The Rice Pullers of New Garia

THIS IS A WORK OF FICTION

The door to the stairwell stood open at half-past five, though Mrs. Banerjee from 4A always locked it at midnight, and someone had scattered white rice across the landing so that it crunched under Jojo’s sandals when he ran down to fetch his father’s bicycle pump.

The pump was gone.

Jojo was ten, and he had promised to pump the football before the lane match at seven. He could not be late. The youngest boys always got stuck at long-on, and Jojo had decided that this morning he would prove he was old enough to bowl. But the rice felt wrong. It was heavier than Basmati, colder than day-old rice from the fridge, and when he brushed it off his toes, it clung to his skin like wet sand.

He crouched. The grains were too white. Too shiny. They smelled of nothing. Not mustard oil, not turmeric, not even the faint chalky scent of the rice-seller’s jute sack. Jojo cupped a handful. It was oddly satisfying, like holding warm marbles, but a chill ran up his arm when a single grain stuck to his metal watch-strap.

‘Jojo!’ Mimi’s voice cracked through the stairwell. She was twelve, wearing her school uniform already, and she had a geometry box under her arm because she liked to be prepared. ‘You’re making a noise like a buffalo. What are you doing?’

‘The pump’s missing,’ said Jojo. ‘And someone left this.’

Mimi padded down the steps in her socks. She poked the rice with a compass from her geometry box. The needle twitched. Then it spun.

‘That’s not rice,’ said Mimi. ‘Not proper rice. Look.’

She tipped a few grains onto the iron railing. They did not roll off. They stuck.

Polo appeared at the front gate, eating a cold aloo paratha from a newspaper cone. He was eleven, and he was always eating. ‘What’s the fuss? I could hear you from the tap. The tap’s running, by the way. Has been for ten minutes.’

‘The pump’s gone,’ said Jojo. ‘And there’s magnetic rice.’

‘There’s no such thing as magnetic rice,’ said Polo, spraying crumbs. ‘Unless it’s got iron in it. My uncle’s a welder. He uses iron filings. They look like grey sugar.’

Jojo felt a familiar squeeze in his chest. He was the youngest. He was always being told what was and was not possible. But the pump was definitely gone, and the rice was definitely sticking to the railing, and he needed that pump before seven.

‘Someone stole it,’ said Jojo. ‘And I bet they left this stuff behind. We should follow it.’

Mimi raised one eyebrow. ‘Follow rice?’

‘There’s a trail,’ said Jojo.

He was right. Whoever had scattered the rice on the landing had dropped a pinch every three steps, leading out of the courtyard, past the sleeping rickshaws, and towards the Kabi Subhash Metro station. The grains caught the early light and gleamed like tiny teeth in the dust.

Polo wanted to stop for a glass of water at the tube-well, but Mimi shook her head. ‘If the trail gets blown away by wind or swept by a broom, we’re finished. We follow it now.’ Jojo nodded. He was already sweating through his school shirt, and his sandals were giving him a blister, but he did not complain. The pump was ahead. The truth was ahead.

The sun was not yet hot. The crows were just beginning to shout. Jojo, Mimi, and Polo walked in single file, not talking much, because early mornings in New Garia have a particular kind of quiet that makes whispers feel loud. A milk-seller cycled past, his cans clanking. A dog with ribs like a xylophone watched them from beneath a scooter. The rice trail stopped at the footbridge over the Metro tracks.

Below, on the dusty maidan beside the station, a crowd had gathered.

Three men stood in the centre. They wore saffron kurtas that looked as if they had been ironed too carefully. One man played a harmonium. Another held a brass bowl full of white rice. The third, who had a voice like a loudspeaker, was talking about miracles.

‘Rice Pullers!’ he called. ‘Sacred rice from the Sunderbans! It pulls metal! It pulls fortune! It pulls your bad luck away and brings lakhs!’

A woman in a faded sari stepped forward. She held a steel spoon. The man with the bowl gestured. The woman lowered the spoon towards the rice.

The spoon leaped from her fingers. It stuck to the rice as if glued.

The crowd gasped. The woman gasped. Jojo gasped.

‘Did you see that?’ whispered Polo. ‘It jumped.’

‘Magnet,’ muttered Mimi. ‘Has to be.’

