Slumdog Millionaire: A Novel (19 page)

Akshay refuses to believe me. He challenges me to show the money, and the prospect of

impressing him is too tempting for me. I turn around, push my hand into my pants and bring out the manila envelope, slightly damp and smelling of urine. I surreptitiously take out the sheaf of crisp thousand-rupee notes and flutter them before him triumphantly. Then I quickly put them back and deposit the envelope in its former resting place.

You should have seen Akshay's eyes. They literally popped out of their sockets. It was a victory to be savoured for eternity. For the first time in my life, I had something more tangible than a dream to back up a claim. And for the first time in my life, I saw something new reflected in the eyes that saw me. Respect. It taught me a very valuable lesson. That dreams have power only over your own mind. But with money you can have power over the minds of others. And once

again it made the fifty thousand inside my underwear feel like fifty million.

* * *

It is ten pm now and everybody is about to turn in for the night. Akshay's mother pulls out bed linen from a green holdall and begins preparing the four berths her family will use. The young mother with the baby is sleeping on the side berth, without worrying about pillows and bed sheets. I don't have bedding and I am not that sleepy, so I sit next to the window and feel the cold wind caress my face, watching the train tunnel through the darkness. The lower berth directly opposite me is taken by Akshay's mother, the upper by Meenakshi. The father climbs up on the berth above me and Akshay takes the upper berth on the side, above the mother and child.

The father goes to sleep straight away – I can hear him snoring. The mother turns on her side and pulls up her sheet. I crane my neck to catch a glimpse of Meenakshi, but I can only see her right hand, with a gold bangle on her wrist. Suddenly she sits up in bed and bends down in my

direction to drop her shoes. Her
chunni
has slipped and I can clearly see the top of her breasts through the V neck of her blue kameez. The sight sends an involuntary shiver of pleasure down my back. I think she catches me watching her, because she quickly adjusts her
chunni
over her chest and gives me a disapproving look.

After a while I, too, drift off to sleep, dreaming middle-class dreams of buying a million different things, including a red Ferrari and a beautiful bride in a blue salwar kameez. All with fifty thousand rupees.

* * *

I am woken up by something prodding my stomach. I open my eyes and find a swarthy man with

a thick black moustache jabbing at me with a thin wooden stick. It is not the stick which bothers me. It is the gun in his right hand, which is pointed at no one in particular. 'This is a dacoity,' he declares calmly, in the same tone as someone saying, 'Today is Wednesday.' He wears a white shirt and black trousers and has long hair. He is young and looks like a street Romeo or a college student. But then I have never seen a dacoit outside a movie hall. Perhaps they look like college students. He speaks again. 'I want all of you to climb down from your berths, slowly. If no one tries to act like a hero, no one will get hurt. Don't try to run, because my partner has the other door covered. If all of you cooperate, this will be over in just ten minutes.'

Akshay, Meenakshi and their father are prodded similarly and made to climb down from their berths. They are groggy and disoriented. When you are woken up suddenly in the middle of the night, the brain takes some time to respond.

We are all sitting on the lower berths now. Akshay and his father sit next to me, and Meenakshi, her mother and the woman with the baby sit opposite us. The baby is getting cranky again and begins to cry. The mother tries to soothe it but the baby begins crying even more loudly. 'Give her your milk,' the dacoit tells her gruffly. The mother is flustered. She pushes up her blouse, and instead of one, exposes both breasts. The dacoit grins at her and makes a show of grabbing one of her breasts. She screams and hastily covers it. The dacoit laughs. I don't get titillated this time.

A loaded gun pointed at your head is more riveting than an exposed breast.

Now that the dacoit has everyone's undivided attention, he gets down to business. He holds aloft a brown gunny sack in his left hand, with the gun in his right. 'OK, now I want you to hand over all your valuables. Put them in this sack. I want the men to hand me their wallets and watches and any cash in their pockets, the ladies to hand me their purses, bangles and gold chains. If there is anyone who does not comply with my instructions, I will shoot him dead instantly.'

Meenakshi's mother and the young mother scream simultaneously when they hear this. We hear cries coming from the far side of the compartment. The dacoit's partner is, presumably, issuing similar instructions to passengers on his side.

The dacoit takes round the open sack to all of us one by one. He starts with the mother and child.

