in another house but soon disappeared from there with money and valuables. A report was lodged with the police, but he never was found. Probably he got on a train and went to some other town. There are millions like him, and no one can tell one from the other. They eat where they can, sleep where they can, and if they get into trouble in one place they move on to another. They may end up in jail on some case that never comes up for trial, they may die of some disease, or they may live a few years longer. No one cares where they are or what happens to them. There are too many of them.
That was Sachu’s defense for his crime: no one cared for him, so he cared for no one. The time of the trial and afterward, after the sentence, was Sachu’s great hour. He became a big man and gave interviews to journalists and made them listen to his philosophy. He boasted of all the crimes he committed before he came to our town. He had been in jail many times, he said, but he had never been convicted of any of the other murders to which he now admitted. He said he would kill anyone if he wanted something they had, even if it was only a ring that he liked. He said that human beings were not born to be poor, otherwise why should the earth be so full of riches, with mines full of gold and precious gems, and with pearls scattered in the ocean? His father had pulled a handcart for a living and had had nine children. Probably those who had survived were all pulling handcarts now—all except him, Sachu. He had wanted something else, and if it had brought him death on the gallows, all right, he was ready. He had always been different from his family; he had run away from them at the age of ten, when he had overheard his father and elder brothers planning to break his leg in order to make him change his bad ways. Since that day he had been on his own.
My prayer to be relieved of their crime has been answered, so that it is no longer before my eyes day and night. Now it is as if it were locked away in a heavy steel trunk; this weight may be taken from me at my last hour, but until then I carry it inside myself, where only God and I know of its constant presence. After a while there is nothing more you can do or suffer. I have also prayed on behalf of the father of the victim—that the man’s suffering may be made bearable for him, if such a thing were possible. Day after day I was with this man in the courtroom, but I can say nothing of his appearance, because not once in all that time did I dare to raise my eyes and look at him.
The famous Parsi lawyer I engaged for Bablu’s defense believed that they never intended to kill the boy but meant to release him, after collecting the ransom money. Very likely this is true. It is certainly true that while they were living in my house they made their plan to kidnap him. At that time there was a popular film playing about a dacoit who kidnapped a high-born girl for money, but then he fell in love with her and she reformed his ways. It was one of those stupid Bombay films that people like, including my wife, who made me take her to see it because her favorite actor was in it. A mother with three children, but still she has a favorite actor! Sachu and Bablu went four or five times, and they knew all the songs and dialogue by heart. So the idea of kidnap must have gotten into their heads. There were enough rich people in our town—many of them like myself, who a few years ago were only humble shopkeepers and were caught up in the big boom in cotton cloth. Such people spent a lot of money on themselves and their children and lived like millionaires; some of them already were millionaires. However, it was not one of their children who was chosen.
P—is a cantonment town, and we have always had a regiment stationed here. The cantonment area is quite separate. It has wide roads and brick barracks, and the officers live in bungalows with gardens. Everything is very clean and very well kept up. The soldiers are healthy and sturdy and look quite different from the townspeople. The officers and their families are like higher beings; they are well-built, with light complexions, and they are educated gentry, speaking English with each other. Some of them even speak Hindi with an English accent, like foreigners—like sahibs. They also live like sahibs in their big bungalows, and drink whisky-and-soda, and their cooks prepare English-style food for them, with roast meat. The boy’s father was the commanding officer—he had the rank of colonel—and his memsahib, the boy’s mother, was from one of the princely families who have lost their title but still have houses and land. (She has since passed away.) The boy was their only child, and they had sent him to a boarding school in the hills to get a good education. The reason he was in the cantonment at that time was that there had been a measles epidemic in the school; all the unaffected children had been sent home as a precaution, to safeguard their health.
Everyone knows what the boy looked like. His photograph has been in the newspapers as often as Bablu’s and Sachu’s. Sometimes all three photos were on the same page, and even though they were not clear in the newsprint it was evident that the boy was of a different type from the other two—as if he came from some different stock or species of human being. In Sachu’s interviews with the newspaper reporters, he sounded as if he hated the boy, because the boy was plump, with big eyes and a light complexion, and wore a very good blue coat, with the badge of his school on the pocket. And because he had roller skates. No one had heard of roller skates in our town till the boy was seen with them. His parents had brought them as a present for him from abroad, and the boy loved them so much that he went on them everywhere, as with wings under his feet.
It was because of these roller skates that Bablu and Sachu were discovered very quickly. It was also all they got from their crime, for although the father had put the ransom money in the place they had indicated, they did not dare collect it after killing the boy. They had so little cash that they had to sneak on to a train as ticketless travelers. When an inspector came, they had to jump off. This was in a town less than two hundred miles from ours. They took a room in a hotel in a bad part of town, and they never came out except at night, when one of them went to buy gram, which was all the food they could afford. Their room was very small, with only one bed and an old fan, but here Sachu tried to learn to roller-skate. This made the whole house shake, as if it were in an earthquake, and everyone in the hotel wondered what was happening. They also heard the noise of someone falling, and then the two young men laughing in enjoyment, so they tapped on the door of their room to inquire. Sachu let them come in and look, because he was so proud of learning to roller-skate. Everyone smiled and enjoyed his feat, but when there was news everywhere of a boy killed and of his missing roller skates the police were informed at once.
Up to that time, the two of them had been lucky, even though their crime had not been well-planned. They had stolen a car from outside the interstate bus depot, and had waited near the cantonment for the boy to pass on his roller skates. They had no difficulty getting into conversation with him; he was frank and open in his manner—everyone said so later—and was always glad to talk to people and to make friends. They got him into the car and drove him to the place they had chosen for their hideout. Here they tied him up with chains, and Sachu—Bablu couldn’t drive—took the car to the other side of town and abandoned it there. It was found by the police the same day, though they found the boy only when he was dead.
There are many places where a person can hide around our town. Important battles have been fought here, and it has been destroyed and built up again many times. Ruins are all around—the foundation of beautiful cities, with the remains of tombs, mosques, and bathing tanks. Since it is a very dry area, very little vegetation has grown, and there are only mounds of rubble and dust, where jackals live and can be heard howling at night. The two took the boy down into a bathing tank, which had been dug so deep into the earth that there were forty steps descending into it. All round the tank were arched niches like rooms. In olden days, it must have been a beautiful, cool place for royal people to bathe and rest and take enjoyment. Now the tank is empty and dry. They kept the boy in one of the niches and stayed with him there for four days, all of them living on milk sweets.
After they were arrested, Sachu talked freely. It was as if he had waited all his life for people to listen to what he had to say. He was a person of no education, and could not express himself, yet words and thoughts always seemed to boil up in him and come gushing out freely. One thing he
