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A year had passed with the father in jail, and three or four months had gone by since the mother began grinding bricks and chilies. In that long year, only two witnesses' statements had been recorded. There was no lawyer to fight the case, nor a single penny to bribe their way out. From the first day, the station house officer had said, "Bring me something, and the matter will be settled.''
He had agreed, but the police inspector was demanding a full five hundred, and the man he had fought with was demanding two hundred. Where would the boy's father, who didn't even have a hundred, find seven hundred rupees? He clasped his hands in front of his rival and grabbed the inspector's feet, saying he would borrow money from here and there and pay three hundred, but the court peon and the inspector were players on the same team.
"Sell your wife, sell the hut," the inspector told him. "Bring the full seven hundred, and don't you see this man is hurt by your hands? Protecting the lives and property of the public and punishing those who spread disorder is the police's duty. I take my duty seriously."
The boy's mother, for whom the family worked, had been making advances toward him from the first day, but the woman was proud and kept rebuffing him. Circumstances forced her to endure every blow. When the boy came home from school he, like his father, would sit on the pavement rolling betel and cigarette leaves. The mother, son, and father all tried to earn as much as possible so they could hire a lawyer for the father.
One evening the chili merchant gave the other women the day off and kept the boy's mother behind, saying, "Work — I'll give you an extra two or three rupees." The woman needed the money and agreed.
Darkness fell and she was still grinding at the mill. Her shoulders hurt. Thoughts of her husband kept coming back to her. Lost in daydreams she was tearing down prison walls in her imagination, breaking bars, crying out in court, defending her husband — then the grinding of the mill rudely dragged her back from that world of imagination to the mound of chilies. Her blood boiled, her teeth clenched in grief and anger, and in those teeth she gnawed at every person who had locked her husband in a cell and forced her to sit at the mill. Anger and protest set her chest on fire and she became a blaze. The mill spun faster and sweat began to pour; she didn't even notice that her employer was standing two steps away, looking at her hungrily. She also didn't notice that she had shut the warehouse door from the inside.
"Stop, Ayesha!" — as if a voice rose from the mill's grinding. "Here, take these ten rupees. Why, you look like a flower — look alive." The woman started and looked up. The coarse, fat chili merchant stood over her smiling. The woman first looked at the ten-rupee note and then at the merchant. The merchant stepped forward, picked her up and hugged her. In the closed warehouse a battle between lust and honor began. The exhausted woman's cries were unheard. She was already hardened by life. When the merchant made a move on her she burst into flames. She shoved him so he staggered back. Behind him was the mill; he lost his balance and fell onto it. It was then that a thought, like a voice, told her that this was the man who had imprisoned her husband. She grabbed the heavy stone roller — the one used to grind the chilies — and as the merchant tried to lift his heavy body from the mill, the stone roller struck his skull. Blood gushed and the merchant did not get up.
The chili mill stopped and the two terrible millstones of the law began to grind. The helpless woman cried and wailed, but the murderer's relatives had plenty of money. They bought a dozen witnesses. The woman had only her innocent little son, who would cry and wail outside the prison even in front of the courthouse. The father was already locked up; the mother was also imprisoned.
When the boy's father heard the news of this incident in jail, he became silent. He stared into space day and night, brooding; he neither slept nor ate, but wept bitterly. In those days Tipu was serving a one-year sentence. The boy's father had told him his sad story many times in jail and had told him he had only one child whose fate he did not know. When criminals go to jail they do not necessarily repent out of fear of punishment; rather, they train newcomers and rest there. They are not kept separate but are kept with other prisoners, and at night they are locked with those who have drifted into crime, or like the boy's father, got into trouble over fights and quarrels. They sometimes get involved in crime by chance; they are not professionals. There are also people among them who are victims of injustice because they lack money. They become enraged against the law and society. A vengeful spirit develops in them that overpowers reason. They are like red-hot iron that can be shaped by blows into any form.
Seasoned criminals and their associates are always on the lookout for such prisoners; they mold the red-hot iron into their own shape. They train prisoners like the boy's father and bring them into their groups. Thus crime and criminals keep increasing. When Jida's associate Tipu heard this man's plight with sympathy, and when he learned the man had a small son, he became even more sympathetic. These people were always on the lookout for such boys.
One day Jida went to visit Tipu in jail; Tipu told him about the boy and that his father was also in jail and his mother too. Jida used to look for such boys. He went with Tipu to the shacks in the magazine line. They found the shacks, but not the boy. The shack-dwellers said the boy was often missing or wandered those lanes crying; Jida put two of his men on the search for him.
There were two cases: the boy's father's case, which had been lying in the files for a year, and the mother's case, which after six months went to the session court and in the eighth month she was sentenced to fourteen years' imprisonment. By then the father had become a skeleton of racked bones; when he heard his wife's sentence he vomited blood, and a little while later he died before his own sentence was announced.
A few days later Tipu completed his sentence and when he got out he told Jida the news of the boy's father's death. Jida became more desperate to find the boy. Finally one day he did. A simple, naive child of nineteen sat in a deserted shack hiccupping and crying. Jida put his hand on the boy's head and drew him to his chest. Jida was the first person who had held him to his chest during that horrible period. The child clung to Jida as if someone had taken him off burning sand and placed him in an icy room.
Jida brought him to his house. He bathed him, fed him milk, and took him into his affection. Night fell; the child dozed on the blanket spread on the floor and Jida sat beside him and watched him as if, in his round, lovely features, he saw his own childhood. A sigh escaped Jida; he whispered, "Sleep, little one! When I was your age my mother and father were taken from me too. I used to wander the streets crying; a pickpocket once took me in his lap. You too have been lifted into someone's arms — today I am content. You will be content tomorrow too… you are my child. Sleep, little one!" The child heard nothing and fell asleep. This was a night five years earlier. Jida grew pensive and drank half a bottle of liquor.
In a few days the child grew close to Jida and began to live with him; Jida's three or four boys took care of the shack. By the time Jida had adopted him as his son, the boy's father's body lay in a medical college.
The jail authorities had handed over the body as unclaimed to the medical college where it was dissected and lay on a table surrounded by students. "This body came from the jail," the professor said after finishing his lesson, as a joke. "This one was a criminal, a counterfeit coin, but see how valuable it has proved for you. We will strip its flesh and skin it, keep the skeleton in a showcase, and it will serve your future generations." Five years later the boy was the fastest among the teenage boys in Jida's gang. Jida had trained him in housebreaking; he had arranged for him to be employed in several mansions so he could spy and guide the others in robberies. Jida had also made him so fast at pickpocketing that in five years he had never been arrested even once.
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To be continue....