With a terrified expression she takes her brown leather purse, opens it quickly to remove a pacifier and a bottle of milk, then drops the bag into the sack. Her baby, whose breastfeeding has been interrupted momentarily, begins wailing again. Meenakshi looks stunned. She takes off her gold bangle, but as she is about to put it in the sack, the dacoit drops the sack and grabs her wrist.

'You are much more beautiful than a bangle, my darling,' he says as Meenakshi desperately tries to escape the man's vice-like grip. The dacoit lets go of her wrist and makes a grab for her kameez. He catches her shirt by the collar, she pulls back, and in the process the shirt almost tears in half, exposing her bra. We all watch, horrified. Meenakshi's father can take it no longer.

'You bastard!' he cries and tries to punch the dacoit, but the man has panther-like reflexes. He releases Meenakshi's shirt and hits her father with the butt of his pistol. A deep gash opens up instantly on the businessman's forehead, from which blood starts oozing out. Meenakshi's mother starts screaming again.

'Shut up,' the dacoit growls, 'or I will kill all of you.'

These words have a sobering impact and we all become absolutely still. A lump of fear forms in my throat and my hands become cold. I listen to everyone's laboured breathing. Meenakshi sobs quietly. Her mother drops her bangles and her purse into the sack, her father puts in his watch and his wallet with shaky fingers, Akshay asks whether he should put in the
Archie
comic. This infuriates the dacoit. 'You think this is a joke?' he hisses and slaps the boy. Akshay yelps in pain and begins nursing his cheek. For some reason I find the exchange rather funny, like a comic interlude in a horror film. The dacoit berates me. 'What are you grinning at? And what have you got?' he snaps. I take out the remaining notes and change from my front pocket and drop them in the sack, leaving only my lucky one-rupee coin. I begin to unfasten my wristwatch, but the dacoit looks at it and says, 'That is a fake. I don't want it.' He appears to be satisfied with the haul from our cabin and is about to move on when Akshay calls out, 'Wait, you have forgotten

something.'

I watch the scene unfold as if in slow motion. The dacoit whirls around. Akshay points at me and says, 'This boy has got fifty thousand rupees!' He says it softly, but it seems to me the entire train has heard it.

The dacoit looks menacingly at Akshay. 'Is this another joke?'

'N-no,' says Akshay. 'I swear.'

The dacoit looks underneath my berth. 'Is it in this brown suitcase?' 'No, he has hidden it in his underwear, in a packet,' Akshay replies, smirking.

'Ah ha!' the dacoit exhales.

I am trembling – I don't know whether from fear or anger. The dacoit approaches me. 'Will you give me the money quietly or should I make you strip in front of all these people?' he asks.

'No! This is my money!' I cry, and instinctively protect my crotch like a footballer blocking a free kick. 'I have earned it. I will not give it to you. I don't even know your name.'

The dacoit gives a raucous laugh. 'Don't you know what dacoits do? We take money which

doesn't belong to us, from people who don't even know our name. Now are you giving me the packet or should I pull down your pants and take it out myself?' He waves the pistol in my face.

Like a defeated warrior, I surrender before the might of the gun. I slowly insert my fingers into the waistband of my pants and pull out the manila envelope, sticky with sweat and smelling of humiliation. The dacoit grabs it from my hand and opens it. He whistles when he sees the crisp new thousand-rupee notes. 'Where the fuck did you get all this money from?' he asks me. 'You must have stolen it from somewhere. Anyway, I don't care.' He drops it in the gunny sack. 'Now none of you move while I meet the other folks in your compartment.'

I just stare dumbly and watch fifty million dreams being snatched away from me, dumped into a brown gunny sack where they jostle with middle-class bangles and wallets.

The dacoit has moved on to the next section of the compartment, but none of us dares to pull the emergency cord. We remain rooted to our seats, like mourners at a funeral. He returns after ten minutes with the sack on his back, its mouth tied, the gun in his right hand. 'Good,' he says, hefting the sack to show us it is full and heavy. He looks at me and grins, like a bully who has just snatched someone's toy. Then he looks at Meenakshi. She has covered her front with her

chunni,
but through the gauzy fabric the white cloth of her bra is visible. He smacks his lips.

The dacoit's partner shouts, 'I am ready. Are you ready?'

