SARA SIDDIQUI CHANSARKAR

Police Chowki

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I ride to the police station on my Vespa scooter, across the market streets bustling with rickshaws and motorcycles. Along the way, I swivel my neck to look at all the young men I pass, hoping to find my son, Shaheen. He did not return home last night. I’ve checked with his friends although he doesn’t stay overnight at anyone’s place.

At my destination, a metal board on the squat one-story building says “Police Chowki, Saharanpur” in Hindi letters. Tendrils of a wild plant growing on the roof swoop down to frame the sign. Reddish-brown betel nut spittle streaks the walls like dried blood. 

This is my first time at a police station but my brother who’d been here before to report his stolen motorcycle has prepared me for the visit. 

Double doors lead to a room with five wooden desks, across which policemen lounge, bellies protruding over the belts of their khaki trousers. At one table, a constable twists the ear of a yelping man. A flurry of expletives rises from yet another table. I hurry past this area as my brother had instructed me.

“Hey, where are you going?” a constable yells.

I barge on as if I know the place well, and stop outside a room at the back with the nameplate “Inspector Arjun Chauhan” nailed to the wall. 

I rap on the open door. “Namaskar, Sahib.”

The police inspector, Chauhan, a heavy-set man with salt-and-pepper hair, glances at me, eyes dripping with exasperation. 

I step inside the room and stand by the officer’s desk. He continues to leaf through some files. I look around at the dusty windows, the walls with cobwebbed corners, the empty chai cups on the floor. A stench of urine wafts in from the window and mingles with the fragrance of incense burning in front of the Ganesha idol on the inspector’s table.

After waiting for ten minutes, I muster up courage and say, “Sahib, please help. My son Shaheen is missing.” 

The officer takes a sip of chai and points to the white crocheted cap I’m wearing. “Muslim, aren’t you?” he says.

I nod my head in affirmation. Being a Muslim, a minority in this country of 80% Hindus, I’m not new to bigotry, but my stomach lurches every time I’m subjected to it.

“You people are too busy observing your five-times-a-day namaz and eating your goshth-biryani to watch the children,” he continues. “Now, you want me to take time from robberies and murders to look for a loafer?” 

Coming here seems like a mistake. To these upholders of law—blinded with bias, cold with hatred, hardened with crime. I tell the officer that Shaheen is no loafer, that he attends St. Mary’s, the best English medium school. 

“Yes, yes, every boy of your community is innocent until he rapes or murders someone,” he continues his tirade.

Heat surges up my spine to my face but I stay silent and absorb the insult. Next, he asks my son’s age. Seventeen, I tell him, and my heart fills with tenderness for my son. In my mind, Shaheen is still a toddler, searching my pockets for lemon candy when I returned home after closing my general store. 

The inspector asks if I’d brought a photo of “the boy.” By this time, I’ve said Shaheen’s name at least four times already but this man insists on ignoring it. I swallow my anger like a bitter Crocin pill and remove Shaheen’s photo from my pocket. My fingers hesitate—I don’t want this prejudiced man’s hands on my son, not even on paper.

“A hero, huh?” Chauhan smirks at Shaheen, almost six-feet tall, standing in front of a microphone for a harmonica performance at school.  “Must have fled to Mumbai. All boys want to be stars like Shahrukh Khan. Any money missing?”

“Not a paisa,” I explain that Shaheen left in a kurta and Bata slippers with his friends last evening to have Thumbs Up at the soda shop. Sometimes, he studies late into the night at a friend’s place, and he has a house key, so my wife and I went to sleep. Only in the morning, we found that he did not return.

Chauhan calls out for the sub-inspector. A stocky man with a handlebar mustache and the tag “Rampal Yadav” pinned to his shirt enters. After I explain, the sub-inspector decides it’s a waste of time to file a formal report, given the boy’s only been missing for one night. 

I retrieve bundles of 50-rupee bills from my pocket, press a wad into the sub-inspector’s hand and another into the inspector’s. My brother had prepared me for this jackal lair. 

The sub-inspector Yadav interrogates me. Who was Shaheen last with? Names of his friends? I sign the report after he’s noted down the information.

“Don’t worry, we’ll find Shaheen.” Chauhan says my son’s name, at last. I thank the men and leave.

Outside, a constable slaps a young man, across his face, already bruised crimson. The boy, about Shaheen’s age, says he didn’t jump the terrace into his neighbor’s house, knows nothing about any missing gold necklace. The policeman strikes the boy again.

“Have mercy, for Allah’s sake,” the boy pleads. The constable hits the boy’s calves with a baton. He drops to the ground; his lip splits open. The man kicks the fallen boy as if he were a sack of potatoes. 

“Speak the truth, Muslim boy, or I’ll break your bones,” another policeman unbuckles his belt.

A cold wave of terror rises inside me and the dried betel-nut stains on the walls outside flash before my eyes. I shudder at the thought of policemen torturing and beating up Shaheen’s friends on the pretext of interrogation. Before I know, my legs carry me back to the inspector’s room and my hands tear apart the report I’d signed.

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