The rest of the afternoon passed without incident, and when they were finally done, one of the sahib’s attendants walked over to Kavi and dropped a handful of coins in her waiting palms.
Four rayals. The shroud of numb indifference she’d been fighting to hold together disintegrated, and she burst into tears.
I can eat.
She saluted the sahibs, slapped the back of her hand against her brow and left it there while the other beggars glared at her.
Once the sahibs turned their backs on her, she levered herself up with a sigh. Knees cracked and muscles groaned as the pain in her back spread.
Kavi counted the coins again, just to be safe, and set three aside to replenish her stores of salt and rice. She wiped the drool off her chin, checked the road for rickshaws, and crossed over to the butta hawker.
She brandished the silver coin stamped with the profile of Sree Golmadi, the long-dead leader of the Raayan push for independence and the most mythologised man in Raaya, and said, “How many can I get?”
The butta hawker studied the coin while his hands continued their fanning and corn-flipping acrobatics. “Two. One if you want extra chilli.”
“Give me two,” she said, “one of them with extra chilli. Please.”
The butta hawker rolled his eyes but gave her a grudging nod.
If the food didn’t make you sweat, the cook was skimping on the spices, or so the saying went. This butta hawker was most definitely not skimping on the chilli. Kavi’s lips burned, and rivulets of sweat ran down the sides of her face as she devoured the first piece of corn.
She took her time with the second one. Enjoyed the tang, the savoury-sweet crunch of the kernels and the heat of the chilli that kept sending her back for another bite.
On the other side of the street, the attendants were busy packing up the shamiana. The artists, their work, and their patron sahibs had long since departed – Kavi froze with the piece of corn halfway to her mouth.
Not all of them, apparently. The cane-wielding sahib was still there, staring at her from across the road, studying her with the same quiet intensity as earlier.
She met his eyes, swallowed what was in her mouth, and took another bite.
The sahib, for whatever reason, took that as a sign. His face paled, the shrivelled hand on his cane trembled, and its tip stuttered on the asphalt as he stepped out into the street.
Kavi frowned with a fresh mouthful of corn. Had they met? Maybe a passenger at the station? Maybe she’d carried his luggage?
He took another hesitant step. The cane wedged itself into a narrow pothole, barely a gash on the road, and Kavi gawked in horrified fascination as the sahib was thrown off balance.
The gilded stick went flying. The sahib hopped, skipped, and fell flat on his face with a loud oomph!
At the other end of the road, a rickshaw sputtered and picked up speed. The driver – Kavi squinted – was wrestling with a horde of schoolboys, all piled into the backseat, one of whom was actively attempting to nose-dive out of the vehicle. The distracted driver had not seen the sahib fall, was completely oblivious to the flailing old man soon to be acquainted with all three of his tyres plus the weight of half a dozen squirming brats.
Kavi took another absent-minded bite, fully absorbed and mesmerised. Cane-sahib was about to become roadkill-sahib, and a bitter corner of her soul cackled with glee. For someone with such fancy clothes and polished shoes, the man sure looked miserable. In fact, the closer she got to him, the more morose his face seemed to get. The closer – What The Fuck Was She Doing?
Her traitorous feet had carried her halfway to the sahib.
The disoriented old man was dabbing at the blood leaking out his broken nose while the steam-rickshaw hissed and sputtered and maintained its course.
Tentacles of icy dread wrapped themselves around Kavi’s head and held it in place. Choose. They squeezed. Now.
Her pupils dilated.
Her breath caught in her throat.
If she let this happen, if she backtracked to safety and left the man to his fate, then just like that pothole in the road, just like the seed of hate taking root in her, a fissure would run through her soul and rupture. On one side, the old Kavi, irretrievably lost, who, despite everything, believed in kindness and good and hope; and on the other side, the new bitter, hateful wretch she was turning into.
She tucked the half-eaten piece of corn into her pocket for later. If this got her killed, she’d find this bhaenchod in the next life and run him over with a bleddy bullock cart herself.
Kavi lunged and closed the gap. Grabbed the man by the arm. And gasped as her foot slipped into the same pothole that had trapped the sahib’s cane. An audible crack, a flare of agony, a spike of adrenaline. The ankle went numb.
The sahib looked up at her in astonishment.
She growled, dropped his arm, and latched onto his collar.
Using the wedged foot as a fulcrum, she swivelled, and with a guttural roar, hurled the old man off the street. The steam-rickshaw shrieked as it bore down on her. The driver saw her, twisted his wrist and jammed the brakes. An unsecured schoolboy flew out of the backseat and collided with the back of the driver’s head, propelling the front of his face straight into the horn in the middle of the steering bar.
Kavi yanked her foot out of the pothole and stumbled. Her eyes bulged and her mouth hung open as the vehicle swayed, veered clear, and its side-view mirror came hurtling into –
Excerpted with permission from Kavithri: Outcast. Underdog. Survivor, Aman J Bedi, Gollancz.
