Behind the Beautiful Forevers_ Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity - Katherine Boo [104]
What was the point of trying to mind-read another judge? She was still weak from jaundice and tension, and as the weeks passed it seemed futile to try to understand what was being said or to predict whether or not she and her father would go to prison. Her mother was worried enough for all of them, with her terrible dreams and her new habit of running across the maidan in her sleep. Kehkashan simply sat on the bench with the other accused people and murmured prayers until she was free to join the rest of the family in devising new ways to make money. As Mirchi put it, they were now “down to earn-and-eat.”
They had given up on the idea of restarting their garbage business in Saki Naka. The rent on the shed there had been greater than Abdul’s monthly income. So Abdul now spent his days driving the rattletrap three-wheeled truck from slum to slum, looking for jobs transporting other people’s waste to recyclers. Mirchi took the temp jobs he could find, in addition to discreetly trading garbage at Annawadi when the police were not around. Their younger brother Atahar dropped out of school, paid for fake papers that said he was of working age, and broke rocks on the road. Atahar said he didn’t mind quitting school to help his family, but Kehkashan minded, very much.
On the last day of July, the prosecutor and the defender made their closing arguments. The judge looked at Kehkashan for what seemed to her to be the first time, and cracked a joke about her burqa: “Are we certain this is the accused? It could be someone else. Who can recognize her, dressed like this!” When the judge finished laughing and the lawyers finished saying whatever it was they were saying to the judge, in English, the judge told Kehkashan and her father to come back in ninety minutes. There would be a verdict.
As they left the courtroom, the judge was saying, “Now I am only waiting for the pay hike to take effect and then I should retire. Maharashtra is such a narrow-minded state—only here they ask for the receipts and bills from judges. In Andhra Pradesh and Gujarat, the judge receives the petrol money along with the salary without having to produce bills.…”
Outside the courthouse, a city garbage truck rolled over a dog. It yelped and died, and Kehkashan and her father decided the courthouse canteen was a better place to wait. Kehkashan sat on the floor and stared at her shoes, which were new and plastic and hurt her. When she walked back into the courtroom she was limping and barefoot.
“What do you do?”
At the witness stand, Kehkashan answered the first and last question that the judge had directed to her.
“Housewife,” she said. She wasn’t about to tell him about leaving her husband and the photos of the other woman in his cellphone.
“And what is your business?” the judge asked Karam, who had clasped his hands to stop them from trembling.
“Sir, I am of plastics,” Karam replied. He thought it sounded better than “of empty water bottles and polyurethane bags.”
“Well, because of you,” the judge said, “one woman’s life has gone.”
“No, sa’ab!” Karam cried out. “She did what she did by herself.”
The judge said nothing for a while, then looked to the prosecutor with the stiff orange comb-over.
“So what to do with these ones, then? Should I sentence them to two years or three years?”
Kehkashan froze. Then the judge smiled and held up his hands.
“Go, leave them,” he said to the lawyers. “Jao, chhod do.” He declared the Husains not guilty. It was over.
The judge’s conclusion was succinct. “There is nothing on record to show that the accused in any manner instigated the deceased to commit suicide. Thus, prosecution has miserably failed to establish guilt against accused beyond reasonable doubt.”
Move along now. The judge had other cases to hear, and wanted to clear the witness stand, to which Kehkashan and her father appeared to be glued. “You can go,” the defense attorney said a second time, more