Chapter 2: Gayab (Vanished)

The woman's name was Bharati.

Lata did not learn this immediately. Lata learned this later — after the darkness, after the van, after the hole. But the name belonged to the woman in the doorway, the woman with the angular face and the determined expression, the woman who had knocked three times at 11:47 PM and who had, when Vandana opened the door, pushed past her into the house with the particular speed of a person who had rehearsed this moment and who was executing the rehearsal.

What happened at the door — the full sequence, which Lata would reconstruct later from fragments — was this:

Vandana opened the door. The woman (Bharati) was standing in the gali, alone. The woman said: "Vandana-tai, tumchi mulgi dhoka-at aahe." Your daughter is in danger. Vandana's face changed — the change that was the gasp, the sound that Lata heard from the stairs. Vandana said: "Kon aahat tumhi?" Who are you? The woman said: "Mala aatmadhe yeu dya." Let me inside. And Vandana, because the sentence "your daughter is in danger" overrides every security instinct a mother possesses, stepped aside.

The woman entered. Behind her — a man. The man who had been standing in the gali's shadow, the shadow that the sodium-yellow streetlight did not reach. The man was large — not fat, large, the largeness of a body that had been trained for physical work and that carried the training in its shoulders and its hands and its particular way of occupying space, the way that said: I am accustomed to rooms being too small for me.

The man's name was Keshav.

Lata saw them from the stairs — the third step, the creaking step, the step she had avoided but that she was standing on now because the avoiding required the calm that she did not have. The creak announced her. Bharati looked up. The looking was — Lata would remember this — the looking was not the looking of a stranger seeing a child. The looking was the looking of a person seeing the person they had come for. The recognition. The purpose.

"Lata," Bharati said.

And then the cloth. Keshav's hand — the large hand, the trained hand — from behind. The cloth pressed to Lata's face — the sweet chemical smell, the smell that was chloroform (Lata would learn the name later; in the moment, the smell was nameless and terrifying and the last thing before the darkness).

Vandana screamed. The scream that was — not the gasp from before. The full scream. The mother's scream. The scream that said: you are taking my child and the taking is the worst thing and I will scream until the taking stops or until I stop.

But Vandana did not stop the taking. Because Keshav was large and Bharati was fast and the sequence had been rehearsed and the rehearsal included the mother's scream and the rehearsal's response to the mother's scream was: Bharati held Vandana. Not violently — firmly. The holding that said: I am not hurting you, I am preventing you from following, the preventing being necessary and the necessity being — what? What necessity justified the taking of a twelve-year-old from her mother's house at 11:47 PM?

The necessity that Lata would not understand for days. The necessity that was: the danger was real. The danger was Tushar Jadhav, who was not "gone" but who was planning to return, and whose return was planned for that weekend, and whose return included the particular plan that men like Tushar made when they had been expelled from their homes and whose expulsion produced not remorse but rage, the rage that said: if I cannot have the family, no one will have the family.

Bharati knew this because Bharati's network knew this. The network that was not police (the police in 1978 Nagpur did not intervene in domestic matters; the domestic being the private and the private being the sacred and the sacred being the untouchable, the untouchability of a man's right to his family). The network was — other. The network was women. Social workers. Teachers. Nurses. The particular informal intelligence service that existed in every Indian city in 1978 and that operated below the law because the law did not operate above the violence, the law being the thing that was supposed to protect and that did not protect and that left the protecting to the women who built the network.

But Lata did not know this. Lata knew: darkness.

*

The van was a Matador. The Swaraj Matador — the Indian van that was not a van but a multi-purpose vehicle, the vehicle that served as bus and truck and ambulance and, tonight, kidnapping vehicle, the vehicle that was white and that was unmarked and that was parked three galis away from Sitapur Gali because the parking three galis away was the rehearsed distance, the distance that was far enough to not be associated with the house and close enough to reach quickly while carrying an unconscious twelve-year-old.

Lata woke in the van. The waking was — not the waking of a morning. The waking of a person who had been chemically rendered unconscious and who was now regaining consciousness in an unfamiliar space and whose regaining was accompanied by nausea (the chloroform's gift, the particular nausea that was not stomach-nausea but brain-nausea, the brain protesting the chemical that had shut it down) and confusion (where am I?) and fear (the fear that was not a single emotion but a cascade, the cascade being: I am not home, I am in a moving vehicle, I cannot see my mother, I do not know these people, I do not know where I am going).

