best friend in college was a Naga girl. She lived in a hostel near the south campus. It happened to her.”
The two men were silent now, looking carefully at their junior.
“It left a lasting impression on me.”
“Is that why you joined the police?” asked Kapoor.
“It is one reason, sir,” said Smita.
Dayal pursed his lips. “Were her assailants caught?”
“Two of them were. She didn’t recognize either. Beyond a point, she didn’t care anymore. She left Delhi then.”
The three of them sat quietly in the DCP’s room, the rays of the afternoon sun slanting in through the window.
“She told me,” said Smita, as if in a dream, “that one of the men, the first one, was vile, that he shouted threats and insults in her ear as he was on top of her, and she fought and fought till she couldn’t fight anymore.”
And then?
“Then,” said Smita, “came a quiet, gentle one. He lay on top of her and whispered in her ear and stroked her before and after and told her she was beautiful. That’s when she switched off.”
The DCP looked out the window and Kapoor looked at his feet and Smita looked at nothing in particular.
“Is it personal, then?” asked the DCP.
“Of course it is. Sir.” She got up quietly, collected her things, and left.
The day before had started well. She had been reading the papers and savoring a hot cup of tea on the balcony of her parents’ home, enjoying the first pale glimmers of day. While still early in the winter, it was already cold. Her father hadn’t yet left for his morning golf game, her mother hadn’t returned from her walk. Smita wore a cap against the cold and a shawl over the sweats she slept in, and, as she desultorily leafed through the paper, a magpie robin came and sat by her. She chirruped quietly at the interloper, flicking him a bit of biscuit from the plate in front of her. The trees in the park across the house were losing their foliage, a process that had quickened noticeably in the past week. They wouldn’t be bare: they were evergreens, for the most part, and she felt that if she walked under them, she’d still be able to smell the last remnants of the flowering of the Alstonia scholaris. But they were hunkering down for the short, sharp Delhi winter, and Smita applauded their good sense.
This is nice, she’d sighed happily, burrowing deeper under her shawl, her fingers wrapped around her tea, a fresh pot snug under its cozy in front of her. And then the phone rang.
It had been Kapoor, tersely informing her of her temporary promotion and the reason for it. She’d gone inside to her own room, where a small TV guarded the approach to her bed. The outrage of the night before was all over the news channels. She’d showered quickly and reported directly to the address Kapoor had given her in the village that had so precariously sheltered the victim. Rush-hour traffic still howled past the gurdwara on the main road. She passed the cop cars and the inevitable gawkers and made her way purposefully down the quiet alley that ran into the village.
She walked past little knots of locals wearing the look of people everywhere who have been touched, however ephemerally, by infamy. They were confused, delighted to be in the limelight, and hoping to be asked what they thought by a wandering reporter, but saddened that their fifteen minutes were to be forever so tainted. She could feel their eyes on her, measuring her calm poise and her businesslike attire. She wasn’t interested in them, wasn’t clutching a microphone or a digital recorder, clearly wasn’t a reporter. But then what was she? They knew she didn’t live here, even though other women her age, who dressed and walked like her—as if they didn’t care that their asses were on display, tight in their trousers and propped up on short heels—lived in this village too. She asked a young Sikh boy where the house she was looking for was. He pointed down a street, said she wouldn’t miss it with all the dogs hanging around. Smita smiled to herself. She found the house hedged about by policemen as advertised, and ran up the narrow airless stairwell.
The DCP and Kapoor were inside the modest little flat that the victim had shared with three other women like her. Two bedrooms, two girls to a room. A small hall that functioned as dining room, living room, and entrance foyer, a modest bathroom that the two bedrooms shared, and a kitchen. What natural light there was entered from one big window each in the living room and one of the bedrooms. Colorful drapes in front of these windows were kept drawn at all times, so that the women could find a modicum of privacy at least inside their own home.
Smita ran her eye quickly around the room she was in. A small TV, a bookcase with a radio on it and photographs, a few occasional stools, and a mattress with some cushions against the wall. A little table stood by the wall nearest the kitchen. Bright posters, a cross, and a colorful handwoven shawl hung on the walls. Fluorescent lights up high, table lamps closer to the ground. Two Northeastern girls were sitting quietly on the mattress, their arms around their knees. Smita could see the third one making tea in the little kitchen. Kapoor and the DCP cursorily acknowledged Smita’s presence, letting her make her own judgments, allowing her to introduce herself.
The two girls on the mattress barely looked at her. The last one came out of the kitchen, a little tray with steaming mugs of tea in her hands. Her eyes were downcast when she stopped before Smita, who took a mug with a smile and a word of thanks that the other woman seemed not to notice. So the young policewoman went and sat down next to the girls on the mattress, who quietly made room for her. She leaned across and shook hands with each one, smiled at them with her eyes as well, and made sure the girl with the tea was settled on a stool next to them. Only then did she look at her seniors, who looked back, on the DCP’s part, with quiet approval, and on Kapoor’s, with something of the phlegmatic calm of a pedicurist considering a customer’s foot.
Our colleague, indicated the DCP. The girls acknowledged his more formal introduction with a wary nod toward him and smiles for Smita who, not for the first time, was brought face-to-face with the fact of the ordinary Indian’s alienation from their ostensible protectors, even from one as seemingly amiable and approachable as the DCP. Kapoor and the DCP knew it too and, making their excuses and thanking the girls for their tea, left quietly.
The facts were quickly established. None of them had studied in Delhi, though one of them had been working here for four years now. The others had come, one by one, looking for employment. They were all from the far east of the country, over on the border with Myanmar. They had known each other before they came, but only became friends after they were roommates. One was a senior shop girl in a foreign luxury brand’s outlet in a spiffy mall. Another managed a restaurant, while the third worked at a development NGO. They had been in this house for almost a year.
The victim was known to be hardworking, diligent in her job and her duties at home. A good cook, said one of them quietly. They all nodded. She was religious, sang in a church choir, neither smoked nor drank.
“Really?” prompted Smita gently.
“Yes,” said one of them urgently. “I smoke. We all like a beer, occasionally. But not her. She didn’t have a boyfriend either. Her mother’s active in the church back home. She’s a believer.”
“Are you?”
“Well,” laughed one of them embarrassedly, “we all are. To some extent. But living out here . . . The boys come by, the local students. We
