Feeling the Vibes (12 page)

It was like a dream you want to stop but can’t. The train chuffing so slowly but gradually getting closer, everyone watching mesmerised with that same cold sense of premonition. This nightmare, now it had started, was unstoppable.

The train came to a shuddering standstill. The doors remained closed. Inside the train nothing moved.

Everyone seemed paralysed, then suddenly there was a frantic surge as people rushed forward, wrenching open carriage doors.

Inside was darkness and a silence so heavy it felt solid, until you noticed the frenzied buzzing of invisible flies.

Relatives forced their way into the unlit carriages where bodies lay piled on bodies like bloodstained luggage.

I knew “massacre” as a word, but I’d never seen, I’d never
smelled
, its horror.

“Amir, Amir!” Obi’s screams mixed with the sobbing of the grieving relatives.

I wanted to scream too.

Obi’s loose time connection should have sent him spinning off into another time, a different, kinder dream, but he just stood screaming, screaming, as if he’d be fixed to this spot for ever.

I scooped him up and I willed us away from the horror and the wailing humans. I had no clue where to take him, I just screamed, “AWAY”, and the nightmarish train with its corpses blurred out of focus, mercifully rushing away like smoke.

Chapter Fifteen

T
here were no detours this time, no princesses in palaces playing tag with their kids. We sped through days and nights like an arrow, as if there was only one Time, only one place, left to go.

When the Universe eventually firmed up, I found myself shakily looking up at Hrithik Roshan. Not the actual movie star, but a massive movie poster showing him and Aishwarya Rai in their new Bollywood blockbuster.

We’d come back full circle to the twenty-first century. My brain tried to take this in, but everything seemed unreal and hellish.

We were on the edge of a vast steaming garbage tip under skies hazy with pollution. So much rubbish had gone in over the years it was now hideously compacted together: chicken bones, rags, pitiful old shoes. Plus all the planet’s unwanted plastic bags seemed to have chosen this one spot as their final graveyard.

If it wasn’t for Hrithik and Aishwarya, actually, I might have thought we’d landed in an Indian Hell dimension.

Carefully sifting through the heap were humans of all ages, from old men and women to tiny little tots. Through the toxic haze they looked disturbingly like ghosts. Coming on top of the horror of the train massacre this new ugliness threatened to overwhelm me.

But I couldn’t let that happen. I had to stay strong for Obi.

To calm myself, I counted my blessings. 1. Obi was safe. 2. By some miracle we were back in the right century. 3. Soon the boys were sure to find us.

A woman and her little daughter were crouching in the garbage, carefully teasing out plastic bags from the stinking mess. Each time they’d successfully extracted a whole bag, they smoothed it carefully, like it was some kind of precious trophy, adding it to their growing pile.

An old man with matted hair sat nearby, waving a crumpled
beedi
, keeping time as he sang in Hindi. “You get everything here, yet you can’t find a heart”>Be careful, save yourself, this is Mumbai, my dear.”

He broke off his song and took a puff from his
beedi.

“That is a personal message from the Lords of Karma,” he told the woman in a slurred voice. “Save yourself and your children,
beti
. Leave this terrible city, before it’s too late.”

My heart did a flip of surprise as I made the connection. We hadn’t just ended up in the twenty-first century, we were in Mumbai, home to Bollywood!

A few miles up the road stars like Hrithik and Aishwarya danced through lawn sprinklers, singing of undying love. Just a few miles, yet it could be a different planet, I thought, trying not to inhale the fumes rising from the garbage.

I squatted down beside Obi wondering how he was handling our latest change of time and place. When he time-hopped before, he’d instantly forgotten where we’d just been. I prayed that he’d forgotten this time.

Don’t
, I told myself quickly.
Don’t think about the train
.

Obi was watching the woman and her daughter with his bewildered little frown. I naturally assumed he was finding so much squalor upsetting.