Her hands were tied. Not rope — cloth. A dupatta, folded and knotted, the particular restraint that said: we are not professional kidnappers, we are people who used what was available, and what was available was a dupatta. The knot was — not tight enough to hurt. Tight enough to prevent escape. The particular calibration of a restraint that was made by someone who did not want to restrain but who had determined that the restraining was necessary.

"She's awake," Keshav said. From the front of the van. The voice deep, the Hindi carrying the particular accent of someone from further north — not Nagpur, not Maharashtra. The accent that Lata would later identify as Madhya Pradesh, the accent of a man who had grown up in Bhopal and who had joined the Indian Army at eighteen and who had left the Indian Army at twenty-five for reasons that he would explain later and that were not dishonourable but were complicated.

"Lata." Bharati's voice. From beside her — Bharati was in the back of the van, sitting next to Lata. "Ghabru nakos." Don't be scared.

"Mala ghari jaaycha aahe!" I want to go home!

"Mala maahit aahe." I know.

"Mala sodha! Aai!" Let me go! Mama!

"Lata, aiku." Lata, listen.

But Lata did not listen. Lata did what twelve-year-olds do when they are tied up in a moving van and terrified: she fought. The fighting that was not effective — the dupatta held, the van moved, Bharati's hands were firm — but that was necessary, the necessity being: the body's refusal to accept the unacceptable, the fighting that was the twelve-year-old's declaration that this is wrong and I will not cooperate with the wrong.

The fighting exhausted itself. The particular exhaustion that terror produces — not the physical exhaustion of effort but the emotional exhaustion of sustained fear, the fear that could not be sustained at its initial intensity and that, like all emotions, eventually reduced, not to calm but to a lower register, the register that was: I am still afraid but I am also tired and the tiredness is winning.

"Bathroom jaaycha aahe," Lata said. I need the bathroom.

The van had — Bharati opened a small curtained area. A plastic bucket. A bottle of water. The particular arrangement that said: this van has been prepared for a passenger who will need a bathroom, the preparation being another sign that this was rehearsed, planned, the abduction that was not impulsive but methodical.

Lata used the bucket. The humiliation of using a bucket in a van while a stranger waited behind a curtain — the humiliation that was the first of many humiliations and that was also, paradoxically, the first sign that Bharati was not a monster: a monster would not have provided a bucket, a monster would not have provided a curtain, a monster would not have looked away.

When Lata emerged, she tried. The door. The side door of the Matador — the handle visible, the door reachable. Lata lunged. The lunge of a twelve-year-old who had been a sprinter at the St. Joseph's sports day (second place in the 100 metres, behind Anjali Deshpande who was taller and who had longer legs and whose longer legs were the injustice that Lata had complained about for a week) — the lunge that was fast and that was almost fast enough.

Almost. Bharati caught her leg. The catching that was — again — not violent but effective. Lata fell against the door. The falling that produced a bruise on her shoulder (a new bruise, the bruise that would sit alongside the fading bruises from Tushar, the body becoming a map of being handled by people who should not have been handling her).

"Mala jail nahi vhatla ki tula baandhava lagel," Bharati said. I didn't want to have to tie you up.

"Mala ghari jaaycha aahe." I want to go home.

"Aapan javal aalo aahe. Tithe pochlyavar me sarva saangein." We're almost there. I'll explain everything when we arrive.

The van moved. Through roads that Lata could not see (the windows curtained, the curtaining being another rehearsed element). Through what felt like hours. The van's engine — the Matador's particular diesel grumble, the sound that was every Indian road-trip's bassline, the sound that was designed for distance and that covered distance with the particular patience of an engine that was not fast but was relentless.

Lata slept. Not by choice — by exhaustion. The chloroform's residue and the fear's depletion and the van's diesel-lullaby combining to produce the particular sleep that was not rest but collapse, the body shutting down because the body could not sustain the alertness any longer.

*

The hole.

When Lata woke, she was in the hole. The darkness was — complete. Not the darkness of a room with curtains (some light always leaked, the light that eyes adjusted to). This was the darkness of underground, the darkness that was geological, the darkness that the sun had never reached and that contained no light-memory and that was, therefore, absolute.

She was lying on something — a blanket. Under her head — a pillow. The hands were untied. The body was — intact. Fully dressed, still in the nightgown she had been wearing when the knock came. The nightgown that was Vandana's old cotton nightgown, re-hemmed for Lata, the cotton soft and familiar, the familiarity being the only familiar thing in a world that had become entirely unfamiliar.

