It was an odd trio that went to Nainital that weekend. It comprised two men and a woman, but no, this wasn’t an archetypal love triangle. The woman was Payal, short, as fair-skinned as a Caucasian, who escaped to the hills to cope with boyfriend trouble. One of the men were Rajiv, an ageing Hindi professor in Lucknow University who dyed his hair to look younger than his years, while the other was Humayun, a boyish-looking PhD scholar on hunger strike outside the main gate of Lucknow University to persuade the authorities to give him a guide to research the Urdu Ghazal.
Payal and Humayun, now in their thirties, were former students of Rajiv who, along with dozens of other students, often went out on jaunts with him. Rajiv and Humayun ran into Payal in the university canteen on a Friday afternoon as they were sipping tea. On hearing Payal’s tale of woe they invited her to rough it out with them to Nainital to help her recoup.
The timing of the expedition couldn’t have been worse. It was the last weekend of the summer holidays before schools reopened. Websites like Make My Trip warned them that all hotels in the hill station were full. The few home-stays whose phone numbers Rajiv had advised him not to venture out till Monday morning, when holiday-makers would leave the town in droves, like bees fleeing a smoked beehive. Payal, however, couldn’t wait till Monday. She told her mates that she wanted to run away to Nainital post-haste.
“In that case, let’s just get to Nainital and see what happens,” Rajiv said, though he rarely set out anywhere before making flight, train and hotel bookings well in advance. Boarding an overnight Express train from Lucknow to Kathgodam, and a bus from Kathgodam to Nainital, they reached the hill town in time for breakfast on Saturday morning.
Anup Kaul, the manager of Nainital’s Lake View Hotel, was a friend of Rajiv’s. The name of his hotel was a misnomer. Although the hotel was in the vicinity of the Naukuchiatal Lake, the lake couldn’t be seen from the hotel, thanks to construction work that was going on all around it. Anup Kaul was a balding Kashmiri Pandit who had fled Srinagar in 1990 to settle down in Nainital where he had relatives.
On stepping out of the bus at Nainital’s central bus stand, Rajiv, Payal and Humayun took a taxi to the Lake View Hotel. Anup Kaul was surprised to see them.
“You are welcome, my friend,” he said to Rajiv, “but I’m afraid there isn’t a single room available in the hotel tonight. I wish you had called me before coming.”
“Yaar, please do some jugaad,” Rajiv begged. “Now that we’ve landed here, we’re not going back. You don’t expect us to sleep it out at the bus stand, do you?”
“If the three of you can spend the night in the store room,” Anup Kaul said, giving it some thought, “I can have it cleaned out for you and lay three beds.”
“Anything will do,” Rajiv said, looking at his companions who nodded in agreement.
Anup Kaul got his staff to ready the store room. Much junk was shifted out of it, the room was swept and mopped, and a double bed was laid out at one end of the room, with a single bed at the other. Fresh bed linen, towels and soaps were brought in. Rajiv took the single bed, placing his rucksack on it, while Humayun and Payal made themselves comfortable on the double bed. The three freshened up, and a vegetarian thali meal was served to them for lunch.
As sunset approached, Anup Kaul was intrigued. Why did Rajiv give his students the double bed, instead of asking Humayun to share it with him? Were Humayun and Payal a couple?
Around dinner time, Anup Kaul told Rajiv that his wife and he had decided to move into his son’s bedroom for the night, so that his male student and he could use their room. The female student could then have the revamped store room all to herself for the sake of privacy.
“That’s wonderful,” Rajiv said. “I can’t thank you enough. After all, two is a company, three is a crowd.”
Once Anup Kaul and his wife had retired for the night, Humayun threw a tantrum. “I’ll sleep in Payal’s room,” he told Rajiv. “We’re classmates, we’re good friends, and we have much in common to talk about all through the night. In fact, we’ll hardly be sleeping. We plan to watch a movie on Netflix.”
Payal, who walked over to Rajiv’s room, acquiesced. “Yes, sir,” she said, although Rajiv’s students rarely addressed him as ‘sir’, calling him by name instead. “I’m depressed, and I’ll feel less suicidal if Humayun is with me.”
Payal knew the reason for Humayun not wanting to spend the night in Rajiv’s room. Rajiv was believed to be gay. Payal felt protective towards Humayun.
As Humayun left Rajiv’s bedroom with his backpack, the latter bolted the door from within in a temper and switched off the lights. He was tired but slept fitfully.
Anup Kaul knocked on Rajiv’s door the next morning to serve him tea in bed. Payal, however, did not open her door till late in the morning, in spite of repeated knocking by the waiters, informing her that breakfast was ready. When, around 10 am, the door was finally opened, it was Humayun who opened it. Everyone -- Rajiv, Anup Kaul and the waiters -- saw Humayun emerge from Payal’s room, toothbrush in hand, followed by Payal who rubbed her eyes.
Breakfast consisted of omelette, toast, cheese, jam, bacon, fruit, orange juice, and coffee. A proper colonial breakfast that Jim Corbett, who had spent his entire life in Nainital, probably had every morning. After breakfast, Payal and Humayun played a game of badminton, then showered and made plans to go sight-seeing. They were especially interested in seeing all Nainital’s seven lakes and clicking pictures to post on Instagram.
