But Seth-ji was obsessed with his new toy. Even though it was lifeless, it was his. And now that she had asked something of him, how could he refuse? Especially if it suited him just fine!

He grunted in an odd fashion and asked for some more curd.

She immediately scooped some in a bowl.

‘Don’t forget to go to the Shani mandir and offer some oil. If he is happy it will all be smooth. That bastard has told me my Shani is sitting in the wrong house, no wonder such calamities are befalling me… I also need funding and permission for the cable TV unit.’

Rajjo realized Sethi-ji had not answered her plea of wanting to work with him. Dejected she walked back to the kitchen wondering what to do next as Seth-ji hollered, ‘Now come my lovely and understand what you need to do for today. The rally is not happening in my kitchen! My dearest, its freaking set-up in the market square and a minimum gathering of seven hundred people is required…where will they come from? I hope I don’t have to sire them!’ He looked at Rajjo with twinkling eyes and laughed at his own joke.

Rajjo smiled feebly, still not believing that he had agreed for her to work. ‘They have no idea what requirements they give from those offices up there! The village dogs won’t come to see what these good-for-nothing young leaders have to say! If it was up to me, I would kick them all the way back to where they came from.’

He saw his young bride looking at the pamphlet with the faces of the young handsome leaders. She looked at one of them long enough for a burning sensation to crawl on him. While her husband burned in his possessiveness, a thought struck Rajjo. He was going to be there, the man with deep brown eyes and the stubble. The man she saw last night. A wave of hope and happiness flared as she sat next to Seth-ji with a pen and a paper.

December 1991

The cold seeped in everywhere. It was difficult to move around in the thick smog after five in the evenings. Rajjo’s hands were frozen as she sorted huge cartons of water and other goodies for the rally lined up in the living room and bedrooms. It was just a week to go before the rally and Rajjo was in the middle of it all, helping Seth-ji who was glued to his phone with the long-winding wire.

Rajjo had boiled down the entire exercise to numbers. How they could maximize the numbers?

She had heard the table over and over as Seth-ji had made her count, ‘Aslam gets hundred, Kulwinder gets twenty-five, bastard good-for-nothing pig, Shailendra gets fifty-five, the amount he has eaten from me he should be getting me a country full of people, I also helped his bloody son-in-law escape arrest! Then they all come grovelling for favours.’