hum, the hum that was louder and that Samaira had learned to ignore the way she had learned to ignore the original hum: completely, automatically, the ignoring being the investigator's skill applied to the investigator's environment.

The filing cabinet had changed. The ACTIVE drawer was fuller — not with the Jadhav file alone, but with the files that had accumulated around the Jadhav file, the files that were the investigation's children, the cases that Samaira had found while looking for Lata and that had become, themselves, cases.

Because Samaira had found a pattern.

The pattern was: children missing. Not the missing-children pattern that the police tracked (the runaways, the stranger-abductions, the trafficking cases — the cases that had explanations, terrible explanations but explanations). A different pattern. Children missing from homes where the father was violent. Children missing without ransom demands. Children missing without traces. Children missing from Nagpur, from Bhopal, from Indore, from Pune — the geographic spread that said: this is not local. This is organized. This is — a network.

Samaira had seven files. Seven missing children over seven years — the seven that she had identified, the seven that matched the pattern. Seven families where the father (or the uncle, or the grandfather — the violence being patrilineal, the violence following the male line the way property followed the male line, the following being the inheritance that nobody wanted and that everybody received) had been documented as violent. Seven children taken without trace. Seven cases classified by the police as "unresolved" — the classification that was the police's admission of failure and the police's relief, the failure meaning: we don't have to do anything, the relief being: we don't want to do anything.

"Saat bacche," Samaira said to Pradhan. On the phone — the phone that connected Mumbai to Nagpur, the STD call that cost eight rupees per minute and that Samaira made because the eight rupees was the investigation's currency and the investigation required the spending. "Saat bacche, saat saal, sab ek jaisi pattern. Koi organization hai — koi group — jo bacchon ko nikalta hai violent gharon se." Seven children. Seven years. All the same pattern. There's an organization — a group — that extracts children from violent homes.

Pradhan's response: "Samaira-ji, yeh bohot bada claim hai. Police isko nahi manegi." This is a very big claim. Police won't accept this.

"Police ko manane ki zaroorat nahi. Mujhe bas yeh samajhna hai ki yeh kaun kar raha hai aur kyun." I don't need the police to accept it. I just need to understand who's doing this and why.

The who and the why. The two questions that were the investigation's engine — the engine that had been running for seven years and that showed no signs of stopping because the engine was Samaira and Samaira did not stop.

*

The breakthrough came from a hospital. Not the breakthrough that solved the case — the breakthrough that opened the case wider, the wider being the thing that investigations did when they were approaching the truth: they expanded before they contracted, the expansion being the gathering of evidence and the contraction being the focusing of evidence and the focusing producing the answer.

The hospital was KEM — King Edward Memorial Hospital, Mumbai. The hospital where Sunita worked — Sunita being one of Bharati's operatives, the nurse who saw the bruises. Samaira did not know that Sunita was an operative. Samaira knew only that KEM's emergency ward saw domestic violence cases that the police did not see, because KEM's emergency ward was the place where women came at 2 AM with broken bones and split lips and the particular injuries that the women explained as "main gir gayi" (I fell) and that the nurses documented as "fall-related injuries" because the documenting was the system and the system required the lie and the lie was the form that the truth took in a world where the truth was not accepted.

Samaira went to KEM. Not as an investigator — as a volunteer. The volunteering that was the investigator's cover, the cover that allowed access without suspicion, the access that Samaira needed because KEM's records were not public and the not-public required the inside.

Samaira volunteered in the emergency ward. Three evenings per week. The volunteering that was: fetching water for patients, holding the clipboards for the doctors, the particular uselessness that volunteer work entailed and that was, for Samaira, not uselessness but positioning — the positioning that put her in the emergency ward at the hours when the domestic violence cases arrived (after 9 PM, the particular timing that Samaira had identified: domestic violence peaked after 9 PM because the drinking peaked after 9 PM and the drinking was the accelerant and the accelerant was the clock).

She saw: the women. The women who came in after 9 PM with the injuries and the lies and the particular look that Samaira recognised because Samaira had spent seven years studying the look — the look that was not shame (shame was the word that outsiders used; the look was not shame) but calculation, the calculation being: how much can I say? How much will I be believed? How much will the saying cost me? The calculation that produced the lie ("main gir gayi") because the calculation's answer was: the saying will cost more than the not-saying.

She saw: the nurses. The nurses who documented the lies and who knew the lies were lies and who could not, within the system, say that the lies were lies. The nurses who — Samaira noticed — some of the nurses had a different reaction. Most nurses documented and moved on, the moving-on being the system's requirement and the requirement being the coping mechanism (the coping that said: I cannot save everyone, I can only document, the documenting is the job and the job is the boundary). But some nurses — one nurse in particular — did not just document. One nurse — Samaira noticed — one nurse also wrote things in a separate notebook. A small notebook. Not the hospital's notebook. A personal notebook.