Lata explored. On hands and knees — the floor was stone. Cold stone. The cold of underground, the cold that was not temperature but absence, the absence of sun-warmth, the stone retaining the earth's baseline temperature which was, in August in Maharashtra, cooler than the air above but not cold-cold, the particular coolness that was initially a relief (the Nagpur heat) and that became, over hours, uncomfortable.

The space: she could lie down if she curled her legs. She could touch both walls if she extended her arms. She could not touch the ceiling — the ceiling was above her reach, the space being not a box but a shaft, a vertical space that was narrow at the bottom and that extended upward beyond her arm's reach.

She listened. Sounds: water, distant. Running water — a stream or a pipe, the sound muffled by earth and stone. No other sounds. No traffic. No gali-sounds. No Chitrahaar through the wall. The absence of Nagpur's acoustic signature told her: she was not in Nagpur. She was somewhere else. The somewhere else that was defined by silence and stone and underground darkness and the distant sound of water.

"Help! Koni aahe ka? Mala baher kadha!" Is anyone there? Get me out!

The shouting produced — nothing. The sound absorbed by the stone walls, the sound travelling upward through the shaft and disappearing. The particular acoustics of underground spaces: the sound went up but the response did not come down.

She shouted until her throat was raw. She cried until the tears ran out. She sat in the darkness and she was — twelve. Twelve years old. In a hole. Without her mother. Without anyone. The darkness the only companion and the darkness not being a good companion, the darkness being the thing that took everything — the seeing, the knowing, the orienting — and replaced it with nothing.

Hours passed. Or what felt like hours — the darkness removed time the way it removed sight, the removal being the particular cruelty of sensory deprivation, the deprivation that was not pain but absence and the absence being, in its way, worse than pain because pain was something and absence was nothing and the nothing was the thing that drove the mind sideways.

Then: a sound from above. Bharati's voice.

"Hey, bacche." Hey, kid.

A bucket descended on a rope. The bucket that was the bathroom. The bucket that was — the first kindness and the first indignity simultaneously, the first sign that Lata was being kept alive (the bucket meant: they planned for her to be here, they planned for her bodily needs) and the first sign that Lata was a prisoner (the bucket meant: she was not getting out, the bucket was the accommodation to the imprisonment, the accommodation that made the imprisonment bearable and that therefore made the imprisonment permanent).

"Bhook lagli ka?" Bharati asked. Are you hungry?

"Mala kiti divas zale khaayla milala nahi. Shevtcha Lucky Charms khalle." I haven't eaten in I don't know how many days. Last thing I ate was Lucky Charms. The cereal that Vandana had started buying because Lata had seen it on television and that Vandana considered a waste of money but that she bought anyway because the buying was love and the love expressed itself in cereal.

A cloth bag descended on the rope. Inside: a paratha. Not a Nagpur paratha — a different paratha, thicker, the flour coarser, the paratha made by hands that were not Vandana's and that did not make parathas the way Nagpur made parathas. The paratha was stuffed with aloo — potato, mashed, seasoned with jeera and dhania and green chilli. The paratha was warm. The warmth said: this was made recently, this was made for her, the making being intentional.

A steel canteen of water. Cold. Clean.

Lata ate the paratha in the dark. The eating that was — the eating was survival. Not the eating of Vandana's pohe (the eating that was love and ritual and morning). The eating that was: I am in a hole and I am hungry and the hunger overrides the fear and the paratha is food and the food is necessary. The eating that reduced her, temporarily, from a person to a body, the body requiring fuel and the fuel being an aloo paratha in a dark hole delivered by a woman who had kidnapped her.

"Aiku," Bharati said from above. Listen.

"Mala ghari jaaycha aahe." I want to go home.

"Ek diwas me saangein ki aapalyala tula ka aanla. Aaj nahi. Pan ek diwas." One day I'll tell you why we brought you. Not today. But one day.

Bharati left. The sound of footsteps above — receding. The silence returning. The darkness returning. The hole returning.

Lata sat in the dark and held the steel canteen and the canteen was warm from her hands and the warmth was the only warmth and the warmth was — not enough. Not enough to replace the mother. Not enough to replace the house. Not enough to replace the gali and the pohe and the tulsi plant and the dal-bhat and the Chitrahaar through the wall. Not enough.

But present. The warmth was present. And the presence was — something. The something in the nothing. The something that kept the nothing from being total.

Lata held the canteen and waited.