Everything in front of her was blue and green, golden and bright. The air was pleasant and crisp except for the whiff of cow dung, which did not bother Anisha all that much, not as much as the cow dung itself – splattered on the road, there for the entire day until the cleaners arrived late in the evening and scooped it up. Anisha, eldest of three sisters, always wanted everything to be clean, tiptop clean. Flick a speck of dust here, clean a line of grime there. It bothered her when she couldn’t do that. When she noticed a stain, a smear, something soiled, it bothered her when she couldn’t pick it up, when she couldn’t clean it up, when she couldn’t make it look right again.
Perhaps that’s why she went away, her mother would say later, because she could feel the dirt roiling inside her house but couldn’t clean it. She could scrub the walls and scrape the floor, but how could she clean the muck that filled her with disgust but couldn’t be seen? So she went away, said her mother. She went away. And along with her went her sisters, because they couldn’t stand to live inside that shithole either.
That day, on February 14, 2013, Anisha was out and about because she was supposed to go to school; she was supposed to be in school, but she carried no school bag and she wasn’t wearing her uniform. Instead, she sported a watermelon-green top. There was a hint of a smile on her lips and her eyes sparkled with anticipation. That day, she was a happy girl, all of fourteen, wearing her favourite top. She knew it could attract attention, of course, a girl wearing anything attracts attention, but at that time of the morning, at around quarter past seven, people didn’t really care about who was wearing what, because such people – people who would have noticed – were yet to step out of their houses. Or so Anisha believed.
Anisha: tall and jumpy, looking a little bit older than her fourteen years. She never walked, she always hopped. Left foot in the air and right foot on the ground; then right foot in the air and left foot on the ground. Plaits wrapped up tightly: a school requirement. A mischievous smile hanging on the edge of her lips, always.
A man Anisha didn’t know rode on a bike from the opposite direction. He wasn’t fully awake yet, but his eyes widened as he leered at Anisha, from head to toe, his tongue out of his mouth, licking his lower lip: good morning, indeed. She noticed the man, she saw him do all that he did, she saw his eyes move up and down and up again, but she had conditioned herself to ignore such things, so she ignored it and continued on her way.
From her home Anisha hopped away in the direction of Shivaji Putala, Murwani’s main square. But she did not enter the square or the market adjoining it. Instead, after taking a right that led to the market, she slipped into a narrow lane that circumvented the market and the main square and walked through Futane Wadi, past Rafiq’s Biriyani and a line of repair shops she knew would still be shuttered. She emerged fifteen minutes later, on the main village road snaking towards the national highway, abutting a line of paddy fields. She crossed the road and disappeared into the fields right opposite Sugandha Fast Food Centre.
Later, the owner of Sugandha Fast Food Centre would claim that he had seen Anisha, the eldest sister, in a green top, crossing into the paddy fields and disappearing inside them. He would also claim that he had spotted her as she emerged on the temple side. She had made her way towards the temple, he said, or perhaps somewhere further. Then the discussion about the direction Anisha took that morning would cease, at this little bit of information: that she was spotted on the main village road, that she had walked into the paddy fields adjoining it, that she had walked towards the temple and then disappeared beyond. Then the discussion, for the time being, would circle around the facts about the top, specifically the colour and the make of it.
Everyone seems to remember how tight this green top was. How it was something that decent girls from Murwani wouldn’t have known existed, let alone thought of wearing out on the streets. The other point of concern was the question of how: how was it that she had managed to change into it – this top – during the hustle and bustle of that morning? Anisha’s mother didn’t know which green top they were talking about, she had never known her daughter to own a green top. Then again, who knows? Everyone knew everything about her daughters and no one knew anything about her daughters. That was how it had always been. The matter at the heart of everything, then, was that Anisha had been spotted wearing a green top.
For days and months after, it was at the periphery of discussion wherever the people of Murwani met, or gathered: it might be true, they said, that she had walked out of the gate wearing her uniform, which is what her mother claims, though what her mother claims is as good as what the police claim, which is not to say much, so it might be true, who knows, but what is known, what is known for sure, they said, is that Anisha had waited for her mother to head out of their shack to fetch water. Then – listen to this – then, silent as a cat’s paw, she had sneaked in through the back door, changed out of her uniform into the said top and then slipped away.
Nods and hmms. No, no, others said, maybe what you said is true, yes, it does seem possible, yes, but what we heard was different. What we heard was that she had made her way out of the shack wearing her uniform, like her mother says she did. But she had changed into the green top and dumped her school bag – listen to this – inside that granary five minutes from her home. Which granary? That granary re, on the way to Shivaji Putala. Aangle’s granary? Haan, that one. Daring baaz that girl, dumping her stuff into Aangle chi granary. Nods and hmms.
Now listen to this: once she had changed into her green top, that tight green top, one would expect that she would make her way towards wherever it is that she wanted to go wearing that green top, yes? And wherever it is that she wanted to go wearing that green top would most certainly not be her school, yes? But that’s exactly what happened: she changed out of her uniform, dumped her school bag inside that granary and then, to ensure that nobody noticed her, she chose to walk through the long line of paddy fields to her school, Murwani Vidya Sadan.
That is what happened, they said, those who said it. It is possible, however, that they didn’t know shit. Because the fact of the matter was that Anisha’s home had neither a back door nor a gate – it was a shack – and perhaps she hadn’t made her way to the school through the paddy fields, because there were people claiming to have seen her on the main road. At this point, the discussion would twist back to the topic of the direction. Someone would say that Anisha was wearing this green top until late afternoon, which is when she had been spotted near the petrol pump. The main source of this information was Raju Bokle, a paanpatti-wala. Said Raju Bokle: “I saw her leaning against a petrol pump pillar at around three o’clock. She was wearing a green top. I don’t know why she was wearing that instead of her uniform . . . I don’t think she ever went to school that day.”
Four others said that Anisha was wearing a green top; two more said that she never went to school that day. At least two children claimed that they had seen her in school. A teacher, her class teacher, said that Anisha had never made it to school, if we are to believe that day’s attendance sheet. But her mother said that Anisha had left for school that morning, and that when she left, she had been wearing her school uniform, just like her sisters Priyanka and Sanchita, who had left a little earlier. As far as their mother was concerned, on that morning, the morning of February 14, 2013, everything had been business as usual. Things would turn unusual only much, much later in the day.
Excerpted with permission from Hurda, Atharva Pandit, Bloomsbury India.