The nurse was Sunita. Sunita who was, Samaira would later learn, Bharati's Mumbai operative. Sunita who was documenting the cases not for the hospital but for the network — the network's intelligence, the intelligence that identified which women and which children were in danger and which danger was approaching the threshold.

Samaira watched Sunita. The watching that was — the watching was the observation that Bharati had trained in Leela and that Samaira had trained in herself, the training being different (Bharati's was deliberate, Samaira's was self-taught) but the result being the same: the seeing. The seeing that noticed the separate notebook. The seeing that noticed Sunita's after-shift behaviour (Sunita leaving the hospital at 11 PM, not going home — going to a chai stall on the road behind KEM, the chai stall where Sunita met a woman, the woman being — Samaira did not know who the woman was, the woman being a connection, the connection being a link in the chain that Samaira was trying to trace).

Samaira followed Sunita. Three times. Three evenings of following — the following that was the investigator's work, the work that was patience and distance and the particular skill of being present without being noticed, the skill that Samaira had perfected over seven years of investigation.

The third evening, Sunita went to the chai stall and met the woman and the woman gave Sunita an envelope and the envelope was — Samaira did not see the envelope's contents. Samaira saw the exchange. The exchange that was: envelope given, envelope received, the two women's conversation lasting four minutes (Samaira timed it; the timing being the investigator's compulsion, the compulsion that said: measure everything, the measurement being the evidence and the evidence being the case), the conversation ending with a nod, the nod being the agreement, the agreement being — what?

Samaira did not approach Sunita. Samaira did not approach the woman. The not-approaching being the investigator's discipline: observe first, approach later, the later being the time when the observation had produced enough understanding that the approaching would yield information rather than alarm, the alarm being the thing that made people stop talking and the stopping being the investigation's death.

Instead, Samaira followed the woman. The woman who had given Sunita the envelope. The following that took Samaira from KEM's back road to a bus stop on the Western Express Highway, the bus stop where the woman boarded a BEST bus (the 83 Limited, the bus that went from Parel to Andheri, the bus that was crowded at 11:30 PM because Mumbai was never not crowded, the crowding being the city's constant and the constant being the investigator's cover: you could follow anyone in Mumbai because Mumbai was full of people following people and the following was anonymous).

The woman got off at Andheri station. Entered the station. Took a train — the Western line, the train that went north. Samaira followed. The following that was now — the following was now the deeper following, the following that said: I am on a trail and the trail is leading somewhere and the somewhere is the answer.

The woman got off at Borivali. Walked from Borivali station to a residential area — the residential area that was, in 1985, still developing, the area that had new buildings and old chawls and the particular mixture of old-Mumbai and new-Mumbai that characterised Borivali in the 1980s. The woman entered a building — a chawl, a four-storey chawl, the chawl that was the particular Mumbai housing that was not apartment and not house but community, the community being the chawl's defining feature: shared walls, shared staircases, shared lives.

Samaira noted the building. The address. The floor (second). The time (12:15 AM). The data that was the investigation's raw material, the raw material that would be processed and analysed and that would, eventually, produce the understanding.

She went home. The home that was the office on Lamington Road (Samaira lived in the office; the living-in-the-office being the economy of a woman who charged two hundred rupees per case and who could not afford both an office and a flat and who had chosen the office because the office was the work and the work was the life). She opened the ACTIVE drawer. She took out the Jadhav file. She added the note: KEM nurse — personal notebook — possible network connection. Borivali chawl — second floor. Follow up.

The follow-up would take months. The months being the investigation's rhythm — not the television-investigation's rhythm (the rhythm that solved cases in sixty minutes minus commercials) but the real-investigation's rhythm, the rhythm that was slow and repetitive and that required the patience that Samaira had and that most investigators did not have, the patience being: I will keep watching. I will keep following. I will keep adding notes to the file. The file will grow. The growth will produce the answer.

The file grew. The answer approached. The approaching being — the approaching was still years away. But the direction was correct. Samaira was on the trail. The trail that led from a missing twelve-year-old in Nagpur to a nurse's notebook at KEM Hospital to a woman in a Borivali chawl to — the network. The network that Samaira did not yet know existed but that Samaira's instinct said existed, the instinct being: someone is saving these children. The saving is organized. The organized-saving has a structure. The structure has people. The people can be found.

The finding was Samaira's life. The finding was the obsession. The obsession was the file in the ACTIVE drawer. The file that said: JADHAV, LATA. MISSING. NAGPUR.

Seven years. And counting.