‘But where?’ said Jojo. ‘There’s nothing under the bowl. Look.’

The harmonium player had lifted the brass bowl to show the ground beneath. Just dust and a flattened cardboard box. No magnet there.

Jojo’s heart thumped. Part of him wanted to believe. If rice could pull metal, then perhaps other impossible things were true. Perhaps he could bowl fast enough to frighten the older boys. Perhaps being ten was not such a small thing after all.

‘Invest now!’ called the loudspeaker man. ‘Deposit five thousand! Receive five lakhs when the rice is sold to the laboratory! Today only!’

A man in a torn shirt handed over a wad of notes. Another woman opened her purse. The harmonium wheezed a low, droning note.

Jojo felt sick. The rice on the landing. The stolen pump. These men were taking things that did not belong to them. Money. Trust. Bicycle pumps.

‘We have to stop them,’ said Jojo.

‘How?’ said Polo. ‘They’re grown-ups. We’re children. Children don’t stop anything except their own noses.’

Mimi opened her geometry box. She took out her compass. ‘Children notice things. Come on.’

They crept down the footbridge steps and hid behind a stack of bamboo poles near the egg-roll vendor. The vendor, Hari-da, was frying onions and pretending not to watch the crowd. His pan hissed and popped. The smell of hot mustard oil made Jojo’s stomach twist.

‘You three look like you’re plotting,’ said Hari-da, without turning around. ‘Plotting gives you wrinkles. Have an egg roll. On credit.’

‘We can’t,’ said Jojo. ‘Those men are thieves.’

Hari-da flipped an egg. ‘I know. They set up at five. Scared away my regular customers. Too much shouting. But people are desperate. They want to believe in magic rice. What can you do?’

Mimi held up her compass. ‘Can we sit here? We need to watch.’

Hari-da nodded. ‘Sit. But if they chase you, run towards the tram line. The constable there is my cousin.’

They sat. The sun climbed. The heat began to smell of diesel and sweet jalebi oil from across the road. Jojo’s stomach rumbled. Polo ate his egg roll in tiny bites to make it last. Mimi wrote numbers in her notebook, timing the tricks.

A tram clanged past, its bell drowning out the harmonium for a moment. A flock of pariah dogs trotted by, noses to the dust, hunting for scraps. Jojo wiped his forehead and left a grey streak of iron-rice dust on his sleeve. His throat was dry. He wished he had brought water, or that Hari-da would offer another egg roll, but he did not dare ask. This was serious. This was stake-out work, like in the films Mimi’s older brother watched on Saturdays. The thought made him sit up straighter, though his back ached from crouching.

The Rice Pullers worked in a pattern. The loudspeaker man talked. The harmonium man played a low chord. The bowl man showed the rice. And every time the harmonium hit a particular deep note—Bhom, bhom—the spoon or the key or the coin would jump.

‘It’s the harmonium,’ whispered Mimi. ‘It has to be. The magnet is inside it.’

‘But it’s a wooden box,’ said Polo. ‘Magnets don’t hide in wooden boxes.’

‘Electromagnets do,’ said Mimi. ‘My science book. If you run electricity through a coil, it becomes a magnet. Switch it off, and it’s just wire. That’s why he lifts the bowl to show the ground. The magnet isn’t under the bowl. It’s in the harmonium next to it.’

Jojo squinted. The harmonium man had a thick wire running from the back of the instrument, down his sleeve, and into a cloth bag at his feet. Every time he pressed the low chord with his left hand, his right hand twitched towards the bag.

‘There’s a battery in that bag,’ said Jojo. ‘And a switch.’

‘Clever,’ said Polo. ‘Evil, but clever. The rice is just rice with iron powder. The magnet pulls the rice, and the rice pulls the spoon. It looks like the rice is magic.’

‘My pump,’ said Jojo suddenly. ‘They needed metal things to test it on. That’s why they took pumps and pressure cookers and anything heavy from the neighbourhood last night.’

Mimi’s eyes widened. ‘Look behind the harmonium. There’s a sack.’

It was true. Half-hidden by a torn shawl, a jute sack bulged with stolen goods. Jojo saw the red handle of his father’s pump sticking out like a flag. He saw a pressure cooker lid. He saw a bicycle bell.

