Chapter 8: Naya Naam (New Name)

1981

Three years changed everything and nothing.

Everything: Lata was fifteen. The twelve-year-old who had been pulled from Sitapur Gali was gone — not metaphorically gone (the metaphor was too easy) but actually gone, the girl replaced by a different person, the different person being the product of three years of forest and observation and Bharati's training and Keshav's discipline and Chinmay's harmonium and the particular alchemy that happened when a child was removed from one life and placed in another and the placement lasted long enough for the new life to become the life.

Nothing: Lata still made Vandana's pohe in her mind. Every night. In the dark (the camp had no electricity; the dark was the kerosene-lantern dark, the dark that was not the hole's dark but that was, at night, complete enough to trigger the technique, the technique that Lata had developed in the hole and that she maintained because the maintaining was the connection and the connection was the thing she would not surrender). The mental pohe: four minutes soak, mustard seeds, curry leaves, turmeric, chillies, peanuts, toss, sugar, salt, coriander, lemon, coconut. The recipe that was her mother. The recipe that was her prayer. The recipe that she could perform physically now — Bharati had taught her to cook, and Lata could make pohe that was good, that was competent — but that she performed mentally with a precision that the physical cooking did not require, the precision being devotional, the devotion being: I remember you, Aai. Every ingredient. Every step.

The name changed on a Tuesday. Not a significant Tuesday — a Tuesday in March 1981, a Tuesday that was hot (March in Satpura was the beginning of the hot season, the season that would peak in May and that was, in March, still building, the heat being a promise rather than an assault). A Tuesday on which Bharati returned from a trip.

Bharati's trips were — Bharati's trips were the network's business. Bharati left the camp for days, sometimes weeks. The leaving was the network's requirement: intelligence to gather, contacts to maintain, cases to assess, the particular infrastructure of an underground organization that required its founder to move, to be present in the cities where the network operated (Nagpur, Bhopal, Mumbai, Pune — the circuit of central and western India that was Bharati's territory). During Bharati's absences, Keshav ran the camp. The running that was: routine. Chai, wood, water, training, evening harmonium, sleep. The routine that Keshav maintained with the particular discipline of a man who understood that routine was safety and safety was the thing.

Bharati returned. On the Tuesday. With information.

"Tushar Jadhav ko bail mili." Tushar Jadhav got bail.

The sentence that changed the air. The air in the camp — the Satpura air, the forest air, the air that was clean and sharp and safe — the air changed. The changing that was not physical but atmospheric, the particular shifting that Lata recognized from Sitapur Gali, the shifting that said: the safe is no longer safe, the safe is provisional, the provisional means the danger is present.

"Kab?" Keshav asked. When?

"Do hafte pehle. Court ne bail di. Surety amount — chaar hazaar rupaye. Tushar ke bhai ne diya." Two weeks ago. Court granted bail. Surety amount — four thousand rupees. Tushar's brother paid.

Four thousand rupees. The price of a man's freedom. The price that was — the price was nothing. Four thousand rupees was nothing. The nothing that was the system's valuation of a woman's safety, the woman being Vandana and the safety being the thing that the system had now removed by granting bail to the man who had planned to kill her, the bail being the system's declaration: the domestic matter is resolved, the man can return, the returning is the man's right.

"Vandana-tai?" Lata asked. The name — the mother's name, the name she had not spoken aloud in weeks because the speaking was the connection and the connection was the pain and the pain was the thing she managed by not-speaking. But now — the speaking was necessary. The speaking was the fear: what about my mother?

"Safe hai. Hamare log uske saath hain. Tushar ko pata nahi ki woh kahan hai." She's safe. Our people are with her. Tushar doesn't know where she is. Bharati paused. The pause that Lata had learned to read: the pause meant more information was coming and the information was not good. "Lekin — Tushar dhuundh raha hai. Tujhe bhi. Police ne Lata Jadhav ka missing case reopen kiya hai — Tushar ne demand kiya. Woh keh raha hai ki tujhe usse milne ka haq hai, as a father." But — Tushar is searching. For you too. Police have reopened the Lata Jadhav missing case — Tushar demanded it. He's saying you have the right to see him, as a father.

The right. The father's right. The right that the law recognized and that the law enforced and that the law did not question: the father's right to his child, the right that superseded the child's right to not be beaten, the right that was the system's foundational assumption and the assumption's lie, the lie being: fatherhood is inherently protective, the inherent protection being the thing that Tushar Jadhav disproved with every swing of his hand.

"Toh?" So?