'Yes,' calls our dacoit in reply. The train suddenly begins to slow down.

'Hurry!' The other dacoit jumps down from the train.

'I am coming in a second. Here, take the sack.' Our dacoit sends the sack – and fifty million dreams – spinning out of the door. He is about to jump down, but changes his mind at the last second. He comes back to our cabin. 'Quick, give me a goodbye kiss,' he tells Meenakshi,

waving the gun at her. Meenakshi is terrified. She cowers in her seat.

'You don't want to give me a kiss? OK, then take off your
chunni.
Let me see your breasts,' he orders. He holds the gun with both hands and snarls at Meenakshi. 'Last warning. Quick, show me some skin or I'll blow your head off before I leave.' Meenakshi's father closes his eyes. Her mother faints.

Sobbing and weeping, Meenakshi begins to unfurl her
chunni.
Underneath will only be a piece of white fabric. With two straps and two cups.

But I am not seeing this happening. I am seeing a tall woman with flowing hair. The wind is howling behind her, making her jet-black hair fly across her face, obscuring it. She is wearing a white sari whose thin fabric flutters and vibrates like a kite. She holds a baby in her arms. A man with long hair and a thick moustache, wearing black trousers and a white shirt approaches her.

He points a gun at her and grins. 'Open your sari,' he barks. The woman begins to cry. Lightning flashes. Dust scatters. Leaves fly. The baby suddenly jumps from the mother's lap and leaps at the man, clawing at his face. The man shrieks and pulls the baby away, but the baby lunges at his face again. The man and the baby roll on the ground while the woman in the sari wails in the background. The man twists his hand and points his gun at the baby's face, but today the baby is blessed with superhuman powers. With tiny fingers he pushes at the barrel of the gun, reversing its direction. Man and baby wrestle again, going left and right, rolling on the ground. They are locked in a death struggle. At times the man gains the upper hand and at times the baby appears to be winning. The man finally manages to free his gun-carrying arm. His fingers curl round the trigger. The baby's chest is directly in front of the barrel. The man is about to press the trigger, but at the last moment the baby manages to twist the gun away from himself and towards the man's own chest. There is a deafening explosion and the man rears back as if hit by a powerful blast. A scarlet stain appears on his white shirt.

'Oh, my God!' I hear Akshay's voice, like an echo in a cave. The dacoit is lying on the floor, inches from the door, and I have a pistol in my hand, from which a thin plume of smoke is drifting upwards. The train is beginning to gather speed.

I have still not quite understood what has happened. When you are woken up suddenly in the middle of a dream, the brain takes some time to respond. But if you have a smoking gun in your hand and a dead man at your feet, there is little room for misunderstanding. The dacoit's shirt is suffused with blood, the stain darkening and expanding all the time. It is not like they show you in the movies, where a bullet produces an instant little red patch and it remains like that till they cart away the body in an ambulance. No. The blood doesn't even come out at first. It begins to seep out very gradually. First there is a tiny red dot, no bigger than a thumbtack, then it becomes a circular patch the size of a coin, then it grows as large as a saucer, then it expands to the size of a dinner plate, and it just keeps growing and growing till the flow becomes a torrent. I begin gasping for breath and the whole compartment is about to drown in a red river when Akshay's father shakes my shoulders violently. 'Snap out of it, I say!' he shouts, and the redness lifts.

I sit on my berth with a crowd of people around me. Virtually the entire compartment has come to see what has happened. Men, women and children crane forward. They see a dead dacoit,

whose name nobody knows, lying on the ground with a dark-red patch on his white shirt, a father with a gash on his forehead, a terrified mother from whose breasts every drop of milk has been squeezed by a famished baby, a brother who will never read
Archie
comics on a train again, a sister who will have nightmares for the rest of her life. And a street boy who, for a brief moment, had some money, and who will never have middle-class dreams again.

The yellow light in the cabin seems unusually harsh. I blink repeatedly and hold the gun limply in my hands. It is small and compact with a silver metallic body and a black grip. It says 'Colt' in chiselled letters and has a picture of a jumping horse on either side of the inscription. I flip it over. On the other side of the muzzle it says 'Lightweight', but it feels ridiculously heavy. The pistol has some letters and numbers engraved on it which have become faded. I make out 'Conn USA' and 'DR 24691'.