It was as they were about to leave the home-stay around noon that the police suddenly arrived in a Scorpio with a beacon light and handcuffed Humayun.
“Brother, we have to arrest you under the Love Jihad law,” the moustached inspector said to Humayun. “Although Nainital is now in Uttarakhand, we follow the criminal laws of neighbouring Uttar Pradesh, of which Nainital was once a part.”
Humayun was flabbergasted but he kept his cool. “Love Jihad!” he exclaimed, unable to believe his ears. “Sir, prove it that I have committed Love Jihad. I did not even touch the damn girl.”
Payal seconded Humayun. “There’s a misunderstanding, sir,” she said to the inspector. We’re just good friends, nothing more. I have a steady boyfriend. I am not Humayun’s girlfriend.”
Payal looked towards Rajiv who remained silent.
The inspector tried to be reasonable.
“If you have a steady boyfriend,” he said to Payal, “how come you spent the night in a hotel room with a Muslim man?”
Payal hated the inspector’s reference to Humayun’s faith. But she knew she would have to provide him with an explanation.
“Sir, my boyfriend Nimesh lives in Bulandshahr,” Payal said. “He runs a motor-car spare parts shop. Right now we’re in a long-distance relationship, as I have a secretarial job in Lucknow. Lately, things haven’t been going well between us, and to introspect, I decided to come to Nainital for a few days. I actually wanted to come here alone, on a solo trip. I latched on to Humayun and Rajiv sir at the last minute.”
The inspector decided to verify Payal’s story. He asked her to call her boyfriend and put the phone on speaker mode.
Nimesh was shocked when Payal told him the mess she was in. He had no idea she was in Nainital with two men. His tone indicated that Payal had strayed, not for the first time, and she deserved to be punished. He said he was busy, called her a slut, and abruptly cut the call.
Payal broke into tears and had to be given a glass of water.
Later, composing herself, Payal wiped her tears and tried another strategy. She took the policemen to her room and showed them the unmade beds. She said Humayun and she did not sleep in the same bed. While she was on the double bed, he had slept on the single bed. The policemen took note of the scores of cigarette butts and empty vodka bottles in the room. They guessed that Payal and Humayun had been smoking and drinking all night.
Humayun butted in. He said that if they’d had sex, wouldn’t there be a condom in the room? He dared the cops to find a condom, used or otherwise.
The policemen sniggered. A lot of couples have unprotected sex, they laughed. The absence of a condom did not mean there was no fucking.
The inspector wondered why Payal was going out of her way to refute the Love Jihad charge levelled against Humayun. After all, it was he who would be arrested, not she. Her defensiveness only proved that she had a soft corner for Humayun, which, to the inspector’s way of thinking, indicated that they were lovers.
Rajiv continued to remain silent. He did not intervene to say a word. When the inspector bluntly asked him if he thought Humayun and Payal had had sex, he merely shrugged his shoulders and said, “No clue.”
Humayun was driven to the police station in the Scorpio. An FIR was registered against him and he was kept in the lock-up with riff-raff. At the same time he was provided with a defense lawyer and allowed to make a call to his folks.
The local TV channels got wind of the story and gave it prime time coverage. They called it “breaking news.” Most of them sided with the police, arguing that the girl being an upper-caste Hindu and the boy a Muslim, this was clearly a case of Love Jihad.
Humayun’s father Saleem was a butcher who lived in Azamgarh. He himself had been a victim of cow vigilantism when Hindu gau rakshaks had found him transporting the carcass of a dead cow on a handcart. Had it not been for the presence of an army convoy that happened to be passing by, he would surely have been killed. When he heard of his son’s arrest under the Love Jihad law he knew at once what to do. He phoned his cousin Mohammad whose daughter Ismat was to be married to Humayun. Like Humayun, Ismat was a PhD scholar at Aligarh Muslim University, pursuing her research in Molecular Biology.
“Janaab, there’s no question of Humayun enticing a Hindu girl to marry her and convert her to Islam,” Saleem told the inspector. “Humayun’s nikah has already been fixed with his niece Ismat. You may contact Ismat and ask her if you wish. The two of them love each other.”
Meanwhile, Payal was taken to the Nainital General Hospital for a check-up. The results took some time, but when they came they revealed that no sex had happened while Payal was in Nainital, though she was sexually active in general, with a ruptured hymen. However, the cops at the police station were given instructions by their political bosses to “suppress” the hospital report.
A police team was sent to Aligarh to interview Ismat. She confirmed that Humayun and she were to be married soon. They were waiting for one of them to land a school or college job so that they could start a family. She had full faith in Humayun and did not think he would cheat on her.
“Ismat’s word means nothing,” Nainital’s guardian minister, a Lingayat Brahmin, was telling the inspector on the phone. “Don’t you know that a Muslim man can have four wives? Both the sharia and the Quran allow it. The culprit is undoubtedly guilty and should not be shown any leniency.”
“Sir.”
