The Year of the Runaways Read Online Free

house: radio alarms, the thrust of a tap. He quickened up and once the rotis were done and wrapped he dumped the frying pans in the sink for whoever would be on washing duty that night and replaced them on the hob with four large steel pans of water, full gas. He added tea bags, cloves, fennel and sugar and while all that boiled he gathered up the five flasks and dozen Tupperware boxes stacked on the windowsill. Each box bore a name written in felt-tip Panjabi. He found an extra box for his new room-mate, Tochi, and spooned in some potato sabzi from the fridge. As he carried a six-litre carton of milk to the hob, Gurpreet wandered in, the bib of his dungarees dangling half undone. He was pinning his turban into place.
    ‘All finished? Thought you might have needed some help again.’
    Randeep flushed but concentrated on pouring the milk into the pans.
    ‘Clean the bucket after you wash, acha?’ Gurpreet went on, moving to the Tupperware boxes. ‘None of your servants here.’
    He had cleaned it, he was sure he had, and his family had never had servants. He didn’t say anything. He just watched Gurpreet moving some of the sabzi from the other boxes, including Randeep’s, and adding it to his own. He wondered if he did this with everyone or only when it was Randeep on the roti shift.
    ‘Where’s your new friend from?’
    Randeep said he didn’t know, that he went to sleep straight away.
    ‘His name?’
    ‘Tochi.’
    ‘Surname, fool.’
    Randeep thought for a moment, shrugged. ‘Never said.’
    ‘Hmm. Strange.’
    Randeep didn’t say a word, didn’t know what he was driving at, and stood silently waiting for the pans to come to the boil again. He had the twitchy sensation he was being stared at. Sure enough, Gurpreet was still there by the fridge, eyes fixed.
    ‘Bhaji?’ Randeep asked. Gurpreet grunted, seemed to snap out of it and left, then the hiss of the tea had Randeep leaping to turn off the gas.
    Soon the house was a whirl of voices and feet and toilet flushes and calls to get out of bed. They filed down, rucksacks slung over sleepy shoulders, taking their lunchbox from the kitchen counter; next a rushed prayer at the joss stick and out into the cold morning dark in twos and threes, at ten-minute intervals. Randeep looked for Tochi but he must have gone ahead, so he paired up with Avtar as usual. Before he left the house he remembered to take up the pencil strung and taped to the wall and he scored a firm thick tick next to his name on the rota.
    Overnight, the ground had toughened, compacted, and at the end of the morning they were still staking it out while Langra John – Limpy John – and three other white men went about in yellow JCBs.
    ‘Wish I had that job,’ Randeep said, closing his lunchbox. ‘Just driving about all day.’
    Avtar clucked his tongue. ‘One day, my friend. Keep working hard and one day we’ll be the bosses.’
    Randeep leaned back against the aluminium tunnel. He shut his eyes and must have nodded off for a while because the next thing he heard was the insistent sound of Gurpreet’s voice.
    ‘But you must have a pind. Was that in Calcutta too?’
    Tochi was sitting against a low wall, the soles of his boots pressed together and knees thrown wide open.
    ‘I’m talking to you,’ Gurpreet said.
    ‘My pind’s not in Calcutta.’
    ‘Where, then?’
    Tochi swigged from his water bottle and took his time screwing the top back on. He had a quiet voice. ‘Bihar.’
    Gurpreet looked round at everyone as if to say, Didn’t I tell you? ‘So what are you?’
    Avtar spoke up. ‘Arré, this is England, yaar. Leave him.’
    ‘Ask him his bhanchod name.’
    Shaking his head, Avtar turned to Tochi. ‘What are you? Ramgarhia? Saini? Just shut him up.’
    ‘Ask him his bhanchod name, I said.’
    Tochi made to get up, frost crackling underfoot. ‘Tarlochan Kumar.’
    Randeep frowned a little but hoped no one saw it.
    ‘A bhanchod chamaar,’ Gurpreet said, laughing. ‘Even the