“We won’t be here long. The boys will catch up with us soon,” I comforted him.

He didn’t hear. It was like he was desperately trying to figure something out.

An old woman came struggling over the tip towards the woman and her child. “Parvati, I was just thinking about you,” she greeted her. “Any more trouble from Razak’s
goondas
l”

“No, no trouble,” said Parvati. “No
goondas
, no bulldozers. We are all hoping he has had a change of heart!” She flicked a persistent fly away from her face.

“Razak doesn’t have a heart to change!” snorted the old woman. “He just has a big greasy wallet.”

“Parvati!” Obi let out a sigh of relief. “
She’s
his mother now!”

I couldn’t think what he was on about. “Do you know her then?”

“How could I know her?” he said, genuinely surprised. “I never came here before.” He had the dazed expression of someone waking up from a v. complicated dream.

“You had been to some of the other places before though?”

He gave an uncertain nod. “I think so.”

The old man suddenly slumped down in the rubbish. His eyes rolled up into his head showing horribly inflamed whites.

“Mohit comes to my house every day to scrounge food,” Parvati tutted. “But he always finds enough money to buy
nasha
.” She bent down to make sure the old man was breathing properly. “He shouldn’t be out here in this state.”

“I’ll take care of him,” said the old woman. “Ravi and Asha will be coming out of school in a few minutes. You’ll need to get back.”

“Thanks, Laxmi,” said Parvati gratefully. “I’d do it, but I don’t like my kids coming home to an empty house.”

“You’re bound to worry,
beti
, bringing them up on your own. Being a widow in India is no joke, don’t I know it!”

Parvati shook her head. “I’ve been like this since the day Ravi was born. I’m so scared that I’ll lose my children it’s like an illness. I pray to Krishna every night to keep them safe.”

“Living here, so would I,” said Laxmi. “There are a million ways for a child to die in Deva Katchi. Go home. I’ll make sure Mohit is OK.”

I looked at Obi. “You want us to go with Parvati, don’t you?”

He nodded solemnly. “We have to, don’t we, Melanie?”

“I think we do,” I said slowly.

There’s a vibe you get when a human urgently needs your help. I wasn’t sure yet if the human was Parvati or just someone close to her.

Parvati carefully placed all the scavenged plastic into sacks before she and her little daughter set off, walking alongside some railroad tracks, balancing their booty gracefully on their heads.

In the distance dingy tenement blocks poked up above ramshackle houses roofed with corrugated tin or just blue tarpaulin.

As we got nearer I saw that these “houses” were just flimsy shacks, botched together from scrap wood and sheets of aluminium. Chatting to her daughter, Parvati ducked under live powerlines, dodging people’s washing, carefully steadying her load. Once she said, “Karisma,
beti
, look out for the poo!” and her small daughter expertly sidestepped the heap. Now and then Karisma broke into a wheezy cough, stopping to catch her breath.

In the past few days it must have rained heavily. There were small lakes of standing water in places and everywhere the ground was waterlogged. The shacks had sucked up so much rainwater they still seemed sodden despite the simmering afternoon heat.

A young man stood outside his home, smoking. His deep frown lines made him look like an old man, but I doubt he was more than twenty.

“How is he today?” Parvati asked. “How is little Hari?”

The young man shook his head. “Not so good.”

“Children get sick in Deva Katchi every year when the rains come,” Parvati said soothingly. “I will bring him some turmeric milk. That will help ease his chest.”

She unlocked a huge padlock on the shack next door, letting herself and Karisma into their home.

There was just enough light inside the cramped little shack to let me see that Parvati had worked miracles. The walls were painted a vivid peacock greenish blue, decorated with her kids’ drawings and pictures from magazines. Shelves suspended from ropes held pots, pans and spices. Bags of rice and lentils hung from the ceiling in nets, presumably to make it harder for the local rats.

There was an old-fashioned treadle sewing machine, also a radio which Parvati immediately turned on. The air filled with Indian-style flute music.