The defence lawyer provided to Humayun had earned his law degree only in the third attempt. His brief was that he had to defend criminals in such a way that the prosecution would invariably win the case in court. When Humayun asked him if he could apply for bail, the lawyer said that Love Jihad was a non-bailable offence. It was only the Chief Minister who had special powers to grant him bail. “You may apply to the honourable CM,” the lawyer said. “But so far no one has been given bail, not even by the honourable CM-ji.”
The defence lawyer asked Humayun to narrate the sequence of events that led to his arrest. When he learned that the hungama had happened only because Humayun was reluctant to spend the night in a gay man’s room, he laughed.
“Arre bhai, you are stupid or what,” the defence lawyer said. “If Proffessor Rajiv molested or raped you, who would be arrested? Professor Rajiv, no? Not you. Today, he would be inside and you would be outside, enjoying Nainital’s cool air. So, even if Professor Rajiv sir is gay, you should have slept in his room, not in girl’s room.”
“But Section 377 is gone,” Humayun said. “Gay sex is now legal in India.”
“Arre bhai, you are mistaken. Section 377 is gone only if the sex is consensual. Rape and molestation do not amount to consensual sex. So Section 377 can still apply.”
The original plan was for Rajiv, Payal, and Humayun to stay in Nainital till Monday or Tuesday morning. But with Humayun in custody, that plan had to be aborted. Rajiv told Payal that he felt unwell and would be hiring a cab all the way back to Lucknow. Payal could join him if she wished.
“You carry on, sir,” Payal said to him. “I’ll find my way back after doing a bit of travelling. I really need to be sorted.”
“Fine,” said Rajiv.
After Rajiv’s departure, Payal decided to confront Anup Kaul. At whose bidding did he concoct the Love Jihad story?
“Ma’am,” Anup Kaul said, “I run a business. All I’m interested in is money. If I start looking at whether Hindus slept with Muslims, or Brahmins slept with Shudras, or goras slept with Negroes, or if my rooms are occupied by homosexuals, lesbians and hijras, I’ll never make money. I’ll have to close down the hotel, pack my bags and leave. It’s true that as a Kashmiri Pandit, I hate Muslims. They are responsible for the genocide of thirty years ago, when were hounded out of our homeland in the valley. But that was a long time ago and I have moved on.”
“So then, why the complaint against poor Humayun?”
“Believe me, ma’am, I didn’t even realize that the guy was a Muslim. He had none of the trappings of a typical Muslim -- you know, fez cap, kohl in the eyes. When he gave me his identity card, I mechanically photocopied it and returned it to him as I habitually do. These things, you must understand, are a mere formality. A government regulation, that’s all. As a matter of fact, I didn’t even ask you both if you were husband and wife, or boyfriend and girlfriend, as many hotelwallahs do.”
“But then why did you phone the cops when you saw both of us step out of my room?”
“Because … because that is what Rajiv told me to do.”
“What!?”
“Yes. You see, Rajiv is an old friend. I have known him for twenty years. Whenever he’s in Nainital, he stays at my hotel. Last night, he felt slighted by Humayun’s refusal to sleep in his room. He felt that in India it was odd for a man and woman to share a room if they weren’t a married couple, or brother and sister. On the other hand, it was normal for men to share a room, even if they were strangers. A man and a woman, according to Rajiv, cannot be ‘just friends’.”
“So?”
“So after you both went into your room and shut the door, he woke me up and pointed out that while you were a Hindu, Humayun was a Muslim--a Sunni Muslim. His surname was Rizvi. UP’s Love Jihad law could easily be applied to him to get him into trouble. At first I thought he was joking. Then I realized he was serious. Damn serious. Of course, why he wanted Humayun to get into trouble he didn’t tell me, and I didn’t ask. Actually, I did not want the police to enter the premises. But Rajiv promised to pay me extra for the favour, which he immediately did.”
Months later, when Payal had resigned from her job and returned to her native Bhopal, she learned why Rajiv had got Humayun arrested. Humayun had breached a contract they had signed. He had borrowed a lakh from Rajiv. When he was unable to return the money, he offered himself up to his professor. He agreed to be his escort, his rent boy, whatever Rajiv wished to call it, and give him sex whenever he wanted. That weekend, Rajiv and Humayun had planned to go to Nainital for a night of debauchery. Payal was a last minute tag-on. A kebab me haddi. The bone in the kebab. Humayun had insisted on sleeping in Payal’s room in the Lake View Hotel only because he did not want her to get a whiff of his agreement with Rajiv, which made him feel like a prostitute. His masculinity, he felt, was at stake.
It was Humayun himself who confessed to Payal, when she went to see him in the Dehradun District Jail where he was an undertrial. He said prison life, where homosexuality was rampant, had enabled him to come to terms with his sexuality. He had come out of the closet and broken off his engagement to Ismat, who was now happily married to her second cousin, Shabbir.
As to Humayun’s PhD on the Urdu Ghazal, Lucknow University had still not provided him with a guide.
R. Raj Rao is an Indian writer and professor. His fifth novel, Mahmud and Ayaz, is to be published in September this year.
