The Inheritance of Loss - Kiran Desai [103]
“You can’t take it,” she said, “it’s a library book, you foolish little man. I’ll get into trouble at the Gymkhana. You’re not going to pay them to replace it.”
“And this?” The guard examined another book.
Noni had picked a sad account of police brutality during the Naxalite movement by Mahashveta Devi, translated by Spivak who, she had recently read with interest in the Indian Express, was made cutting edge by a sari and combat boots wardrobe. She had also selected a book by Amit Chaudhuri that contained a description of electricity failure in Calcutta that caused people across India to soften with communal nostalgia for power shortage. She had read it before but returned every now and then to half drink, half drown in those beautiful images. Father Booty had a treatise on Buddhist esotericism, written by a scholar from one of the legendary monastic universities of Lhasa, and Agatha Christie’s Five Little Pigs. And Sai had Wuthering Heights in her bag.
“We have to take these to the station for inspection.”
“Why? Please sir,” said Noni, trying to persuade him, “we’ve especially gone…. What will we read…. Stuck at home…. All those hours of curfew….”
“But officer, you only have to look at us to know we’re hardly the people to waste your time on,” said Father Booty. “So many goondas around….”
But they had no sympathy for bookworms, and Lola began to shout, “Thieves, that’s what you police are. Everybody knows it. Hand in hand with goondas. I will go to the army major, I will go to the SDO. What kind of situation is this, bullying the population, you little men throwing your weight around. I’m not going to bribe you, if that’s what you’re hoping—forget about it. Let us go,” she said grandly to the others.
“Chalo yaar,” said Uncle Potty and glanced at his bottles to indicate they might have one or two IF…
But the man said, “Serious trouble. Even five bottles will not be enough.” And it became obvious what Kalimpong was in for.
“Calm down, madam,” the policeman said to Lola, offending her still more. “If there is nothing in your books, we will return them.”
The red-hot library books were taken carefully away. Father Booty’s camera, too, was confiscated and delivered to their supervisor’s desk; his case they would review separately.
______
Sai didn’t notice much, for she was still thinking about Gyan ignoring her, and she didn’t care the books were gone.
Why was he there? Why hadn’t he wanted to acknowledge her? He had said: “I can’t resist you… I have to keep coming back….”
At home the cook was waiting, but she went to bed without her dinner, and this greatly offended the cook, who took it to mean that she had eaten fancily in a restaurant and now despised the offerings at home.
Sensitive to his jealousy, she usually came home and complained, “The spices were not ground properly—I almost broke my tooth on a peppercorn, and the meat was so tough, I had to swallow it without chewing, all in a big lump with glasses of water.” He would laugh and laugh. “Ha ha, yes, nobody takes the time to clean and tenderize the meat properly anymore, to grind the spices, roast them….” Then, growing suddenly serious, he would exclaim, holding up a finger to make his point like a politician: “And for this they charge a lot of money!” Nodding hard, wise to the horrors of the world. Now, in a spoiled mood, he banged the dishes.
“What is going on!” shouted the judge. A statement, not a question, that was to be responded to by silence.
“Nothing,” he said, beyond caring, “what can be going on? Babyji went to sleep. She ate at the hotel.”
Thirty-four
A week after the library trip, the books were returned, having been declared harmless, but the authorities didn’t take a similar view of the photograph of the butterfly, which showed, beyond its beguiling wings of black, white and pink, the sentry post at the bridge, and the bridge itself, spanning the Teesta. In fact, it was focused, they noted, not on the butterfly, but on the bridge.
“I was in a hurry,” said Father Booty, “I forgot to focus properly and then just as I was going