Karisma fetched her doll, an ancient Barbie with strange ginger stubble for hair. She started murmuring to her in Bambaiya, the lively mix of Hindi, Urdu and whatever, which seemed to be the unofficial language of Mumbai. I’d noticed Parvati and Laxmi switching between languages, cheerfully throwing in the odd word of English, apparently without noticing.

Parvati’s house was basically just one room, yet like Dev and Saraswati she’d made space for a simple altar. As well as an incense holder and a tiny tin statue of the god Krishna, Parvati kept two pictures on her altar: a black and white postcard of the old man I now knew to be Gandhi and a framed colour photograph, showing an unsmiling man posing beside a shiny motorised rickshaw.

“Namaste!” said a familiar voice.

Reuben ducked in through the doorway, followed by Brice.

“You found us!” I briefly shut my eyes. I’d never seriously doubted they’d track us down, yet my relief made me tremble like some little old lady.

“Piece of cake,” said Reuben breezily. He looked totally wiped.

I guessed they’d had a rough time in the time tunnels. Brice didn’t bother with hello, just launched into a speech.

“OK, this is what we’re not going to do. We’re not going to watch humans fly kites. We’re not going to visit anyone just because they have great vibes. We’re not even going to fret about nasty time tunnels because, by some miracle, we’re in the right time zone, so we can just catch a train up to - DAMN! I HATE when humans do that!”

Two distraught children had run right through Brice to get to their mother. The girl was crying so hard, the only words you could hear were, “My pot! My beautiful pot!”

Obi might not have been sure he knew Parvati, but he absolutely recognised her son Ravi. His eyes lit up with pure relief and joy, then his face quickly fell as he saw something was very wrong.

Parvati had gone pale, but she just said, “Asha, please calm down. Ravi, tell me what happened.”

Ravi was shaking because he was so angry. “Razak sent his
goondas
to our school.”

Parvati’s hand flew to her mouth. “Oh, Ravi!”

“He says if people don’t pay the new rents he’s going to bulldoze our houses into the ground. One of Razak’s thugs hit Mr Malik right in front of us and another guy ran down the whole length of the school smashing windows with a lead pipe.”

Asha was crying in huge wrenching sobs now. “I made a beautiful pot for you, Ammi, and he smashed it to pieces! And Razak’s going to break up our whole school!”

Parvati grabbed her children and checked each of them over, trembling. “They didn’t hit you? You’re not hurt?”

Ravi impatiently shook her off. “They said we won’t need an education, Ammi. They said when we lose our homes, we’ll be begging to work in Razak’s sweatshops.”

I felt numb. We just blow into humans’ lives, I thought, and in like, moments we’re caught up in their story.

Exactly what Brice was trying not to do. I saw him scowling at his phone, flicking through different functions, anything to avoid looking at these distressed humans.

Ravi was ready to explode. “I’m going to KILL Razak.”

“No talk of killing in this house!” said Parvati at once. “Didn’t your father tell you, you cannot fight evil with evil?”

Ravi threw himself down on the floor. “I know, but I don’t know what to do!”

Parvati looked like she had no clue either, but she said calmly, “Do your homework, that’s what you can do. You too, Asha.”

“I just checked,” said Brice. “There’s a train leaving for Kashmir in a couple of hours. We should go now.”

Obi looked horrified. “We can’t leave! Angels have to help people and Ravi and Parvati needs us to help them.”

“Someone else will have to help them then,” snapped Brice, then remembering he was speaking to a little kid, he said more gently, “Our job is to get you to the monks, Obi Wan. So you can train to be a
bodhisattva
, yeah? Then you’ll be able to help millions of humans, not just one or two.”

“I know,” Obi said humbly, “and I’m all muddled up because I’m supposed to look after Ravi and his family as well.”

Brice closed his eyes. “Explain it to him, Mel.”