Jojo stood up. His legs shook. ‘I’m getting it.’

‘Wait,’ said Mimi. ‘If they catch you—’

‘I promised to pump the football,’ said Jojo. ‘And those people are giving them their savings. It’s not fair.’

He walked into the crowd before Mimi could grab his shirt. He was small, and the crowd was thick with desperate faces, so he wriggled through easily. He reached the sack. He pulled the pump. It was heavy and familiar, and the handle was warm from the sun.

‘Hey!’ The bowl man turned. ‘What are you doing?’

Jojo froze. The loudspeaker man stopped talking. The harmonium man stopped playing. The crowd turned.

‘This is my pump,’ said Jojo. His voice came out higher than he wanted. ‘You stole it from our stairwell. And your rice is just rice with iron powder. You have a battery in that bag. You’re cheating people.’

The loudspeaker man smiled. It was not a nice smile. ‘Little boy. Little, foolish boy. You don’t understand holy science. Go home before you get hurt.’

‘I understand switches,’ said Jojo. He pointed at the cloth bag. ‘And wires. And magnets in harmoniums.’

The crowd murmured. The woman in the faded sari looked at the bag. Then at the harmonium. Then at Jojo.

‘Prove it,’ said a man at the back.

Jojo’s mouth went dry. He had not thought this far. He was ten. He was good at fielding and making paper boats, but he was not good at public speaking.

Then Mimi pushed through the crowd. She held her compass high. ‘The magnet is in the harmonium,’ she said, loud and clear. ‘Watch this.’

She placed the compass on the ground near the harmonium. The needle pointed north. Then the harmonium man, sweating now, pressed the low chord. Bhom.

The compass needle spun like a top.

The crowd gasped again, but this time it was a different sound. It was the sound of understanding.

‘Switch it off,’ said Polo, who had crept round the back. ‘Or I’ll pour Hari-da’s chutney into your battery bag.’

The harmonium man looked at the loudspeaker man. The loudspeaker man looked at the crowd. The woman in the faded sari stepped forward and kicked the cloth bag. A car battery rolled out, trailing a wire that led straight to the harmonium’s wooden back.

For a moment, no one moved. Then the crowd roared.

The three men grabbed their sacks and ran. But they did not get far. A police jeep had been waiting at the corner of the maidan, and Inspector Banerjee—who had been watching from the tea stall since dawn because her own aunt had lost three thousand rupees to a rice scam in Tollygunge last month—saw the compass spin and the battery roll out. She stepped out and blocked their path.

‘Hands up,’ said Inspector Banerjee. ‘And keep them away from any brass bowls.’

The fraudsters were handcuffed. The crowd cheered. The woman in the faded sari got her five thousand rupees back, and she pressed a cold bottle of Limca into Jojo’s hand.

‘You were brave,’ she said. ‘All three of you.’

Jojo drank the Limca in one long gulp. It was the best thing he had ever tasted. Fizzy, sharp, and the colour of sunlight.

Hari-da fried three extra egg rolls and refused payment. ‘On the house,’ he said. ‘For the detectives.’

‘We weren’t detectives,’ said Polo, through a mouthful of egg. ‘We were just looking for a pump.’

‘And you found justice,’ said Mimi, which sounded like something from a book, but she said it with her mouth full of jhalmuri, so it was all right.

Inspector Banerjee took their names for her report. ‘You did well,’ she said. ‘But next time, tell a grown-up first. A real grown-up. Not just an egg-roll man.’

‘We tried,’ said Jojo. ‘But the tap was running, and the rice was sticking, and there wasn’t time.’

Inspector Banerjee laughed. ‘Go on. Don’t you have a match?’

Jojo looked at his watch. It was quarter to seven. The lane would be waiting.

They ran. The pump bounced against Jojo’s leg, and the football was in Polo’s arms, and Mimi carried the needle valve because she was the most responsible. The sun was fully up now, and the crows were shouting properly, and the smell of the city was the smell of mustard oil and dust and possibility.

Jojo did not feel ten anymore. He felt exactly the right age for everything. The sun was hot. The ball was true. And somewhere beyond the lane, the city hummed with a thousand ordinary miracles waiting for someone curious enough to look.