Barely a week after Gudiya returns from the hospital, he does something to her again. He tries to touch her. But not like a father. At first, I don't understand. All I hear is some references to Gudiya being his moon and then Mrs Shantaram crying, and Gudiya screaming, 'Papa, don't touch me! Papa, please don't touch me!'
Something snaps in my brain when I hear Gudiya's plaintive cry. I want to rush into Shantaram's room and kill him with my bare hands. But even before I can gather my courage, I hear Shantaram's loud snores. He has crashed out. Gudiya is still weeping. I don't need a glass to hear her sobbing.
Her crying affects me in a strange way. I don't know how a brother should react on listening to his sister's sorrow, because I have no experience of being a brother. But I know that somehow I have to comfort her. Unfortunately, it is not very easy to comfort someone when there is a wall, howsoever thin, between you. I notice then that right at the bottom of the wall, where the water pipes go into the other flat, there is a small circular opening, large enough to thrust an arm through. I jump down from the bed and, lying spreadeagled on the ground, push my hand through the opening. 'Sister, don't weep. Here, hold my hand,' I cry. And someone does grasp my hand. I feel fingers caress my arm, my elbow, my wrist, like a blind man feeling someone's face.
Then fingers interlock with mine and I feel a magical transference of power, energy, love, call it what you will; the fact is that in that instant I become one with Gudiya and I feel her pain as if it is my own.
Salim, meanwhile, is still sitting on his bed, watching the scene in amazement. 'Are you mad, Mohammad? Do you realize what you are doing?' he admonishes me. 'This hole through which you have pushed your hand is the same hole through which rats and cockroaches come into our room.'
But I am oblivious to Salim and to everything else. I don't know how long I hold Gudiya's hand, but when I wake up the next morning I find myself lying on the ground with my hand still thrust through the hole and a family of cockroaches sleeping peacefully inside my shirt pocket.
* * *
The next night, Shantaram again comes home in a drunken stupor and tries to molest Gudiya.
'You are more beautiful than all the stars and planets. You are my moon. You are my Gudiya, my doll. Yesterday you evaded me, but today I will not let you leave me,' he says.
'Stop behaving like this!' Mrs Shantaram cries, but her husband takes no notice.
'Don't worry, Gudiya, there is nothing wrong in my love for you. Even Shahjahan, the great emperor, fell in love with his own daughter, Jahan Ara. And who can deny a man the privilege of gathering fruit from a tree he himself has planted.'
'You are a demon,' Mrs Shantaram yells, and Shantaram hits her. I hear a bottle break.
'No!' I hear Gudiya scream.
I feel as though an oxyacetylene torch has pierced my brain and molten metal has been poured over my heart. I can tolerate it no more. I run to Mr Ramakrishna's room and tell him that Shantaram is doing something terrible to his own wife and daughter. But Ramakrishna behaves as if I am talking about the weather.
'Look,' he tells me. 'Whatever happens inside the four walls of a home is a private matter for that family and we cannot interfere. You are a young orphan boy. You have not seen life. But I know the daily stories of wife-beating and abuse and incest and rape, which take place in chawls all over Mumbai. Yet no one does anything. We Indians have this sublime ability to see the pain and misery around us, and yet remain unaffected by it. So, like a proper Mumbaikar, close your eyes, close your ears, close your mouth and you will be happy like me. Now go, it is time for my sleep.'
I rush back to my room. I hear Shantaram snoring and Gudiya screaming that she is dirty. 'Don't touch me! Nobody touch me! I will infect whoever comes near me.'
I think she is losing her mind. And I am losing mine.
'Infect me,' I say, and thrust my hand through the hole in the wall.
Gudiya catches it. 'I will not live much longer, Ram Mohammad Thomas,' she sobs. 'I will commit suicide rather than submit to my father.' Her pain floats through the hole and envelops me in its embrace.
I begin crying. 'I will never allow this to happen,' I tell her. 'This is a brother's promise.'
Salim gives me a dirty look, as if I have committed a criminal act by making this promise. But I am beyond right and wrong. I feel Gudiya's bony fingers, the flesh on her hands, and know that we are both hunted animals, partners in crime. My crime was that I, an orphan boy, had dared to make other people's troubles my own. But what was Gudiya's crime? Simply that she was born a girl and Shantaram was her father.
* * *
