Leila by Prayaag Akbar

Author:Prayaag Akbar [Prayaag Akbar]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780571341337
Publisher: Faber & Faber
Published: 2018-10-10T16:00:00+00:00

Then there is my husband’s voice, cracking slightly as he strains for volume, ‘What the hell is going on here?’

Everyone turns. Riz stands at the top of the stairs with a brass candlestick and a child’s cricket bat loosely gripped in either hand. I haven’t a clue where he found them. The foyer lights make him glow. He drops the bat at his feet and brandishes his cell phone in the air. ‘Any idea whose house you’re in?’ he shouts, his chest forward, legs shivering with rage. ‘You know who I can call? Get out of here before I have you all thrown in jail.’

For a few seconds no one says anything. The hoodlums on the lawn look desperate to get to Riz, but something is holding each of them back, a thread hobbles them, mad horses spancelled by an invisible rein. ‘But who will you call, Nawabzaada?’ It is a taut voice, smooth as honey oak, ringing out behind me, slicing the young silence. The first thing I see is a dollop of white hair. ‘Tell me now, who – who will you call?’ Unmistakably, the same Repeater who led the charge the other day, walking with a deliberate tread down the garden path, an emperor entering a battlefield after the vanguard has supped.

Rizwan does not respond. He’s racing through his phone book when a young Repeater hits him from behind, swinging a lathi with all his might onto Riz’s lower back, sending him springing forward, the candlestick falling from his fingers, arched, head thrown back, a straitened cry escaping. He finds no footing and tumbles down the steps. Bizarrely, the leader of the Repeaters and I are running towards my husband at the same time, from opposing ends of the lawn. Nakul, one of our oldest friends, Riz’s usual squash partner, is charging to the steps himself. Out of nowhere a lathi spins through the air and catches him just below the Adam’s apple. He falls to the ground, unable to scream, whimpering and clutching his throat. His wife runs to him and she is yanked to a stop by her ponytail, collapsing to her knees.

Riz is breathing in quick gasps when I reach him. I cradle his head. Then I sense the arrival, tremors from the pounding feet, the stench of angry sweat, the drawled invective, it comes from all around, every point on the wheel, closer and still closer until we are subsumed, struck by knees and feet and fists, pushed down to the soil. When I blink out the blur from the tears I see the streaming gash above his eye, his shirt bloody and ripped to the waist. Our guests are in two lines, men and women. I have been separated from the group.

‘What did you think?’ the leader shouts. He is walking in between the two lines of guests, looking into the men’s faces, appraising the women. ‘Everywhere we are dying for water and you live like this? Rules don’t apply to you?

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