Govinda ran his fingers through his hair. Smoke and dirt had hardened it. Even though the family’s faces were smudged with ash and dust, and marked by worry and fear, there was an overriding sense of relief. They had almost made it, but then they were stopped again.

Boot heels clicked on asphalt. A baby wailed as the sky grew dark. A man dressed in a white lungi and red singlet flung open the door. His eyes settled on Gitanjali.

‘Give her to me,’ he said.

‘There is no shame,’ Ashok held his head in anguish.

Sunil Seth attempted to get out of the car. Govinda clamped his hand on his father’s shoulder but his father pushed it away.

Govinda caught a flurry of movement out of the corner of his eye, and then a blur of light zipped past him. His father had struck the man.

‘A man must stand up sometimes,’ Sunil Seth roared after he cracked the man who insulted his wife. Sunil Seth had hit him in the jaw with such force that he fell. An angry mob of men wearing white lungis descended on the car.

‘Leave the woman and child,’ someone cried.

The men in white grabbed at Ashok and Sunil Seth. They were bashed, their faces scratched and hair pulled, as they were brought to the ground. A knife was held at each of their throats. They were told to lie still. The men inspected Govinda and Gitanjali. They instructed them to stay in the car. Through the barrage of fists and kicks, his father raised himself and got as far as his knees as he punched out at a man in the crowd. His arms grew increasingly limp as he was struck again and again. The driver lay motionless. He’d given up. The sound of a police siren pierced the air. From a van with flashing lights, a policeman shot a round of bullets in the air. The mob dispersed. Sunil Seth and Ashok and Gitanjali and Govinda were pushed into the police van.

The Police Station

The Police Station

The police station was in mayhem.

Govinda heard shouting, the banging of doors and the unanswered ringing of telephones. The cracked cement floor felt sticky with phlegm. People were bleeding in the cells. Before him stretched a battlefield of tables and shelves that sagged beneath mountains of dog-eared files spewing out yellowing paperwork tied together with bits of string. On the wall Govinda noticed a dusty effigy of the goddess Durga slaying the demon buffalo, the incarnation of evil. On the opposite wall a portrait of Gandhi contemplated the chaos. A Sikh was bundled into the police station. ‘I haven’t done anything. I don’t want to pay for somebody else,’ he cried with trembling lips. A policeman took him away.

They were ushered to seats in the middle of the chaos and sat in silence, falsely polite, handing over their passports.