"Toh — tujhe naya naam chahiye." So — you need a new name.

The sentence that was the sentence that ended Lata and began — something else. The sentence that said: the name "Lata Jadhav" is now dangerous. The name is on a police file. The name is being searched. The name is the thing that connects you to Tushar and the connection is the danger and the danger requires the severing and the severing is: a new name.

"Kaunsa naam?" What name?

Bharati looked at Chinmay. Chinmay was sitting at his flat rock by the stream, the harmonium in his lap, the harmonium that was always in his lap. Chinmay looked back at Bharati. The looking was — the looking was the conversation that did not need words, the conversation between two people who had been working together for twelve years and whose working had developed the particular telepathy that long collaboration produced.

"Leela," Chinmay said.

The name. The name that Chinmay offered — not randomly, not without meaning. The name that meant: play. The name that was, in Hindi and Sanskrit, the word for divine play, the cosmic game, the particular concept that Indian philosophy had developed to describe the universe's creative force: leela, the play of creation, the play that was not frivolous but foundational, the play that was the reason things existed.

"Leela," Lata repeated. The sound of the name in her mouth — the sound that was — the sound was close to her own name. Lata. Leela. The two names sharing the L and the a and the particular music of two-syllable Indian women's names, the sharing being the bridge between the old and the new, the bridge that said: you are not losing yourself, you are translating yourself, the translation being the thing that survival required.

"Leela kya?" Leela what?

"Leela. Bas." Just Leela. Bharati said. "Surname nahi. Surname connection hai — surname se log trace karte hain. Leela. Ek naam. Bas." No surname. Surname is connection — surnames can be traced. Leela. One name. That's it.

One name. The name that was the severance from Sitapur Gali and from Vandana and from Tushar and from the gali that knew everything. The name that was the new identity — the identity that the network required, the identity that would allow Lata-now-Leela to move in the world without the world connecting her to the missing-person file that had her photograph and her old name and her father's claim.

*

The first mission came six weeks after the renaming.

The mission was — Bharati called it a mission, Keshav called it an operation, Chinmay called it "kaam." The three names for the same thing: the network's work. The work that was, Lata-now-Leela was learning, not just the extracting-of-children but the preceding work, the intelligence work, the work that determined which children needed extracting and which children's situations could be resolved through other means (the other means being: intervention with local authorities, connection with sympathetic police officers — they existed, rare and scattered, but they existed — placement with extended family, the particular menu of non-criminal options that the network preferred but that the network was prepared to bypass when the non-criminal options failed).

The mission was intelligence. In Bhopal. A case that Bharati's network had identified: a woman named Sunanda, married to a government engineer named Vikram, the marriage containing the particular violence that Bharati's network specialized in identifying, the violence that was hidden behind the government-engineer's respectability and the respectability's door and the door's closing.

Sunanda had two children. Girls. Ages seven and nine. The girls were the network's concern — not Sunanda (Sunanda was an adult, and the network's position on adults was: adults had agency, adults could leave, the leaving being the adult's responsibility; children did not have agency, children could not leave, the not-leaving being the system's failure). The girls were — the intelligence suggested — in danger. The danger that was the escalating danger, the danger that started with the hitting and that moved to the more-hitting and that was, Bharati's experience told her, approaching the threshold, the threshold being the point where the violence stopped being intermittent and became constant and the constant-violence was the thing that killed.

"Tera kaam," Bharati said to Leela. "Ja. Dekh. Wapas aa. Bata." Your job. Go. Watch. Come back. Tell me.

The instruction that was the test. The test that Leela understood was a test — not a trick-test, not a trap-test, the honest test that said: can you do this? The can-you-do-this being: can you go to a city you do not know (Leela had not been to Bhopal; Leela had not been anywhere except Nagpur and Satpura for three years) and observe a family and return with the intelligence that the network needed to make the decision?

Leela went to Bhopal. On a bus — the state transport bus from Pachmarhi to Bhopal, the bus that was crowded and slow and that smelled of diesel and sweat and the particular smell of Indian state transport buses: the combination of human bodies and engine exhaust and the plastic-covered seats that absorbed and re-emitted every smell they had ever encountered. The bus ride was — Leela was fifteen. Fifteen and alone on a bus to Bhopal. The aloneness that was — the aloneness was terrifying and exhilarating simultaneously, the terror being: I am fifteen and alone in the world, the exhilaration being: I am fifteen and alone in the world, the two emotions being the same emotion from different angles.

