The In-Between World of Vikram Lall Read Online Free PDF

of trucks, and a thunder of many army boots ominous outside, proceeding at a pace in the gullies between the buildings; a halt and a prolonged shuffle sounding like the rains. A woman’s rising query quickly chokes into a brief but painful scream. And then gruff, hectoring African voices call out, pitching venom and terror and rude, electrifying authority, right there, behind the houses, in the backyards.
     
Kikuyu!
Out, you hyenas!
Hands in the air!
Tokeni nje! Sasa hivi!
All Africans, come out!
     
    And-if-any-of-you-fancies-hiding-away-inside, surely he is my meat…and I will eat his brains and wear his skin.
    The last taunt muttered by the sinister Corporal Boniface, a jowly Idi Amin of a man, Grimm giant known to all.
    And a theme emergent: a command or two uttered in high-pitched English accents, followed by the murmur of two like voices chatting casually.
    Here they come again for the poor Kikuyu, Dada muttered from his armchair, opening his eyes but otherwise not stirring, just as Mother and Papa came hurrying out of their room. Mother looked flushed and soft, deliciously dishevelled, as she always did when she took a nap in the afternoon; she was still arranging her kameez, and I went to stand close to her.
    A police raid, looks like, she said irritably. What Mau Mau can they expect to find here in this location?
    The police regularly raided the Indian residential areas, expecting to find Mau Mau hiding among the servants.
    It’s good they are vigilant, na, Papa replied.
    Mahesh Uncle, who had earlier gone to my room to rest, was already out the back door and audible. My parents headed that way, followed by me, and Grandfather reluctantly got up on his feet also to go witness the clamorous proceedings outside. Dadi had gone to the Molabux household three doors down, to visit her friend Sakina-dadi, as she always did after the Sunday family meal.
    She must be asleep, Mother answered when Papa inquired about Deepa. Let her be.
    Outside, in our backyard, Njoroge stood wide-eyed, looking lost and nervous, a hare petrified before the hounds, praying for the earth to swallow him up right there under his feet, or my family to somehow do something for him.
    Hide somewhere quickly, child, Mahesh Uncle admonished just as a European police inspector started coming toward us, in the company of an askari.

    The Asian development in which we lived consisted of four rectangular buildings on either side of a small street, each with two adjoining homes and servant quarters at the back. The large French windows in the fronts of these homes and facing the street must have seemed modern and fashionably suburban once, but in the current fearful climate were a nerve-wracking security risk; our windows were heavily draped at night, the casements always checked and securely fastened. In the daytime, however, our street, lined with tall fern trees with swaying branches that rustled noisily in the wind, looked beautifully innocuous, contentedly residential. It turned off from the larger road which began at the railway station and alongside which, not far from us, was the shopping centre where my family had its business and Deepa and Njoroge and I went to play on Saturdays. Ours was the fourth home from this intersection, on the right side. There was a champeli tree in our garden, and bougainvillea bushes climbing at the hedge; the roses under the windows were evidence of an enthusiasm caught from the flower displays at the annual Nakuru Show, where the European ladies showed off their gardening skills.
    Dada and Dadi lived in an apartment downtown, in the main street of Nakuru; Omprakash Uncle, my father’s older brother, lived in the same building as my grandparents and ran a hardware store; my father’s younger brother Mohan was a bookkeeper at the Farmers’ Association and lived in one of the houses across our street. My father had two sisters, both of whom had been married out of town.
    That Sunday during the family lunch my uncles