right: their dad’s death, their mum’s death, their stunted, hopeless birthright and all the petty cruelties of their world. They’ll find the sense in this.
They settle over the wreckage and weep their glass into each undefended eye. No child, no bird, no dog is safe: all must give up what they know. Glimpses, rumours, histories: the brothers drink them in.
Names, faces, places.
Smells, sights, memories.
Banyan trees. Hindu swastikas. Bad typography.
Cooking fires in a parking lot.
A foul smell. Christmas dinners. Pink Australians. Yadav.
The twofold genie lurches.
Yadav
? Blue flame erupts across the sky as the boys scurry and slither through the wreckage, among the living and the dying, the human and the animal, hunting down this errant thought. (Mortal men, hiding as they must from too much reality, assume that this fierce blue blaze that does not burn is simply sunlight, catching against the bright metal of the Purushottam’s carriages. The birds aren’t fooled: they wheel and caw.)
The blue fire winds itself up again and slides through many colours into the invisible as it curls towards a young woman, her face as bright, iconic and ambisexual as the emblem on a stamp. Hers is a smile to stagger the heart. Hers is a heart that yearns for love. They wrap her round, their instant auntie, loving her for her smile and her heart. They lick a forked and twofold tongue into her ear, all glass, to tease out what she knows.
Mmm
. (They sip and cogitate.)
A cheeky little number, this:
Engine grease / US$38 barrel / 27 barrels Revolvers (assorted) / US$ N/A piece / 37 Ammunition (assorted) / US$ N/A / 128 x 10rds box
And an aftertaste of silencer
.
And here, with uniformed retinue, he comes: a big policeman in civilian clothes.
Yadav
.
It’s no Yadav the boys have ever met. There’s story here, for sure. The boys will stick around for this. They slide in, bed down, twine around the bright young woman’s silky guts (none too gently – the old mistake) and the little tea she’s drunk today drools off her chin as Roopa Vish, Bombay child, father’s daughter and police spy, heaves...
Part Two
FIVE
Sion: a suburb of Bombay.
It is 1993, two years before the Purushottam Express collides with the stalled Kalindi service just outside Firozabad, causing the second-worst rail crash in Indian history.
Hardik Singh and his boys have arrived early at the community centre. Police Probationer Roopa Vish finds them loitering in the portico. Muscular poster-boys for the hardline saffronist Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, right now they’re stuffing their faces with egg sandwiches. Why so many of them? She feels their eyes on her as she unlocks the door. Their smiles are speculative, halfway insolent. Her dear dead father warned her about boys like these. Boys who shelter under a religious banner. Boys who think they’re God’s gift.
‘The meeting’s not until six.’
They watch her. They await her next important pronouncement. Oh God, is she blushing? The youngest is barely a teenager. The oldest is no older than her. He offers her his hand. Unthinking, she shakes it. ‘Hardik.’ His features are delicate and expressive. Not handsome. She cannot hold his gaze.
The venue is a former Scout hut. (This is Roopa’s job, six months into her service with the Bombay police: community events.) Stacking chairs. Dusty windows. Peeling paint. They build fast round here and they build cheap. When they need concrete they dredge sand from the nearby creeks. When it rains the concrete acquires streaks and stains and it cracks and crumbles and, yes, collapses, as though these blocks were ancient, weathering to failure over centuries.
Hardik and his boys want to reassure the locals about their organization. They will explain to the law-abiding and aspirational communities of Sion that their children have joined a benign outward-bound movement. Any cheaply produced pamphlets they may have found under their
They settle over the wreckage and weep their glass into each undefended eye. No child, no bird, no dog is safe: all must give up what they know. Glimpses, rumours, histories: the brothers drink them in.
Names, faces, places.
Smells, sights, memories.
Banyan trees. Hindu swastikas. Bad typography.
Cooking fires in a parking lot.
A foul smell. Christmas dinners. Pink Australians. Yadav.
The twofold genie lurches.
Yadav
? Blue flame erupts across the sky as the boys scurry and slither through the wreckage, among the living and the dying, the human and the animal, hunting down this errant thought. (Mortal men, hiding as they must from too much reality, assume that this fierce blue blaze that does not burn is simply sunlight, catching against the bright metal of the Purushottam’s carriages. The birds aren’t fooled: they wheel and caw.)
The blue fire winds itself up again and slides through many colours into the invisible as it curls towards a young woman, her face as bright, iconic and ambisexual as the emblem on a stamp. Hers is a smile to stagger the heart. Hers is a heart that yearns for love. They wrap her round, their instant auntie, loving her for her smile and her heart. They lick a forked and twofold tongue into her ear, all glass, to tease out what she knows.
Mmm
. (They sip and cogitate.)
A cheeky little number, this:
Engine grease / US$38 barrel / 27 barrels Revolvers (assorted) / US$ N/A piece / 37 Ammunition (assorted) / US$ N/A / 128 x 10rds box
And an aftertaste of silencer
.
And here, with uniformed retinue, he comes: a big policeman in civilian clothes.
Yadav
.
It’s no Yadav the boys have ever met. There’s story here, for sure. The boys will stick around for this. They slide in, bed down, twine around the bright young woman’s silky guts (none too gently – the old mistake) and the little tea she’s drunk today drools off her chin as Roopa Vish, Bombay child, father’s daughter and police spy, heaves...
Part Two
FIVE
Sion: a suburb of Bombay.
It is 1993, two years before the Purushottam Express collides with the stalled Kalindi service just outside Firozabad, causing the second-worst rail crash in Indian history.
Hardik Singh and his boys have arrived early at the community centre. Police Probationer Roopa Vish finds them loitering in the portico. Muscular poster-boys for the hardline saffronist Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, right now they’re stuffing their faces with egg sandwiches. Why so many of them? She feels their eyes on her as she unlocks the door. Their smiles are speculative, halfway insolent. Her dear dead father warned her about boys like these. Boys who shelter under a religious banner. Boys who think they’re God’s gift.
‘The meeting’s not until six.’
They watch her. They await her next important pronouncement. Oh God, is she blushing? The youngest is barely a teenager. The oldest is no older than her. He offers her his hand. Unthinking, she shakes it. ‘Hardik.’ His features are delicate and expressive. Not handsome. She cannot hold his gaze.
The venue is a former Scout hut. (This is Roopa’s job, six months into her service with the Bombay police: community events.) Stacking chairs. Dusty windows. Peeling paint. They build fast round here and they build cheap. When they need concrete they dredge sand from the nearby creeks. When it rains the concrete acquires streaks and stains and it cracks and crumbles and, yes, collapses, as though these blocks were ancient, weathering to failure over centuries.
Hardik and his boys want to reassure the locals about their organization. They will explain to the law-abiding and aspirational communities of Sion that their children have joined a benign outward-bound movement. Any cheaply produced pamphlets they may have found under their
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