Lunch, at Arthur Road, consisted of a watery soup ladled out onto our flat aluminium plates. The evening meal, served at four thirty with the addition of a single chapatti, was a repetition of that soup of the day. It was made with the peelings and discarded ends of various vegetables-peelings from beetroot on one day, from carrots the next, from pumpkins on the third day, and so on. The eyes and bruises, cut from potatoes, were used, as were the hard ends of courgettes, the papery outer skins of onions, and the muddy scrapings from turnips. We never saw pieces of the vegetables-those went to the guards and the convict overseers. In our soup, the scraps of peelings or stalky ends floated in a colourless, watery liquid. The large vat that the overseers wheeled into our compound for every meal brought one hundred and fifty ladled servings from the kitchens. There were one hundred and eighty men in the room. To remedy the deficiency, the overseers poured two buckets of cold water into the vat. They did that at every meal, with a ritual head-count and a pantomime display of inspiration as they solved the problem by adding the buckets of water. It never failed to rouse them to raucous laughter.
At six o'clock, after the evening meal, the guards counted us once more, and locked us in the long dormitory room. For two hours, then, we were permitted to talk, and to smoke charras, purchased from the overseers. Inmates at Arthur Road Prison received five ration tickets, called coupons, per month. Men with access to money could also purchase coupons. Some men held rolls with several hundred coupons in them. They used them to buy tea- two coupons bought a cup of hot tea-bread, sugar, jam, hot food, soap, shaving accessories, cigarettes, and the services of men who washed clothes or did other odd jobs. They were also the black-market currency in the prison. For six coupons, a man could buy a tiny goli, or a ball, of charras. For fifty he could buy a shot of penicillin. A few dealers also traded in heroin, for sixty coupons a fix, but the overseers were ruthless in their attempts to exterminate it. Heroin addiction was one of the few forces strong enough to overcome terror and challenge the torturers' authority. Most men, sane enough to fear the overseers' almost limitless power, satisfied themselves with the semi-legal charras, and the perfume of hashish often drifted through the room.
Every night the men gathered in groups to sing. Sitting in circles of twelve or more men, and tapping on their upturned aluminium plates as if they were tabla drums, the prisoners sang love songs from their favourite movies. They sang of heartbreak, and all the sorrows of loss. A particularly beloved song might start in one circle, be taken up by a second group for the next verses, and then move to a third group and a fourth before working its way back to the first. Around each circle of twelve or fifteen singers were twenty or thirty more men who provided the chorus of clapping hands and supporting voices. They cried openly as they sang, and they laughed together often. And with their music they helped one another to keep love alive in hearts that the city had forsaken, and forgotten.
At the end of the second week at Arthur Road, I met with two young men who were due for release within the hour. Mahesh assured me that they would carry a message for me. They were simple, illiterate village boys who'd visited Bombay and had found themselves caught in the round-up of unemployed youths. After three months in Arthur Road without any formal charge, they were finally being released. On a piece of paper I wrote the name and address of Abdel Khader Khan, and a short note informing him that I was in prison. I gave it to the men and promised to reward them when I was released. They joined their hands together in a blessing and then left me, their smiles bright and hopeful.
Later that day the overseers called our dormitory together with more than usual violence, and forced us to squat in close ranks.
As we watched, the two young men who'd tried to help me were dragged into the room and dumped against a wall. They were only semi-conscious. They'd been beaten viciously. Blood wept from wounds on their faces. Their mouths were swollen and their eyes were blackened. A snakeskin pattern of lathi bruises covered their bare arms and legs.
"These dogs tried to take a message out of the jail for the gora," Big Rahul the overseer roared at us in Hindi. "Anyone who tries to help the gora, will get the same. Understand? Now these two dogs have six more months in jail, in my room! Six months!
Help him, any of you, and you will get the same."
The overseers left the room to share a cigarette, and we rushed forward to help the men. I washed their wounds, and dressed the worst of them with strips of cloth. Mahesh helped me, and when we finished the job he took me outside to smoke a beedie.
