The Girl from Nongrim Hills by Ankush Saikia

Author:Ankush Saikia [Saikia, Ankush]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9789351183235
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2013-03-04T00:00:00+00:00

19

Headed back into Shillong Bok rode as fast as he could. He had a faint hope of spotting the Scorpio, even though she had a headstart on him. Country buses returning from the city, jeeps, and trucks streamed by from the other direction. He berated himself for his momentary distraction inside the bedroom. If he had kept his head he would have had the money with him now, his brother would have been saved. He had acted in self-defence, but it still didn’t alter what had happened. A man was dead, shot by him; he had turned into a murderer trying to fix his brother’s mess. At the same time, he had to admit a grudging respect for her. To have jumped from the first-floor balcony with bare feet in the dark; even he would have hesitated before trying that. He crossed the Air Command centre, and after that the road sloped down and started turning left and right. Bok slowed as little as he could on the bends, zipping dangerously past the traffic going up. He weaved through the taxis with their red braking lights around the 101 cantonment area, went across the bridge, and then he was approaching the traffic light. The left led to Guwahati, the straight one to Shillong. What was he to do?

In the end he headed back into the city. He crossed the civil hospital and curved left along the state central library (the surrendered East Pakistani tank on its grounds a brooding but empty presence), following the road towards Police Bazar. Across the road from the Superintendent of Police’s office, police commandos milled around the parked white police Gypsys. With that amount of hard cash with her Christine wouldn’t risk going down alone to Guwahati, Bok reasoned. Besides, she had been talking about going across to Mizoram. He remembered what she had said, about having Burmese blood in her. Come to think of it, Mizoram had a sizeable Myanmarese population, the Chins of the Kuki–Mizo–Chin group. They had a festival Bok had read about in the newspaper—what was it called?

He parked his motorcycle under the dark, looming bulk of the eternally under-construction Crowborough Hotel. Across the road was the site of the old Assembly building, burnt down in a blaze in early 2001. The question was: how would he manage to track her down once again? Bok didn’t believe she would be foolish enough to return to the guesthouse in Nongthymmai. He walked up to the traffic point at the roundabout, dodging the shifting maze of small cars and taxis. The road going towards Dreamland cinema was packed with evening shoppers. It had been dug up recently for a beautification project and then left that way, a muddy village track in the middle of Shillong. The crowds lent some solace to Bok; he was part of them, a small cog in this city, doing what he had to do. He felt both tired and wound-up. Thinking it would help him figure out his next step, he decided to go somewhere and have a drink.

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