In Bhopal, Leela found Sunanda's house. The finding that was Bharati's training in action: the address provided, the observation conducted. Leela spent three days watching. Not inside (the inside was not accessible) but outside — the chai stall across the street, the temple at the corner, the particular vantage points that a fifteen-year-old girl could occupy without attracting attention because a fifteen-year-old girl was, in India, invisible. The invisibility of gender and age — the intersection of being young and being female, the intersection that meant: nobody looked at you, nobody questioned your presence, the not-looking being the particular advantage that the network exploited and that Leela was now exploiting.

She saw: Vikram leaving for work at 8:30 AM (the government engineer's schedule, the schedule that was predictable because government jobs were predictable). She saw: Sunanda at the market at 10 AM (the morning-market trip, the trip that Leela followed at a distance, the distance being the not-being-seen, the observation that Bharati had taught). She saw: the girls at school (the government school two streets from the house, the school that released at 2 PM, the girls walking home together, the older girl holding the younger girl's hand, the hand-holding that said: I am protecting you, the protecting being the older sister's self-assigned role).

She saw: the evening. Vikram's return. The door closing. And after the door closed — the sounds. Not the sounds from Sitapur Gali (Sitapur Gali's sounds carried through walls; Bhopal's houses were different, the walls thicker, the sounds more muffled). But — sounds. The sounds that Leela's trained ears identified because Leela's ears had been trained by years of listening for these sounds, first as a child in Nagpur and now as an operative in Bhopal, the sounds that said: the hitting is happening. The sounds that were not screams (the screaming was the advanced stage; the hitting-sounds preceded the screaming-sounds, the hitting-sounds being: thuds, muffled impacts, the particular percussion of violence that was happening behind a closed door).

Leela returned to Satpura. Three days. Report delivered: Vikram's schedule, Sunanda's movements, the girls' school, the evening sounds, the layout of the house, the available exit points, the neighbours (cooperative or not — the assessment that Bharati needed to plan the extraction).

"Bahut achha." Bharati said. The assessment. The assessment that was, this time, not surprised — the assessment that was: confirmation. The confirmation that Leela was what Bharati had suspected: a natural. The natural-operative who could observe and report and remain unseen and whose remaining-unseen was the skill that the network needed more than any other skill.

"Toh ab kya?" Leela asked. So now what?

"Ab — ab hum unhe nikalte hain." Now — now we get them out.

*

The extraction was not Leela's job. The extraction was Keshav and Bharati's job — the extraction requiring the physical capabilities that Keshav provided and the planning that Bharati provided and the fifteen-year-old providing the intelligence that made the extraction possible but not the extraction itself (the extraction being dangerous, the danger being the thing that Bharati shielded Leela from, for now, the for-now being the particular limit that Bharati placed on Leela's involvement: observe, report, but do not extract, the not-extracting being the line that separated the operative from the soldier).

The girls — Sunanda's girls — arrived at the Satpura camp four days after Leela's report. Two girls, seven and nine, the girls who were — the girls were afraid. The fear that Leela recognised because Leela had been the girl, three years ago, who had been afraid in the same way, the fear that was the not-knowing and the not-trusting and the where-is-my-mother and the particular terror of a child who has been removed from the known (even when the known was violent) and placed in the unknown (even when the unknown was safe).

Leela did for the girls what Chinmay had done for her. Leela played the harmonium. Not "Lag Jaa Gale" — a different song. A children's song. "Lakdi Ki Kaathi" — the song from Masoom, the film that had not yet been released (the film would be released in 1983, two years in the future, but the song existed already in the popular consciousness because songs in India preceded films the way thunder preceded lightning, the songs arriving in the culture before the culture knew where the songs came from). The song that was about children and that was light and that was the particular music that frightened children needed: the music that said nothing is wrong, the music that lied beautifully, the lie being the kindness.

The younger girl stopped crying first. The older girl stopped crying second — the older girl needing more time because the older girl had been the protector and the protector's crying was the deeper crying, the crying that included the guilt: I should have protected us better.

Leela gave them chai. Keshav's chai — the military chai, strong and sweet. The chai in steel tumblers. The tumblers that the girls held with both hands — the same way Raju held his tumbler. The holding that was the trust. The trust that Leela could see forming because Leela had formed the same trust, three years ago, in the same place, with the same chai.

Leela was — Leela was home. Not in the place-home sense (the place-home was still Sitapur Gali in the part of her mind that made mental pohe every night). In the person-home sense. The home that was: I know what to do here. I know who to be here. The knowing that was the identity, the identity that was: Leela. Not Lata. Leela.

The name that meant play. The name that meant creation. The name that was — hers.